Is Social Science Extremist?

I recently did two interviews with Nikola Danaylov, aka “Socrates”, who has so far done ~90 Singularity 1 on 1 video podcast interviews. Danaylov says he disagreed with me the most:

My second interview with economist Robin Hanson was by far the most vigorous debate ever on Singularity 1 on 1. I have to say that I have rarely disagreed more with any of my podcast guests before. … I believe that it is ideas like Robin’s that may, and often do, have a direct impact on our future. … On the one hand, I really like Robin a lot: He is that most likeable fellow … who like me, would like to live forever and is in support of cryonics. In addition, Hanson is also clearly a very intelligent person with a diverse background and education in physics, philosophy, computer programming, artificial intelligence and economics. He’s got a great smile and, as you will see throughout the interview, is apparently very gracious to my verbal attacks on his ideas.

On the other hand, after reading his book draft on the [future] Em Economy I believe that some of his suggestions have much less to do with social science and much more with his libertarian bias and what I will call “an extremist politics in disguise.”

So, here is the gist of our disagreement:

I say that there is no social science that, in between the lines of its economic reasoning, can logically or reasonably suggest details such as: policies of social discrimination and collective punishment; the complete privatization of law, detection of crime, punishment and adjudication; that some should be run 1,000 times faster than others, while at the same time giving them 1,000 times more voting power; that emulations who can’t pay for their storage fees should be either restored from previous back-ups or be outright deleted (isn’t this like saying that if you fail to pay your rent you should be shot dead?!)…

Suggestions like the above are no mere details: they are extremist bias for Laissez-faire ideology while dangerously masquerading as (impartial) social science. … Because not only that he doesn’t give any justification for the above suggestions of his, but also because, in principle, no social science could ever give justification for issues which are profoundly ethical and political in nature. (Thus you can say that I am in a way arguing about the proper limits, scope and sphere of economics, where using its tools can give us any worthy and useful insights we can use for the benefit of our whole society.) (more)

You might think that Danaylov’s complaint is that I use the wrong social science, one biased too far toward libertarian conclusions. But in fact his complaint seems to be mainly against the very idea of social science: an ability to predict social outcomes. He apparently argues that since 1) future social outcomes depend in many billions of individual choices, 2) ethical and political considerations are relevant to such choices, and 3) humans have free will to be influenced by such considerations in making their choices, that therefore 4) it should be impossible to predict future social outcomes at a rate better than random chance.

For example, if allowing some ems to run faster than others might offend common ethical ideals of equality, it must be impossible to predict that this will actually happen. While one might be able to use physics to predict the future paths of bouncing billiard balls, as soon as a human will free will enters the picture making a choice where ethics is relevant, all must fade into an opaque cloud of possibilities; no predictions are possible.

Now I haven’t viewed them, but I find it extremely hard to believe that out of 90 interviews on the future, Danaylov has always vigorously complained whenever anyone even implicitly suggested that they could any better than random chance in guessing future outcomes in any context influenced by a human choice where ethics or politics might have been relevant. I’m in fact pretty sure he must have nodded in agreement with many explicit forecasts. So why complain more about me then?

It seems to me that the real complaint here is that I forecast that human choices will in fact result in outcomes that violate the ethical principles Danaylov holds dear. He objects much more to my predicting a future of more inequality than if I had predicted a future of more equality. That is, I’m guessing he mostly approves of idealistic, and disapproves of cynical, predictions. Social science must be impossible if it would predict non-idealistic outcomes, because, well, just because.

FYI, I also did this BBC interview a few months back.