Posted on 12/13/2002 5:04:30 PM PST by tuna_battle
I'm not sure what to think about this... Comments?!
Why do I trust Gary Winnick and Jeffrey Skilling--nefarious former chief executives of notoriously bankrupt companies--more than I trust Senator John McCain of vaunted valor in prison camps or David Broder of Pulitzer fame or Senator Joseph Lieberman of famously flinty integrity? Why do I trust Kenneth Lay of Enron and Bernard Ebbers of WorldCom more than I trust Justices William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, the stalwart intellectual leaders of a nominally conservative Supreme Court, or even George W. Bush, that most trusted of Presidents?
Why do I trust General Electric chief emeritus Jack Welch or AT&T Chief Michael Armstrong more than I trust the entire scientific and environmental coverage in the New York Times and all the venerable editors of the increasingly political Scientific American? Why do I trust Martha Stewart and ImClone's Sam Waksal far more than I trust the crusading journalist James B. Stewart or New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, trustbuster deluxe, as they righteously seek to banish moneylenders, marketmakers and conflicts of interest from the temples of Wall Street?
The reason I trust disgraced executives more than politicians, judges and journalists is the same reason that I trust physicists more than I trust sociologists. The answer comes from the eminent philosopher of science Karl Popper: falsifiability. In science, falsifiability means that a hypothesis is presented with sufficient rigor to be proven wrong, that is, falsified. It is the condition of trust. By contrast, the sociologist deals in broad propositions--such as "ethnic diversity improves educational outcomes" or "patriarchy causes war"--that, by sinking into a mush of definitions, defy disproof.
Except when conducting trials of identifiable crimes such as murder or assault, judges are no more truthful than politicians or journalists. They all adhere to the "ring-true" standard of sociology rather than the falsifiable standard of physics. Most of the time, as physicist Wolfgang Pauli put it in another context, they are not even wrong. Their statements lack the rigor to rate as lies and swim in the ontological soup of the verb "to be." From such a soup, no enduring truths can evolve.
Like a physical experiment, every entrepreneurial venture embodies and tests a hypothesis about products or markets. Intel is currently preparing to test the hypothesis that computer companies will choose a microprocessor that runs at 3 gigahertz, or 3 billion cycles a second, and will buy it in sufficient volumes that Intel can profitably manufacture it in a plant that costs $2 billion to build and equip. Samsung is testing whether people will buy a cell phone that takes digital photographs. Ebay is testing whether it can move beyond Web auctions of used wine openers to Web auctions of $20,000 antique cars, and to TV programs. The presence of such testable hypotheses distinguishes investment from both gambling and government planning. A true gamble does not test a refutable principle. Therefore it cannot produce valuable knowledge. Likewise, a nationalized business with guaranteed markets cannot yield falsifiable information.
Knowledge emerges not from chaos, or fixity, but from conditions of uncertainty. Under capitalism power flows to precisely the people who are willing to stake their money not on gambles or sure things but on testable hypotheses, thus generating knowledge and wealth for society. Entrepreneurs are trustworthy because they accept a moral code of testability and falsifiability rather than one based on sentiment, sanctimony, good intentions, good press, good luck, good looks or guarantees.
Bernie Ebbers vs. George W.? Wow, what an easy choice... Now Bubba vs. Bernie: maybe Gilder makes a point.
Practical success was the appeal that brought Gorbachev to tout Glasnost and visit farms in the United States.
From: Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism: The Ideological Civil War Within the West
Excellent !
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