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Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

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Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#131

Post by barrkel »

super_mario wrote: post #122
Maro wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is a medical doctor doing a Phd right now. By her own admission, doctors are _not_ well-versed in the scientific method _by education_. The others in her lab are all biologists, and she spent the first year playing catch-up in terms of being able to do science, and says she still feels like she'll always be behind compared to the biologists in the lab who got a regular scientist training in their 5 years at t…

The process of diagnosing a disease works quite like scientific method. You form a hypothesis based on symptoms, and then you test your hypothesis by ordering various kinds of lab etc. tests. You inspect the results and modify your theory on what could be wrong.

The procedure you described just there is susceptible to confirmation bias. You need to take that into account, as well as the power of your tests as Bayesian evidence updates. There are a lot of doctors that order tests even though their evidential value is not high.

For example, consider a test with a 1% false positive rate, for a disease with a 0.1% incidence rate for a particular set of symptoms. If you come through positive for the test, what's the probability that you have the disease? Too many people think it's 99% (the converse of the false-positive rate); but in reality it's more like 10%. But you still formed a hypothesis, did a test, and the result came out OK. You think you're doing science, but in reality you're cargo-culting.

Double-blind trials and high-quality statistics are prerequisites for good work here.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#132

Post by ucee054 »

MrKurtHaeusler wrote: post #47

That is an easy one. Scientists are good at objective truth, facts, etc. Most political decisions are however highly subjective, and based on values, principles and opinions. Scientists are great for advising politicians on things that are obviously and provably correct or false, but once it gets beyond that, their biases tends to get in the way. Asking a scientist if NASA should get more or less funding is about as…

Operations Research is the science of resource allocation. I would certainly ask an OR guy about NASA funding.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#133

Post by super_mario »

barrkel wrote: post #131
super_mario wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The process of diagnosing a disease works quite like scientific method. You form a hypothesis based on symptoms, and then you test your hypothesis by ordering various kinds of lab etc. tests. You inspect the results and modify your theory on what could be wrong.

The procedure you described just there is susceptible to confirmation bias. You need to take that into account, as well as the power of your tests as Bayesian evidence updates. There are a lot of doctors that order tests even though their evidential value is not high. For example, consider a test with a 1% false positive rate, for a disease with a 0.1% incidence rate for a particular set of symptoms. If you come thro…

Most doctors won't bother with ordering tests for disease with 0.1% incidence rate (or much higher) until more common and probable causes are excluded. And even then, they would most likely defer you to someone who specializes in the very narrow field who could potentially make correct diagnosis with the existing data.

Double blind trials are for clinical studies. You don't do double blind trials on single patient :D.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#134

Post by rdouble »

prewett wrote: post #22

Why don't Americans elect scientists? Because current American culture is anti-intellectual. I can't really back this up concretely, but as an American, it's hard to find anything intellectual around. A long time ago, people went to hear lectures on the weekends, and the Lincoln-Douglas debates were well attended. Now, TV "news" is a joke, and even NPR is becoming a bit entertainy. I get the feeling that few American…

American culture has always had an anti-intellectual component. The country was initially settled by merchants and religious fanatics, two groups not exactly known for intellectual curiosity. What's more interesting is how successful intellectuals have been in this country, considering half the population has generally held them in contempt.

This book is a bit dated but is a pretty good history of American anti-intellectualism:

http://www.amazon.com/Anti-Intellectualism-American-Life-Ric...

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#135

Post by paulhauggis »

To be honest, many people that have PHDs that I have met have horrendous people skills. Yes, I want an intelligent person to run our country, but serial killers also many times have very high IQs.

I want someone that is good with people and has intelligence.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#136

Post by Duff »

Americans don't elect scientists for a simple reason: scientists by their nature lack the skills necessary to succeed as a popular politician.

Singapore isn't a democracy in the same sense as the US or Britain. China is a not a democracy at all. So comparing the education levels of elected officials isn't really an apples-to-apples comparison.

In the US, a person's charisma, ability to relate to and attract the attention of voters, ability to build a political organization and ability to get things done within the political system define your success as a politician. Politicians start local, and build tight social networks as city councilmen, mayors, state legislators, etc. They then use those networks to get into Federal offices.

The great exception are candidates that skip the political process and reach high office by spending prestige capital (ie. President/General US Grant) or by spending lots of financial capital (ie. New York City Mayor Bloomberg). Even in these cases, these folks are actually buying access to someone else's political infrastructure.

None of this means that the US government does not have scientists working on policy. Scientists do work for the government as political appointees (ie. Secretary Chu of the US Department of Energy), as civil servants (ie. employees of NOAA), as contractors to government (ie. the RAND Corporation), or indirectly via unaffiliated think-tanks (ie. Federation of American Scientists).

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#137

Post by jerf »

ashconnor wrote: post #110
smsm42 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still go to lectures - or find them on YouTube, download them from the web or torrents, etc. And the debates are as much "attended" and more - people just don't have to be physically there anymore. It's all right with Americans and thinking - it's just most of them don't turn their thinking towards government. Which is a blessing - it is brilliant minds who brought us the current financial crisis, for example,…

You just got Marxism mixed up with the dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union. Please read the Communist Manifesto before you lambast it with an uninformed critique.

The Communist Manifesto leads directly to the "dictatorial regimes of the 20th century". The Communist Manifesto is not founded in any reality (psychological, political, economic), and as it is applied but fails to bring the promised benefits as it is completely ungrounded in reality, it also encourages the leaders to come to the conclusion that the only reason this can be is that the people aren't trying hard enough. This requires a stronger centralized rule to fix the problem and force the people to comply, but strengthening the centralized rule just causes more problems because centralized rule doesn't work, and it certainly doesn't work with the horrifyingly wrong Communist economic model. This causes yet more centralized power to be amassed and yet more crackdowns, until it crumbles under its own weight.

It's utterly predictable, mostly because we've seen so many try to apply it and fail in exactly the same way each time. We're well past the point where we can say the Communist Manifesto directly leads to dictatorial regimes. I will recant this statement when someone manages to apply it without turning into a dictatorial regime, but don't hold your breath for that.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#138

Post by moldbug »

sbierwagen wrote: post #94

I’ve visited Singapore a few times in recent years and been impressed with its wealth and modernity. I was also quite aware of its world-leading programs in mathematics education and naturally noted that one of the candidates for president was Tony Tan, who has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. Tan won the very close election and joined the government of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who also has a degree in mathemat…

I think a Singaporean would be amused to hear this comment emanating from (or at least served by) a nation that contains Detroit, Oakland, etc.

I've visited Oakland a few times in recent years. I haven't been impressed by its wealth or modernity. No capital punishment, however. And as for drug possession - woo-hoo! The labor laws are quite strict as well, I'm told.

Tolerance of other cultures isn't just a slogan to be mouthed at freshman orientation. Sometimes it actually requires a nigga to consider dissonant perspectives.

Re: Why Don't Americans Elect Scientists?

#139

Post by trustfundbaby »

Here's what's missing from that article ... how many 'scientists' ran and lost compared to 'non-scientists'?

I do think that Americans have this weird 'anti-nerd', culture where being brainy without being rich (ever notice how having money makes it okay to be nerdy in the States?) is something to be mocked or made fun of, but I also think that the way the American political system is set up discourages scientists/engineers from running.

Just take a look at Ron Paul (whom I disagree with on a lot btw) in some of the debates, trying to tell Americans the hard, very obvious truths about their country and getting roundly booed and you can understand why ... say ... a software developer would never even want to go near the process.

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