Time to Rally the Reality-Based Community

[saavedra77]

The other day, my friend MJ and I had a rather frustrating conversation with a friend of hers, a nonscientist who's been persuaded by pundits, politicians, and pastors that evolution, global warming, and other unwanted ideas all represent "junk science." The whole conversation reminded me of a recent Salon article about politically "manufactured doubt" and the increasingly powerful constellation of groups seeking to debunk science where it conflicts with their faith or pecuniary interests.

The article also cites, in passing, remarks attributed to a White House "senior advisor" last year by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine. I must confess that, news junkie though I am, I hadn't seen this, until today: In an interview with Suskind, this "senior advisor" disdained what he called "the reality-based community ... who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."

I actually found this article pretty illuminating: if you don't belong to the "reality-based community," maybe the catastrophes currently unfolding in Iraq and along the Gulf Coast don't matter.

Or maybe it's all just the wrath of a vengeful God--a theological tradition taken to task by the liberal Baptist Bill Moyers in a recent talk.

Whatever the rationalization, I'm with Moyers when he says "Our democratic values are imperiled because too many people of reason are willing to appease irrational people just because they are pious." Time to rally the reality-based community, I think.

Comments

What's the Matter with Reality?

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Suskind's White House "senior advisor" elaborates on why it's so wrongheaded to be "reality-based": "That's not the way the world works any more," the official continued, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

The sentiment is reminiscent of the fictional czarist in Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes, who declaims that "'It is not Reason but Authority which expressed divine intention. God was the Autocrat of the Universe ....' It may be that the man who made this declaration believed that heaven itself was bound to protect him in his remorseless defence of autocracy on this earth."

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Oh you and your reality.

We are the exact same country Israel was when God handed them over to Babylon. Arrogant sons of bitches who think they can "make their own reality".

They are not Americans. They belong to the same nation-state as all other despots. I like to call it "Hell".

I will gladly send them back home.

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

Funny, that's how I feel talking to liberals these days.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Well, if I may ask, did you feel differently talking to them, before? If so, when was that? And what's changed?

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

I stopped agreeing with them. Sometime around 1999, though it took a while to really take hold.

"You too can escape liberal brainwashing! I am the living proof!"

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

I guess, when you get down to differences in a priori values, the conversation can't usefully progress very far beyond agreeing to disagree--the only alternative is confrontation. And an open society depends on people agreeing to disagree about all kinds of matters of value, taste, and judgment. On the other hand, it also depends on our agreeing about a few crucial a prioris--like, say, the value of having an open society).

Values also obviously shape how we interpret empirical information; but I'd insist that interpreting information isn't the same thing as throwing it away away because of one's preconceptions.

I read the examples cited in the above post as being cases of the latter--people throwing out informaiton because their belief systems told them it just couldn't be true. This is raised almost to a philosophical principle by the "senior advisor" who laughs off the very idea of the "judicious study of discernible reality." To me, the suggestion that we can instead "create our own reality," without needing to pay particularly close attention to the facts on the ground just sounds like making a policy of shoving the square peg into the round hole.

Socially, the thing that really worries me about this kind of "thinking" (ironically resembling the academic postmodern skepticism conservatives used to deplore) is that it seems to reduce everything to belief, leaving no facts, and nothing to discuss whatsoever. Basically, we're all then reduced to trying to "create" or (if we have the power to do so) impose "our own reality," irrespective of what others think. If we someday reach that level of dissensus, I doubt that we'll be able to sustain anything resembling an "open society."

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

See, I "throw out" any article that quotes an anonymous source in no context in the NYT Magazine. I'd throw out the whole magazine while I was at it, it's a piece of junk.

It's not so clear to me what that quote, taken out of context, means. What it sounds like to me is saying that your actions change the facts, and that in a political situation it's never very clear what the facts are to begin with. As for creationists, well, "If you heave an egg from a Pullman car window you will hit a fundamentalist." That's always been true, and yet oddly enough, the nation thrives...

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

See, I "throw out" any article that quotes an anonymous source in no context in the NYT Magazine. I'd throw out the whole magazine while I was at it, it's a piece of junk.

Actually, the article does provide context for the remark, explaining what the advisor was responding to, giving further details of the conversation. But you'll have to hold your nose and actually read the article to find out about that.

As for anonymous sources, I think anyone with a passing acquaintance with how politicians and journalists interact has some idea why government figures sometimes choose to speak "on background." And, after all, Deep Throat was an anonymous source who proved to be quite reliable on matters of fact. This unnamed "advisor" is just stating his opinion--although it's a damned interesting one.

What it sounds like to me is saying that your actions change the facts, and that in a political situation it's never very clear what the facts are to begin with.

I'd certainly agree that "the facts" are often uncertain, and that a sufficiently vociferous ideological dustup can make it harder to get a solid grip on them. But that's why I place more faith in the "judicious study of discernible reality."

Also, I'd argue that there's a limit to even a superpower's ability to remake "reality." Nothing illustrates the "law of unintended consequences" like the confrontation of hubris with a particularly stubborn fact.