michael_nielsen

I’m a random D-list blogger. If I tweet speculative dumb shit, very little happens, but there’s more potential for damage than with someone with no following. If you’re a famous academic who has the ear of impulsive CEOs more can happen. If you’re president, wars might start.

If you transpose Perrow’s conclusions about nuclear reactors to social science, you would in fact conclude that some subjects should not be studied at all. Because the only people with the methodological competence to study it might be under unacceptably high moral hazard.

This is why I’m fundamentally sympathetic to even (say) the most irrational sounding black activists who might want to object to (say) white men studying IQ. The researchers are safe in their nice university jobs. Any errors leading to social policy meltdowns, guess who suffers?

There are two ways to bring these nuclear reactor “normal accident” topics into “safe study” zone. First: add more methodological rigor burdens in proportion to risk to others. IRB++. But this won’t be enough to bring more responsibility to say casual speculative tweeting.

I like the second approach: increase direct risk exposure (or lower moral hazard). You want a million dollar research grant to study race and IQ? Go for it. We just ask that you live in a black inner city school district while doing so, that will be applying your findings.

You want to speculate about sex markets? Great, do it in a sociology department where you have more female peers than male. Better still: include them in proposal. Get skin in the game in proportion to the accidental harm you might do to others.

The common response to free-expression absolutism is “freedom of expression is not freedom from consequences”... as in don’t expect people to not yell at you or retaliate. If only it were that simple. The real messy problem is *others may not be free from consequences*

To bring it back to the opening point, how do you judge a thinker? By topic, not method. How by topic? If a thinker routinely indulges in morally hazardous thinking where others are more likely to be hurt by erroneous conclusions, I do a double take.