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I love this article as it speaks to one of the most overlooked aspects of modern life: There are a lot of fundamental things that we take for granted and practi

I love this article as it speaks to one of the most overlooked aspects of modern life: There are a lot of fundamental things that we take for granted and practice every day - a lot of things with lots of experts and powerful institutions around them - that simply do not work. And once you have such a thing, and you've build your reputation, your power base, your institution around it, it is absolutely paramount to carry on with it, deepen it, and extend it - regardless of whether it works or not. But continuing the thing that doesn't work doesn't require some malicious intent or ulterior motive. Quite often, it's just a question of "well, what else would we do?". And the answer to that is often "nothing" - or "we don't know" - so it's better to do something and feel like we have agency and are doing something about it than just carrying on with our lives.

wolframhempel 2y ago
I'm not sure that "education" as the article states is one of them. But the war on drugs certainly is.
- nonrandomstring 2y ago
  For me, the word "education" does not appear in the article hosted at the URL https://fermatslibrary.com/s/cargo-cult-science https://fermatslibrary.com/s/cargo-cult-science Maybe fermatslibrary.com is a badly designed website that returns SEO spam like content depending on such things as IP address, browser or some other factors. It's interesting that a URL is no ground truth, and that my comments below are discussing an entirely different text.
  - in_a_hole 2y ago
    Education is mentioned on the first page in the 6th paragraph. Upon reading your other comment, it's possible that whatever you are viewing the page on is not rendering the pdf containing the actual text and you are only seeing the annotations.
- from-nibly 2y ago
  Education is definitely one of them. Kids learn at public schools by accident. Utah has some of the lowest spending on education in the nation and yet it has some of the highest standardized testing scores. Similar to the war on drugs sometimes public education correlates with actual learning, but sometimes arresting people who have drugs lowers drug usage. In both cases we don't actually understand what we're doing.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
ants_everywhere 2y ago
> a lot of things with lots of experts and powerful institutions around them - that simply do not work. Part of what's going on is that "does not work" is usually a vague moving target. "Does not work" can be said about any gap between the goal and where we are currently. If you have a system that, on average, closes that gap over time, then the system "does not work" for the entire time it's running. After all there's a still a gap. Chesterton’s Fence is a kind of inverse impulse to what you're describing. It may be that we think our current systems are nonsensical, but when we change them we realize we've created new problems that the old systems were solving. And then there's often disagreement about what the goal should be. He mentions decreasing the amount of crime by how we handle criminals. Not everyone agrees that's the goal of the criminal system. Some people very strongly believe that criminals need to be punished or harmed, and those people vote. But punishment and crime reduction are different goals and they may compete. A solution that reduces crime may not harm criminals enough for the blood thirsty voters, and vice versa. So my reading on all this is that, yes we have gaps in our understandings of a lot of things. But many of those will not be fixed until there's more agreement about what the goals are.
- wolframhempel 2y ago
  I agree with that - but in many cases, I think I'd at least define "works" as "is a benefit towards the set aim, rather than a detriment". Although in many cases, it'd be fairer to define it as "is a net benefit towards the set aim when taking all costs and externalities into account". In this way, I would argue e.g. that - the war on drugs is a detriment, having significantly increased the price and thus the profitability of drugs and fostered a cartel ecosystem that is now a large percentage of the economy (and often the government) of many countries. - the war on terror or the prison system might be a net benefit towards the aim of reducing terror or crime respectively, but is a net detriment when taking its costs (monetary, social, freedom etc.) into account.
  - Bjartr 2y ago
    Aren't those examples pretty well understood to have true motivations that differ from their "marketed" motivations? Those detriments are actually part of the hidden set goal that led to those programs existing in the first place. * The war on drugs was motivated by racism and marketed on morality and harm. * The war on terror was motivated by power & military-industrial-profits and marketed on fear. * The prison system was motivated by punishment & revenge and marketed on lower crime. It's the social equivalent of WONTFIX: Working as intended

wolframhempel 2y ago

I'm not sure that "education" as the article states is one of them. But the war on drugs certainly is.

nonrandomstring 2y ago
For me, the word "education" does not appear in the article hosted at the URL https://fermatslibrary.com/s/cargo-cult-science https://fermatslibrary.com/s/cargo-cult-science Maybe fermatslibrary.com is a badly designed website that returns SEO spam like content depending on such things as IP address, browser or some other factors. It's interesting that a URL is no ground truth, and that my comments below are discussing an entirely different text.
- in_a_hole 2y ago
  Education is mentioned on the first page in the 6th paragraph. Upon reading your other comment, it's possible that whatever you are viewing the page on is not rendering the pdf containing the actual text and you are only seeing the annotations.
from-nibly 2y ago
Education is definitely one of them. Kids learn at public schools by accident. Utah has some of the lowest spending on education in the nation and yet it has some of the highest standardized testing scores. Similar to the war on drugs sometimes public education correlates with actual learning, but sometimes arresting people who have drugs lowers drug usage. In both cases we don't actually understand what we're doing.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

ants_everywhere 2y ago

> a lot of things with lots of experts and powerful institutions around them - that simply do not work. Part of what's going on is that "does not work" is usually a vague moving target. "Does not work" can be said about any gap between the goal and where we are currently. If you have a system that, on average, closes that gap over time, then the system "does not work" for the entire time it's running. After all there's a still a gap. Chesterton’s Fence is a kind of inverse impulse to what you're describing. It may be that we think our current systems are nonsensical, but when we change them we realize we've created new problems that the old systems were solving. And then there's often disagreement about what the goal should be. He mentions decreasing the amount of crime by how we handle criminals. Not everyone agrees that's the goal of the criminal system. Some people very strongly believe that criminals need to be punished or harmed, and those people vote. But punishment and crime reduction are different goals and they may compete. A solution that reduces crime may not harm criminals enough for the blood thirsty voters, and vice versa. So my reading on all this is that, yes we have gaps in our understandings of a lot of things. But many of those will not be fixed until there's more agreement about what the goals are.

wolframhempel 2y ago
I agree with that - but in many cases, I think I'd at least define "works" as "is a benefit towards the set aim, rather than a detriment". Although in many cases, it'd be fairer to define it as "is a net benefit towards the set aim when taking all costs and externalities into account". In this way, I would argue e.g. that - the war on drugs is a detriment, having significantly increased the price and thus the profitability of drugs and fostered a cartel ecosystem that is now a large percentage of the economy (and often the government) of many countries. - the war on terror or the prison system might be a net benefit towards the aim of reducing terror or crime respectively, but is a net detriment when taking its costs (monetary, social, freedom etc.) into account.
- Bjartr 2y ago
  Aren't those examples pretty well understood to have true motivations that differ from their "marketed" motivations? Those detriments are actually part of the hidden set goal that led to those programs existing in the first place. * The war on drugs was motivated by racism and marketed on morality and harm. * The war on terror was motivated by power & military-industrial-profits and marketed on fear. * The prison system was motivated by punishment & revenge and marketed on lower crime. It's the social equivalent of WONTFIX: Working as intended