Technopoly (17 page)

I speak of the zero for two reasons: First, to underscore that it is a kind of technology that makes both possible and easy certain kinds of thoughts which, without it, would remain inaccessible to the average person. If it does not exactly have an ideology, it contains, at least, an idea. I have previously alluded to the technology of using letters or numbers to grade students’ papers, and to the Greek discovery of the technology of alphabetization: like the use of zero, these are examples of how symbols may function like machines in creating new mind-sets and therefore new conceptions of reality. Second, the use of the zero and, of course, the Hindu numbering system of which it was a part made possible a sophisticated mathematics which, in turn, led to one of the most powerful technologies now in use: statistics.

Statistics makes possible new perceptions and realities by making visible large-scale patterns. Its uses in science are too well known to warrant notice here, except to remark that if, as the physicists tell us, the world is made up of probabilities at the level of subatomic particles, then statistics is the only means by which to describe its operations. Indeed, the uncertainty principle ensures that in the nature of things physics is unable to do more than make statistical predictions.

Of course, it is possible that physicists conceive of the world as probabilistic
because
statistics was invented. But that is not the question I wish to pursue here. A more practical question is, To what extent has statistics been allowed entry to places
where it does not belong? Technopoly, by definition, grants free rein to any technology, and we would expect that no limits have been placed on the use of statistics. We would expect correctly.

Perhaps the most abusive example is found in the work of Francis Galton, who was born in 1822, died in 1911, and therefore lived during the richest period of technological invention. He may be thought of as one of the Founding Fathers of Technopoly. Galton is also known as the founder of “eugenics,” a term he coined, which means the “science” of arranging marriage and family so as to produce the best possible offspring based on the hereditary characteristics of the parents. He believed that anything could be measured and that statistical procedures, in particular, were the technology that could open the pathway to real knowledge about every form of human behavior. The next time you watch a televised beauty contest in which women are ranked numerically, you should remember Francis Galton, whose pathological romance with numbers originated this form of idiocy. Being unsatisfied with vagueness about where the most “beauty” was to be found, he constructed a “beauty map” of the British Isles. As he told us, he classified “the girls I passed in streets or elsewhere as attractive, indifferent, or repellent.” He then proved statistically that London had the most beautiful girls, Aberdeen the ugliest; this no doubt made it awkward for Galton to spend his vacation in Scotland. If this were not enough, he also invented a method for quantifying boredom (by counting the number of fidgets) and even proposed a statistical inquiry for determining the efficacy of prayer.

But Galton’s main interest was in demonstrating, statistically, the inheritance of intelligence. To that end, he established a laboratory at the International Exposition of 1884, where for threepence people could have their skulls measured and receive Galton’s assessment of their intelligence. Apparently, a visitor
received no extra credit for demanding his or her money back, which would surely have been a sign of intelligence. We can be sure that not many did, since Galton was considered a major intellect of his day. In fact, Lewis Terman, the man most responsible for promoting IQ tests in America, calculated that Galton’s IQ was more than 200. Terman, who fancied making such estimates of the dead, ranked Charles Darwin (Galton’s cousin, incidentally) at a mere 135, and poor Copernicus somewhere between 100 and 110.
¹

For a definitive history and analysis of the malignant role played by statistics in the “measurement” of intelligence, I refer the reader to Stephen Jay Gould’s brilliant book
The Mismeasure of Man
. Here, I will only cite three points made by Gould, which I believe are sufficient to convince anyone with a higher IQ than Copernicus of the dangers of abusing statistics.

The first problem is called reification, which means converting an abstract idea (mostly, a word) into a thing. In this context, reification works in the following way: We use the word “intelligence” to refer to a variety of human capabilities of which we approve. There is no such thing as “intelligence.” It is a word, not a thing, and a word of a very high order of abstraction. But if we believe it to be a thing like the pancreas or liver, then we will believe scientific procedures can locate it and measure it.

The second problem is ranking. Ranking requires a criterion for assigning individuals to their place in a single series. As Gould remarks, what better criterion can be used than an objective number? In the ranking of intelligence, we therefore assume that intelligence is not only a thing, but a single thing, located in the brain, and accessible to the assignment of a number. It is as if “beauty” were determined to inhere in the size of a woman’s breasts. Then all we would have to do is measure breasts and rank each woman accordingly, and we would have an “objective” measure of “beauty.”

The third point is that in doing this, we would have formulated our question “Who is the fairest of all?” in a restricted and biased way. And yet this would go unnoticed, because, as Gould writes, “The mystique of science proclaims that numbers are the ultimate test of objectivity.” This means that the way we have defined the concept will recede from our consciousness—that is, its fundamental subjectivity will become invisible, and the objective number itself will become reified. One would think that such a process would appear ridiculous on the breast of it, especially since, by believing it, we must conclude that Dolly Parton is objectively proved to be more beautiful than Audrey Hepburn. Or, in the case of intelligence, that Galton had twice as much of it as Copernicus.

Nonetheless, in Technopoly all this is taken very seriously, albeit not without a few protests. After a lifetime of working in the field of intelligence measurement, E. L. Thorndike observed that intelligence tests suffer from three small defects: “Just what they measure is not known; how far it is proper to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and compute ratios with the measures obtained is not known; just what the measures signify concerning intellect is not known.”
²
In other words, those who administer intelligence tests quite literally do not know what they are doing. That is why David McClelland remarked, “Psychologists should be ashamed of themselves for promoting a view of general intelligence that has engendered such a testing program.” Joseph Weizenbaum summed it up by saying, “Few ‘scientific’ concepts have so thoroughly muddled the thinking of both scientists and the general public as that of the ‘intelligence quotient’ or ‘IQ.’ The idea that intelligence can be quantitatively measured along a single linear scale has caused untold harm to our society in general, and to education in particular.”
³

Gould has documented some of this harm, and Howard Gardner has tried to alleviate it (in his book
Frames of Mind)
. But Technopoly resists such reproaches, because it needs to believe
that science is an entirely objective enterprise. Lacking a lucid set of ethics and having rejected tradition, Technopoly searches for a source of authority and finds it in the idea of statistical objectivity.

This quest is especially evident not only in our efforts to determine precisely how smart people are but also in our attempts to find out precisely how smart
groups
of people are. Aside from the fact that the procedures used do not and
cannot
give such an answer, one must ask, Of what earthly use is it to declare that one group of people is smarter than another? Suppose it is shown that according to objective measures Asians have more “intelligence” than Caucasians, or that Caucasians have more than African-Americans. Then what? Of what use is this information to, say, a teacher or an employer? Is the teacher or employer to assume that a particular Asian is smarter than a particular African-American? Or even that six Asians are smarter than six African-Americans? Obviously not. And yet who knows? We must keep in mind the story of the statistician who drowned while trying to wade across a river with an average depth of four feet. That is to say, in a culture that reveres statistics, we can never be sure what sort of nonsense will lodge in people’s heads.

The only plausible answer to the question why we use statistics for such measurements is that it is done for sociopolitical reasons whose essential malignancy is disguised by the cover of “scientific inquiry.” If we believe that blacks are dumber than whites, and that this is not merely our opinion but is confirmed by objective measures, then we can believe we have an irreproachable authority for making decisions about the allocation of resources. This is how, in Technopoly, science is used to make democracy “rational.”

Polling is still another way. Just as statistics has spawned a huge testing industry, it has done the same for the polling of “public opinion.” One may concede, at the start, that there are
some uses of polling that may be said to be reliable, especially if the case involves a greatly restricted question such as, Do you plan to vote for X or Y? But to say a procedure is reliable is not to say it is useful. The question is as yet undecided whether knowledge of voter trends during a political campaign enriches or demeans the electoral process. But when polls are used to guide public policy, we have a different sort of issue altogether.

I have been in the presence of a group of United States congressmen who were gathered to discuss, over a period of two days, what might be done to make the future of America more survivable and, if possible, more humane. Ten consultants were called upon to offer perspectives and advice. Eight of them were pollsters. They spoke of the “trends” their polling uncovered; for example, that people were no longer interested in the women’s movement, did not regard environmental issues as of paramount importance, did not think the “drug problem” was getting worse, and so on. It was apparent, at once, that these polling results would become the basis of how the congressmen thought the future should be managed. The ideas the congressmen had (all men, by the way) receded to the background. Their own perceptions, instincts, insights, and experience paled into irrelevance. Confronted by “social scientists,” they were inclined to do what the “trends” suggested would satisfy the populace.
⁴

It is not unreasonable to argue that the polling of public opinion puts democracy on a sound and scientific footing. If our political leaders are supposed to represent us, they must have some information about what we “believe.” In principle, there is no problem here. The problems lie elsewhere, and there are at least four of them.

The first has to do with the forms of the questions that are put to the public. I refer the reader to the matter of whether it is proper to smoke and pray at the same time. Or, to take a more realistic example: If we ask people whether they think it acceptable
for the environment to continue to be polluted, we are likely to come up with answers quite different from those generated by the question, Do you think the protection of the environment is of paramount importance? Or, Do you think safety in the streets is more important than environmental protection? The public’s “opinion” on almost any issue will be a function of the question asked. (I might point out that in the seminar held by the congressmen, not one asked a question about the questions. They were interested in results, not in how these were obtained, and it did not seem to occur to them that the results and how they are obtained are inseparable.)

Typically, pollsters ask questions that will elicit yes or no answers. Is it necessary to point out that such answers do not give a robust meaning to the phrase “public opinion”? Were you, for example, to answer “No” to the question “Do you think the drug problem can be reduced by government programs?” one would hardly know much of interest or value about your opinion. But allowing you to speak or write at length on the matter would, of course, rule out using statistics. The point is that the use of statistics in polling changes the meaning of “public opinion” as dramatically as television changes the meaning of “political debate.” In the American Technopoly, public opinion is a yes or no answer to an unexamined question.

Second, the technique of polling promotes the assumption that an opinion is a thing inside people that can be exactly located and extracted by the pollster’s questions. But there is an alternative point of view, of which we might say, it is what Jefferson had in mind. An opinion is not a momentary thing but a process of thinking, shaped by the continuous acquisition of knowledge and the activity of questioning, discussion, and debate. A question may “invite” an opinion, but it also may modify and recast it; we might better say that people do not exactly “have” opinions but are, rather, involved in “opinioning.” That an opinion is conceived of as a measurable thing
falsifies the process by which people, in fact, do their opinioning; and how people do their opinioning goes to the heart of the meaning of a democratic society. Polling tells us nothing about this, and tends to hide the process from our view.

Which leads to the third point. Generally, polling ignores what people know about the subjects they are queried on. In a culture that is not obsessed with measuring and ranking things, this omission would probably be regarded as bizarre. But let us imagine what we would think of opinion polls if the questions came in pairs, indicating what people “believe” and what they “know” about the subject. If I may make up some figures, let us suppose we read the following: “The latest poll indicates that 72 percent of the American public believes we should withdraw economic aid from Nicaragua. Of those who expressed this opinion, 28 percent thought Nicaragua was in central Asia, 18 percent thought it was an island near New Zealand, and 27.4 percent believed that ‘Africans should help themselves,’ obviously confusing Nicaragua with Nigeria. Moreover, of those polled, 61.8 percent did not know that we give economic aid to Nicaragua, and 23 percent did not know what ‘economic aid’ means.” Were pollsters inclined to provide such information, the prestige and power of polling would be considerably reduced. Perhaps even congressmen, confronted by massive ignorance, would invest their own understandings with greater trust.