Two possible drivers are mentioned: the start of the internet and "perhaps more importantly, there could be a connection to tensions arising from neoliberal policies which were defended on rational arguments, while the eco-nomic fruits were reaped by an increasingly small fraction of societies"
As someone who started the 1970's as an undergraduate and who dropped out of graduate school by 1980, I have three observations:
1. The rise of the internet probably was an insignifcant contributor. I started using the Arpanet in January 1973, and being in gradute school in Artificial Intelligence, was a heavy user. But it did not affect society at large.
2. It is curious that the authors use the term "neoliberal", which I don't remember being discussed at the time. Although the hyper-inflation and economic malaise (including the gas crisis) of the Carter Administration led to his ouster and the replacement of Ronald Reagan and a different mindset, coupled with a similar malaise in England leading to Margarest Thatcher, I did not exerience these economic policies as resulting in a decrease in the respect for rationalism. Instead, they manifested themselves in a libertarian outlook, which replaced the greater sense of community that had developed in the wake of World War II. Although the two might be related, I doubt there is a causal relationship. I argue for a deeper cause that led to the economic and politcal changes.
3. There were a number of deeper currents in intellectual thought at that time that presaged this decline in rationality. Moral Foundations theory mentions respect for authority as one of the fundamental moral foundations. This was severly eroded in the 1960s during the civil rights and anti-war movements. This probably is a better explanation. In the 1970s, you saw an increase in religion and mysticism, for example. This was an individualistic religion that mirrored the individualistic politcal turn. That also led to a do-your-own thing, if-it-feels-good-do-it way of living that discounted the effort and value and fought against the confines of having to be rational.
I love your observations: "And of course, it is going to be mighty difficult to test the suggested causal link. It’s one thing to demonstrate a robust data pattern, repeatable across a series of datasets. It’s an altogether different thing to tease apart the underlying causal factors." and "one would have expected a comparable, or even larger, effect of the even more dramatic Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939. But no such effect is visible in the data." I second you on this.
As someone currently working in the field of Natural Language Processing, I would point out that there are some methods to tease these relationships out. One that comes to mind is to go beyond the counting of single words. I struggle with this daily in my work. Analysis of keywords is a simplisitic analysis - it yields easy results with little effort, but you have to work harder to get to the next level. For example, given a database of the individual texts, such as the New York Times articles (and similar newspapers from around the world) you can select phrases that are more indicative of who inspired whom. As an example in this very discussion, the phrase "neoliberal policies" which I questioned earlier is an example of such as phrase, along with my citing "if it feels good do it". Then you can start building a graph linking the documents in terms of their influences through their idiomatic use of these phrases. Broadening this search to multiple societies allows you to then get an independent evaluation of the lingusitc effect: as the language changes, the effect on the individual societies can be measured. This effect is implied by the authors when they talk about economic changes. But there are other changes as well, such as the growth of relgion and the way it mutated. Another marker that is an indipendent measure of rationality is the changes in medical treatment, which is often subject to pseudo-scientific and irrational forces, such as homeopathy, or bogus treatments like Laetrile, which, if I remeber correctly, took off in this very 1980 time period.
The article on flossing and scientific certainty is excellent.
If you have not read Adam Mastroianni yet, you should. His Substack essays are excellent. They present orignal and insightful ideas and they are fun to read. He has some valuable critiques of the way that science is practiced, especially how it relates to his field: psychology.
Good selection. I had already read a couple. About the change in linguistics, it corresponnds to declines in the arts about the same time. I noticed it in music about 20 years ago. And I have been blaming Prometheus for my problems most of my rather long life. It helps.
In The (Linguistic) Fall of Rationality, you quote from Scheffer et al section on Potential Drivers
https://www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10.1073/pnas.2107848118
Two possible drivers are mentioned: the start of the internet and "perhaps more importantly, there could be a connection to tensions arising from neoliberal policies which were defended on rational arguments, while the eco-nomic fruits were reaped by an increasingly small fraction of societies"
As someone who started the 1970's as an undergraduate and who dropped out of graduate school by 1980, I have three observations:
1. The rise of the internet probably was an insignifcant contributor. I started using the Arpanet in January 1973, and being in gradute school in Artificial Intelligence, was a heavy user. But it did not affect society at large.
2. It is curious that the authors use the term "neoliberal", which I don't remember being discussed at the time. Although the hyper-inflation and economic malaise (including the gas crisis) of the Carter Administration led to his ouster and the replacement of Ronald Reagan and a different mindset, coupled with a similar malaise in England leading to Margarest Thatcher, I did not exerience these economic policies as resulting in a decrease in the respect for rationalism. Instead, they manifested themselves in a libertarian outlook, which replaced the greater sense of community that had developed in the wake of World War II. Although the two might be related, I doubt there is a causal relationship. I argue for a deeper cause that led to the economic and politcal changes.
3. There were a number of deeper currents in intellectual thought at that time that presaged this decline in rationality. Moral Foundations theory mentions respect for authority as one of the fundamental moral foundations. This was severly eroded in the 1960s during the civil rights and anti-war movements. This probably is a better explanation. In the 1970s, you saw an increase in religion and mysticism, for example. This was an individualistic religion that mirrored the individualistic politcal turn. That also led to a do-your-own thing, if-it-feels-good-do-it way of living that discounted the effort and value and fought against the confines of having to be rational.
I love your observations: "And of course, it is going to be mighty difficult to test the suggested causal link. It’s one thing to demonstrate a robust data pattern, repeatable across a series of datasets. It’s an altogether different thing to tease apart the underlying causal factors." and "one would have expected a comparable, or even larger, effect of the even more dramatic Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 to 1939. But no such effect is visible in the data." I second you on this.
As someone currently working in the field of Natural Language Processing, I would point out that there are some methods to tease these relationships out. One that comes to mind is to go beyond the counting of single words. I struggle with this daily in my work. Analysis of keywords is a simplisitic analysis - it yields easy results with little effort, but you have to work harder to get to the next level. For example, given a database of the individual texts, such as the New York Times articles (and similar newspapers from around the world) you can select phrases that are more indicative of who inspired whom. As an example in this very discussion, the phrase "neoliberal policies" which I questioned earlier is an example of such as phrase, along with my citing "if it feels good do it". Then you can start building a graph linking the documents in terms of their influences through their idiomatic use of these phrases. Broadening this search to multiple societies allows you to then get an independent evaluation of the lingusitc effect: as the language changes, the effect on the individual societies can be measured. This effect is implied by the authors when they talk about economic changes. But there are other changes as well, such as the growth of relgion and the way it mutated. Another marker that is an indipendent measure of rationality is the changes in medical treatment, which is often subject to pseudo-scientific and irrational forces, such as homeopathy, or bogus treatments like Laetrile, which, if I remeber correctly, took off in this very 1980 time period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdalin
So this is a proposal for a followup study.
The article on flossing and scientific certainty is excellent.
If you have not read Adam Mastroianni yet, you should. His Substack essays are excellent. They present orignal and insightful ideas and they are fun to read. He has some valuable critiques of the way that science is practiced, especially how it relates to his field: psychology.
https://substack.com/@experimentalhistory
Some of my favorites:
Science is a strong-link problem
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/science-is-a-strong-link-problem
I’m so sorry for psychology’s loss, whatever it is
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/im-so-sorry-for-psychologys-loss
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that?
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/youll-forget-most-of-what-you-learn
Ideas aren’t getting harder to find and anyone who tells you otherwise is a coward and I will fight them
https://www.experimental-history.com/p/ideas-arent-getting-harder-to-find
Good selection. I had already read a couple. About the change in linguistics, it corresponnds to declines in the arts about the same time. I noticed it in music about 20 years ago. And I have been blaming Prometheus for my problems most of my rather long life. It helps.
omigod, I'll never get caught up--but thanks anyway, Massimo!
Happy Thanksgiving...and floss Mass, for (the)God’s’sakes!
More awesome excerpts and comments! Here’s wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving, Massimo, and all Family!