Let's Reason

In a recent column in the New York Times, David Brooks asked whether human beings are fundamentally good or fundamentally bad.  Based on my understanding of evolution I would be inclined to answer: neither.   Robert Sapolsky, author of the book Behave: The Biology of Humans At Our Best and Worst offers a more nuanced scientific answer:

Genes have different effects in different environments; a hormone can make you nicer or crummier, depending on your values; we haven’t evolved to be “selfish” or “altruistic” or anything else-we’ve evolved to be particular ways in particular settings.  Context, context, context.

Of course, this is a scientist’s answer detached from any moral purpose one’s faith may attach to human life.  The fact is that for hundreds of millennia and long before we reached the point to conceptualize the divine as a moralizing force that cares for the morality of its human creatures, we survived and evolved as a species.  We did this thanks to genes that found a way to pass their copies to the next generation.  This gave rise to the concept of “the selfish gene” that became the title of a blockbuster book by Richard Dawkins.

In the almost fifty years since this book was published the field of evolution has advanced by leaps and bounds and now not every evolutionary biologist or evolutionary behaviorist accepts that evolution works solely in the interest of selfish genes. *  Still though the basic principle remains, that evolution is about reproduction, and about new mutations of genes, some of which prove to strengthen the fitness for reproduction and by being inherited keep evolution going. 

But here is the greatest thing in the evolutionary process.  For genes to succeed in passing their copies on to future generations, many species, and above all human beings engage in patterns of pro-social behavior.  This means that, yes, the genes are selfish in their quest to replicate themselves, but we, their carriers, are not necessarily so.

Recognizing others as our kin and acting in their interest is one way to reproduce part of our own genes.  A sibling may sacrifice her chances to reproduce or otherwise improve her fitness to survive and reproduce because she knows that the common portion of genes shared with siblings (or another relative for that matter) will be passed on to the offspring of the sibling.  Altruism, and its variant reciprocal altruism, has also been selected as another efficient way to increase our fitness for reproduction.  I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine so that we both have a better chance to survive and reproduce.  Thus, evolution works both in selfish and cooperative ways.

And then there are the universal emotions we all share, most importantly empathy, sympathy, and envy.  Our predisposition to feel empathy and sympathy brings us together and make us pro-social.  But what about envy?  The ethologist Frans De Waal makes the argument that paradoxically envy might have very likely birthed the moral sentiment of fairness.  An uneven distribution first triggers envy and rejection.  Eventually we realize that fairer arrangements are more likely to be met with less friction and more acceptance by others.  Two-year toddlers, long before they have been inculcated by moral and religious values, refuse to accept unfair deals even though that leaves them with nothing.

Although genes can be responsible for our tendencies, propensities, potentials, and vulnerabilities they are not the only thing that matters for human behavior, as Sapolsky argues with plenty of convincing evidence though out his book.  Environment and culture do matter.  They matter to the point that it is more correct to say that genes and culture coevolve.

Here are some examples of how the cultural environment can twist any original genetic predisposition and affect one’s life.  Childhood poverty affects the brain and its development.  That can affect the child’s adult life.  Children raised by loving mothers have a better chance to be inclined toward good as opposed to bad behavior later in their lives.  Living under persistent stress makes people’s behavior more susceptible to emotional reaction (coming from the limbic system of the brain) rather than to reasoned reaction (coming from the frontal cortex).   Irrespective of any genetic advantage in analytical thinking, math scores of female and male students can suffer due to gender inequality.  (In Iceland, a country of gender equality, girls best boys in math scores!)

The extent of child poverty a society is willing to tolerate, the family and social context that enables mothers to care for their kids, the stress and insecurity people live under through their lives, and degrees of gender equality are all dependent on the kind of environment our political, social, and religious institutions built around people.  In other words, they constitute the cultural context within which our genetic tendencies, potentials and vulnerabilities are set to manifest themselves. 

Another important interplay of genes and culture has to do with how we treat those we know and those we don’t.  As part of our survival and reproduction game our behavior has been biased to favor in group comradery and out group hostility.  These biases become the springboard for racism, xenophobia, and ultimately war against others.  Even here though, we can avert our genetic predisposition by developing the kind of culture that bridges the precarious gap between Us and Them and leads toward acceptance and tolerance.

The interaction of genes and culture should convince us that it is a mistake to isolate individual behavior from one’s environment and social setting.  Our individual nature is not moral destiny.  Instead, we have plenty of room to develop the contextual conditions that can lead individuals in our societies to live better lives.   Thus, whatever role genes have in one’s behavior gives no pass to a society to remain indifferent or unscathed of any responsibility.

*The alternative to gene selection at the individual level is selection at the group level.  In this case traits of behavior are selected for the benefit of the group not of the individual necessarily. 

Several times in the past, I have come back to the blog by writing about books I had read during the summer vacation.  I hope I will have something to say about the books of this past summer, but right now I find myself staring at the books I keep on my desk and I have the feeling they are staring back at me pleading to be heard.

They are books that speak of human progress, of renewal, of fear of what we may be losing or of what we should pursue.  Factfulness is a book from 2018 that made a convincing case that in spite of all the world problems, humanity is making progress in the social, economic, educational and health fronts.  Given what followed: a menacing pandemic and the war in Ukraine, we would be excused to feel otherwise.  Then there is Upswing that described the remarkable period of progressive policy victories that still define many aspects of life in the US.  Here too, though, things have been turned around toward inequality and social anomie with a new upswing struggling to gain traction.  Then I hear the voices of worry and dismay from Liberalism and Its Discontents and Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure.  Contrary to what, at least, the historians expected thirty years ago at the end of the Cold War, the two great offspring of Enlightenment, liberalism, and democratic government, show signs of serious weakness in inspiring people around the world.

And then there are the books that keep me focused on the two facts that matter the most.  First, that we are all members of one species.  We the sapiens that have come to rule planet earth but also in full ownership (no matter how much we wish to avoid it) of all its problems.  You must have guessed I am talking about Sapiens by Yuval Harari.  If Sapiens reminds us of our common history as the last surviving hominin species, it is in the books of Frans De Waal we are reminded that far from being entirely unique, we are also part of the animal kingdom that lies with us on the wide spectrum of intelligence, emotions, and even feelings.  If commonness with other fellow sapiens and other animals makes us uncomfortable is because of the obligations and challenges such realizations raise for each one of us.  Namely, how to coexist with one another and the rest of nature in a sustainable world.

The significance of looking at the world with full awareness that we humans are all part of the same species and that we cohabitate this planet with other forms of life within a fragile ecosystem should, I believe, be enough to stir us into a serious reconsideration of ideas we inherited from the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution.

When historians lament the decline and corruption of liberalism and then propose remedies for its reinvigoration, we would also like to know how this restored and rehabilitated liberalism can address the current challenges from climate change and ecological deterioration, extreme economic and social inequality with its consequent migration waves, and, of course, the prospect of superintelligent AI machines.  I am afraid that in the presence of these grave challenges, talking within the original framework of liberalism and conservativism or of any variant of each, falls short of helping us tackle the new challenges recent realities have imposed upon us.  These challenges do not appear, at least thus far, to be adequately served by the institutions trusted by both liberalism and conservativism, that is, individual sovereignty, free markets, and nationalism.

The liberating ideas that emerged three centuries ago with either a liberal or conservative flavor sought to unshackle the individual from political, ecclesiastical, and economic subjugation.  The new social order was supposed to be based on the consent of the governed, individual rights, and free markets.  At the same time, the thinkers that raised those ideas expected that people would use their new liberties responsibly and with moral restraints.  Similarly, nationalism aimed to give people with common cultural, religious, and historical bonds the right of self-rule.  

These ideals of individual sovereignty, economic freedom, and national self-rule were supposed to be the instrumental goals for an ultimate objective, that is, enable people to gain control over their lives and fate through personal choices.  Three centuries later we have, or should have, come to realize that upholding these ideals has led us down to a path that threatens our future as a species. 

For example, the prerogative of property rights weaponized, so to speak, by free markets has been used to elevate wealth maximization and unfettered consumption to a level of unquestioned legitimacy devoid of any restraint.  The result is inordinate wealth concentration and overconsumption.  Neither of these, however, serves the interests of ecological and climatic sustainability.  Nor do these pursuits serve the interests of social cohesion and equitable political and economic rights for all.

Nationalism also often morphs into chauvinism, and ethnic and religious fundamentalism that spawn xenophobia, ethnic cleansing, and countless inter-state frictions and wars.  Although founding the United Nations had the noble and ambitious objective to bring nations into cooperation and peaceful coexistence, the UN assembly – as this year’s meetings also demonstrate – is mostly used to air grievances and threats, often very vehement in their content and delivery.

Meanwhile the dangers of climate change (potentially life threatening) and AI going rogue know no national borders and as such they should concern us all.  To address these threats, we need to harness the presumed freedom to pursue profits and consumption without limits and we need to be willing to cede some national sovereignty so that we have a unified front in the fight for a life-sustainable climate and averting machines from transforming our human nature or eventually overtaking us.

In recent centuries, philosophical and political thought as well as open rebellion and warfare have been used to secure or expand freedoms for individuals and nations.  Now, however, is the time to strive for the fate of our whole species and its freedom from the fear of catastrophe.

In a previous post I wrote how early on biologists tried to check developments in genetic engineering and how the recent calls for restraint in AI research and application echoes those attempts.  Those early warnings, however, did not succeed in putting a halt to bio-engineering research into areas that would have much graver consequences for humankind.  And this provides a lesson as we enter the early phases of AI research and development. 

In its early stages genetic engineering had achieved only the modification of genetic characteristics in plants and animals by introducing qualities from the DNA of other species.  Despite the voices of caution and apprehension, scientists continued their inroads into genetic research and in 2012 a new powerful technique of gene editing, called CRISPR, was laid out.   This technique could edit human embryos for the purpose of either conferring specific traits exclusive to the newborn or, more dramatically and consequentially, passing inheritable genes down the line of its offspring.   In his book AS GODS Matthew Cobb describes the upheaval and flurry of activism that followed as biologists tried to check and control the proliferation of both new research on human editing as well as its publication in scientific journals. 

But neither the admonition or opposition of individual scientists (including the pioneers of gene editing) nor guidelines by scientific organizations stemmed the flow of new research discoveries.  In November 2018, the news came from China that the discoveries were turned into application.  A scientist, He Jiankui, had used CRISPR to edit the genes of two female embryos.  The reaction was swift and severe.  He was denounced by the international scientific community, his Chinese university fired him, and the Chinese authorities prosecuted him and sentenced him to a jail term.  However, the dam had burst.

Cobb writes that reliance on self-regulation and pronouncements by individual scientists and scientific organizations were not enough to stop an ambitious scientist from applying gene editing on human embryos.  Expectations and assumptions about self-restraint and the efficacy of rather abstract guidelines proved to be wrong.  This is exactly what could happen with AI.  Bio-engineering and AI are not lacking in potential for beneficial applications.  The problem is that research that empowers beneficial applications can also empower questionable, unethical, and devastating applications.  The conundrum we face is how we deal with the dictum “Just because we can do something does not mean that we should.”

So, who should have a say on what we are allowed to do?  To their credit, many biotech scientists recognized that their research and its applications had implications for all humanity.  Therefore, the public should have a seat at the table of such momentous decisions. 

The calls for the public to set boundaries whether in bio-engineering or AI, requires however that we have a public that is capable to appreciate the consequences of applications on human life.  This does not mean knowledge of the technical aspects only.  More importantly, it means an understanding of the of human experience and condition that only an education in the humanities (literature, philosophy, sociology) can offer.  To channel students into technical fields we call STEM (for science, technology, engineering, mathematics) without a decent exposure in the humanities deprives them of the ability to appreciate what their work means for the future of humankind.

In her inimitable style, Maureen Dowd (NYT, 5/27/2023) wrote “We can’t deal with artificial intelligence unless we cultivate and educate the non-artificial intelligence that we already have.”  And “Without humanities, humanity and humaneness, we won’t be imbuing society with wisdom, just creating owner’s manuals.”  Technology can dazzle us so much that we often blindly follow it with very little reflection as to what we have to lose.  Therefore, we need to ask what is the education we need in order to protect us from ourselves?” 

Pierre Hadot, a French academic, goes further and express skepticism as to whether the modern educational system prepares men and women for, as he puts it, “careers as human beings.” Instead, in his opinion, the system controlled by the state or corporations and often with the blessing of religious institutions prefers to trains us for occupational careers and, I would add, for unexamined lives.  As such we are destined for a life that marches to the drumbeat of daily chores in the interest of performative tasks dictated from outside without the time or capacity to reflect on our humanness.

A core lesson of an education in the humanities is to impart a modicum of wisdom so that we learn how to act so as not to harm ourselves or others.  This is not, however, what we see in the contemporary world.  Instead, lack of moderation and desire for self-gratification is what sets the tone in this era of the “sovereign self” as the historian Francis Fukuyama calls it.  The sovereign self is the extreme manifestation of the liberal world order, divorced from personal  responsibility. Without wisdom and temperance, the individual is practically unarmed in fighting the excesses of individual choice.  That applies to the average citizen as well as to the ambitious scientist or technologist.

So how do we edit the cell of the sovereign self with the traits of wisdom and temperance?  David Brooks, the well-known columnist of The New York Times has something to say in this regard in a piece for The Atlantic.   He argues that the autonomy-based liberalism should be replaced by the gifts-based liberalism.  These gifts include the gift of life and the gift of knowledge we have received from those that preceded us.  Therefore, “our individual choices take place within the framework of the gifts we have received, and the responsibilities to others that those gifts entail.”

It seems therefore, that in order to contemplate our human future and steer it down a path that preserves our fundamental humanness we need to train individual citizens in the art of wise living and reset our liberal world order so that it balances the freedom of individual choice with the responsibility toward preserving our human nature.  This is how we can instill agency in all of us so that we can take control of our human future.

On the other end, stand the voices of those who want to make us believe that whatever future we happen upon is the inevitable outcome of how the world works.  But these voices are either misguided or wish to escape responsibility.  Which innovations prevail, which technologies are adopted, which ways of life are stamped on us are not necessarily the result of nature-based inevitability.  They are rather the results of choices we make with less or more or even no consent under the influence of competing interests, political dynamics, and cultural diversions that keep us away from any liberating introspection.  No wonder then that the liberating power of the humanities must be suppressed.

It seems to me that any future human dystopias, if they come, will come only if we cease to have agency as responsible citizens.

I am not a movie or TV critic but I can’t resist throwing my hat in the ring of commentaries about these two series.  Much of what has been written has been from the perspective of the personalities of the protagonists and their human flaws.  But more than that can be glimpsed from the two series. 

Despite some commonalities, I found both series to project some salient reflections of the ways of the old and modern worlds, which surprisingly still coexist even in advanced societies and seem to appeal in varying degrees to different segments of people.  I have looked, though not thoroughly, for this kind of analysis, and the closest I came was an essay in the December 2022 issue of The Atlantic which I found to be an interesting point of departure.      

So, before I go into my own takeaway points, let me give some highlights of that Atlantic essay.  First, a glaring discrepancy.  Although “Yellowstone” has been more popular than “Succession,” it has received no formal artistic recognition.  “Succession” on the other hand, as of its third season, had garnered 48 Emmy nominations and 13 awards.  “The elites won.” That’s how the author put it.  To buttress this claim, the author wrote that “Yellowstone” appealed to audiences in the American heartland whereas “Succession” appealed to the coastal elites.  “Yellowstone” was all about masculinity, honest toil of the land, and resistance to change.  “Succession” was about corporate power and control, and about super-wealthy people served by swarms of domestic servants, lawyers and assistants, fleets of SUVs, and private jets. 

“Succession,” for sure, is firmly grounded into the world of modern capitalism and life, though the better part of this life is for the privileged few.  The plot in “Yellowstone” is about a struggle to keep it in its pre-modern state-dominated world.  In each of these series we see the reflections of raw versus sophisticated living.

What is striking in “Yellowstone” is how justice is meted out and order is kept.  Whether we have altercations in the cowboy compound or disputes with outside interests, justice and order are dealt with little resort to authorities.  The ethos of the residents of the ranch is based on personal loyalty and trust and immediate retribution.  When thuggish types threaten the Dutton’s interests the family prefers to settle scores outside the purview of the law in their own swift ways. That’s what we would see in clans and tribal societies.  Dispensing with formalities and authorities is not because the state is weak but because the direct application of justice (and for that matter revenge) entails greater and more immediate satisfaction.  The Dutton family runs the ranch under its own set of rules and discharges justice accordingly.  We have the distinct feeling that the state apparatus, from the governor’s office to the police, enter the Dutton’s affairs only as an imposition or as a last resort.  Authorities are trusted as long as they are under the control of the Dutton patriarch.

If these are valid observations, it is not difficult to see why the Dutton’s world can be appealing primarily to those who are distrustful of state authorities and prefer a personal or communal law and order.  In today’s America this yearning for direct justice finds its political expression in the “Stand your ground” laws.  Let’s face it.  Humanity has lived a lot longer under law and order systems that precede the founding of the state as the only authority to mete out justice.

Next, family assets have different meanings to the Dutton and Roy families.  John Dutton does not see his ranch just as a type of capital that can be transformed into cold cash.  He resists all takeover attempts because to him the ranch is family tradition and pride, hence, it has no transactional price.  “Succession,” standing on the other side of economic paradigms, is the embodiment of modern cut throat capitalism.  Everything can be sold and bought for the right price.  Royco run by the Roys or by the Swedish tech mogul Lukas Matsson makes no difference to the Roy siblings as long as it has the same value to them.  The sudden change of hearts toward keeping the company in the family has little to do with the desire to preserve a beloved family asset and a lot more to treating it as an object of power play and a trophy for whoever secures its leadership.   Capital in capitalism, as a factor of production, is devoid of any sentimental attachment and value.  After all, an asset can not be called capital unless it is available for trade and utilization for maximum monetary benefit.

The two series also tell us something about the complexity and contingency of our modern world.  Life and doing business in “Yellowstone” exude a much stronger flavor of a pre-industrialized world.  They are much more grounded and closer to the land.  Running the ranch has few of the trappings and layers upon layers of intermediaries that intervene to turn decisions into outcomes.  Both, “Yellowstone” and Royco are family businesses, but with distinctly different organizational forms.  John Dutton runs Yellowstone as he pleases, with only minimal input from his children.  Logan Roy has, in theory, the same power, but he needs to follow corporate bureaucracy and procedures that engage board directors, lawyers, PR executives, finance guys, securities authorities and on and on.  This is not just a difference in business organization; it is also a difference in complexity and division of labor. 

But there is more to increased complexity and division of labor.  The wider the gap becomes between wanting something and getting something because we need to rely on “experts” or technology, the less capable we become in basic survival skills.  Think of the decline in numeracy because of the reliance on calculators.  The Roy family members look like they have a privileged life served by servants and assistants catering to their every need.  The price of that life is dependency on others that can disappear once the privileges are gone.  For the Roys and their peers, and less so for the rest of us in the periphery of the elite world, each level of service depends on the function of a service under it, and so on.  This is what I like to call contingent living.  Greater complexity brings more contingency.  But the higher the degree of contingency the higher the risk a little disturbance in the system will bring a devastating end.  No wonder our modern lives, the result of advances, progress, and system complexity, are also lives full of anxiety.

We can draw all these differences between these series and then again come to the same enduring conclusion that has govern human life.  No matter under what system we live, human love, compassion, jealousy, ambition, greed, vengeance, are all there.  The only thing that varies is the social context within which our human nature finds its expression.   

If you have followed the news the messages are not particularly good for either the climate or the biodiversity of our planet.  A critical factor contributing to the diminishing quality of both is the rapid population growth of humans.  We actually have become the invasive species par excellence that threatens life, or at least its quality, for all earth’s creatures.

The negative effects of population growth are compounded by hyper-consumption and ever- increasing use of carbon-producing fuels.  And yet the demographic signals that population growth will peak and even reverse itself by the end of the century are treated as bad news. 

So, in a change of my usual approach of how I compose my posts, I will post parts of an interesting piece titled Population Decline Will Change the World for the Better published in Scientific America, on May 4, 2023, written by Stephanie Feldstein, the population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Before I present parts of this article, I want to list the reasons why, in my opinion, population growth is becoming a serious and difficult problem to handle.

• Population growth is favored by biological factors and cultural indoctrination; both make resistance to propagation very difficult.  That requires deliberate effort and policies to make population control possible.  Especially because . . .
• Population growth management most often requires the use of reproductive controls which are often opposed on religious grounds.  And . . .
• Population growth is linked to economic growth and national strength.  Although income per capita may decline if the economy fails to grow commensurately with the population, our strong focus on aggregate size than individual prosperity makes us ignore diminishing living standards at the individual level.

To overcome the forces of nature and those of culture we need to adopt a different set of principles that focus on: prosperity and human development at the level of the individual, respect for the biodiversity and survival of all species, and the protection of the climate which if destroyed can end human civilization.

Now below, I reproduce some of the interesting parts of Stephanie Feldstein’s opinion piece.

First on biodiversity and the climate:

“ . . . Declining populations will ease the pressure eight billion people put on the planet. As the population and sustainability director at the Center for Biological Diversity, I’ve seen the devastating effects of our ever-expanding footprint on global ecosystems. But if you listen to economists (and Elon Musk), you might believe falling birthrates mean the sky is falling as fewer babies means fewer workers and consumers driving economic growth.

. . . We’re at a crossroads—and we decide what happens next. We can maintain the economic status quo and continue to pursue infinite growth on a finite planet. Or we can heed the warning signs of a planet pushed to its limits, put the brakes on environmental catastrophe, and choose a different way to define prosperity that’s grounded in equity and a thriving natural world.”

More on the survival of other species:

“… As the human population has doubled over the past 50 years, wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of 69 percent. We’ve already altered at least 70 percent of Earth’s land, with some reports putting that number at 97 percent. Our activities have driven wildlife from their homes and destroyed irreplaceable ecosystems.

. . . The loss of biodiversity is tragic in itself. A world without elephants, hellbender salamanders and the million other species at risk of extinction in the coming decades would be deeply impoverished. Wild plants and animals enrich our lives and hold vital ecosystems together. The fresh water we need to survive, the plants we rely on for food and medicine, and the forests we depend on for clean air and carbon sequestration are all the product of complex interactions between life-forms ranging from microbes and pollinators to carnivores and scavengers. When even a single thread is pulled from that tapestry, the entire system can unravel.”

On the social impact:

“. . . Lower fertility rates also typically signal an increase in gender equality. Better-educated women tend to have fewer children, later in life. This slows population growth and helps reduce carbon emissions. And when women are in leadership roles, they’re more likely than men to advance initiatives to fight climate change and protect nature. These outcomes are side effects of policies that are necessary regardless of their impact on population.

On our options:

. . . With the first scenario [that of growth] we’ll find that an economy fueled by limitless population growth makes it increasingly difficult to address environmental crises. Communities are already struggling in the face of worsening droughts, extreme weather and other consequences of climate disruption—and population pressure makes adaptation even harder. A growing population will further stress damaged ecosystems, reducing their resilience and increasing the risk of threats like pandemics, soil desertification and biodiversity loss in a downward spiral.

. . . With the second—slow decline and all that comes with it—we can ultimately scale back our pressure on the environment, adapt to climate change, and protect enough places for imperiled wildlife to find refuge and potentially recover.”

On the duty of governments:

“. . . Governments must invest in health care, support caregivers, help people who want to work longer do so, and redesign communities to meet the housing, transportation and service needs of older people. We need to move our economy toward one where people and nature can thrive. That means managing consumption, prioritizing social and environmental welfare over profits, valuing cooperation and recognizing the need for a range of community-driven solutions. These practices already exist—in mutual-aid programs and worker-owned cooperatives—but they must become the foundation of our economy rather than the exception.”

I will close by adding that our challenge is to become less of an invasive species and more of a collaborative one that learns again how to live in harmony with our natural environment not at its expense. 

As a general rule, democracies are in danger when part of a country’s populace grows uncompromisingly intolerant to certain ideas and the behavior that such ideas inspire among their believers.  Judged by that rule, America is currently at risk of going down this slippery road.  Closing in on free thought and speech, illiberal elements on the right and left are trying to shield their respective constituents from critiques of their ideas and actions.  They do this by retreating to their respective silos. 

This arrangement is hardly stable and durable.  As the common space for the exchange of ideas shrinks, intolerance grows, and one side will eventually attempt to silence the other by undemocratic means.  For some time now, the common space in this country has been retreating and the competing silos of ideas have hardened. 

For a country born with a constitution that placed the course of the country in the hands of its people and gave people the protection to influence this course through the free expression of thought, it is ironic and tragic we are at this point.  But it is also a mistake to believe that this fight for free thought is new.  To recall the battles for free thought in America, I returned to the book FREETHINKERS by Susan Jacoby. 

Since the days of the revolution, the ground for free thought has not been necessarily welcoming.  And yet courageous freethinkers rose to take on the banner of unpopular but worthy causes.  These were men and women like Thomas Paine (the defender of reason), Robert Green Ingersoll (the Great Agnostic), the suffragists Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton, the liberal poet Walt Whitman, the Black abolitionist Frederick Douglas, and Clarence Darrow (the lawyer for the defense in the Scopes (monkey) trial.  These freethinkers defended the separation of church and state, spoke against slavery and for voting rights for women, and argued the case of science in society.  The intellectual battles of today still echo those causes though in their modern versions. 

We still try to reach the right balance of power between religious and secular rights, as the changing numbers of conservative and liberal justices on the Supreme Court keep making the wall of separation lower or higher; unquestionably lower these days.  Amendments to the constitution may have abolished slavery and given equal rights to Black Americans but the legacy of slaveholding still casts a shadow and taints the relationship between Americans of different skin color.  Women have earned the right to vote but they are still behind men in wages and career opportunities and are still exposed to intrusions to personal matters, especially those concerning reproductive decisions. 

Jacoby reminds us that the illiberal streak in America culture and society has waxed and waned as the country moved from the euphoria of independence to its confrontation with the scourge of slavery, the influx of immigrants, the rise of science, the civil emancipation of women, and the spread of socialism and communism.  During those periods of warring ideas, fear and intolerance emanated from religious quarters, nationalist circles, and moral puritans.  The results were bans of books and movies, laws against obscenity and blasphemy, and equating  atheists, agnostics, socialists and communists with lack of morals or patriotism.  If the period around the turn of 20^th century was (as Jacoby calls it) the Golden Age of free thought, the McCarthy period of the 1950s was the nadir of free thought in America.

Today’s battles are about reproductive rights, racial justice, sexual and gender orientation, the separation of church and state, immigrants, and social fairness in general.  One would think that all these issues ought to invite reasoned and informed conversations.  On the contrary, they have led to polarized positions, often defended by illiberal means.   

On the left, a visceral disdain of white supremacy, antisemitism, anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ views has served as the “justification” for the rejection and expulsion of speech, sympathetic to these views, from university campuses.  Beyond that, student bodies have demanded the establishment of “safe” spaces (call them echo chambers) for the socialization of like-minded students, and for “trigger” warnings concerning any coursework material that may be deemed harmful to one’s worldview or self-identification.

Fortunately, after a period of ambivalence and inaction, university officials have started to stand up and put an end to these illiberal methods of quashing free speech and the unencumbered exchange of ideas on the natural venues of pluralism and truth seeking.  It is more common than not that the birth and death of free thought and open societies start and end in the hallow grounds of institutions of learning.  From the closing of Plato’s Academy to the closing of the Central European University in Orban’s Hungary, authoritarians have known this all too well.

On the right, the attack on free thought has taken, however, a turn towards methods that are even more illiberal and pernicious.  With Florida being the epicenter, Republican-controlled states have legislated (or are in the process of doing so) a slew of laws that aim at silencing voices and forms of expression that disagree with conservative notions of a righteous society or an acceptable national narrative.  Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibits schools to discuss sexual and gender orientation topics all the way to the 12^th grade.  Under the guise of shielding students from divisive ideas and giving parents control over the education of their children, the law, in essence, allows minorities of parents (even a single parent) to impose on the rest of the community their standards on the content of education. 

The same state’s WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act outlaws the teaching of theories arguing for the presence of racism, sexism, and oppression in societies – in reality, a strawman since hardly such theories are taught in public schools.  In an egregious encroachment of academic freedom this same law also places restrictions on what can be taught in social sciences in Florida’s state universities.  Thankfully, this section is currently blocked by the courts.

The dissonance between ideology and practice is particularly acute in the case of conservative states.  How can one profess the efficiency of markets in sorting out preferences for material goods but deny the same efficiency to the marketplace of ideas?  And how can one oppose the encroachment of individual liberties by the state but engineer the intrusion of the state in the free exchange of ideas.

There is a big difference between private citizens (like students) fighting for space in the agora of ideas or parents competing for different educational materials in their schools and the state using its authority to impose its ideological partiality to what ideas can be debated and disseminated.  This is how free thought dies in theocratic or authoritarian states.

In his 2017, book Life 3.0 Max Tegmark wrote of the almost infinite achievements we could realize through AI but also of the great perils we faced, if and when AI-based machines reached a state of autonomy from human control.  Hardly six years later, we are starting to freak out from the latest advances of AI in one single area, that of producing human-like written language.

As you may have read, more than 1000 tech leaders and researchers sent out an open letter warning us of the profound risks unchecked development of AI poses to humanity and called for a moratorium so that we have time to contemplate about the potential consequences. *  In a very insightful OP-ED piece in the NYT, Yuval Harari and his co-authors laid out the risks of supplanting humans by AI technologies in the creation of language, culture, and civilization.  In another on line piece in the Times, the linguist Noam Chomsky and his co-authors ridiculed the idea that AI programs, like ChatGPT and Bard, are true substitutes of human language and expressed apprehension at the thought that a mechanical synthesis of already produced information devoid, though, of emotion and moral judgment could be confused with human language.  On the other side of the debate, there is no shortage of people who, full of excitement and anticipation, can’t wait to see what the future of AI will bring to humankind.

 As I have written in other posts, innovation and technology have been both a boon and a bane for humanity.  One thing we can say with certainty is that our innovative prowess has not lived up to its most hyped promises.  Leisure from work is still a luxury, the pace of life has become more maddening, poverty and sickness are pervasive, and the geometrically increasing complexity of human life consumes ever greater amounts of energy and natural resources that threaten the climate and the survival of other species.  So how do we then approach the promise and threat of AI? 

First, I think that we are past the point of losing autonomy to machines.  Our lives are already so embedded in the world of machines, that I am not sure we can call ourselves masters.  Let’s try to imagine a life without the tech world with which we have surrounded our lives and I bet shivers will come down everybody’s spine.  We already live in a symbiotic world of humans and machines.  They may be our creations but we can’t do without them.  That means we have long ago surrendered our autonomy to our many Frankensteins. 

Second, questions as to how AI will affect the economy, jobs, politics, and education, though important, are in my opinion second order questions.  The questions we ought to be asking as we evaluate the promises and risks of AI are these:  Will AI be safe for the climate?  Will AI be safe for the biodiversity of species?  And most importantly, will AI be safe for the essence of human nature?  Though a livable climate and an ecosystem with biodiversity are extremely important, the most consequential question we need to contemplate about and ultimately answer is “what do we want our future as humans to be like?” 

My first concern here is the impact of the AI world on our evolution as a species.  Living within an environment of humanoid physical robots and brains will be unlike the environment we have encountered thus far.  How will our cognitive and emotional make up respond and adapt to this new environment?  Reason and emotions have evolved to foster cooperation between humans as a means of improving our chances for survival.  Will this cooperation and sociality in general erode when human beings start to rely on cooperation with AI creatures?  Think, for example, of  children raised by AI nannies.  Do we have any scientific or otherwise reliable method to make predictions about such and other questions of similar relevance to our future as authentic humans rather than hybrids of humans and machines?

The expressed voices of skepticism and alarm about the effects of AI suggest that we need to develop the tools to check and control advancements in AI that have the potential to put us at an existential risk.  To come up with some plan of response we can look at how we coped with two other life-transformative developments.  Namely, the development of nuclear physics and genetic engineering. 

Nuclear physics gave us the promise of plentiful and clean atomic energy but also the potential to destroy human life.  In the 1960’s and 1970’s the activism of the still young baby boomers of the world along with the logic of safe containment resulted in treaties among the nuclear powers that established limits to the development and quantity of nuclear weapons.  And proliferation of atomic energy plants has been checked in many countries through local public resistance. 

Genetic engineering has also presented us with deep moral questions regarding the possibility of molding human life in ways we have deemed to belong to the exclusive realm of nature and God.  Since 1971 researchers and academics working in genetics have initiated several self-imposed moratoria that have halted further applications of genetic engineering.  They have also drafted rules of safe conduct in research to minimize unintended consequences. *

Regulating and checking the development of AI though is not going to be as easily achieved.  Unlike nuclear power which was mostly developed in state-funded national labs or genetics that was developed in academic labs, AI development is backed by for-profit mega-firms (Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others) that have strong incentives to monetize their inventions.  Another difficulty is that the immediate effect of AI advances is increased convenience in carrying out a variety of tasks and this numbs our urgency to think about the ultimate consequences down the road.  Nor do I sense a widespread interest within the public at large that would mobilize activists to demand a governance model of checks and balances on AI.  And yet, the risks and dangers are real and call for action.  So, we do need to mobilize governments, AI innovators as well as the public on an international scale to find the right path forward.

In the end, it comes down to drawing a line between the freedom to develop new knowledge driven by our human curiosity and the necessity to apply it wisely for the good of humanity.

*The recent letter on AI echoes the pronouncement on standards and limits in genetics research of the 1975 Asilomar Conference in California.  An informative account of how research and applications in genetic engineering have been contained within some bounds can be found in Matthew Cobb’s book AS GODS – A Moral History of the Genetic Age

“There we go again” were the words that came out of a lot of mouths when SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) failed on March 9.  We thought that after the 2008 financial crisis the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 would have ushered in a more stable banking environment.  Closer supervision and more onerous resolution of bank failures for shareholders and uninsured deposits were expected to instill more discipline in banking.  The SVB case exposed the limits of these expectations. 

The seemingly ad hoc way the regulators chose to avert another financial debacle exposed the fragility of the regulatory architecture.  It also brought to the fore the sense that we may have a selective approach to supervision and resolution.   As Daniel Tarullo, a former Fed governor, said “… concerns about moral hazard, and concerns about who the system is protecting, are front and center again.” 

Despite statements to the contrary, the SVB case was a bailout and bailouts have winners and losers.  In this case, the answer to “who the system is protecting” is wealthy millionaire depositors and the Silicon Valley tech companies whose uninsured deposits were granted full protection.  Along with these firms, their employees, among the best paid in the American workforce, also became the indirect beneficiaries of the bailout.

The question is why the Fed opted for a bailout instead of a bail-in that the Dodd-Frank Act  allows in such cases.  In a bail-in uninsured deposits are converted into equity, thus bearing the ultimate consequences of risk taking.  The Eurozone was an early user of the bail-in mechanism  when Cyprus suffered a banking collapse during the Euro debt crisis and has adopted bail-ins as a resolution mechanism.

Bail-ins and deposit insurance up to a reasonable level are tools to limit the moral hazard problem in banking operations.  Exposing large depositors to the risk of substantial losses and  converting their deposits into equity has a dual purpose.  It aims at compelling large depositors to monitor a bank’s risk and signal their disapproval by withdrawing deposits.  It also aims at making shareholders more cautious with respect to pursuing profits at high risk by exposing them to losses on their equity positions once uninsured deposits turn into equity. 

In the case of SVB, we had a failure of bank supervision before the collapse and of selective rescue afterward.  It seems that SVB’s regulatory supervisors were remiss in making sure SVB would act and reverse cited lapses the regulatory examiners had identified prior to its failure.  And then following its failure, SVB and its privileged depositors were offered a resolution with disregard to the moral hazard problem.  What good is any regulatory framework if the checks on reckless profit seeking are undermined by limiting losses on shareholders and large depositors?

Interestingly, both supporters and critics of bank regulation are now proposing that deposit protection cover millions of dollars or even become unlimited.  There are two issues here that merit consideration.  First, raising or eliminating the limit of insurance for deposits relieves both large (and mostly wealthy) depositors as well as bank shareholders from careful and costly risk assessment and monitoring.  Second, with less skin in the game, both large depositors and bank shareholders (especially the latter) can potentially become a lot less careful with risk taking.  Protecting us from bank failures then will fall more on the shoulders of regulators and their capacity to resist powerful interests and less on the market’s assessment of risks and rewards.  So welcome to socialized banking.  Not in the sense the state takes control of the banks but in the sense that bank shareholders and wealthy depositors reap extra profits in good days and share their losses with us on bad days.  

There are two arguments that circulate in reference to the SVB debacle that appear to me to be incompatible.  One is that the SVB failure was a one bank’s failure due to mismanagement and failed supervision.  The other is that we had to act decisively and quickly to avert a bank panic.  If it were the first, then no special treatment should have been extended to this bank and its clients.  If it were the second, then regulators signaled that even isolated bank failures are enough to spread public fear and uncertainty. 

I believe the second concern is more valid.  And this argument exposes the fragility and limited reassuring power of regulation in the face of fear.  Fear is one of the strongest human emotions.  It’s what tells us to take flight whether from a shadow that jumps in front of us or from a sudden banking incident.  Behind fear is the human difficulty to handle threats and uncertainty.  Fear triggers reflexive reaction before we have the time to process any available information or collect new information.  

Now add to the rapid reaction to fear the speed with which information spreads and how fast money can be moved around, both made possible thanks to digital technology.  So, we can have a reality in which negative information, valid or not, spreads like a brush fire, it ignites fear, which rapidly, and before our reasoning has time to process facts, triggers money movements that may deplete a banks’ deposits.  The question then is: Is our approach to safeguarding the stability of banking and financial markets designed so that it can deal with human psychology and modern technology?  I am not sure.  We still cling to the model of the rational homo economicus and we are enthralled by the boundless possibilities of modern technology and thus we tend to ignore their destabilizing effects.

Given the fragility of trust and the potency of human fear, we should err on the side of prudent and responsible banking that protects the economic welfare of society.  Laws and regulations should reward responsible banking practices and not the pursuit of profits and executive remuneration through irresponsible risk seeking.  In a capitalist economy, entrepreneurial rewards are justified by risk taking.  When these risks are, however, spread across society when they become reality, then what is the meaning of entrepreneurship?  

More broadly, we need to be honest about our understanding of the effects of moral hazard.  By that I refer to the pervasive notion that the adoption of social support programs (anti-poverty measures, child support, publicly-supported health care, student debt relief and so on) erode the incentive to work, while believing, at the same time, that the risk of moral hazard is impervious to assisting or rescuing businesses by using public funds. 

In case you missed it,right now, there is a war going on between institutional investors who engage in ESG-based investing on one side and Republican-controlled states and the Congress on the other.  Legislatures, attorneys general, and treasurers in about half of the US states (almost all controlled by Republicans) have turned against asset management firms that choose to invest in firms that comply with ESG principles.   At the state level fund managers are accused for dereliction of their fiduciary duty to generate the best returns possible for the pension plans they manage in the name of state employees.  They are also accused for being motivated by political agendas in favor of climate and social justice related causes.

Congress also passed a Republican-sponsored bill that prevents the enactment of a Labor Department rule that would allow but not oblige pension plan managers to adopt ESG criteria in their investing.  The basic argument behind the bill is the same concern that fund managers will be motivated by their political views on climate and social issues. 

But let’s start with some definitions.   ESG stands for environmental, social, and (corporate) governance responsibility.  Environmental encompasses concerns about the climate, the ecosystem and clean air and water.  Social refers to corporate practices that impact the firm’s communities and issues of diversity (race, sex, gender, religion, ethnicity), equity (pay, opportunities, rights and obligations) and inclusion.  Governance means corporations have sound rules for the delegation of power and accountability as well as for fair and full disclosure of information that is relevant to the firm’s stakeholders.

Governance was the first of the three that appeared as part of responsible business management more than 30 years ago.  As public awareness grew about matters of social justice and environmental sustainability, the S and the E found their way into the acronym.  In recent years the S and E also got an extra impetus as individual corporate leaders and collective bodies, like the Business Roundtable, expanded the responsibility of the corporation beyond shareholder value maximization to also include the interests of other stakeholders, including the environment and the society.  All, good stuff you would think.  So does the market.  Based on numbers published by the accounting firm PwC , it is estimated that a total of $18 trillion are invested globally in firms that follow ESG principles. 

Now, let’s look into the concerns regarding ESG investing.  First, do ESG-based investments leave money on the table?  I will start with the G(overnance).  Numerous studies have shown that firms with superior corporate governance standards trade at higher stock prices all else equal. Studies have also shown that the rigorous corporate governance standards adopted and enforced by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and US stock exchanges account for the popularity of US capital markets as hubs of securities trading and for the value premium enjoyed by shares of firms listed and traded on US exchanges.

Reason also suggest that adopting principles of social responsibility that open-up opportunities for hiring the best from the pool of workers irrespective of demographic characteristics and creating working conditions that respect everybody ought to boost morale, loyalty, and productivity – all good for a better valuation of the firm.  Generating good will with the surrounding communities where a firm operates should also be a positive thing for the firm.

Finally investing in environmentally responsible operations has upfront costs but it can also generate savings and lower the cost of adjusting to future environmental laws.  It can also signal to investors that the firm has a sophisticated and up to speed management team that can handle not only environmental challenges but also other aspects of business.  Ultimately though theorizing must be subject to empirical verification.  So, let’s look at the evidence.

We have a rich roster of studies that compare the returns produced by ESG-based investments to those produced by other firms.  In general, studies originating from business organizations report superior return performance for ESG-based investments.  Academic studies (presumably better designed) also offer no evidence of inferior performance for investments structured by ESG criteria.  Therefore, it seems that there is no empirical basis for the concern that ESG-based investments harm the financial interests of their beneficiaries.  Consequently, if such investments are at worst return-neutral and at best profitable then the argument that they harbor hidden political agendas becomes irrelevant.  After all, whereas investment performance is observable and measurable, intentions behind investments are not.

Nonetheless, there is a public policy issue that raises a troubling question about the anti-ESG stance.  Markets are supposed to enable us to express our choices with regard to a range of personal preferences and priorities.  This way the market can impact the conduct and viability of firms with respect to quality of products as well as business practices and operations that bear on society and the environment.  It is only when the market fails in its monitoring and disciplining mission that the state intervenes to restore it through laws and regulations.  It seems to me then that the anti-ESG stance – almost all of it originating within conservatives, who are the primary advocates of free markets – signifies an unreasonable dissonance.  To exclude ESG principles from the range of priorities the market has to sort out is an admission of lack of trust in the market by its very advocates.  Stifling the market that way is also the kind of value-destroying regulation for which conservatives always accuse liberals.  Even worse, it is a sort of censuring investors with respect to their right to express their priorities in relation to environmental and social issues.

If there is a really good reason to scrutinize ESG-based business practices it has to do with how reliably the ESG scores firms receive correspond to actual compliance with ESG principles.  A recent joint study by Columbia University and the London School of Economics found that firms with higher ESG scores had no better compliance than firms with low ESG scores.  To address the issue, the SEC is in the process of drafting rules that will require that firms disclose their ESG policies and initiatives.  As with public auditing firms, we need credible agencies for the assignment of ESG scores.

Raising investor confidence in the reliability of ESG scores is much more important than interfering with ESG-based investing and restricting investor freedom.

This post is a natural segue to the previous posts on how human life continually grows in complexity and how this imposes the need to adjust to its consequences.  I could have chosen words like “innovation” or “change” in the title, but I don’t think we can have progress without either of them.   After all, human history is nothing but a persistent pathbreaking adventure of innovations in survival, culture, knowledge, and technology which we collectively call progress.  

Progress though is more than innovation or change.  It also and primarily means betterment, which inserts a value judgment.  We are so much taken by the force of progress that we judge people, societies, and civilizations by the progress they make in the course of their existence.  Thus, we are indoctrinated with the obligation to make progress.  And we rarely pause to think that progress as innovation and change has consequences and that these consequences do not translate to betterment for everybody, including other species and our ecosystem.  More importantly, we fail to see that progress may not be managed in a democratic way and, hence, it can open up a divide between those who seek it and those who resist it.  It all comes down to how we understand “betterment.”

So, let’s first recognize that not everybody has rushed to embrace progress in our human history.  For example, hunter-gatherers were still roaming Central Europe a few thousand years after the emergence of agriculture.  Was this due to slow diffusion of farming or refusal to adopt it?  Hunter-gatherers have survived to our day in various remote parts of the planet and not because they are ignorant of the existence of modern societies.  The Amish in the United States have refused to adopt progress and integrate into modern life.  Workers, called Luddites, opposed technological progress that threatened their jobs in the early 19^th century.  To all these groups, what was proposed as progress did not necessarily entail betterment.

This past January (2023) David Brooks and Bret Stephens had an interesting exchange in an Opinion piece of the New York Times.  Brooks: “In society after society, highly educated professionals have formed a Brahmin class. . . . This class dominates the media, the academy, Hollywood, tech and corporations.  Many people on the middle and bottom have risen up to say, we don’t want to be ruled by those guys.  To hell with their economic, cultural and political power.  We ‘ll vote for anybody who can smash their machine.”  Stephens:  “… The class/partisan divide is between people whose business is the production and distribution of words – academics, journalists, civil servants, lawyers, intellectuals – and people whose business is the production and distribution of things – manufacturers, drivers, contractors, distributors and so on.  The first group makes the rules of the administrative state.  The latter lives under the weight of those rules … “

In that exchange, Brooks identified the class that mostly drives progress not only as inventors but also as proselytizers.  Going a step further, Stephens associated pretty much the same group with shaping and running the modern administrative state.   Here, we have a link between progress and its political ramifications.

Progress in science and knowledge has been the handmaid of state administrations since cities appeared in Mesopotamia and soon after in Egypt.  Cities brought new organization of labor, legal and enforcement systems, the need to manage farming and irrigation, keep inventory and money accounts, and set up defense systems.  That’s why we still consider cities to be incubators of progress. 

The path has remained quite straightforward.  New ideas, new knowledge and new technologies increase the complexity of human life.  They also trigger adaptive mechanisms that alter human behavior and social life.  More complexity means new risks and perils to navigate, new needs for law and order, new regulations, and, inadvertently, new restrictions in individual freedom. 

This process brings forth two forces that become sources of friction in the path of progress.  One is epistemological, meaning how well we understand and appreciate new knowledge and innovations and their impact on our world.   Unless all citizens are sufficiently educated or otherwise capable to understand the implications of innovations and change, a gap opens between those who know and those who don’t or don’t care to learn.  The other source of friction is how reliance on the advice of experts alters the relationship between citizens and the state. 

State administrations ancient and modern rely on experts who have the knowledge to inform governments as they deal with higher degrees of complexity.  Thus, the administrative state dictates the extent and severity of the mediation between what individuals want to do and what or how they are allowed to do it.  That’s where, progress and politics intersect.  We saw that on a global scale during the pandemic when states thought it responsible to enact unprecedented restrictions and mandates.  Significant portions of people refused to comply.  Part of the non-compliance was due to the epistemological gap and part was due to resistance against the stretch of the administrative state.

Societies and states are ruled by political groups invested in specific paths of progress, and, thus, they have every interest to push the path of progress they favor.  This means citizens must adapt to the skills and ways of life a particular path of progress implies.  Over the last 40 years, this path in the developed world has been: innovate, accept automation, go global, retool and go where the jobs are.  Either you jumped on this bandwagon or you were left behind.  How well, though, is this message heeded?  In the 38 advanced economies of the OECD, the average percentage of the population ages 25 to 64 with a college degree was 39% in 2020.  In the US, it was 50%.  That means the majority of the working age populations of the most advanced countries lack the academic and technical skills to successfully navigate the current path of progress.  In the US, in particular, there is a significant deficit of workers with the requisite skills to be part of the new technology sectors that are the flagships of progress. 

Why is this?  Is it because the state has failed to provide the motivation, incentives and means so that more young people choose to advance their knowledge and skills?  Or is it because significant segments of the population here and around the world are not so eager to embrace progress as defined by what we now call elites?  In the US, blue color workers resent their college-educated fellow citizens, what they stand for, and more importantly their notion of what progress is, just as David Brooks has argued.

It is difficult to imagine a human race not aspiring to innovation, change, and the desire to make progress, whatever the latter means.  That being the case, growing complexity will expand the knowledge gap and the administrative hand of the state.  Societies and states already face a political problem that will become more and more serious.  It has to do with the question:  Of the possible paths of progress which one do we choose and how do we make this decision? 

* Here I use the term administrative state not in its current dark meaning favored by some very conservative quarters.  I rather use it in the meaning of Dwight Waldo who coined it in his dissertation published in 1948.  Waldo viewed the administrative state to comprise the bureaucracies and agencies dedicated to public service.