Blixa made the following comment in a post about "Cherry Picking":
Nobody seems to be complaining that, say, Barbara Lee "cherry-picked" only anti-Iraq-war information in her speeches. I'm certainly not. The whole criticism here almost qualifies as Nit-Picking. Sorry, but a decision to go to war is not a scientific one, it's a political one.
I tried to respond in Blixa's comment section, but my response was too long for the Blogger software. So I decided to post my response here.
I agree that going to war is a political decision, although it might also be a strategic calculation. But in this case we're not really talking about going to war. We're talking about the intelligence upon which the decision is made, which would (if we put it into a slightly more revealing context) be the same problem we'd encounter if we were talking about a strategy for winning a war, or even a battle. It's a decision-making paradigm that attempts to minimize the consequences of error, and therefore it is scientific in the general sense. But that creates a political dilemma that almost no one has talked about.
Basically the dilemma is that if you follow an appropriate method, and do so correctly, you end up giving your political opponent amunition. To follow a procedure that gives you the best chance of making a good decision you either have to assume guilt, and devote all or most of your resources to falsifying that hypothesis; or you have to assume innocence, and devote all or most of your assets and resources to falsifying that hypothesis. Politics really comes into the argument with respect to which of the two methods you use, and where you set the thresholds. That part is political.
Note that no one involved in the decision to go to war in Iraq used either of these methods appropriately, or well. Sometimes people attempted to use a mix of the two, as did Blix. (You'd have thought he knew better.) The "peace" movement used the "innocent" hypothesis, and then never did much to disprove their theory. The Bush folks used the "guilty" hypothesis (which is appropriate, I think, given the risks) but then devoted most of their resources to falsifying their political opponent's hypothesis. And that sewed the seeds for misunderstanding and misrepresentation. We ended up with a really nice little crop of memes.
Good method strikes most people as nitpicking and tedious, but there's good reason for it. It's not simply that it helps make good decisions. It also prevents you from second-guessing yourself should the hypothesis you've failed to falsify nevertheless turn out to be false. Second guessing, which is what we're doing now, is still just guessing. It's not a very robust way to go about decisions with such dire consequences. Even if you get the "right" answer, it's not reproducable. It's like using a stopped watch, which is always right twice a day, to make it to your appointments on time.
So again, the political risk in following an appropriate method correctly is that you'd be providing evidence for your political opponents' arguments, if you have leaks (which you will). But I think that pitfall could be avoided if you fight the political battle over the appropriate method first, so that everyone is clear about what's being done, and why. Later you can make a political argument about where to set the threshold for falsification. And in this case I think you'd need to have some pretty convincing evidence that Saddam did not have WMD. You'd need 99.99% assurance that your gulty hypothesis (that he had WMDs or programs capable of producing them soon) was false.
And the truth is, about the only thing that would have met that test would have been full and complete cooperation and disclosure from the outset, on all aspects of the weapons program. Unfettered U2 flights, safe harbor interviews with weapons scientists, the works.
Well, maybe there's some other way, short of going to war, that we could have been 99.99% certain that the guilty assumption was false (that he had no WMD programs). Except, of course, that he did have WMD programs!
So, I think it's clear that even if we had used appropriate method correctly, the result would have been the same. There's just no way we could have avoided the decision to go to war given the circumstances. To do so would have simply been incompetent. and reckless
But it would be really useful if we started getting our methodological ducks in a row, because not all such decisions are going to be this clear cut and unambiguous, especially if the consequences of going to war loom larger than they did in Iraq. (In N. Korea, for instance.)
Posted by Demosophist at February 7, 2004 01:58 AM | TrackBackI agree (mostly) with everything you've written. For the record I don't think *intelligence* itself is "political", obviously. (or - wait - what i mean is that I don't think it *should* be. I'm sure that it gets corrupted by politics however, like all other human endeavors ;) It's how it is used that's "political". rather than scientific. This is partially because (a) intelligence is by its nature equivocal rather than unequivocal (as many forget) and (b) what to do about facts one thinks one has learned via "intelligence" is *always* debatable no matter what those facts.
Your talk here about "methods" is right on. Essentially, critics assume/imply that the scientific method (with the null hypothesis being "Saddam has no WMD", which must be falsified by disinterested observers in order to act...) is the only method we were allowed to use, for some reason. My point was that this is incorrect. Other methods exist, and as you an I agree, the "beta" method (or was it "alpha"? I forget - it's from your "alpha and beta" post :) was more appropriate in this case. Yet many people disagreed with that, in fact they would call us names (essentially because they have watched so many Perry Mason episodes and heard the phrase "guilty until proven innocent" drummed into them so often and so early that they think this is the *only* valid method to *ever* use in *any* situation, even outside of a court of law...)
So here's the point. Yes it would have been good if we could've settled on a "method" early on. And then (given the "method") a big chunk of the rest of the decision-making would end up looking more "scientific" than "political".
But which method to use is a political decision too! And many people fall on one side, or the other, largely based on which "method" they perceive will produce the desired outcome (whether "no war" or "war"). So what I'm trying to say is that you can't suck the politics out of this decision-making process; you can shove much of it into that "method-selection" thing but you know and I know that this would merely make "method-selection" a big political battle. With more or less the same lines drawn across the battlefield (anti-war preferring the "innocent till proven guilty" method, pro-war preferring the opposite, sort of.)
Best,
Posted by: Blixa at February 7, 2004 02:20 PMP.S. You edited the phrase "Nit-Picklering" to say "Nit-Picking". I see why you did this but actually "Nit-Picklering" is what I meant. Go look at that link :)
Posted by: Blixa at February 7, 2004 02:21 PMp.p.s. oops one more thing: in my first response I wrote "guilty until proven innocent" in a place where obviously I meant the opposite of that
Posted by: Blixa at February 7, 2004 02:22 PMBlixa:
So what I'm trying to say is that you can't suck the politics out of this decision-making process; you can shove much of it into that "method-selection" thing but you know and I know that this would merely make "method-selection" a big political battle. With more or less the same lines drawn across the battlefield (anti-war preferring the "innocent till proven guilty" method, pro-war preferring the opposite, sort of.)
Nit-picklering, huh? I'll have to think about that. I had a scare once that I'd picked up lice from some kids, so I identify with that nit-picking image. That's also where the "fine toothed comb" image came from. It's almost a genetic memory. "Picklering" is a whole different thing. Irony.
And yes, as Clausewitz says "war [itself] is politics by other means. And there's even a branch of sociology, inspired by Thomas Kuhn, that scientific method is little more than social construction. But in terms of a "relatively absolute, absolute" it's a good idea to try to separate the two as much as pragmatism allows. And I have no problem with an intense debate over which method is appropriate, even if teh outcome isn't guaranteed. It's about time we learned this lesson, because the choices will only become more difficult as time passes. The judgment call in Iraq was really relatively easy to make. Even if we had been wrong about the WMD hypothesis (and it looks like we were) the experience is teaching us something about objectivity and wishful thinking. The more we, as a society, learn about this stuff, the better our odds of survival in the long run.
oops one more thing: in my first response I wrote "guilty until proven innocent" in a place where obviously I meant the opposite of that
Well, I knew what you meant.
Posted by: Scott (to Blixa) at February 8, 2004 12:34 AMAnother thing about deciding a "method" politically: it's a nice idea but it seems to me this would have an inherent problem when it comes to that (pretty important) thing known as "legitimacy". It's difficult to contemplate let alone envision how a "method" debate and vote would take place - but worse, how it would be *enforced* and *adhered to* later on (when it mattered).
I suppose there could be a joint Congressional finding that we are heretofore going to use a Beta method when it comes to country X. Or, there could be a "Beta-method list" of countries (like the "terror list" we currently have), with countries added and taken off from time to time. Or whatever. So far so good.
The problem would come when it's time for the rubber to meet the road, i.e. someone first suggests "ok, Iraq now meets our beta criteria and we should invade". What would ensue? Would the debate be "scientific", with all the anti-war people saying "well I'm against the war but we already voted on using a Beta method so I guess I have no choice but to agree"? Or would people forget about that whole "method-vote" nonsense they did (when it didn't matter) and end up just re-arguing the Iraq war in toto, from scratch. I think something like the latter. There's no real way to set up a "method" vote and then have people stick to it; people would never view it as "legitimate". You can't just say to an Iraq-war opponent "gotcha - we already settled on a beta method, so you can't oppose the war. ha ha ha!" Or (more to the point) if you do, they'll ignore you.
Either the "method" argument is taking place in a nice vacuum with no war on the horizon (and people will feel free to vote however they want, knowing *nothing* can or will hold them to it when the rubber meets the road, if they wanna change their mind), or the "method" argument is taking place at a time when its ramifications vis a vis some war are quite clear to all involved (in which case it ends up being just a proxy debate over "the war").
So my intent with the (slightly overstated) "what's wrong with cherry-picking?" post was just to remind everyone that you can never squeeze the politics out of warmaking. I don't know whether the scientific method is a "social construct"; even if so it has been immeasurably useful in discovering truths and I'm all fer it etc. But whether to make war is not a "truth" to "discover", it's a decision to make. (what i think is) your point is well-taken, that we want that decision to be informed by things which are as close to being "facts" as possible. but while facts are nice they are still open to different interpretations and suggest different courses of aciton. in our system courses of action are debated and one of them wins; this is true of the action "war" as it is of other actions. And it's inherently "political".
Posted by: Blixa at February 8, 2004 08:41 PMBlixa:
but while facts are nice they are still open to different interpretations and suggest different courses of aciton. in our system courses of action are debated and one of them wins; this is true of the action "war" as it is of other actions. And it's inherently "political".
I guess I'm not thinking so much of a formal vote on method as opening it up to "political voice." Even if we don't come to a consensus, at least people will understand the concept (which they don't at the moment) so that if a politician makes the case citizens can cast their proxy vote as one of the considerations in elections.
Actually, the concept of an "imminent threat" has a formal definition, but is somewhat outdated, so the Bush administration argued that we need to modify the meaning to incorporate the circumstances of this War on Terrorism. It's just sheer ignorance to have an argument over the use of that word, when almost no Administration officials used it. They, apparently, knew the formal definition, whereas the public and media didn't (and don't).
To take another example, it would have been nice if people had understood the notions of "bias" vs. "error" in the Florida vote count. If there's a systematic error that isn't biased, it really doesn't threaten the integrity of the election very much. But clearly neither the strategists from the two campaigns, nor the media, really understood that if "hanging chads" resulted in an overcount, that really wasn't a problem, because it would tend to just add the same number of overcounted votes to each candidate. No one would get an advantage from such an error.
I mean, some issues are legitimate sources of disagreement, and some "issues" are just the result of ignorance.
Posted by: Scott (to Blixa) at February 8, 2004 11:17 PMgood points
I guess what I'd say is that the debate for war which took place DID contain (intrinsically) a debate over "method". Every time Bush said something like "we can't afford to wait till the threat is imminent" or "I'm not going to give a maniac the benefit of the doubt" this was, intrinsically, an allusion to "method". Many people who agreed with him (including myself) did so at least in part on those grounds; many people who disagreed with him did so because they preferred a different method.
It would be correct of course to object that the "method" component of the debate wasn't necessarily widely understood. And that many, many people probably just got the idea that this was a debate over whether Saddam had "stockpiles" of WMD making him an "imminent threat" (if yes, then invade; if not then don't). I agree that it would've been better if more people understood the "method" component of the argument for war. And if more people understood that error can be unbiased. And if more people understood lots of things.
The truth though is that these points were being made, and were out there for those who cared to seek them out and pay attention to them. Again, Bush *did* say stuff like "we can't afford to wait till the threat is imminent". On the other hand he also said plenty of dumb-sounding stuff. And so to be sure, if lots of Americans got the impression that this was all done for the purpose of engaging in an Elliot-Ness-style "WMD-stockpile raid", and thus now think that the lack of such stockpiles proves that the "raid" was unwarranted, this can be in no small part chalked up to Bush's failure to communicate well his motives, intentions and reasoning.
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