There’s something about TED. For a long time, I couldn’t place it. TED is “popular science” by smart people. I watch all those videos of upbeat optimistic speakers who can see on the horizon the vague outlines of a better future, like an EPCOT ride, and I get this feeling on the back of my neck, the same feeling I get when I hear somebody scraping fingernails across a blackboard. So what’s the trouble with TED that it sets off alarm bells inside my head?
One trouble with TED is that it is modern. It assumes a fixed and stable center of meaning against which all phenomena can be evaluated. Innovation notwithstanding, this places its science firmly in the 19th century. Embedded in this fixed and stable center is an ideology of progress which assumes that innovation and the application of technology invariably produce positive outcomes. However, taken together, the fixed center and ideology of progress produce questionable results.
Consider, for example, Steven Pinker’s “A brief history of violence” in which he argues that our species is becoming less violent over time, with the tipping point arriving at (surprise, surprise) the Age of Reason. Like most TED presenters, he offers a “big picture” argument, and like most TED presentations, it requires so many interdependent assumptions that if one fails, the whole structure topples like a house of cards. First is the obvious Eurocentrism of his claim. He draws on no evidence from a region of the world which accounts for two thirds of its population.
Second is the simple matter of definition. What counts as violence? Pinker’s first illustration, a chart of male homicides in hunter/gatherer societies, suggests that assault, torture, sexual abuse, and domestic violence aren’t being measured here. Psychological violence isn’t even on the table. Do we restrict our analysis to humans? Why does Pinker talk about cat burning if he doesn’t intend to discuss interspecies violence? What are we to make of today’s factory farming practices? The best we can presume here is violence in the air. There’s no allowance for the possibility that “violence” may be a categorical construct as contingent as “success” or “baseball.”
Third is the problem of how to measure the incidence of violence in prehistoric and ancient societies. Pinker’s first recourse is to biblical accounts of Israel’s treatment of its enemies. This is egregious Biblical literalism and is unworthy of the forum. No Biblical scholar would ever endorse the use of this collection of documents as a reliable historical witness without corroboration from external sources.
Evidence from the Middle Ages isn’t much better. Pinker speaks of infractions which, today, would incur a fine but, five hundred years ago, would have resulted in severe penalties like having one’s tongue cut out, or being thrown in the stocks. However, the fact that a law exists tells us nothing about enforcement practices. Most laws, coupled with occasional enforcement, served a deterrent function and have become part of medieval lore, but lore is not the same thing as practice. An example of this can be seen in the witch burnings of the Inquisition. A lore has arisen around the Society of Jesus and its oppressive treatment of undesirable women. However, the Society of Jesus kept fastidious records and a close examination reveals that the torture and killing of witches has been grossly exaggerated. A 1972 study of the Spanish Inquisition by Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras surveyed the 50,000 trial records for the period from 1540-1700 and found a grand total of 826 executions and a further 778 executions in effigy (cited in Helen Rawlings, The Spanish Inquisition, Blackwell, 2006 at 17). For the sake of comparison, the state of Texas has executed 1153 people since 1819.
I don’t want to suggest that Pinker is wrong; rather, that his thesis is unarguable. Unfortunately, the culture that is TED is not receptive to the idea that some things are absolutely unknowable. It isn’t sexy to stand in front of a crowd and draw a map of your epistemological limitations.
Another trouble with TED is that it’s all about the big picture. That’s another way of saying that most TED speakers rely upon statistical evidence to support their claims. For example, Emily Oster, a practitioner of one statistical discipline (economics), delves into another statistical discipline (epidemiology) to challenge our assumptions about the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and infection rates in Sub-Saharan Africa. Hans Rosling uses statistics to challenge our received notions about development and poverty. David Keith proposes a geoengineering model for the management of climate change which he believe is cheap and effective. In each instance, the message is the same: the world is a better place than you assumed. HIV/AIDS isn’t as widespread as you thought, people aren’t as poor, and the climate change doomsday scenarios will never happen.
Notwithstanding the big picture presentations, the format is testimonial. Inevitably, presentations delivered as testimonial will throw personal experience up against statistical generalizations. And a sample group of one is never statistically significant. This fact was driven home to me when I stumbled upon Sherwin Nuland’s talk about Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT’s) and found myself saying: no, that isn’t true; experience tells me that simply is not true.
Nuland’s talk is deeply personal. He shares with his audience (and the entire world) his experience of severe depression, hospitalization, drug trials, psychotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy. I think it is wonderful that he can share in this way and do his part to help address the persistent stigma associated with mental illness. He speaks of ECT’s as his salvation. In fact, he speaks of his entire journey in religious terms, using words like redemption and resurrection. However, personal testimony offers no value in a big-picture discussion of treatment efficacy. It is always possible to find somebody with contradictory testimony. In fact, I have such testimony. I have offered glimpses of it elsewhere in my blog, so I won’t repeat the gory details, but note that, for me, ECT’s were the gates of hell. I responded to ECT’s by becoming dissociative, had to be placed in intensive observation, and experienced significant memory impairment for eighteen months. When I listen to Nuland, I get angry. I don’t begrudge Nuland his good fortune, and I don’t feel resentful that my journey has taken me to darker places. What sticks in my craw is our insufferable confidence in the power of science to expand our knowledge and to solve all our problems.
Across a large sample, ECT’s can be an effective treatment for severe depression—sometimes the only treatment option. However, my own adverse response has instilled in me a strong skepticism. I simply don’t trust people who place too much confidence in the scientific application of ECT’s. While I can bear the consequences of misapplied science when it happens to be misapplied to me, the world can ill-afford misapplied science when it’s misapplied on a grand scale.
David Keith alludes to the problem in his talk on geoengineering: our confidence in science introduces a moral hazard. We feel less inclined to take responsibility for outcomes if we believe that science can be invoked to solve our problems for us. This belief is no different than the fundamentalist Christian belief in the rapture. For believers in an apocalypse, God becomes the moral hazard, snatching agency from believers so they no longer assume responsibility for outcomes in this life and on this planet because God will make everything right. To the extent that science can be invoked to save us from our folly, it functions like the god of a fundamentalist religion.
I don’t mean to diss science, but to put it in its proper place. That begins by naming its limits, both as a tool for knowing the world, and as a tool for manipulating it. But all these hyper-positive TED talks throw a moral hazard wrench into the gears.