7 ms·

I have a heuristic. A 'code smell' for social science articles, which is something like, is all of Western society explained by happenings in the USA? Caveats:

by rm445 6y ago

I have a heuristic. A 'code smell' for social science articles, which is something like, is all of Western society explained by happenings in the USA? Caveats: there's nothing wrong with writing an American article about America. And it's not to deny the many incredible achievements of the USA. The 'smell' occurs when you read (in other articles) that inflation was invented by the Fed, or that public schooling was invented for American social cohesion. That such and such US president caused a global long-term phenomenon. This article is a bit like that. Nothing wrong with focusing on what the USA should be doing, but neglects that the same powerful economic forces operate in all kinds of places - it's hard for Australia to build, for Germany to build, for Turkey to build, for Japan to build. The author perhaps starts from the view that none of those can build great things in the first place and only the USA could be any different. And here are some nineteenth-century Tocqueville quotes to prove it. But it risks going down blind alleys. How was the industrial revolution built in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester? How was the Sydney Opera House built? The trans-Siberian railway? The Suez Canal? How was post-war Japan reconstructed? How were the expeditions of the Spanish and Dutch empires put together? The answers might be related to the author's ponderings about the nineteenth-century American spirit, but it's not a perfect correlation. Building stuff is straightforward where there's not much stuff already - because it's wilderness, or everything has been bombed, or it's something new like the Internet. And stuff can be built where there's hardly any government, and also when the government has huge powers. Building is hardest and costliest when population density is high, when 'land' (or equivalent resource) is in small parcels, and property rights are strong - but those are exactly the conditions that lots of people love to live in. If societies can figure out how to build new infrastructure in cities, they can also figure out how to build super-projects. Both of those are hard problems. I agree with the article author that it requires co-operation, self-organisation, recognition of common interests and allocation of a decisive authority. But there's no answer yet to the problem of the legitimacy of that authority in places where there are many competing and dissenting interests.

naravara 6y ago
I think your point is correct in general, but I’d like to nitpick in a specific part here: > it's hard for Australia to build, for Germany to build, for Turkey to build, for Japan to build. Just looking at the cost of rail infrastructure, it looks like the US has a significantly harder time generating value for money with what we build. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-09/why-1-billion-doesn-t-buy-much-transit-infrastructure-anymore https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-09/why-1-bil... The cost difference per km of rail comparing Tokyo or Berlin to NYC is insane. It’s literally an order of magnitude difference in some cases. And this issue arises in many parts of our society. IT modernization projects in the federal government cost boatloads of money, yet never seem to make any real headway. Even in the private sector, real value adding things like transitioning to electronic medical records never really took until insurance companies and the government started forcing it. And once they did the focus on their design was entirely around billing and coding and not really improving the physician’s workflow or enhancing care. So while the point may be true everywhere, I think there really is a baked in tendency to veto and strike down proposals for change in the US that doesn’t seem to get quite so rampant in other places.
- netcan 6y ago
  I think you're both right. To the meta-point made by the OP... We are now sitting on 200 years of social "science" failure to gain an understanding of this stuff. Theories fall in and out of favour, but they never seem to be affected by reality very much either way. I think science, as an approach, just isn't a useful way of getting an understanding of why US rail construction costs are so outrageous. It isn't that kind of question. Aspiring to an abstract philosophical or scientific Theory of Government Procurement doesn't take you anywhere useful.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Was the "Theory of Government Procurement" ever been the goal of social science?
    - netcan 6y ago
      The goalposts of social science always seems to be moved to where the ball goes. But, I think if we're being honest, than yes. Not the only goal obviously. But, there are countless economists & policy researchers publishing on similar topics all the time.
      - watwut 6y ago
        To me, it seems that actual scientific articles that would fall into social science umbrella have much smaller scope and goals.
        netcan 6y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by "actual scientific articles," but I mean stuff that's generally published in economics, policy, psychology or other "social science" related journals. I'm not commenting on which is "scientific" in a Popperian sense. I'm not sure any of these publications clear that bar. Questions of scope and/or magnitude is one of the moving goalposts. Scope is implied to be very broad in most contexts, limited in more critical contexts. This theory only applies to preschools in this neighborhood. The 2018 Nobel Laureate for Economics was about "Endogenous growth theory," a theory of how human capital, innovation, and knowledge contribute to economic growth. Is that a small scope? The most influential social science book of the last few years was "Capital in the 21st century" which is a theory of income and wealth gaps. Is that small in scope? Ultimately, a theory that can't be generalized iss not really a theory, in a scientific sense. It's punditry.
hliyan 6y ago
This detracts from the point of the article. The author is not writing a program, nor is he aiming for "perfect correlation". He is noting a series of observations and proposing some connections between them, as is often the case with writings about society. If we take a level of rigor that works for sub-100KLOC algorithms running on dozens of cores and try to apply it to millions of interacting neural networks, each with 100 billion neurons, there will hardly be any writings about society.
pharke 6y ago
> Building is hardest and costliest when population density is high, when 'land' (or equivalent resource) is in small parcels, and property rights are strong - but those are exactly the conditions that lots of people love to live in. I don't think this holds up. Throughout history the greatest examples of "building" in all domains have occurred in these conditions. I don't think the impediments to building are related to scarcity. The author is making this point as well, it doesn't matter where a person is located, a city, a frontier, a farm, or a village, what matters are the attitudes and beliefs of the people in those settings. It's the old adage "where there's a will, there's a way". I think this is a better explanation of why it is so difficult to build in some places _at the moment_ because it also explains why it was not difficult to build in the same places at different times in the past. The question here should be how do we effectively teach people to think this way en masse despite their current circumstances or past training?
- watwut 6y ago
  Attitudes are shaped by external circumstances. By seeing someone attempt to build and seeing either failure or success or neutral result. > where there's a will, there's a way That is motivational, but it is not factual fact. > why it was not difficult to build in the same places at different times in the past None of those places have same laws and conditions as it used to.
asdfman123 6y ago
You make a good point -- if you're in a place without basic infrastructure, the government and the people really want that new infrastructure and few will try to stop you. Everyone benefits from the new drastic efficiency improvements. But if all the basic infrastructure needs are met, do you really want someone building a noisy interstate near you? My theory: in a growing economy, the easiest way to make money is to build something new (e.g. in a city with tons of new real estate being built). In a developed economy, though, there's more incentive for rent-seeking behavior (e.g., there's not a ton of capacity for new development and it's easier to stop your competitor). Finally, labor is just cheaper in developing economies.
julianeon 6y ago
The article is kicking off with the implicit belief that America is the greatest at building. So if America is no longer the greatest at building, we have to investigate where America went wrong. If New Zealand is bad at building but was always at building, there isn’t much to say. But if America has fallen, we have to look at the reasons, specific to America, to find out why.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  > ...we have to investigate where America went wrong. There's a very strong implicit assumption in using here the word wrong.
UncleMeat 6y ago
> A 'code smell' for social science articles I'd watch out for this. If a historian came to you and said "I have a heuristic, a code smell for programs" you'd be incredibly skeptical. It is easy to develop strong feelings about social science that seem right and may even be right, but probably a better bet is to reach out to experts and verify these approaches.
- war1025 6y ago
  The question is whether the writer has any clue what they are talking about either. Also known as the "Gell-Mann Amnesia" effect, where you realize how terribly inaccurate reporting is on topics you know well, but assume that surely they do better for other topics. They used to have a Wikipedia article about it, but I guess the censors decided it didn't warrant mention anymore. Here is a random article I found on the topic [1]. [1] https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    It is surely the case that a large amount of secondary writing on academic subjects is bad. This is why I suggest getting feedback from experts instead of building heuristics about topics outside ones field of expertise.
  - eindiran 6y ago
    I remember this article on Wikipedia. Look at what it is now: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gell-Mann_amnesia&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gell-Mann_amnesia... A redirect to the article for Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame; unfortunately it appears to have been removed from that page as well. It looks like Crichton is the one who actually came up with the effect, and named it after Gell-Man after discussing it with him. Here is the page on the edit immediately before being removed from Gell-Mann's article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Murray_Gell-Mann&oldid=943076261 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Murray_Gell-Mann&... And here is the best mention of the effect currently in a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#G...
nitrobeast 6y ago
I thought the article was pretty explicit in comparing US against european countries that are still able to build?

by rm445 6y ago

naravara 6y ago

I think your point is correct in general, but I’d like to nitpick in a specific part here: > it's hard for Australia to build, for Germany to build, for Turkey to build, for Japan to build. Just looking at the cost of rail infrastructure, it looks like the US has a significantly harder time generating value for money with what we build. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-09/why-1-billion-doesn-t-buy-much-transit-infrastructure-anymore https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-09/why-1-bil... The cost difference per km of rail comparing Tokyo or Berlin to NYC is insane. It’s literally an order of magnitude difference in some cases. And this issue arises in many parts of our society. IT modernization projects in the federal government cost boatloads of money, yet never seem to make any real headway. Even in the private sector, real value adding things like transitioning to electronic medical records never really took until insurance companies and the government started forcing it. And once they did the focus on their design was entirely around billing and coding and not really improving the physician’s workflow or enhancing care. So while the point may be true everywhere, I think there really is a baked in tendency to veto and strike down proposals for change in the US that doesn’t seem to get quite so rampant in other places.

netcan 6y ago
I think you're both right. To the meta-point made by the OP... We are now sitting on 200 years of social "science" failure to gain an understanding of this stuff. Theories fall in and out of favour, but they never seem to be affected by reality very much either way. I think science, as an approach, just isn't a useful way of getting an understanding of why US rail construction costs are so outrageous. It isn't that kind of question. Aspiring to an abstract philosophical or scientific Theory of Government Procurement doesn't take you anywhere useful.
- watwut 6y ago
  Was the "Theory of Government Procurement" ever been the goal of social science?
  - netcan 6y ago
    The goalposts of social science always seems to be moved to where the ball goes. But, I think if we're being honest, than yes. Not the only goal obviously. But, there are countless economists & policy researchers publishing on similar topics all the time.
    - watwut 6y ago
      To me, it seems that actual scientific articles that would fall into social science umbrella have much smaller scope and goals.
      - netcan 6y ago
        I'm not sure what you mean by "actual scientific articles," but I mean stuff that's generally published in economics, policy, psychology or other "social science" related journals. I'm not commenting on which is "scientific" in a Popperian sense. I'm not sure any of these publications clear that bar. Questions of scope and/or magnitude is one of the moving goalposts. Scope is implied to be very broad in most contexts, limited in more critical contexts. This theory only applies to preschools in this neighborhood. The 2018 Nobel Laureate for Economics was about "Endogenous growth theory," a theory of how human capital, innovation, and knowledge contribute to economic growth. Is that a small scope? The most influential social science book of the last few years was "Capital in the 21st century" which is a theory of income and wealth gaps. Is that small in scope? Ultimately, a theory that can't be generalized iss not really a theory, in a scientific sense. It's punditry.

hliyan 6y ago

This detracts from the point of the article. The author is not writing a program, nor is he aiming for "perfect correlation". He is noting a series of observations and proposing some connections between them, as is often the case with writings about society. If we take a level of rigor that works for sub-100KLOC algorithms running on dozens of cores and try to apply it to millions of interacting neural networks, each with 100 billion neurons, there will hardly be any writings about society.

pharke 6y ago

> Building is hardest and costliest when population density is high, when 'land' (or equivalent resource) is in small parcels, and property rights are strong - but those are exactly the conditions that lots of people love to live in. I don't think this holds up. Throughout history the greatest examples of "building" in all domains have occurred in these conditions. I don't think the impediments to building are related to scarcity. The author is making this point as well, it doesn't matter where a person is located, a city, a frontier, a farm, or a village, what matters are the attitudes and beliefs of the people in those settings. It's the old adage "where there's a will, there's a way". I think this is a better explanation of why it is so difficult to build in some places _at the moment_ because it also explains why it was not difficult to build in the same places at different times in the past. The question here should be how do we effectively teach people to think this way en masse despite their current circumstances or past training?

watwut 6y ago
Attitudes are shaped by external circumstances. By seeing someone attempt to build and seeing either failure or success or neutral result. > where there's a will, there's a way That is motivational, but it is not factual fact. > why it was not difficult to build in the same places at different times in the past None of those places have same laws and conditions as it used to.

asdfman123 6y ago

You make a good point -- if you're in a place without basic infrastructure, the government and the people really want that new infrastructure and few will try to stop you. Everyone benefits from the new drastic efficiency improvements. But if all the basic infrastructure needs are met, do you really want someone building a noisy interstate near you? My theory: in a growing economy, the easiest way to make money is to build something new (e.g. in a city with tons of new real estate being built). In a developed economy, though, there's more incentive for rent-seeking behavior (e.g., there's not a ton of capacity for new development and it's easier to stop your competitor). Finally, labor is just cheaper in developing economies.

julianeon 6y ago

The article is kicking off with the implicit belief that America is the greatest at building. So if America is no longer the greatest at building, we have to investigate where America went wrong. If New Zealand is bad at building but was always at building, there isn’t much to say. But if America has fallen, we have to look at the reasons, specific to America, to find out why.

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
> ...we have to investigate where America went wrong. There's a very strong implicit assumption in using here the word wrong.

UncleMeat 6y ago

> A 'code smell' for social science articles I'd watch out for this. If a historian came to you and said "I have a heuristic, a code smell for programs" you'd be incredibly skeptical. It is easy to develop strong feelings about social science that seem right and may even be right, but probably a better bet is to reach out to experts and verify these approaches.

war1025 6y ago
The question is whether the writer has any clue what they are talking about either. Also known as the "Gell-Mann Amnesia" effect, where you realize how terribly inaccurate reporting is on topics you know well, but assume that surely they do better for other topics. They used to have a Wikipedia article about it, but I guess the censors decided it didn't warrant mention anymore. Here is a random article I found on the topic [1]. [1] https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  It is surely the case that a large amount of secondary writing on academic subjects is bad. This is why I suggest getting feedback from experts instead of building heuristics about topics outside ones field of expertise.
- eindiran 6y ago
  I remember this article on Wikipedia. Look at what it is now: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gell-Mann_amnesia&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gell-Mann_amnesia... A redirect to the article for Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame; unfortunately it appears to have been removed from that page as well. It looks like Crichton is the one who actually came up with the effect, and named it after Gell-Man after discussing it with him. Here is the page on the edit immediately before being removed from Gell-Mann's article: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Murray_Gell-Mann&oldid=943076261 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Murray_Gell-Mann&... And here is the best mention of the effect currently in a Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#G...

nitrobeast 6y ago

I thought the article was pretty explicit in comparing US against european countries that are still able to build?