Everyone here has become familiar with the meaning of the word ‘nudge’ since 2020. It was at the centre of Laura Dodsworth’s book A State of Fear in 2021. In a powerful article of a few days ago Gary Sidley gave us a short history of ‘nudge’.
I always think it is a good thing to have a good argument or good bit of evidence shortened so it can be seen at a glance. Sidley, in short, shows:
- That behavioural science has been central to British Government strategy since Cameron, and came to its height in the happy days of Michie, Sridhar, Hancock and other superior technocrats.
- That this behavioural science is an American invention: an invention which was a grotesque distortion of some academic activity in the 20th century so that it became an exploration of the techniques by which society could be manipulated by a ‘democratic’ regime.
The techniques developed were many. They included bits of rational exaggeration and irrational suggestion, all in the service of ‘conditioning’ us to accept certain rules and edicts. ‘Nudge’, as explained by the authors of the overtly titled book Nudge of 2008, was a remarkable innovation: as it showed why there was no reason to think that the Western enthusiasm for ‘freedom’ should prevent Western regimes from imposing constraints on us worthy of a despotic or autocratic or let us say Eastern regime, for the ‘greater good’.
Is there any hope? One might think not. I certainly think that there is something highly subtle and sophisticated about the West now: it makes the East look primitive. But there is very good reason to suppose that ‘nudge’ has a great flaw in it. It is the same flaw which runs through all social science. It is a flaw in the form of a self-rupturing loop.
I take no credit for this argument. As with the history of ‘nudge’ detailed by Sidley, there has also been a history of scepticism about social science, including behavioural science. To my mind, at least — I am, as usual, no expert — the great heroes of this are Michael Polanyi, Michael Oakeshott and Alasdair MacIntyre — the last of whom is still alive at the great age of 95. The point is very simple, and I shall first use Oakeshott’s way of putting it, before also mentioning MacIntyre’s rather more elaborate way of putting it, which is so decisive that it should stand as a refutation of the very possibility of the social sciences. I am amazed that it is not more famous than it is.
Oakeshott began by saying that one cannot have a science until one has a subject matter which is ‘intelligible’. This is simple enough. ‘Intelligible’ means that whatever we want to study can be subjected to intelligence. Next, the problem with the social sciences, as opposed to the natural sciences, is that its subject matter is — ‘intelligent’. Atoms and stars are intelligible; but humans are intelligent. Note the problem. We are trying to subject to our intelligence an object which is itself not only intelligent, but intelligent in exactly the same way that we are intelligent. In sum, what this means is that when it comes to understanding ourselves there is no Archimedean point, no external point of view, no godlike vision we can possibly hope to have of ourselves. We are limited by our intelligence, and any pretence that we are transcending it by calling ourselves ‘scientists’ — even behavioural scientists — crashes on the rocks of that limitation. We may pretend to be scientific about ourselves, but it is only a pretence.
MacIntyre wrote a sequence of articles and chapters between the early 1960s and early 1970s which I consider to be a refutation of the social sciences, including the behavioural sciences — proof that they are an impossibility. The argument is really just a version of Oakeshott’s, and even Oakeshott’s was just a way of saying something that had been obvious to some historians and philosophers as early as the late 19th century. But MacIntyre’s argument is particularly potent. It is best found in the article ‘Ideology, Social Science, and Revolution’ in Comparative Politics 5 (1973), pp.321-342.
Here he argues that the purpose of the social sciences is to generate some findings about ourselves that could not be stated by the man on the street or the average educated journalist. If the social sciences are to establish anything at all, this should take the form of the sorts of generalisations we call laws. So MacIntyre decided to explain what a law of the social sciences would look like. He argued on p.334 of his article that it would take the following form:
Whenever an event or state of affairs of type A occurs, then an event or state of affairs of type B will occur, unless (1) intelligent reflection by the agents involved leads them to change their ways or (2) unpredictable factors deriving from creative intellectual innovation intervene.
The “unless” is the rupturing loop. This is because the qualifications (1) and (2) make a law of this form absolutely worthless. MacIntyre explained: “A generalisation framed like this is one whose scope can never be known.” If such a law were ever framed, we would never be able to find a counterexample. So anything would go. The fact that our intelligence is a variable that cannot be controlled means, said MacIntyre, that “refutations cannot occur in social science”. It follows that social science is not a science. And: “From this it follows further that, if there is consensus in the social scientific community, and to the degree that such consensus exists, it will not be rational, but a matter of something else, perhaps of academic politics.”
Let us delete the word “academic” in that last sentence and paraphrase the sentence. If there is consensus, it will not be rational — or scientific — but political.
Now, MacIntyre’s refutation is a refutation of the possibility of having a theoretical law of ourselves. But the refutation also destroys ‘nudge’ and for the same reason. We can always be nudged by A in such a way that we will do B unless — unless — we become conscious that we are being nudged and then decide to confound the expectation. In other words, as soon as we become aware that we are being nudged, we can be nudged no longer — at least not in the way that we have recently been nudged. This is because our knowledge of being nudged enters the nudging mechanism as a new input and dislocates it, since the original “nudge” was only supposed to work if we were unaware of it.
Now, the behavioural scientists might say that they can themselves innovate and come up with a new way of persuading us to do things against our own interests for the ‘greater good’, but as soon as we become aware that ‘liberal’ and ‘democratic’ regimes are in the habit of consciously attempting to manipulate the population as a whole then the game is over. ‘Nudge’ only works if the people being nudged are not aware of it. Make them aware — starting calling things ‘nudge’, for God’s sake — and the game is over. Then governments, if they want to insist on their controls, will have to revert to simple Eastern forms of coercion. Governments will not be able to hide from the people that they are being ‘nudged’ as long as there is even a sliver of free enquiry, open deliberation and public education. This is because we are people being nudged, not by God, or Satan, or Antichrist, or Sauron, or the Daleks, but by other people.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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Nazi salute you say? From the Nazi Demon Party maybe?
And they’re socialists, just like Hitler was!
Ah, but those are three right-armed and one left-armed right sort of sincere, compassionate and deeply principled salute, whereas nasty evil far-right Mr Musket’s wrong sort of projected right arm clearly belongs held aloft at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Got it? Under no circumstance mention The War, Midnight Rallies or Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms.
The left: “and we don’t like Musk, so there!”
My favourite nickname for Senator Elizabeth Warren is walking Eagle,because she’s too full of poo to fly.
If you were the suspicious kind you would wonder if scheduling the trial, abbreviated by a handy guilty plea, alongside another newsworthy event was not merely a coincidence but a stage managed ‘nothing to see here’ trial.
But then you would have to ask yourself ‘What is being covered up?’. Several other mysterious news non-events make me wonder if people are being leaned upon to prevent (no pun intended) embarrassing disclosures. Perhaps Prevent are merely scapegoats in this particular case?
Cover-up Keir motto: All the news that ordinary people are allowed to know.
The trials of the Labour councillor (now on bail) who is alleged to have incited murder,and the alleged attempted murderer of an Army Colonel in Rochester were scheduled for the same day,but unaccountably delayed.
2TK team working hard.
‘Ang on a minute, first you say this ‘igson geezer’s a comedy writer, and the next you mention the “fast show” – can you plse make your mind up?
Reportedly there was some link between the murderer’s father and 2TK.
Perhaps he bought him a dress or something.
The Uniparties have to keep the B word out of the media at all costs. So they are blaming Amazon for selling the knife and EM for everything else.
The B word involves the videos that Axel followed and would upset every decent person in the Country.
If you think the accusations are absurd now, just wait till they start loading those planes with illegal gimmiegrants.
“illegal gimmiegrants” nice!
Mea culpa. I am showing extremist traits as outlined above, all the way from Shakespeare, through Tolkien, The Great Escape et al. I even hide my identity behind a nom de plume. I am unrepentant.
What are these space cadets smoking? That’s what I’d like to know. How does one manage to go through a single day ignoring the many contradictory facts that surround them which cancel out their viewpoint easily, whilst doubling down on their completely fictional inner narrative that has no basis in truth? It’s like a form of self-hypnosis, surely? Is it not just similar to being radicalized or belonging to a cult?
”James O’Brien blames Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos for the Southport stabbing.
The mental gymnastics is astonishing. Crazy to think that people take this man seriously.”
https://x.com/jessgill03/status/1882051266697941338
This is funny though…
https://x.com/throughist/status/1882157660763771083/photo/1
Pathetic Leftards desperately scraping the barrel and demonstrating just how lobotomized and idiotic they really are. The only way they can get any of their poisonous rhetoric to make sense is by denying reality. Facts are like kryptonite because basic data can easily contradict their bilge in one fell swoop, ergo highlighting their relentless bullshittery, so truth must be ignored at all costs. Who wants inconvenient truths when you’ve an agenda to push? Sadiq The Khant is a master of this art, but the examples are all over the shop.
From Germany, just another traitor in complete denial, but I think there’s a factory somewhere churning out these treacherous, delusional imbeciles. I suspect it’s in Brussels;
”German Green MP Katrin Göring-Eckardt often celebrates changing demographics in Germany, despite years of terror and soaring crime.
“We are talking about what our country will look like in 20 or 30 years’ time. It will become younger. How great is that? How long have we been talking about demographics? It will become more colorful. How wonderful that is?”
Germany has been hit with a wave of terror attacks in recent months featuring foreigners, including the most recent one in Aschaffenburg, which saw a 2-year-old child and a man stabbed to death by an Afghan national who should have been deported.”
https://x.com/RMXnews/status/1882152553829355690
Et tu, Charlie Higson? FFS.
“The Great Escape, did Prevent think they were automatically on the side of the guards?”
That got me thinking of a Top Gear episode in Germany when Clarkson asked…”When you watch a War film, what side are you on” LOL.
How Come Elon Musk is Automatically a Nazi, But Axel Rudakubana Definitely Isn’t a Terrorist?
Elon Musk – has a skin colour of the people the madleft consider to be “world poisoners”.
Axel Rudakubana – is a person of sacred skin colour
The simple fact that the left feel the need to put this forward as a serious piece of discussion shows that they are beaten. Its an enormous ‘mopping up’ exercise, but they are done.
A commentator on Fox News who says that the Left and MSM know it’s all over, it’s all they’ve got, like a fat man on death row, what’s the point of dieting.