Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society

welcome to uncommon knowledge i'm peter robinson be sure to follow us on twitter at twitter.com slash unc knowledge that's twitter dot com slash unk knowledge dr. Thomas Sol has taught economics, intellectual history, and social policy at institutions such as Cornell, UCLA, and Amherst. The author of more than a dozen books. Dr.

sowell

is now a senior fellow at the hoover institution his most recent work

intellectuals

and

society

tom we'll start with a quote from then-candidate barack obama in july 2008 quote it's like these guys republicans are proud Being ignorant they should go talk to some experts and really make a difference.

Close appointment. Well, talking to experts does make a difference. Many of the great disasters of our time have been committed by experts. You may remember FDR's think tank, which later studies show ran long. the depression for several years the genius kids in the pentagon under mcnamara who managed to ruin the vietnam war you can go over an impressive list of things of disasters caused by people with very high IQs okay, segment one the species of the intellectual when you refer to

intellectuals

in intellectuals in

society

, who are you referring to? I mean people whose final products are ideas.

There are other people, people with great intelligence, whose end products are things like the Salk vaccine. There is a research scientist who is not necessarily an intellectual. true, an engineer is not necessarily intellectual, that's true, because the engineer is judged by the final product, which is not simply ideas, if he builds a building that collapses, it doesn't matter how brilliant his idea was or how screwed up, uh On the contrary, if an intellectual who is brilliant does not have an idea to reorganize society and that ends in disaster he pays no price at all I see let me quote intellectuals in society to cite the fatal misstep of intellectuals is to assume that superior ability within a particular domain can be generalized to superior wisdom or morality in general, chess grandmasters, musical prodigies, and others who are as notable within their respective specialties as intellectuals within theirs, rarely time they make that mistake, explain why well, let's take an example, noam chomsky, about who writes in intellectuals in society whose work in linguistics first of all I can't understand but the best I can tell everyone who understands exactly everyone who They understand his technical work within the field within his discipline of linguistics and consider him one of the great figures of the 20th century and his work in politics.

It's absurd, the same could be said about Bertrand Russell and his landmark work on mathematics and other people in other fields, but they step outside their fields and when you step outside your level of expertise, sometimes that's like taking a step. off a cliff and why intellectuals, that is, people whose end product are ideas, should succumb to that temptation instead of using his example, a chess grandmaster, because a chess grandmaster can be world famous for do absolutely nothing but win chess. tournaments and make exhibitions, as many of them do, of playing five games of chess simultaneously blindfolded, so Bobby Fischer had no need to comment on the politics of the time because he was becoming rich and famous and having a brilliant career. within his narrow profession.

That's right, that's right, but intellectuals, what is the question of when someone is well-known or not? It came up during New Zealand's Jim Flynn's visit here a few years ago. He is one of the world's authorities on IQ testing. People you know in India. I know about Jim Flynn, people in England he's going to, he went on a world tour, but I doubt the people in the next block from where he lives know who he is, I don't know who he is. I see that it's okay, it's much easier to be consistent again. I quote intellectuals in society, it is much easier to concentrate power than to concentrate knowledge.

Yeah, what does that have to do with the influence that intellectuals have on society as a whole because they believe that since knowledge is concentrated in people like them, what it must be? made like a quote from president obama is to put more power in the hands of the experts, so the intellectual temptation is to say look, we already know everything that is right if only we had the power, all the power, yeah, everything would be fine , yes, and what is wrong with that vision? Why is this not a sensible view? Don't they know everything? They don't know a tenth of everything.

In fact, I have argued that they probably know nothing. percent of consequential knowledge in a society consequential knowledge is a is a concept that runs through this book explains that concept knowledge whose presence or absence has consequences serious consequences I want to say that I was once on a plane descending to land at the Ithaca airport and suddenly the pilot revved the engine and climbed again because someone in the control tower had reminded him that he had not lowered the landing gear, so that was consequential knowledge. Yes, he was delighted that this person had had his eyes. open and with his mind on his work, so the notion here is that the kind of knowledge, the kind of consequential knowledge, that is required to prove to be effective in the government of a nation like the United States, with the economy largest in the world, 300 million people, can gather. a fairly large group of teachers and they are still not going to possess the knowledge that would allow them to run general engines, for example, or run the nation's health care system, for example, absolutely in fact, one of the things that have happened In All over the world in the 20th century, all kinds of countries have tried central planning.

Now, the guys who run the central plan usually have advanced degrees from prestigious institutions, they have mountains of statistics sitting there, and they have all the experts. in the country are at their beck and call, and yet when you take the power out of their hands and put it back into the market, then all the hundreds of millions of people who don't have any of those things generally end up with a higher rate of growth. and a more rapid decline in poverty because the resulting knowledge, by its nature, tends to spread widely yes yes segment two intellectuals and economists we have already touched on these two quotes number one quote from paul krugman the increase in income inequality is not new but what happened under Bush was completely unprecedented for the first time in our history: so much growth was being diverted to a small wealthy minority that the majority of Americans were failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth close quote second quote dr

thomas

sowell

in intellectuals and society cite the statistics that the intelligentsia continue to cite are much more consistent with their view of America than the statistics they continue to ignore close quote that is difficult to summarize, but the basic confusion is between statistical categories and people of flesh and blood it is true that if you look at the percentage of incomes that reached the top 20 percent one year and then a decade later you find that percentage has increased and you say, well, that shows the disparity between people, regardless of who they are.

Whether they are the rich, they are getting richer, richer, but when you follow the statistics generated by the Internal Revenue Service that can follow particular individuals over time, you find the people who are in the bottom 20 taxpayers. in the first year. their income almost doubles in this later period, while the income of the people who are initially at the top has increased less and, upon reaching the top, has actually fallen, so people are simply moving between these groups from year to year and the number of people who are in the bottom 20 percent, say in 1975, who are still there in 1991, is 5 percent of them, actually 29 of them have already reached the absolute majority top, they are in the top half. and then you're comparing what happens to these abstract categories rather than what happens to real flesh and blood people, so there's an enormous amount of turmoil and death, oh my god, almost everyone's personal life, I want say, look what you were doing when you were 20 compared to what you were making when you were 40.

Negative. I was spending my parents' money when I was 20. Okay, so why the intellectuals? What you just made is an intellectually rigorous case. Why would an intellectual as you use the term hate looking at that intellectually rigorous argument hate examining the data the way you did well he's happy with the data he got why would he examine why would he go further? look at the numbers the numbers say what he, what he thinks he should say, hey, that's it and move on to the next great crusade of intellectuals in society, once again, the same phrase income distribution is biased.

Wealth can only be created after capital and labor have reconciled their competing rights and agreed to terms on which they can operate together in the production of wealth quotes income distribution the same phrase is biased how come income cannot They are distributed uh uh and I mean that newspapers are not distributed, social security checks are distributed and once milk was distributed the income, right? distributed people earn it directly from those to whom they provide some good or service, and the argument of many people you see is that it is a question of capital and labor having contradictory interests and dividing the right of income, no, no, there is no income to divide before they first reconcile their conflicting interests and decide on what terms they are going to produce that income, there is no pre-existence, there is no way in heaven that they will fight over you, do the I mean the economic crisis which we went through 18 months ago, but we'll start with the great depression, where all discussions of economic crises should probably begin, and you point out that there are two important characteristics of the great crisis. depression, one was the stock market crash and the other was the enormous government intervention that started under Herbert Hoover and continued and expanded under FDR, but it started quickly, in other words, yeah, and then you said you have two important facts here, it's very good.

The question that actually caused or prolonged the great depression and it is a question that very few intellectuals really examine well. One way to examine it would be to simply look at the time period in which the stock market crash occurred in October 1929. Now there is data. On unemployment month by month, two months after the stock market crash, unemployment peaked at nine percent and then began to decline irregularly to about six point three percent in June 1930, indicating that The economy was trying to recover, yes, in its own right, in June 1930. The government stepped in with its first massive intervention with a smoot-hawley tariff approved despite a public call from more than a thousand economists from major universities saying no. do it, they did it anyway.

This shows how much influence economists have in six months. After that, unemployment hit double digits for the first time and never went down for the rest of the decade, not even for a month, so the stock market crash took it to nine percent and that was starting to fade. government measures. to help and I had to reach double digits and it eventually peaked at 25 percent and didn't fizzle out until the end of the decade. Okay, listen to a list and then I'll ask you a question, President. from the Fed benjamin bernanke ba at harvard phd at MIT professor of economics at Princeton director of the National Economic Council Lawrence Summers BS at MIT PhD at Harvard youngest full professor of economics in Harvard history eventually president of Harvard treasury secretary timothy Geithner a b dartmouth m a johns Hopkins, he is the worst performer in the group, how did this group of intellectuals manage to handle the nation's economic crisis in 2008?

Well, first of all, they didn't run it, the politicians ran it, oh, and so, even if you said these guys really could have done a great job if they had unbridled power and so on, they don't have unbridled power. One of the problems with experts is that experts are hired by other people, so you never know what the expert would have done. In fact, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal some time ago that said that the policies being pursued in Washington are directly opposite to the policies Somers advocated when he published before coming to Washington, so we should never assume that the Experts are simply people who are feeding information to politicians who are trying to do good, although the intellectuals had some security, the notion that the government should intervene is a hangover from the understanding of what happened during the new agreement,true, oh yes.

Okay, in other words, intellectuals and politicians are acting within it, within a world of options that intellectuals have created over decades. Yes, of course, are you impressed by that intellectual framework? No, no, okay, segment three intellectuals and vision. Intellectuals in society. around which the majority of contemporary intellectuals tend to coalesce has characteristics that distinguish it from other visions that prevailed in other segments of contemporary society or among the elites or masses in previous times, I quote which is the vision that intellectuals subscribe to. contemporaries that intellectuals should influence and do not control the types of decisions that are made in society, most especially that they should transfer the decisions of the masses to those who have more intellect and what they have given me How I conceive of knowledge is its distribution , which would mean transferring decisions from where there is 99 percent of the knowledge to where there is one percent of the knowledge and in that context it is not at all surprising that things like central planning simply does not produce as good results as allowing millions of people react in the market, okay, let me ask you a question that came from Twitter, uh, travis814.

All of these questions are limited to 140 characters, so be prepared. It is coming towards you, but it will pass quickly. Why does the liberal progressive mindset have such dominance within intellectual academia? Why should the view you just described be so prevalent among intellectuals? Among the many reasons why most academic intellectuals have no serious experience or experience. experience outside of academia uh, I mean, I remember I was once an economist for a t when it was the largest corporation in the world and when I returned to academia I was welcomed like the prodigal son, you see, returned from the ills of America corporate to the real nirvana of academia, like that, and not only are they inexperienced, but they have every incentive to believe that they are brighter than other people and not brighter than other people because they have been told their entire lives I mean you . become a top intellectual, uh, because you have gone through all these successive filters, you have entered the best universities, you have entered the best graduate schools or even from second grade onwards, teachers respond to you like a child who passes exams .

Especially yes, and that's why you have all that in your experience, you write in intellectuals and society, if you believe in the free market, judicial restraint, traditional values ​​and other characteristics of what you call the tragic vision, there is no personal exaltation that arises from those beliefs, but yes, but being in favor of social justice and saving the environment puts you on a higher moral plane. Yes, so the question here is: can it really be so simple that intellectuals across the American landscape tend to embrace the vision you've described purely on their own initiative? flattery and self-pleading, yes, don't forget that human beings have an enormous power of rationalization, think about all the absurd things that have been believed throughout all of history, and I suppose the common denominator is that those absurd things were typically very flattering to those who believed in them, had the only true faith, were the vanguard of the proletariat, you know, by the way, you just went through the whole list of things, I've been reading some notes, I can't understand how anyone took them.

Seriously, I mean, have you ever taken it seriously? What are you reading sentence by sentence? Oh well, I actually started with the communist manifesto that he and the angles of him are magnificent. If you want a model for propaganda, it is the masterpiece, but. actually there is absolutely no contact with real economic reality no there is no need for that as there are many people who are showing you that you can become president of the United States without any contact with economic reality okay two quotes from intellectuals in society quote intelligence often divide people between those who are in favor of change and those who are in favor of the status quo yes, candidate barack obama we are the change we have been waiting for yes tom people who say things like this like they're saying something new uh this is what was said in the 1790s and since then you know there's nothing older than the idea that this is new and it's Thomas Paine we have it in our power to make that The world ends, yes, you are right. but, in fact, there is again this is one of those totally unquestionable and unsubstantiated statements, uh, john dewey was saying, you know, that did the same thing about 60 years ago, that uh, those of us who are in favor of change we have to fight those who are for the status quo now the people that people like Adam Smith were talking about Adam Smith was not for the status quo, of course, as I mentioned in the book.

Why would Administrator Smith spend an entire decade writing a 900-page book saying how happy he was? he was with the way things were, I mean, when you spend a decade writing a 900-page book, something's bothering you, you know, I mean, and anyone who's ever bothered to read Adam Smith will see. who is sometimes quite angry about many things. again, two quotes that you cite at various points from intellectuals and society, you cite judge oliver wendell holmes, here is one of them, since judge oliver wendell holmes said that the word law is one of the most misleading pitfalls and a constant request to fallacy, that's a quote. one here's the quote two barack obama quote health care should be a right for all Americans close quote well there's the fallacy uh no it's uh uh the right word is amazing yeah I and in a sense I can I just I can't explain it um people say we have the right to affordable housing, decent healthcare, we write all kinds of things and the question is where did this right come from?

By the way, it is literally the case that I heard one of the questions on the radio the other day. in healthcare it's plastic surgery, whether it's taxed or I literally heard someone say that women have the right to botox treatments. It occurred to me to mention it there, yes, but that is no more arbitrary than all the others. things that are called rights, I mean, right now we are going to have this trial of these terrorists in a court of law, which is unprecedented and absolutely absurd, and the question is where did that right come from, well, it's not in the Constitution.

It's certainly not the Geneva convention, uh, uh, it's just that, with vague thought, people say well, prisoners of war are treated that way. Yes, they are not prisoners of war. The Geneva convention said what prisoners of war were the people who acceded to the Geneva convention. their protections, but during World War II, when some German soldiers in the Battle of the Bulge dressed in American uniforms, infiltrated the American line and were captured, they simply lined them up against the wall and shot them dead on the spot, and it was not so. something secret the army filmed it and I've seen the movies on the history channel there was no doubt if you don't follow the rules you don't get the protection of the rules it's that simple true this brings us to segment four The intellectuals and the war of the intellectuals in society discussing the role that intellectuals played between the two world wars.

One of the most notable developments of the 1920s was an international movement among intellectuals that promoted the idea that nations could unite and publicly renounce war. Yeah, what were they thinking? I guess they weren't thinking they were reacting, they were reacting to the horrors of the first world war that most of those intellectuals had supported by the way uh and now and now they decide no, that was so horrible, we just have to give up the war . It doesn't occur to me that yes, you can give up a war that won't stop your neighbor from building the largest army in the world and coming in and killing you.

It's very similar to this. It's a lot like thinking about gun control. You know you say, well, listen. I don't think people should have guns Hey, I wish people didn't have guns, but the fact is that passing a law doesn't stop them from having guns, it just leaves you defenseless. One of the things I think I mentioned in the ad is that in Britain the robbery rate is much higher than in the US and also British thieves don't search the place before entering now if you are in the US and you're going to break into someone's house in the middle of the night you might be met with a hail of bulls and britain have made robbery a safe occupation it's like it's like osha for thieves all right, intellectuals and society of vietnam again, among the many implications of the war in vietnam was that it once again illuminated the role of the intelligentsia in influencing the policies of a society and the course of history.

Closed quote We did not lose the war. The intellectuals surrendered in our name. Yes, in fact, the communists themselves in later years admitted that there was no way they could do it. They defeated the United States on the battlefield and, in fact, the Ted Offensive, which was the turning point, that the communist guerrilla movement was virtually eliminated in the south, but the intellectuals saw that as a victory for the communists and the war was unwinnable and once a democratic country decides that a war is unwinnable, it becomes unwinnable at this point. Tom, what is Vietnam? raises a point that simply needs to be addressed and that is that the special place of intellectuals in the democratic party is not a fair point that the democratic party became at least as far as the Vietnam War was concerned became totally influenced by correct intellectual opinion Yes, how is it possible, but it is also true that Nixon was and it is not true, look because here is what Machiavelli thought of intellectuals as influencers of events by influencing rulers. and they changed their mind saying no, that's not the role, since Vietnam clearly demonstrated that Nixon didn't give a damn about intellectuals, but they created a climate of opinion in which if he continued with that war he would pay too much of a political price. high. so he threw south vietnam to the wolves signed a negotiated agreement and they loved negotiated agreements no matter what it says as long as you sign it and win the nobel prize who cares if a few million people die afterwards? the mechanism of transmission of intellectual opinion to the broader climate of opinion this is where the media comes in oh there are many oh yes there are many transmission belts i mean schools all from primary school to high schools graduate, uh the media, now more and more, the churches, even the churches that we consider conservative, are out there pushing the liberal agenda, the intellectuals in the cold war again, the intellectuals and the societies that you talk about, the Senator Edward Kennedy, Edward Kennedy was one of the leading voices in favor of the nuclear freeze.

They joined many other prominent political figures and many in the media. Close quote: Now this nuclear freeze movement reaches its most powerful moment just as Ronald Reagan is establishing the policies that really ended the Cold War and the Cold War. How come why why not? They, why they do it, but this goes back at least to the 1920s, the idea that an arms race is wrong and not only is it wrong, but it is dangerous that it leads to war, and, of course, the contrary evidence again like It's like so many things that intellectuals believe is not subject to any kind of empirical proof because between the two world wars there were all these arms agreements and renunciations of war and all of that only encouraged the Axis power to feel that They could win this. war because the West was too gullible to arm itself and defend itself Tom, we are talking about the cold war, what do you think of it?

That Harry Truman who put containment in place, the fundamental containment structures that remain in place for more than four decades. harry truman takes office he was vice president for less than a year before taking office assumes that the soviet union is our ally because it was and has done so within a year discovers that they actually have aggressive intentions changes and builds state containment united in my opinion is I would say he's kind of a heroic figure and I think you're okay with that and then when he starts our position in the cold war, he takes on the Soviets and Ronald Reagan is the one who ends this.

Now let me leave it. I'll tell you this: Harry Truman's educational background ended high school. Yes. Ronald Reagan's college degree came not from some ancient Eastern university like the ones you attended, but from the small Eureka College located in the farm towns of central Illinois. It's so significant that it may well be because they didn't have to fight all the nonsense.what they would have been taught in these prestigious intellectual institutions in Iraq you quote in intellectuals and society you quote New York Times columnist paul krugman New York Times columnist and Princeton economist paul krugman quote to understand what is happening in Iraq follow the money of the oil you already know the surge failed close quote yes so the surge worked of course while krugman was just wrong yeah so what did he think he was doing uh oh trying to explain? other people are very harsh uh, I mean, in some ways, I mean, I'm often baffled why Larry Summers, you know, tried to hold on at Harvard, the man had millions, uh, could have stood up and said what I thought throughout the entire process.

The notion of people being independently wealthy is very shaky to me because there are people with millions of dollars who are afraid to say what they think correctly and there are other people who can barely get the radicals to say, "You know exactly what They are thinking". well, well, segment of five intellectuals and the rest of us again intellectuals and society, there is a spontaneous demand from society at large for the end products of the medical and scientific engineering professions, but the demand for public intellectuals is largely manufactured by public intellectuals themselves. Yes, explain. How do you manufacture demand for your own services?

It's one thing to make alarming predictions offering solutions to our problems and if they didn't, you know, if Nam Chomsky continued to claim in linguistics neither. We would probably have heard of Nam Chomsky at some point. He would have been just as famous among linguists around the world, but no one else would have heard of him. What do you think about global warming? I think it is a classic example of the need for crusades. Now people are surprised by these emails. They don't surprise me at all. I read the original UN study years ago and was just curious what they were like.

I'm going to address the issue that temperatures rose first and then there was an increase in carbon dioxide, because you can't say that a cause b uh uh if b happened first, then I read this and I could see that they were They were tiptoeing Through the two loops and the way they phrased things and so on, they couldn't confront that and now we're finding out that they knew full well that Dawn couldn't deal with all the evidence, so it fits the pattern of a group of intellectuals, climate scientists who have very limited competence, who suddenly proclaim that there is a crisis that scares the rest of us, thus creating a demand for their services not only as climate scientists, but as a kind of cast of high priests that they can tell us all how to live and save the entire planet and in the meantime generate billions of dollars in government programs to fund their research initiatives and so can you, it's a scandal, yes, okay, but again you have to keep in mind the ability of human beings to rationalize uh I'm sure there are scientists who believe some are a lot of what they're saying and there are other scientific scientists who believe otherwise, but those who are driving global warming are doing everything they can to do I'm sure those who believe otherwise won't be harmed in the public eye, so shouldn't there be a large group of climate scientists saying that the data really suggests we're headed for trouble here, but?

Precisely because what I say as a climate scientist will seem like a special plea. If we, as a community of scientists, should be even more careful to be completely transparent when disseminating data to the public, we should overcome the obstacle of appearing to be a self-petition as to why. Why isn't that happening? There is no reward for that. Okay, imagine yourself as an assistant professor in some department. Whether your senior colleagues are going to vote on your salary, among other things. I have millions of dollars in grants awarded to promote. global warming and you say exactly what you just said and they will say this guy is incorrigible okay tom what explains the exceptions during the 1930s?

Intellectual after intellectual after intellectual visits Russia and says this is the land of the future oh and Malcolm Muggeridge and a handful of others, but a small number of other intellectuals say no, it's not Stalin, it's a barbarian after the great depression, The entire economics profession is dominated by John Maynard Keynes, yes, and then Milton Friedman comes along and he just won't do it. What explains these exceptions among rising intellectuals? That's for another book for someone else to write at the end. In the preface I mentioned that I will have very little to say about President Milton Friedman, no, no, because he is not one of the most important people of the 20th century, but because he has an exception to the general pattern I am trying to explain , I'll let someone else figure out the exceptions.

Okay, let me try to ask you to find one. another other exception I'm going to address you once again this time listen to this barack obama has degrees from columbia and harvard and taught at the university of chicago

thomas

saul who liked barack obama arises from the African American experience in this country is from harvard m.a de colombia phd from chicago and has taught at howard brandeis ucla cornell and amherst which explains the difference in visions between barack obama and thomas seoul oh my god you were I mean this is like trying to account for the fall of each sparrow, I mean, we went through two pretty big sparrows, well, here it is at least, but no, you can't, it's hard enough to keep general patterns in mind when you get to the individual you would have to know. much more than any of us have known or will probably know for the next thousand years at least okay quote by bill Buckley I'd rather be governed by the first 400 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty close quote very Good summary of the drive you expected most Americans to show.

Yes, I distrusted the experts when Bill Buckley made that comment in the 1960s. About nine percent of Americans had college degrees. Today, the number is 29 and still increasing because about half. Of high school graduates go to college The first 400 names in the Boston phone book today probably include a large number of Harvard graduates and professors The question here is simple: Are we becoming a nation of intellectuals? I hadn't thought about that there. It would be a chilling thought because we are becoming a nation of people who are propagandized from elementary school to graduate school with a certain worldview and only those who, for one reason or another, have experience or knowledge. or whatever leads them to say: wait a minute, those are the only ones we have to depend on, last question, if I had a sentence or two to say to the cabinet gathered around President Obama and this cabinet has brilliant titles from a impressive institution after another.

If you could beg them to behave in a particular way from now until the time they all leave office, what would you say? Actually, I would just say a parting word to them because I know there is no point in talking to them, it's like asking how, what. Would he tell the mafia boss to force him to give up crime? There would be nothing I could say to him. Okay, he'll tell him to give up crime. I earn a thousand times more than you, why should I give up? crying dr thomas sol author of intellectuals in society thank you very much and happy new year thank you and happy new year I am peter robinson for uncommon knowledge and the hoover institution thank you for joining us