Science, Sources and Technocracy

Elon Musk is many things. I suppose it's currently very en vogue to criticise the man, not that it's not appropriate. He's a billionaire - currently the richest one of the miserable gremlins - does competitive union-busting on a global scale, habitually starts projects that destroy nature reserves, and seems to think that Mars is a viable alternative planet to live on, when neoliberalism is done burning this one to a crisp. I'd also hypothesize that he is symptomatic.

The Face of the Future

The idea of the hyper-competent technocrat is attractive, I think. Somebody with a finger on the pulse of science and technology, hyper-competent and always with the right solutions for the biggest problem of the time. Well, except for capitalism, but we'll take what we can get. This is the image he's been trying to cultivate about himself as long as I've known about him. I suppose, to my age-group he really entered the public debate with Tesla and SpaceX. To give him credit, at the time he was the first person to really bother with both electric cars, and modernization of space exploration. However, even at the time, there were studies that electric cars could only ever stand to improve the environmental impact of vehicles, if produced correctly. As for the whole space exploration thing... well, I might be biased, as a theoretician, but I'm not usually too interested in lofty goals like getting a second planet, especially since the theoretical bases for that do not exist yet. I could be convinced to freeze the richest 200 people into cryostasis, shoot them into space and hope they'll find a nice planet to colonize in 800 years. And colonize they will, those thirsty, thirsty war-criminals. Otherwise, I'm not a fan of this idea, and not really most of the other things he suggests. However, he did claim an identity that was "his for the taking" as it were. The Face of the Future. Mainly, because nobody else seemed to be willing to engage with it in a way that seemed visionary. Of course that is partially, because it just doesn't work that way, partially because the media presence of science has been great.

Science in Media

The scientific process isn't exactly photogenic in the traditional sense. Watching somebody do something mostly wrong, to slightly wrong, to slightly correct, to mostly correct, to correct with several asterisks is difficult to make engaging the way it needs to be, if it's to enter publication. Arguably, the best method for this is the movie training montage, most recognizably exemplified by the "Rocky"-Montage. It's not news material, is what I'm saying, neither is it movie material, necessarily. As such, I'm not sure how present the scientific process is in the collective consciousness. Most of the depictions of scientists in popular media aren't exactly flattering. They are rarely ever in the center of the narrative, if the narrative doesn't happen to be a biopic, and as side-characters they tend to be either eccentric savants, or technically underqualified for whatever job they are meant to do. Not that these types of personalities don't exist, but they're frankly over-represented. That's not a problem in itself - scientists aren't a marginalized class of people - however, this does mean that the legitimacy of scientific institutions are perceived with slight animosity. It's an unfortunate coincidence, that the portrayal of this profession is so heavily skewed toward its extremes. To understand the problem that arises from this, let's examine a different profession that I'm politically impartial to, and have close to no personal connection to.

Picture a baker. The archetype of the baker gets up early, works quickly and efficiently, loves his job, etc. This is also not coincidentally the portrayal of the baker in media. The baker is - like the scientist - rarely the focus of the story, so they don't get a lot of characterisation. If they do, these characters are then understood as individuals and not representative of their profession (or class). Take the baker from Into the Woods for example. Through his relative presence in pop-culture (relative to most other bakers in media), his character traits of greed for example, haven't really transferred to the archetype. However, bakers as supporting casts tend to fulfill these archetype characteristics, which feeds back into the collective consciousness of the profession. Now, the job entails certain things, the assessment isn't entirely unfounded. However, the realities of a service job with early and long working hours do not necessarily translate directly into passion for the job, or the even doing that job well. At the risk of sounding a little stupid: Statistically, most bakeries are average. Ergo, most bakers do an average job. And that is completely fine. I gladly eat average bread of most varieties, and their work is much appreciated in my book, and most others, as it should be. However, the portrayal of the profession is not honest in this regard. Now, do I want this to change? No, not really. I like seeing people who like doing their job, and their portrayal isn't harmful (to my knowledge. If it is, then I retract this statement), so I'd rather see mostly happy bakers than unhappy ones.

A different, slightly more complex example can be found in the journalist. If they are often a little more important to traditional plots than the baker, so they tend to fall into several archetypes. To name the two main ones that come to mind, there is the curious, honest and inquisitive journalist, mostly on the side of the protagonist, and then there's the corrupt, or at least dishonest, overtly biased libelist. Now, which of these is harder to actually do in real life? Which of these two types exists more often? I couldn't tell you the answer to the latter question with confidence, though I've got a gut feeling, but what I can tell you with certain is that in most cases, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter, because the middle field is so wide. There's instances of anomalies, like Fox News for example, where mostly habitually wrong people gather under the guise of journalism, probably in bad faith, but who knows, maybe they're not only using the idiot defense, maybe they are actual idiots. Either way, because the former category seems like it's connected to much more work, the impression of the latter one is much more prevalent in the general perception. Now, imagine that one of the primary characteristics of the former included an expression of intelligence that is not only mostly misunderstood in media and pop-science, but is also often described as one in a million.

Back to the scientist. Similar to the journalists, being an inept scientist is likely much easier than being a savant, mainly since the latter is not something one can work towards. Now, if these are the impressions that exist in the popular consciousness, and the average human being can tell which number is greater than another, then that doesn't bode well for the image of the scientist in the public eye. They are then regarded with a certain skepticism, since they could have easily "done a bad science". Skepticism in itself is not usually the wrong answer, but being skeptical is a time-consuming venture, if done correctly. If done correctly, one does in fact check the claims, the sources, the data, if available. Keep this short list in mind for later. I personally can only really afford to be properly skeptical of things once a week or so, and only in fields I'm already somewhat familiar with. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had last looked at viruses about three years prior, when I was still in school and learned the very basic way viruses function. There were ample opportunities to get skeptical at the science that was communicated to the citizens in the country I lived in at the time, but I would not have had the capabilities to verify or refute the claims. Let's take something I know now pretty firmly is false, namely that a horse dewormer is an effective treatment for the viral infection.

This was never really up for debate in the first place, but the claim was publicized by certain people either way. I do not know what is inside said horse dewormer, and if I did, I probably wouldn't be able to tell what it does to the human body. My own assumption was that it kills either a category of parasites, or other organisms beyond that, presumably leaving at least those that the horse requires to survive intact. That is what I understand under the definition of horse dewormer. At the same time, I'm fairly certain that viruses do not fall under this strict definition of parasites. Skeptical of this claim, I would then have to check, whether it killed the virus, and if it did, whether it killed something a human needs to function. If there are studies for this, this step is easy. If it's not, my journey of skepticism is dead in the water, because I tend not to trust secondary sources of scientific claims. Now, maybe there's a secondary source that cites a paper I can track down, but this process is lengthy, and mostly not worth the effort. In this case, I just waited until I could get vaccinated, and have kept up with the vaccinations since, so hopefully I wouldn't have to seriously entertain the idea of introducing horse dewormer into my system.

Okay, so the scientists have an image problem, and checking the sources is more work than can be reasonably hoisted upon the audience, but the scientists aren't actually the ones communicating the science, right? Hence the term science communicator. It's communication through a proxy, that can reduce the material into a comprehensive form - or at least it's supposed to be.

Communicating Nature

Science communication is a difficult form of journalism. In a number of countries it's required for somebody to have already finished one prior university degree, before applying to study journalism, and I imagine in many cases, this is why. Journalism is the art of reducing a flood of information into comprehensible chunks, and already having one degree would theoretically give a few qualifications. Be it handling statistics, basic mathematics, knowledge of historical backgrounds or language capabilities, a prior degree would probably make sure there are shortcuts in place for the journalist to be to take in comprehension and communication of the material. However, not every branch of science will be represented in every editorial team. Sciences like Biology require a fundamentally different knowledge base from sciences like Physics, and sciences like Psychology, and judging from my personal experience, each of those will probably have a number of disciplines that differ from one another again. Not every editorial team can be expected to have a radiologist, a string theoretician and a market psychologist. However, science doesn't sleep (look alive, Batman). Sometimes a team will have to report on an issue that they don't know anything about, and that's where traditionally the expert comes in. The journalist then faces the exact same problem everyone of us would that isn't familiar with the information. Honestly, I do think most of the experts do a good job, represent the scientific concensus and do their best to communicate that. I'm not personally too happy with the standard that comes out the other end of the understanding and communicating phase, because a lot of it is not as accurate as I'd like it to be, but that's not necessarily a problem, because it's rarely meant to be actionable. It's news. They have less than ten minutes. That is never enough to pragmatically explain a complex concept, and why you should care. That means, the information tends to get picked up by people already passionate about the topic, because they don't need to be convinced to care, and afterwards they maybe look for a source. The rest might remember for the week and forget afterwards.

The general population isn't uninterested in science. The success of science communication programmes by people such as Bill Nye and Michio Kaku are a good example for that. Decidedly non-physicists memorize star-facts, fueled by the enthusiasm of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. They do impressive work, regardless of whether I personally appreciate their way of doing it and how little I enjoy engaging in conversation that uses these types of communications as the primary basis. However, they don't get a lot of speaking time outside such engagements. One to two hours a week, contained in a television season - or six to twelve episodes on Netflix. So how does one get more streaming time?

Money

(and what it's doing here)

And here we are. The point. Science educators are a good resource, but their reach outside of such programs is usually limited to those willing to engage with them on social media, which is not usually the demographic that needs to get informed more than once. You know, the news demographic. However there is another way that science can get out there through traditional media. Say, there existed an individual - a civet maybe - with financial influence, maybe a bit of social clout, and they had a science idea. Then they founded a company on the basis of this idea, and gave regular press conferences, where they mention said idea. Maybe they have some adjacent ideas and since there's already a microphone right there, it would be a shame not to vocalize that idea, and suddenly you've consigned yourself to buy a social media platform you didn't want in the first place. Anyway, since such a person will have a platform, and news will occasionally report on what they said, rather than whether said idea is sensible, their ideas will become difficult to distinguish from actual scientific findings. People like said civet benefit heavily from this - let's call it an information loophole. Business reporters can't not talk about it, since these are often things actually said and maybe even deliberated upon. Talking about this stuff is part of their job. The problem arises, if the civet is wrong.

Billionaires are usually wrong, because actual solutions tend to cost money. It really doesn't matter which issue we're specifically talking about, most solutions aren't exactly cost effective for the next quarter. Pretty words and pseudo-intellectual hand-waving however can give the illusion of a well thought-through solution to a problem that a billionaire is more often than not profiting from, if not directly responsible for. This is the bold tactic, in my opinion, that is to say, the solution for those that don’t mind being overtly wrong on a public platform. It doesn’t really matter to their fans if they’re wrong, which is possibly why its still a viable approach. One can be very wrong and only lose those fans, whom the comment happens to directly affect. Their sphere of influence is not meaningfully constricted by being habitually wrong. This is how some select few think it’s a good idea to suggest worse and worse versions of the railway system and presenting them with attractive 3D simulations (Weird pod transport). Money however can speak several languages. If one doesn’t have the qualifications to speak on a topic, one can pay people with the papers and sufficient lack of integrity to speak in ones place. Whenever this happens, somebody has created a think-tank.

The roots of think-tanks find themselves very explicitly in direct influence of public opinion. It’s not dissimilar to the movie Inception: An idea is implanted into the conversation. Tom Nicholas has a good explanation of the background here. If the previously established conclusion happens to coincide with the evidence, that’s a happy little accident, as it were, if it’s not, it’s the think-tank’s job to make it fit. It’s frankly confusing to the readers that aren’t in the habit of reading the data themselves, and it really shouldn’t be their responsibility to do so. What happens here however, is a billionaire creating his own source, which gives them the edge against channels that don’t use sources that are as visible as a think-tank. These are almost all of them. To many people like me, sources are the name of the game. To back things up, good primary sources will do most of the work in convincing the audience. Restricting access to the information through pay-walls, as is the standard for the vast majority of publications doesn’t help, and neither does not listing the sources clearly visible as information is conveyed. An official statement on a sleek website on the other hand gives a very different impression – a more professional one, and most of all, an easily comprehensible one.

The Technocrat

From the combination of this, a figure emerges that while not inherently dangerous is troubling to me. Let’s return to the beginning of this essay. The Technocrat as he is described in the idea of a Technocracy is entirely fictional, as we’ve seen, and thus the concept of Technocracies aren’t actually viable. At the same time, many of those rich silicon valley types try their hand at it. This doesn’t have to take the form of, say, privatized space travel programs, but also the establishment of foundations, donations for research and humanitarian programs, and most directly, dabbling in politics. All of these actions are technically responsibilities of the state, and don’t belong in the hands of rich, allegedly hyper-competent capitalists, especially not, if they are in turn allowed to skirt responsibilities most everybody else has towards their fellow citizens. Taxes come to mind. At the same time, they are very convenient to have around from the perspective of the ruling class.

In fact, capitalist approaches to scientific research and reporting share a symbiotic relationship with the mythos of the technocrat. It's genuinely difficult to find scientific papers to look into for free. It's something virtually no public facing scientific figures are happy with, but as long as the only method of publication are for-profit journals, i.e. public scientific research is not sufficiently government funded, this is the state of the matter. I'm sure this is not on purpose, but the inadvertent effects of this includes that often the only way to check a source is to pay for a paper one isn't necessarily equipped to understand. This leaves whoever is speaking about this topic the freedom to cite papers incorrectly, especially when they don't have instances to meaningfully hold them accountable for being wrong. It also makes debunking erroneous claim significantly harder, since the newer research particularly tends to be locked behind a pay-wall. It's partially why I try to cite websites more often than papers, since those are freely available, or cite papers that are available for free, even though I do have access to researchgate and arxiv papers, for example. The technocrat then needs only to amass a significant enough following to rid themselves of all responsibility to be factually correct to those that trust them, since the sources will not be widely known and difficult to parse, for one reason or another. Political representatives will also benefit from the situation, as the technocrat has a large enough platform, so that interacting and collaborating with them will allow them to appear as science-forward and aware of the data. This however will usually remain an illusion, as popular technocrats are almost exclusively part of the capitalist class, meaning that they share the same interests anyway. This won't actually drive any meaningful change outside the capitalist (usually consumerist) paradigm. If our hypothetical system isn't currently facing any ongoing crises similar to climate change or poor distribution of resources, that might not be a problem, aside from making the fields appear a little stale. Otherwise, this runs the risk of withholding perspective solutions in favour of what amount to pipe dreams. Think of terraforming Mars, for example. Unfortunately for the rest, being a popular technocrat is quite profitable.

Seeing as how these three disparate phenomena naturally seem to lead into one another and form something like a feedback loop, the final question remains: What to do in the face of this? We can't get rid of people that would aspire to be such a popular technocrat. The idea is too attractive to fall away, and too conveniently reductive not to come to by oneself. It's also just not that desirable a goal in my opinion, so I'd like to look at the other parts of the equation.

The easiest scenario I suppose would be improved scientific reporting. I've been vocal about not being happy about the standard, but am not qualified to speak on the methods. However, assuming the format of mass media were to be made compatible with the scientific process, as well as precise, status reporting. This would effectively inform the population, equipping them with some semblance of general knowledge and the know-how to shoot down garbage ideas. It would in turn limit empowerment of rich people selling themselves as a sort of data-driven savior, preventing them from accumulating capital and confidence on garbage ideas alone. Interestingly enough, I believe this alone would break the cycle.

Considering the scenario in which sources were freely accessible, the process of peer-reviewing should weed out the garbage ideas. More importantly, this would mark wrong hypotheses by way of peer-reviews. With a well designed platform, checking primary sources would not only be a matter of minutes, and thus freely accessible to the public. It might need a few extra precautions, but this too could break the cycle - and probably would eventually.

I can't make any of this happen. Instead, I'll point you to the work of Alexandra Elbakyan. There is a good profile on her written on the verge a few years ago. She works to make scientific papers openly accessible to everybody, which looks like the last scenario we looked at. It's got a lot of sources, but is by no means complete. As long as we don't have any other means of stacking our odds against the mythical technocrat, it's honestly our best weapon. It also doesn't disenfranchise scientists, it disenfranchises publishers, often the same ones that charge triple digit prices in Euro for books that make passing a university course significantly easier. Trust me, I've tried with, and without. I want to close by encouraging the readers to employ Elbakyan's website, contribute what you can in good faith and help in returning to people what was created by the people for the people. To quote one of the mottos displayed on the starting page: common ownership of the means of production, free access to articles of consumption.