The Problem of Insulation

The Problem of Insulation

The system does not give researchers the incentive to be a Malraux. The great skeptic Hume was said to leave his skeptical angst in the philosophical cabinet, then go party with his friends in Edinburgh (though his idea of partying was rather too … Edinburgh). The philosopher Myles Burnyeat called this the “problem of insulation,” particularly with skeptics who are skeptics in one domain but not another. He provides the example of a philosopher who puzzles about the reality of time, but who nonetheless applies for a research grant to work on the philosophical problem of time during next year’s sabbatical—without doubting the reality of next year’s arrival. For Burnyeat, the philosopher “insulates his ordinary first order judgments from the effects of his philosophizing.” Sorry, Professor Doctor Burnyeat; I agree that philosophy is the only field (and its sibling, pure mathematics) that does not need to connect to reality. But then make it a parlor game and give it another name …

Likewise, Gerd Gigerenzer reports a more serious violation on the part of Harry Markowitz, who started a method called “portfolio selection” and received the same iatrogenic Swedish Riskbank prize (called “Nobel” in economics) for it, along with other fragilistas such as Fragilista Merton and Fragilista Stiglitz. I spent part of my adult life calling it charlatanism, as it has no validity outside of academic endorsements and causes blowups (as explained in the Appendix). Well, Doctor Professor Fragilista Markowitz does not use his method for his own portfolio; he has recourse to more sophisticated (and simpler to implement) cabdrivers’ methodologies, closer to the one Mandelbrot and I have proposed.

I believe that forcing researchers to eat their own cooking whenever possible solves a serious problem in science. Take this simple heuristic—does the scientific researcher whose ideas are applicable to the real world apply his ideas to his daily life? If so, take him seriously. Otherwise, ignore him. (If the fellow is doing pure mathematics or theology, or teaching poetry, then there is no problem. But if he is doing something applicable, then: red flag.)

This brings us to Triffat-type fakeness compared to Seneca, the talker versus the doer. I applied this method of ignoring what an academic writes and focusing on what he does when I met a researcher on happiness who held that anything one makes beyond $50,000 does not bring any additional happiness—he was then earning more than twice that at a university, so according to his metric he was safe. The argument seen through his “experiments” published in “highly cited papers” (that is, by other academics) seemed convincing on paper—although I am not particularly crazy about the notion of “happiness” or the vulgarity of the modern interpretation of “seeking happiness.” So, like an idiot, I believed him. But a year or so later, I heard that he was particularly avid for dollars and spent his time on the road speaking for fees. That, to me, was more sufficient evidence than thousands of citations.