Prestige Blocks Reform
At several recent conferences, I suggested to the organizers that I talk about social institution innovation, but they preferred I talk about my tech related work (or not talk at all). At those events they did have other people talk about social reforms and innovations, and all those speakers were relatively high status people with a background in “hard” sciences (e.g., physics or computers science). And to my eyes, their suggestions and analysis were amateurish.
Curious about this pattern, I did these Twitter polls:
So while more of us would rather hear about social analysis from a social expert, more of us would rather hear about social reform proposals from prestigious hard scientists. This makes sense if we see reform as a social coordination game: if we only want to support reforms that we expect to be supported by many high status folks, we need a high status advocates to be our focal point to get the ball rolling.
Alas, since hard scientists tend to know little social science and to think little of social scientists, the reforms they suggest tend to be low quality, at least by social scientist standards. Furthermore, since prestige-driven social systems have done well for them personally, and are said to do well in running their hard science world, they will tend to promote such systems as reforms. Alas, as I think replacing such systems should be one of our main social reform priorities.
"It's the reputation that "social scientists" have earned, which is a poor one. Look at how many people believe "economics is bunk" - yet economics is far less bunk than most of the rest of social science (IMHO)."
I don't think dissociating economists from (other) social scientists would help much. My impression is that a lot of people tend to easily disbelieve economists if they make claims or proposals that would be uncomfortable for them or people they associate with or sympathize.
As an example, a lot of people strongly oppose removing mortgage interest deduction (if such deduction exists), especially if they themselves would stand to lose as a result and often don't appreciate the economists' arguments in favor of it. Even more so if an economist argues that the imputed rent on one's own house should be taxed like any other capital income, it easily gets opposed by pretty weak arguments (like imputed rent really isn't income because money doesn't change hands).
When it comes to things like cosmology, what ever the scientific facts are or what people or experts believe they are doesn't much affect the material welfare of most people. When it comes to economic policy, people don't want to believe (and don't want others to believe) that policies that benefit them have in fact effects that are typically considered inefficient for the economy as a whole.
(I would personally count economics as a social science because it mostly deals with human behavior. But the words "economics" or "economist" doesn't even contain the word "social".)
How would a hard scientist be an expert in a field that studies social reforms?