Respect My Authoritah

That's actually the title of David Foster's funny piece about Nancy Pelosi's demand to monetize her dignity (who knew she was so into the commercial mindset?  Next she'll be defending profit).  But it seemed also to describe this handwringer from the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled "How Rude!  Reader Comments May Undermine Scientists’ Authority":
Scientists have a hard enough time getting people to understand what they’re talking about. 
Their thoughts can be complicated.  Their sentences can be laden with jargon.  And their conclusions can offend political or religious sensibilities. 
And now, to make things worse, readers have an immediate forum to talk back.  And when some readers post uncivil comments at the bottom of online articles, that alone can raise doubts about the underlying science, a new study has found.  Or at least reinforce those doubts.
What follows is a summary report of a study showing that readers were less swayed by an argument about the risks of nanotechnology when it was followed by rude comments than when it was followed by polite ones.  The article's author described the experiment as having taken care to ensure that the substance of the comments was the same, and all that was varied was their tone.  Hard to say, since the paper was presented at a conference and hasn't been published yet.  It's due to be published soon in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication ("CMC," for those in the know).  I found something similar, perhaps, in the current issue, "The Impact of Language Variety and Expertise on Perceptions of Online Political Discussions," which contained this delightful early subsection heading:  "Status Cues and Heuristic Processing in CMC."  So right away we get some clues about the balderdash quotient (BD).  (I'm sorry; I'm afraid that was rude.  But I'm working on a peer-reviewed paper establishing universal units for the Cognitively Heuristic BD (CHBD), and the grant money is just pouring in.)

Is this a new thing, all the concern over whether the public is getting heuristically out of hand and needs better cognitive processing so we technocrats can maintain our authoritah?  Or have I just not been paying enough attention to the hilarious stuff that gets published?  (A classic early example is "Transgressing the Boundaries:  Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.")

Rudeness is a problem, certainly.  Among its other drawbacks, it heightens emotions, not usually a helpful means of facilitating the exchange of complex ideas.  It also often wrenches the focus of discussion from the relevant to the irrelevant, especially to the personal characteristics and politics of the authors.

But if the motive for censoring rude remarks is to prevent a loss of the readers' confidence in the authority of the beleaguered scientists, then count me unconvinced.  That's just asking for moderators to censor remarks according to their ostensible ability to undercut the argument in the main post.  Even if the moderator is concerned about the unfair tactic of "rudeness," who among us wouldn't be corrupted by that standard?  It will lead to a censorship standard that's weighted by the content of the argument instead of by its style.  As commenter JD Eveland wrote:
Consider, for example, the following range of possible comments: 
(a) "Fantastic!  Amazing!  I'm putting your name into Nobel consideration right away!" 
(b) "Interesting paper.  However, I do have some concerns with how the statistical analysis was conducted." 
(c) "The results are rendered largely uninterpretable due to the investigators' choice of a repeated measures analysis of variance rather than a regression model, as is currently taught in all reasonably respectable doctoral programs." 
(d) "Obviously, the results in this article were scraped off the bottom of a birdcage after the data had been statistically processed by the bird." 
(e) "You're a poopypants, and your data analyst is a stupid f**k!  You obviously learned all you know about statistics off the back of a bag of birdseed!  I'm coming after you, and your little dog too!" 
We'd all probably agree that result (e) would be considered rude, and most of us would also apply that to (d).  On the other hand, (c) could easily be considered rude by some scientists, although it might not have been intended as such by the respondent, since that's just the way he talks to everyone including his students and his wife.  (b) would probably not be considered rude by anyone offering it, although some scientists are sensitive enough to see it as such; indeed, there are even those insecure enough as to see anything short of (a) to be rude.
What I'm describing here is rampant PC culture.  The last thing scientists need is a less hostile working environment for their tender arguments. Sound ideas can stand some rough and tumble.

25 comments:

Grim said...

(C) is a sort of rudeness to which scientists ought to be professionally inured. At the APA this year, one of the attending professors began his question by telling the panelists, "I don't know anything about your medieval thinkers, but consider this a question from a real philosopher."

Here the rudeness undercut the whole process. Nobody I talked to could remember either the topic if the panel or what his question actually had been, just the snideness of his tone.

And that may actually be a real problem with our democracy, as it is far easier to appreciate a snide remark than to understand the substance of the question (or the answer). I notice that my liberal friends often post snide, and fairly vile, slanders against religion on their Facebook pages. Rarely are these valid critiques or even interesting questions, but the effect is to slime religion as something a decent person would associate with at all. There's no reflection, just viciousness.

Grim said...

And yet these are otherwise good people who are certainly thoughtful about the things they care to think about! Otherwise they would be poor candidates for friends of mine. They often have interesting arguments when they bother to frame an argument, and they can appreciate a counterargument when one is offered.

It's just that slander is the style of the time, and as long as it's amusing people are ready to go along with it.

Texan99 said...

"And that may actually be a real problem with our democracy, as it is far easier to appreciate a snide remark than to understand the substance of the question (or the answer)."

Is that really a greater problem for democracy than for any other system of governance? The ruler has to get his information somehow, whether he's an individual or a large electorate. If people can't think straight in the presence of snideness or rudeness, a king will have the same difficulty as the crowd in reaching good decisions based on evidence. Maybe the crowd has an advantage by averaging out the problem. An individual king may be an incredibly clear thinker, or a real ox who falls for whatever mental interference his evil courtiers toss up for him.

Grim said...

Good question! I had meant to speak only of "our democracy," but you may be right that this is a problem with "democracy."

It seems to be, empirically: at least, 'the mob' being easily swayed by sophistry is a problem cited both by the ancients (and not just Plato and Aristotle, but the significantly-later Romans) and the moderns. If we're seeing it here -- and among well-educated, thoughtful people, not just 'the mob' as the Romans considered them -- it may very well be the case that it's a genuine problem of democratic models.

Now, the other part of your question is whether other models are better. On that the evidence is mixed. Aristotle argues that the other models are either better or worse: the best model is to have one person making the decisions who is particularly wise and virtuous, but the worst model is to have one person making the decisions who is unwise and/or vicious. "A few people" fares in the middle on both points.

Today I'm not sure where to look. Clearly many of our betters at the New York Times think that China is doing it well, in part thanks to autocracy. I don't agree, in part because I think China is using autocracy to hide a bunch of fraud: but even if it were true, I wouldn't make the trade.

The country that seems to me to be doing best of all is Iceland. And it's quite a democracy -- moreso than we are, really.

Texan99 said...

Is there really "mixed evidence" whether common human errors in reasoning are a bigger problem in autocracies or oligarchies than in democracies? I'm not sure I find Aristotle a convincing source of evidence; he had a tendency to argue from first principles rather than from evidence, and in any case his evidence would necessarily be limited to the few governments with which he could have become familiar over two thousand years ago.

What do you think Iceland is doing particularly well in the decision-making department? My main impression of them lately is that they went broke rather earlier than everyone else, though it's true that they also addressed their bankruptcy promptly and thoroughly and are making a comeback while other nations are dragging things out.

Grim said...

Well, the Politics is empirical as well -- we stopped looking through it when JW left, but if you go back and look at the discussions you'll find us talking about specific constitutions and their problems. It's true that those are old examples, although insofar as there is a human nature they may still be telling.

Modern history provides more cases, but again, the evidence is mixed. Clearly the Soviets and the Communist bloc in general did nearly as poorly as it is possible to do. On the other hand, non-democratic colonies led by unelected Europeans did better, by economic and technological measures at least, than democratic states in Africa and parts of Asia. (That they may have been unjust in principle is not at issue; just the practical outcomes of having a technocratic elite in charge, versus an elected government.)

The Scandinavians have done modestly well, and are modestly technocratic. The Irish have been intensely democratic, and have done at turns badly and well, well and badly. (Galway was a boomtown until recently; now it's the opposite.) The Arab states have mostly been autocratic, and have done well even economically only where there has been oil wealth. Thailand, by contrast, has a king who is both educated and has always worked for the common good -- and it's done fairly well as a result, avoiding many political as well as economic problems common to Southeast Asia. Compared with its near neighbors -- Burma, say, or Vietnam -- it's kind of a beacon.

You've got the answer to why I think Iceland is doing well there at the bottom of your comment. It's true they screwed up just as badly as everyone else, but they were able to recognize and adjust fire more quickly. Sometimes that's the best you can do -- people do tend to go along with the crowd, especially in a democracy.

Texan99 said...

I find the evidence so mixed as to support the conclusion that there's no observable correlation between the degree of democratization and the vulnerability to the undermining of reason by rudeness or snideness.

Grim said...

Well, there is, on Aristotle's model. On Aristotle's model, it makes sense, because there are two axes: one/few/many in terms of rulership, and virtue/vice in terms of what drives the leadership.

If you take that model, the evidence from our time seems to correlate with it almost exactly. Where you have a virtuous king like the king of Thailand -- remember that virtues for Aristotle are capacities, intellectual and moral -- things go quite well for you compared to your neighbors, even if conditions are not ideal (as they were not in Southeast Asia over the last century). If you have a bad king, like Mao or Stalin, things go horribly.

If you have a virtuous aristocracy, as in the colonies, things go reasonably well -- the better, in fact, the fewer of them really have final authority over their projects. If you have a vicious aristocracy, as in contemporary China, things go better than they did under the evil king -- but there's still a lot wrong with the model both politically and economically (e.g., fraud).

If you have a virtuous democracy, like Iceland's, things may still go wrong, but corrections are swift and wise. If you have a vicious one, like the republics in much of Africa, it turns into kleptocracy and 'the many against the almost-many.'

And that is just what the ancient theory predicts.

Grim said...

So the virtue, for your example, might be the capacity of being able to entertain an opposing argument thoughtfully rather than rudely. Or the capacity to see past rudeness to examine the real arguments underlying the snide people. Or the capacity to turn away the snide's wrath ("a soft answer" -- there's a virtue, eh?) and return the discussion to the merits.

Texan99 said...

Theory, yeah -- but I was looking for observational evidence of real nations establishing the correlation. I don't know of any.

Grim said...

I'm not following you now. Thailand is a real nation, right?

Texan99 said...

Sure -- and I can see that if you have a king, you may do really well or really badly, depending on how lucky you are in your king. But I guess I'd want to see some evidence that countries with kings on the whole do better than countries with democracies. I guess I'd expect the democracies to be in the middle of the bell curve while the ones with kings would be out there on either tail, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Cass said...

So the virtue, for your example, might be the capacity of being able to entertain an opposing argument thoughtfully rather than rudely. Or the capacity to see past rudeness to examine the real arguments underlying the snide people. Or the capacity to turn away the snide's wrath ("a soft answer" -- there's a virtue, eh?) and return the discussion to the merits.

Just to make Grim's head totally explode, I think I agree with him here. I wouldn't impose this on anyone by force, but I think we are better served by not allowing rude comments.

People are herd animals - even scientists and academicians are. We know this. Personally, I"m not terribly concerned with anyone's authority.

But I do see considerable danger in the internet mentality taking hold.

Is this a new thing, all the concern over whether the public is getting heuristically out of hand and needs better cognitive processing so we technocrats can maintain our authoritah? Or have I just not been paying enough attention to the hilarious stuff that gets published?

I think it's mostly an older thing, and one probably worth resurrecting. I think worrying about serious conversations devolving, whether through rudeness or simple substitution of mindless mockery, into free-for-alls is a very valid concern (though again I don't give two figs about the authority of scientists).

The tactic isn't just used to erode the authority of scientists - it's used to delegitimize perfectly valid public policy positions in the eyes of the public. The tactic works particularly well when the issue is complicated and hard to understand.

Just look at what Barack Obama has managed to do using the tactic. He skates out of any serious discussion of criticisms of his administration by schoolyard taunts and name calling.

If you care about the character of a nation, you have to find that alarming. Human nature is often irrational. I see nothing bothersome about not encouraging our basest instincts in a public space.

That's one reason I don't put up with nastiness in my comments section - I want people to entertain each other's ideas, not resort to name calling.

This strikes me as one of those issues that's easy to sign off on b/c we dislike scientists (and they can be pompous at times). But used against people we admire, the tactic takes on a different color entirely.

james said...

I agree with Cass--we should struggle against the substitution of abuse for argument. It undercuts all discussion and prevents understanding.

Unfortunately, Texan99 is right that a PhD after your name shouldn't be taken to mean that every word is gospel. (Especially after the words have gone through through a reporter's digestion)

Scientists are supposed to understand and practice skepticism, and should be used to it.

FWIW, comments of the type "(b)" show up all the time when scientists discuss things among themselves. Not so much at the big conferences, but raking one of our grad students over the coals was almost an agenda item at the weekly meeting.

Texan99 said...

I agree absolutely there are excellent reasons to combat rudeness, even to the point of shunning the offenders.

What bothers me is the justification: "ban this rude person because he may succeed in bringing an idea into disrepute that I think should gain more public support." That's a dangerous direction, and in practice will be almost impossible to distinguish from ordinary opportunistic authoritarian censorship.

Grim said...

Just to make Grim's head totally explode, I think I agree with him here.

How nice! I think. :)

Grim said...

Tex:

I guess I'd expect the democracies to be in the middle of the bell curve while the ones with kings would be out there on either tail, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

That's essentially Aristotle's proposition, except that the distribution isn't random. It's directly related to the virtues of the ruler. Likewise the distribution of democracies, which are on the good side of the curve if they have a people that is relatively virtuous; and on the bad side if their people are relatively vicious (for example, if they like to vote themselves wealth from the minority).

One of the lessons of Aristotle's Politics is that rule by the many is the safest form -- not because it's likelier to be good, but because when it goes bad the fall isn't as far. A good king who goes bad (or who is succeeded by a bad one) can take the whole thing down pretty hard.

So the next question might be: do we still have a (now vicious) democracy, or has it devolved into an oligarchy? That would tend to indicate how far the fall will be.

douglas said...

"It's just that slander is the style of the time, and as long as it's amusing people are ready to go along with it."

We've cultivated an entertainment consumer culture, and these are the fruits of our labor. When people watch sitcoms instead of read books (I daresay, even bad books), and get their 'news' from pseudo-news comedy shows, is it a surprise when slander for the purpose of amusement (the commenter's own, and/or the readers) is the style of the time? The thing is, from what I see in my students, we've also become not very good at taking criticism. It seems the sciences aren't immune either.

Given all that, we look for easy paths, even when deep down we know they're leading over the cliff, and just hope we don't get there soon. Laughing all the way.

Hilarious, isn't it.


I think Tex has Aristotle right on politics, but the bell-curve is the theoretical, not the actual, nor even the expected actual with a large enough sample. When you add back in human nature, it's inevitable that the aristocratic model, once confronted with human nature, become more likely to be of the vicious variety, rather than the virtuous one. There goes your symmetric bell curve, all lopsided to one side.

Dennis Prager says 'that people are bad doesn't surprise me at all, it's that people are as good as they are that's a miracle'. I think you can extend that to aristocrats as well.

Texan99 said...

Aristocrats may be more vicious, I don't know. I would agree that few people remain uncorrupted by power. On the other hand, the electorate is powerful in a democracy and shows its own brand of viciousness.

But I'm not really talking about whether rulers will behave better morally in a democracy or an oligarchy. I'm curious about whether they will make better calls on difficult, murky decisions about emerging dilemmas affecting the public good (which might be scientific or economic or political). This line of discussion began with Grim's comment:

"And that may actually be a real problem with our democracy, as it is far easier to appreciate a snide remark than to understand the substance of the question (or the answer)."

I question whether the power of snideness to undermine a rational public response to a confusing dilemma is greater in a democracy than in any other governmental system. If your ruler is brilliant and clear-thinking, he'll do a better job than the easily confused masses. If he's a nutcase, that won't be the result; the "wisdom of the crowd" will out-perform him.

But, as everyone here already knows, I also believe that there's good evidence to support the belief that crowd-sourcing works better, on average, than central control for many kinds of large, communal problems.

Cass said...

I question whether the power of snideness to undermine a rational public response to a confusing dilemma is greater in a democracy than in any other governmental system. If your ruler is brilliant and clear-thinking, he'll do a better job than the easily confused masses. If he's a nutcase, that won't be the result; the "wisdom of the crowd" will out-perform him.

I think it is greater in a less authoritarian system. Just look at the comments in most news articles. They're useless. In moderated forums, the criticism is no less severe but at least it's well thought out and encourages serious thought in even lurkers.

The notion that somehow, not allowing people to be rude asses will shut down all critical inquiry simply doesn't hold up to inspection.

I agree that preserving the authority of "experts" isn't really the main point (though I would argue there's value in that too). The main point is keeping public discourse out of the toilet, and whether by allowing certain things to go unchallenged, we actually encourage/bring out the worst in people instead of inspiring the best from them.

Cass said...

One more thing: "experts" aren't automatically right - in this I agree with James.

Because they are human, their work should be peer reviewed and challenged.

But the notion that Joe Sixpack off the street will, in the vast majority of cases, produce useful critical feedback on complex questions requiring knowledge of the subject strikes me as borderline delusional. I have a high opinion of my own ineffable wonderfulness, but you'll never see me attempting to review a paper on quantum physics.

When is, "You're a big poopy head" EVER useful critical feedback? What does it add to the discussion?

Perhaps more importantly, what does it detract from the discussion? I would argue that allowing such comments to go unchallenged suggests that all criticism is of equal merit. Except it's not.

And if scientists can prove that such "commentary" actually feeds innate biases and makes people less thoughtful than they otherwise would be, isn't that kind of a big deal? I am every bit as suspicious of populist attempts to mandate the inclusion of people with malicious intent as I am of elitist attempts to prevent the inclusion of anyone who doesn't belong to their elite clique.

But I honestly don't see standards of politeness/manners as the same as banning people because they don't belong to the right group.

Texan99 said...

When is, "You're a big poopy head" EVER useful critical feedback? What does it add to the discussion?" I definitely wouldn't argue for the usefulness of "you're a poopyhead" as critical feedback. The question is the usefulness of taking steps to ensure that no reader ever has to be exposed to the pernicious effects of a comment like "you're a poopyhead."

Which is your next question: "Perhaps more importantly, what does it detract from the discussion? The study suggests that it detracts from whatever was the previous inclination to trust what the article said. I can't see that as a huge risk or drawback. It may be unpleasant, but there's no reason to think that the assault on trust will affect good arguments any more than it will affect unreliable ones. A less trusting atmosphere may be a fine thing. These are articles meant to spur investigation and debate, not ex cathedra pronouncements in times of crisis or military orders in time of battle.

And finally, "I would argue that allowing such comments to go unchallenged suggests that all criticism is of equal merit." I question that vigorously. There are many ways to signal that some criticism is more helpful than others, short of censoring criticism for fear that it will undermine the original article. Moderators can admonish trolls against rudeness. Moderators can even banish trolls who refuse to stick to substance. Other commenters can counter the trollish arguments.

This all reminds me of that interesting site I linked to last week, where the size of one's online "megaphone" was linked to his accumulated reputation points. That's a kind of censorship I can see working well -- I suppose because I assume that the ability to accumulate reputation points will not depend on whether anyone fears that a commenter is undermining the authority of the original author, but instead on whether he brings anything useful to the discussion and knows how to back up his positions with facts and arguments that the audience finds persuasive. Whatever method that site uses for calculating reputation points, they do seem to have figured out a way to minimize idiot trolls, but the back-and-forth is still quite sharp, sometimes even rude.

Texan99 said...

I should add, because I don't think I'm making this part clear enough: I am not arguing that what the world needs is more incoherent snideness and rudeness. I'm arguing that anti-rudeness measures ought to be content-neutral; i.e., enforced equally against people who agree with the original article's premise as against those who doubt it. Because what's wrong with incoherent rudeness should not be that it brings authority into doubt, but that it's unpleasant and drowns out rational discourse on both sides of any question.

Each discussion, and each discursive community, has a level of rudeness it finds tolerable. Some groups are comfortable with more rough-and-tumble. They all have a right to set the tone. As long as they don't put their fingers on the scale to find a Doubting Thomas rude while a True Believer expresses himself the same way without criticism, they'll do fine.

Cass said...

The question is the usefulness of taking steps to ensure that no reader ever has to be exposed to the pernicious effects of a comment like "you're a poopyhead."

Well, I can only respond out of my own experience. I used to get emails from lurkers all the time. Some of them now comment regularly. But a common theme was that many folks are discouraged by rudeness. They decide it's not worth their time to participate.

If you care about the quality of the discussion, I think that matters b/c in my experience some of the most reluctant commenters are the smartest and most thoughtful (I say this as 'the-opposite-of-a-reluctant-commenter').

I've already pointed out how easy it is to delegitimize genuinely serious ideas in the eyes of the public through mockery and name calling.

I can accept it if you don't agree that literally "laughing good ideas to scorn" is a bad thing, or that the value of reading poopyhead comments somehow outweighs the value of lost comments from people who avoid such venues or the encouragement of public derision rather than serious critical inquiry.

I will never understand why anyone would think that, but I can totally accept it :p

I've been thinking about a tangential issue lately and can pretty much guarantee that you'd like my thoughts there even less :)

I'm old fashioned. I think manners and standards are enormously important in the continual fight against people who think their latest random urge must be not only accepted but even treated as though it were something wonderful. I really believe that each of us is fighting this battle every day. That notion is what religion is all about, and though I am not a regular churchgoer, I endorse it whole heartedly.

Cass said...

I'm arguing that anti-rudeness measures ought to be content-neutral; i.e., enforced equally against people who agree with the original article's premise as against those who doubt it.

You'll get no argument from me there, Tex. I think that's essential if you don't want the standard itself to be delegitimized.