From the opinion piece kindly submitted here, which is by mathematician and popular author on mathematics John Allen Paulos: "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.…
An interesting post; I'm assuming your later references to Taiwan are actually to Singapore?
Why would you assume that? They're two different countries, with different histories, mentioned together because both have excellent education in mathematics and scientifically competent leaders (relevant to the OP).
Because elections are a poor way to elect competent people, overall? The best democratic system in the world won't help anything if the population is not educated or interested enough to make an informed decision. Democracy itself is distorted because it doesn't thrive for optimal solutions, instead, it thrives to please the people. The people who get elected are detached from the population to begin with. Being a "p…
There was that popular link being circulated a while back... Democracy does not aim to select the optimal candidate but to minimize the damage caused. The candidate chosen is the "least bad", not the most optimal.
I have great sympathy for the position proposed in the article, with one major fear: those trained in science typically traffic in ideas that are either right (true) or wrong (false). I fear that this would dispose them toward authoritarianism, which is in fact the first word that comes to mind when I hear about Singapore. How does this compare to your personal experience?
You're probably not a scientist. Mathematics mostly traffics in things which are right or wrong; science rarely does. That's one of the criticisms that the peanut gallery often lobs at it: that it's just based on theories . When ideas are actually being trafficked -- that is when they're new and struggling for breathing room, they're rarely clearly right or wrong. Consensus forms over a fairly long amount of time. Wi…
Going by anecdotal evidence[0], there does seem to be some of the tendency ta12121 worries about among engineers, though.
I don't want to step on too many toes, but I have to make mention of the error in the particular arrogance among the scientific community that their work qualifies them to reform other industries and facets of the human existence. Obviously the work of scientists and engineers is vital, and worthy of credit and praise, but I would not trust even the smartest scientists and engineers I know to handle the foreign policy of a nation, for example. Or tell me how to live my life, ethically or morally. I'm saying this from the perspective of an engineer, to my credit--I'm well aware of the talent and brilliance in the community. I just think it's dangerous to worship the altar of science to solve all of our problems.
"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 mathematics."
There was that popular link being circulated a while back... Democracy does not aim to select the optimal candidate but to minimize the damage caused. The candidate chosen is the "least bad", not the most optimal.
Isn't "least bad" equivalent to optimal?
If your selection function optimizes for minimized damage, not maximized improvement, sure.
Science can only describe the physical world, it can't tell you what to do about it. The Nazis had plenty of highly placed scientists. Woodrow Wilson did too and they were in favor of eugenics. The deification of science is a life raft post adolescents cling to as they try to swim away from the inherent corruption of mankind. Scientists are no less afflicted with selfishness, vanity or pettiness than people in any ot…
That said, the old adage still holds: "You are entitled to hold your own opinions, but not to hold your own facts." That is something which is clearly not true in US politics. There are politicians in the US who profess publicly that the Earth is not warming, that the universe is only 6000 years old, and animals were designed by a divine creator. This has obvious public policy implications. It's hard to discuss possi…
The reason is people are not so naive. In 20th C., affiliating your position with [Science] has often just been short hand for [Trust Me]. It has been a way to dress up mutton as lamb. Only a certain kind of person argues: I know the all the facts. I am 100% right. They are usually (1) people who do not know what they are talking about; or (2) people who [bracket] their scope of knowledge to the subset of things that [conform to their education/training/expertise], but then extrapolate further. And, everybody knows, politics covers a broader scope of ambition and emotion. Certainly, broader than what is taught [in XYZ school]. It covers hopes and dreams [mlk, ghandi]. As well as other more base instincts [20th century wars, etc]. So, there is no [expertise] in politics that is an academic credential. And to substitute an [academic] [science] credential and call it an [expertise] in politics is dressing up [mutton] and calling it [Lamb]. Its just short hand for [Trust Me]. And the reason people do not buy that? The reason is that people are not so naive.
"...scientifically literate government leaders who push for evidence-based policies and demonstrate a scientific outlook are needed more than glib panderers with attitude."
In my subjective experience, scientifically literate leaders usually have way better attitude than ones who are not that literate.
Those individuals are using science to support their pre-existing narrowmindedness, stubbornness, and extremism. Science is not making them those things. On the contrary, the fundamentals of science lie in questioning pre-conceived notions in the face of findings that conflict them. This is how scientific progress is made.
Right. No point of conflict there. All I'm saying is that many technically trained and minded people, in the arena of dealing with human/political issues, seem to rely on idealizations, not unlike mathematical models, when in truth they are too complicated to be represented as such. Maybe the prediliction for mathematics and science betrays a deeper desire for a clean, concise, comprehensible truth, which rarely exis…
I think the main benefit is that a scientist elected to a political office would make decisions based on real data when possible. Obviously it is often times not possible - for example, you can't use science to determine whether you should take a pro-life stance or a pro-choice stance - but the insistence on using numbers would greatly simplify many decisions.