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nobody.really
January 30th, 2013 | 11:03 am

What prompted the link to “Rise of the Policy Wonk Robot”?

I ask because on Monday R.R. Reno remarked on the idea that secular liberalism, as a currently dominant world view, fails to appreciate that it is merely one more world view. In comments B.G. Klin argues that Reno overstates his case, but acknowledges that some secular liberals may fit this mold – and cites “Rise of the Policy Wonk Robot”!

The article’s author, Bhaskar Sunkara, basically argues that objectivity is an illusion, and therefore it’s dishonest to offer technocratic analysis of public policy without explicit disclosure of world view because the analysis can only be understood within the context of the world view. (This echoes ideas espoused in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.) Once we recognize that objectivity is an illusion, Sunkara argues, the only option we have is to decide which side of the partisan war we want to join and to begin fighting. If we can’t fight for truth, we can at least fight for dominance.

While I appreciate the problem of acontextual analysis in the abstract, I have difficulty understanding the problem in practice. Nate Silver employed technocratic means to predict the election outcome – and succeeded. Or so it seems to me. But then, I’m just another one of the blind liberals; if someone could show how, when viewed from another perspective, Nate Silver got things wrong, I’d appreciate the lesson.

Mostly, analysts provide analysis. They provide us with substantive building blocks with which to build our arguments, moral and otherwise. If the analysis reflects an offensive world view, it’s our job to point that out, too.

But don’t fault the brick-maker for failing to be brick mason.