>Thomas M. Nichols is a professor of national security affairs in the National Security Decision Making Department, where is also the Course Director for Security, Strategy, and Forces. A former Secretary of the Navy Fellow at the Naval War College, he previously taught international relations and Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. He is a former chairman of the Strategy and Policy Department at the Naval War College, for which he was awarded the Navy Civilian Meritorious Service Medal in 2005. He holds a PhD from Georgetown, an MA from Columbia University, the Certificate of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia, and a BA from Boston University.
I think the definitions of [1]"public policy" and [2]"social science" here are meant strictly, not as generalities.
From a cursory glance, I think he believes Snowden is a misguided traitor, Manning should spend the rest of his life in solitary, and Wikileaks is a Russian-funded intelligence front.
These are strong opinions with, IMO, a heavy political slant. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, even when I disagree with him. But now it seems like he's complaining about not getting enough respect and attention. But with his political bias, I don't think he deserves that kind of respect. His writing is too off-the-cuff and opinionated, lacking in two-dimensional treatment of what he talks about, never mind analysis.
In short, I think he's a right wing blowhard making a fuss about too much questioning of his authority.
>From a cursory glance, I think he believes Snowden is a misguided traitor, Manning should spend the rest of his life in solitary, and Wikileaks is a Russian-funded intelligence front.
He's a professor at a military school, I'm not the least bit surprised that he thinks that way. I agree completely that it limits the extent to which we can trust him as an authority.
Manning's conviction was actually pretty fair IMO. He was acquitted of leaking the video evidence of a government hiding illegal activity; he was also acquitted of aiding the enemy because that assertion was ridiculous. He was rightly held to account for releasing close to three quarters of a million classified documents that contained no instances of illegal activity. Had he done his due diligence like Snowden, he should have (but probably wouldn't have) walked away. That being said, I would be happy if they paroled him ASAP. I don't think we should take some kid's life(35 years will destroy your life just as surely as a lethal injection) away for making a stupid decision when it didn't cause much demonstrable harm.
What I find most entertaining about this article is that his argument is basically "Young people have an inflated sense of entitlement and that's why they don't worship the ground I walk on."
The problem is that the fields in which he is an expert have failed to provide sufficiently better predictive power over the judgement of a well-read or experienced layman[1]. I do not mean that as a criticism of the OP; this is merely a consequence of how young "social science" as a science is, and how difficult of a subject matter it attempts to study. The fact that a "2 sigma" level of confidence is considered acceptable in social science, whereas particle physics has a stand of 5 sigma, should demonstrate that judgement of experts from different disciplines should be different depending upon their area of expertise (but this has been known since the time of Aristotle).
Now it is fair to point out that medicine(as an application of biology) and counseling (as an application of psychology) are held to the same statistical standard, yet the medical community has the advantage of being able to generalize about the responses of human physiology in a way that the social sciences cannot, and counselors at least have the option of leveraging their empathy when trying to understand their clients. Public policy (as an application of sociology) has neither advantage.
But I also think he is painting a false dilemma, either that or he is being uncharitable to his opposition, which I would characterize as "populist"[2]. With regard to the governance of America, it is not simply a choice between experts and the unwashed masses. We also have the option of decentralizing power and policy decisions and letting states, counties, and cities - as well as voluntaristic organizations like professional societies, religious communities, corporations, and charities - decide more of their own rules. This does preclude a "rule by experts", but does delay their ascension until their science has fully matured.
Now, to be fair, my own discipline of computer science/software engineering has yet to grow into maturity as well [3][4]. Yet for all the griping about "techo-elitism" there are quite a number of counter-indicators of this:
- there are no legal barriers to entry in this discipline: while a degree is typically expected by employers it is not mandated by law and many enter this discipline without one.
- there is a strong culture of having an "open book", i.e. the open source community.
- a portfolio of work is typically the central piece of one's resume (rather than credentials or years of experience)
While not having a source of standards can be very detrimental[5], as Brian-Puccio pointed out[6] having a source of standards isn't going to solve the problem. As Dijkstra said, we gain respectability by limiting ourselves to the feasible, and we are successful when we allow ourselves to be opportunity-driven rather than mission driven. Only upon that foundation can we construct a source of credible authority.
Agreed 100%. You should only be considered an expert if you can make expert predictions.
In physics or engineering that's damn near trivial; for anything that the layman might want to know I can provide him with quite a good answer.
In the social sciences nobody actually KNOWS anything with any degree of certainty. And as for which policy is best, you might be able to give an answer that's good in aggregate or agreeable to the majority, but definitely not an optimal answer or something that everyone will agree with.
The problem is not that we don't trust the experts. We absolutely do. Experts have built the modern world in a very literal sense through science and engineering and skilled labor and whatnot. The problem is that he's a pseudo-expert and the laymen can sense that in their gut even if they can't clearly articulate it.
I've been thinking about the parent and grandparent comments for the last hour, and the longer I do, the wiser I think they are, as in one fell swoop you get a tangible way to think about what you should be able to expect from experts and their expertise. If you study a topic for twenty years, and even after this twenty years of study you are unable to predict fundamental and crucial phenomena related to that field (a global financial meltdown, say) then your "expertise" is of minimal value, however painfully it was acquired; similarly, if using your wide-ranging armchair internet quarterbacking you're able to do things (predictively; via engineering; whatever) that other people cannot do, then you're as much an expert as could reasonably be hoped for.
While I share the OA's disillusionment with a culture that seems to pride itself on stupidity, and to resent the hell out of expertise as traditionally defined, I think that the instinct can be thought of as a kind of intellectual and memetic antibody that has, for the most part, served this country well. A lot of the things that many of us value (GNU software; Linux; Wikipedia; Apple Computer) owe their existence to people who, by socially normative standards, had 'no business' doing what they were doing in the first place.
>Thomas M. Nichols is a professor of national security affairs in the National Security Decision Making Department, where is also the Course Director for Security, Strategy, and Forces. A former Secretary of the Navy Fellow at the Naval War College, he previously taught international relations and Soviet/Russian affairs at Dartmouth College and Georgetown University. He is a former chairman of the Strategy and Policy Department at the Naval War College, for which he was awarded the Navy Civilian Meritorious Service Medal in 2005. He holds a PhD from Georgetown, an MA from Columbia University, the Certificate of the Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union at Columbia, and a BA from Boston University.
I think the definitions of [1]"public policy" and [2]"social science" here are meant strictly, not as generalities.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_policy
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_science