2024 Philosophy, Politics, & Economics Society Keynote Lecture :: Westin New Orleans Hotel, New Orleans, LA :: J. Bradford DeLong :: U.C. Berkeley :: brad.delong@gmail.com :: as prepared for...
Maybe the problem is that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the dusk. Each new mode of production requires its own theory/eplanation, and by the time they arrive the next mode is upon us.
Interestingly, my last grad seminar at San Diego State (poli sci that I never completed) was in IR, and we read Thucydides. The Melian Dialogue served as an introduction to my critique of U.S. policy in Central America, specifically Nicaragua (this was 1984). I soon abandoned poli sci (I was also interested in normative theory driven by my work experience in a retail chain that had liquidated its holdings in 1982, leaving 3,000+ union clerks out of work) for a secondary teaching credential. Seven years after this seminar, I applied and was accepted to a NEH Seminar, The Tragic Voice of Thucydides’ History. Our seminar t-shirt used a portion of the quote you alluded to, albeit from the 1954 Rex Warner translation. I never lost my interest in theory as a way to frame. And I admit that in 2016, I threw my hands up in frustration and consternation as to how to explain what had just happened. Now that I am retired, I am attempting to figure it out. Your post is timely.
I don't think it's possible to figure it out. History is written by the winners, and the winners write history to justify their successes and prominence in society. But in the long run, demographics determines the winners more than technological developments or other accomplishments. And as a society's demographics change, the way history is taught changes too. So perhaps there is no rhyme or reason to history. Maybe history is just "one damn thing followed by another." Henry Ford used to say "History is bunk." I personally love history, but the older I get the more I think Ford might have been right.
On the other hand, I will note the social scientist Peter Turchin uses history and statistics in an attempt to develop reliable forecasts. (IMO this sounds a lot like the "psychohistory" of Isaac Asimov's science fiction.) Nevertheless, for years now Turchin has been predicting significant social conflict in the U.S. in the late 2020s. Let's hope he's wrong.
Thank God I'm not a history or economics professor, because it appears to me that whatever they know was perverted or lost to all but tiny hotel rooms at seminars. Meanwhile, the Ivy Leagues instruct the gifted and the legacies in sophistry. Economics is lost in equations and graphs which are impenetrable to most, which means the narrative is controlled by fascists pretending to be Libertarians. Even their hero Hayek would throw them out as money changers and say ye have made this a den of thieves. Enough - how to be constructive?
1) We need a Krugman for the masses, not behind a NYT paywall. And no one should ever be on X.
2) We have to teach values, and those values are Liberal values. It is how most of us already think, but it is under attack. Our patron saint should be Rawls. Unfortunately, as is the case with every revolutionary thinker, his magnum opus employs disciplined logic to dethrone an existing order, which makes terrible reading. The best I've found is Lefebvre's "Liberalism as a Way of Life'. But we need something for a broader audience.
3) We have to learn from history because history helps us from repeating the same mistakes. Communism hasn't work (also, stop saying Socialism without defining it). Feudalism doesn't work. 19th century UK doesn't work. Hungary and Russia - let's look at the numbers. How long can a people be ruled by an emperor before an insane incompetent takes hold? Are walls emblematic of an empire's apex, or apoplexy?
4) We have to think in nuance. The choice of absolute monarchy, absolute communism, absolute capitalism are all the same - tyranny.
5) We have to think in probabilities in a dependent world. The concept is a forgotten facile. Understanding comes from repeated attempts to empirically predict the future -- and fail.
6) We cannot prepare students for the future because the future is unborn and unknowable. Hari Seldon will never exist. It is this terrible uncertainty that has given birth to religions, ideologies, cults, and addictions because a capricious world is too much for a wrinkly brained ape to handle. We must acknowledge this, and fight it.
I'm very glad you posted this. I had read STU the summer before this but did not attend the conference, so was very curious to know what you said. I had assumed it was a precis of STU, so somewhat surprised and intrigued to see this. Even more curious to know how it was received by the audience and what the feedback was like (did you get any syllabi?).
It's a very interesting question. I seriously doubt it is actually possible to come up with a mental model "from scratch" that is not substantially a reworking of mental models one has been educated into. How then do we generate new mental models? Kuhn has something to say here I think. Kuhn thinks mental models (roughly what he calls paradigms) shift when someone finds an anomaly that does not fit the paradigm. Normally they spend a lot of time trying to fit the anomaly into "normal science" - normalize the abnormal. But sometimes in frustration, they consider what would it be if the anomaly was not the anomaly, but the paradigm case, and in so doing imagine a new paradigm. The problem is that it is not possible to routinize this as a method of generating new paradigms. It is probably some combination of obsessiveness and perfectionism that won't allow someone to accept a less than perfect reconciliation of the anomaly with the paradigm. That and pure random luck of having the person with such a disposition working on the right anomaly, and having the imagination and persistence to re-imagine the anomaly as a paradigm case.
A great enemy here, of course, is professional orthodoxy which puts huge weight on the paradigm.
Some further thoughts -- reading outside one's field. One of the most striking examples of this is Darwin solving the puzzle of natural selection by reading Malthus. I would say not many biologists read economists and vice versa - or if they do it is only to confirm their models. Of course, this is just another argument for inter-disciplinarity, which everyone wants but is extremely difficult to achieve in any real sense.
I've often noticed how forcing academics out of their professional silos (what we used to call ivory towers) and forcing them to work on problems completely outside their normal fields and under severe time constraints, can have a significant impact on innovation. One time this happens en masse is during wartime. Dan Davies' Stafford Beer is a good example. The number of US economists who were drafted into government to work on running the "wartime socialist" economy is another data-point - Friedman for one.
Not that this is an argument for war. Just some sense of what it takes in terms of resources, displacement pressure and sheer randomness, to create new mental models.
You say your education prepared you perfectly to understand the world of 1905. But the paradigms of 1905 are very much the paradigms generated by the shock of the industrial revolution. And these in turn would be shattered by the First World War and again by the Second.
All this underlies my curiosity about the result of an economic historian addressing a PPE conference -- which you would hope is a possibility for cross-fertilization.
Just realizing that this is the text you will presented this year and did not present last year after cancelling - but still intrigued to know how the audience responded.
DeLong's Slouching, Partanen's Nordic Theory of Everything, Polanyi, Hayek, Sapolsky's Determined, Ord's Precipice, Fourcade and Healy's Ordinal Society
I was cut off at “All this underlies my curiosity…” and have gotta respond to your comment, knowing nothing for STU or the conference or why Brad was in New Orleans, but I follow Brad closely.
The curiosity, ideas, examples and insights of your comment were so telling that I have to note it. Brad’s got to respond and I want to see what he says.
Science fiction is in the business of thinking about the future.
Relistened recently to the Foundation Trilogy - then listened to the two sequels for the first time. I'd been thinking about a correspondence between The Mule and Trump. Gets into people's heads, right?
There's a whole lot more there ofc, much of it not of use, but some of use. It turns out that actual history outflanks even the Second Foundation. At least, according to Asimov. In the sequels.
Many young people (including our son who's 24) still find science fiction engaging - and there's a lot of new science fiction out there. Sample new science fiction (I've sampled some) and see how people are imagining the future now.
Maybe the problem is that the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the dusk. Each new mode of production requires its own theory/eplanation, and by the time they arrive the next mode is upon us.
Interestingly, my last grad seminar at San Diego State (poli sci that I never completed) was in IR, and we read Thucydides. The Melian Dialogue served as an introduction to my critique of U.S. policy in Central America, specifically Nicaragua (this was 1984). I soon abandoned poli sci (I was also interested in normative theory driven by my work experience in a retail chain that had liquidated its holdings in 1982, leaving 3,000+ union clerks out of work) for a secondary teaching credential. Seven years after this seminar, I applied and was accepted to a NEH Seminar, The Tragic Voice of Thucydides’ History. Our seminar t-shirt used a portion of the quote you alluded to, albeit from the 1954 Rex Warner translation. I never lost my interest in theory as a way to frame. And I admit that in 2016, I threw my hands up in frustration and consternation as to how to explain what had just happened. Now that I am retired, I am attempting to figure it out. Your post is timely.
I don't think it's possible to figure it out. History is written by the winners, and the winners write history to justify their successes and prominence in society. But in the long run, demographics determines the winners more than technological developments or other accomplishments. And as a society's demographics change, the way history is taught changes too. So perhaps there is no rhyme or reason to history. Maybe history is just "one damn thing followed by another." Henry Ford used to say "History is bunk." I personally love history, but the older I get the more I think Ford might have been right.
On the other hand, I will note the social scientist Peter Turchin uses history and statistics in an attempt to develop reliable forecasts. (IMO this sounds a lot like the "psychohistory" of Isaac Asimov's science fiction.) Nevertheless, for years now Turchin has been predicting significant social conflict in the U.S. in the late 2020s. Let's hope he's wrong.
Thank God I'm not a history or economics professor, because it appears to me that whatever they know was perverted or lost to all but tiny hotel rooms at seminars. Meanwhile, the Ivy Leagues instruct the gifted and the legacies in sophistry. Economics is lost in equations and graphs which are impenetrable to most, which means the narrative is controlled by fascists pretending to be Libertarians. Even their hero Hayek would throw them out as money changers and say ye have made this a den of thieves. Enough - how to be constructive?
1) We need a Krugman for the masses, not behind a NYT paywall. And no one should ever be on X.
2) We have to teach values, and those values are Liberal values. It is how most of us already think, but it is under attack. Our patron saint should be Rawls. Unfortunately, as is the case with every revolutionary thinker, his magnum opus employs disciplined logic to dethrone an existing order, which makes terrible reading. The best I've found is Lefebvre's "Liberalism as a Way of Life'. But we need something for a broader audience.
3) We have to learn from history because history helps us from repeating the same mistakes. Communism hasn't work (also, stop saying Socialism without defining it). Feudalism doesn't work. 19th century UK doesn't work. Hungary and Russia - let's look at the numbers. How long can a people be ruled by an emperor before an insane incompetent takes hold? Are walls emblematic of an empire's apex, or apoplexy?
4) We have to think in nuance. The choice of absolute monarchy, absolute communism, absolute capitalism are all the same - tyranny.
5) We have to think in probabilities in a dependent world. The concept is a forgotten facile. Understanding comes from repeated attempts to empirically predict the future -- and fail.
6) We cannot prepare students for the future because the future is unborn and unknowable. Hari Seldon will never exist. It is this terrible uncertainty that has given birth to religions, ideologies, cults, and addictions because a capricious world is too much for a wrinkly brained ape to handle. We must acknowledge this, and fight it.
"Our patron saint should be Rawls" ❤️❤️❤️
Krugman is now on Bluesky.
A Cantlcle for Leibowitz comes to mind.
I'm very glad you posted this. I had read STU the summer before this but did not attend the conference, so was very curious to know what you said. I had assumed it was a precis of STU, so somewhat surprised and intrigued to see this. Even more curious to know how it was received by the audience and what the feedback was like (did you get any syllabi?).
It's a very interesting question. I seriously doubt it is actually possible to come up with a mental model "from scratch" that is not substantially a reworking of mental models one has been educated into. How then do we generate new mental models? Kuhn has something to say here I think. Kuhn thinks mental models (roughly what he calls paradigms) shift when someone finds an anomaly that does not fit the paradigm. Normally they spend a lot of time trying to fit the anomaly into "normal science" - normalize the abnormal. But sometimes in frustration, they consider what would it be if the anomaly was not the anomaly, but the paradigm case, and in so doing imagine a new paradigm. The problem is that it is not possible to routinize this as a method of generating new paradigms. It is probably some combination of obsessiveness and perfectionism that won't allow someone to accept a less than perfect reconciliation of the anomaly with the paradigm. That and pure random luck of having the person with such a disposition working on the right anomaly, and having the imagination and persistence to re-imagine the anomaly as a paradigm case.
A great enemy here, of course, is professional orthodoxy which puts huge weight on the paradigm.
Some further thoughts -- reading outside one's field. One of the most striking examples of this is Darwin solving the puzzle of natural selection by reading Malthus. I would say not many biologists read economists and vice versa - or if they do it is only to confirm their models. Of course, this is just another argument for inter-disciplinarity, which everyone wants but is extremely difficult to achieve in any real sense.
I've often noticed how forcing academics out of their professional silos (what we used to call ivory towers) and forcing them to work on problems completely outside their normal fields and under severe time constraints, can have a significant impact on innovation. One time this happens en masse is during wartime. Dan Davies' Stafford Beer is a good example. The number of US economists who were drafted into government to work on running the "wartime socialist" economy is another data-point - Friedman for one.
Not that this is an argument for war. Just some sense of what it takes in terms of resources, displacement pressure and sheer randomness, to create new mental models.
You say your education prepared you perfectly to understand the world of 1905. But the paradigms of 1905 are very much the paradigms generated by the shock of the industrial revolution. And these in turn would be shattered by the First World War and again by the Second.
All this underlies my curiosity about the result of an economic historian addressing a PPE conference -- which you would hope is a possibility for cross-fertilization.
Just realizing that this is the text you will presented this year and did not present last year after cancelling - but still intrigued to know how the audience responded.
DeLong's Slouching, Partanen's Nordic Theory of Everything, Polanyi, Hayek, Sapolsky's Determined, Ord's Precipice, Fourcade and Healy's Ordinal Society
I wonder if theories keep governing ideas constrained into impractical contortions. Do they keep us from being in touch with the fluid present?
6 Easy Pieces - Richard Feynman
Otherlands - Thomas Halliday
Zealot - Reza Aslan
Three cheers for Brad. My 2c — social theory for the 21st century should be able to unify and explain:
- the "lie flat" movement in China and parallels in the developed world (opting out of work)
- the "4b" movement in Korea (and spreading quickly)
- r > g and trends in asset prices v. growth and esp. housing costs in the developed world
- cultural + political stasis and repetition of the kind described by Ross Douthat and others
- technological stagnation of the form described by Gordon, Cohen, and others
- declining global fertility rates
- gen z / alpha fondness for pre-cell-phone culture, i.e. camcorder videos of 90's 2000's high school before cell phones
- the sentiment expressed in this music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVO5OYoZQHc
I was cut off at “All this underlies my curiosity…” and have gotta respond to your comment, knowing nothing for STU or the conference or why Brad was in New Orleans, but I follow Brad closely.
The curiosity, ideas, examples and insights of your comment were so telling that I have to note it. Brad’s got to respond and I want to see what he says.
respond to you, and I want to see that colloquy!
Thanks Brad
Science fiction is in the business of thinking about the future.
Relistened recently to the Foundation Trilogy - then listened to the two sequels for the first time. I'd been thinking about a correspondence between The Mule and Trump. Gets into people's heads, right?
There's a whole lot more there ofc, much of it not of use, but some of use. It turns out that actual history outflanks even the Second Foundation. At least, according to Asimov. In the sequels.
Many young people (including our son who's 24) still find science fiction engaging - and there's a lot of new science fiction out there. Sample new science fiction (I've sampled some) and see how people are imagining the future now.
Covered with Night
Dawn of Everything