Jim Manzi on Knowledge, Policy, and Uncontrolled

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 18 June 2012

⏱️ 64 minutes

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Summary

Jim Manzi, author of Uncontrolled, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the reliability of science and the ideas in his book. Manzi argues that unlike science, which can produce useful results using controlled experiments, social science typically involves complex systems where system-wide experiments are rare and statistical tools are limited in their ability to isolate causal relations. Because of the complexity of social environments, even narrow experiments are unlikely to have the wide application that can be found in the laws uncovered by experiments in the physical sciences. Manzi advocates a trial-and-error approach using randomized field trials to verify the usefulness of many policy proposals. And he argues for humility and lowered expectations when it comes to understanding causal effects in social settings related to public policy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:13.9	of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org
0:21.2	where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to
0:26.5	other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org. We'd
0:33.6	love to hear from you.
0:38.7	Today is June 13th, 2012, and my guest is Jim Mansy. He is the author of Uncontrolled, Jim
0:45.7	Welcome to Econ Talk. Go ahead to be here. Thanks for having me. Your book is a really extraordinary
0:53.9	overview of the history of science, the current state of economics, social science, generally,
1:01.8	what we know and what we don't know, and what we might do about all that. I want to start with
1:08.4	a thumbnail sketch of the history of science, which you devoted a couple chapters to. How did
1:14.2	our knowledge begin to grow so dramatically? Why don't you start with Francis Bacon as you do in
1:19.8	the book? Sure, I think he is a, obviously, a seminal figure in the development of modern science,
1:28.4	who is often referred to today, but not read as much as he ought to be. And one of the things I
1:35.8	discovered is that I really went back to some of his books that I hadn't seen since high school,
1:41.0	is how incredibly prophetic he was and how much he laid that down philosophical foundations
1:47.5	for modern empirical science. And I think the most foundational transformation that occurred
1:55.4	because of his thinking was what he called the transition from where from to whereby. And what
2:02.7	he meant by that was abandoning the Aristotelian attempt to understand things like final or ultimate
2:11.6	causes, and instead simply think of the world as particles plus rules for their interaction.
2:18.2	He is very clear that the purpose of this and the purpose of science was not to attain
2:25.0	philosophical truth, but ultimately to an insword or a translation inswords to increase the
2:30.1	limits of the power and greatness of math. In other words, for Francis Bacon, the ultimate purpose
	...

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