Mike Wolf

Assume, for a moment (even if you don’t already believe it) that the effect of humans on the climate is certain, significant, and dangerous.

If you don’t believe it, just, assume it, for the moment.

This is an article by Bret Victor, a thoughtful guy I follow in the tech world. He lays out the underlying issues  in the following framework:

• Funding
• Producing energy
• Moving energy
• Consuming energy

Then, because so much of he opportunity and success in the area depends on what scientists and engineers do:

• Tools for Scientists and engineer

And because robust, reasoned public debate requires better understanding of complex situations:

• Media for understanding situations

I happen NOT to believe that the effect of humans on the climate is all three of certain, significant, and dangerous.  But from a risk-management perspective, it makes just about zero sense to me to do nothing but criticize people who are trying, however imperfectly, to assess a risky situation, and argue that markets will solve the problem better than governments.

Which maybe is a segue into next week’s topic.

Malcolm Gladwell documents the process, link here, by which colleges in the United States (at least) came to embrace “diversity” rather than pure merit as a basis for admission:

In 1905, Harvard College adopted the College Entrance Examination Board tests as the principal basis for admission, which meant that virtually any academically gifted high—school senior who could afford a private college had a straightforward shot at attending.

Previously Harvard had “been the preserve of the New England boarding-school complex known in the admissions world as St. Grottlesex.”  But meritocratic admission changed that. How?

The enrollment of Jews began to rise dramatically. By 1922, they made up more than a fifth of Harvard’s freshman class.

Of course, Harvard was delighted that they were fulfilling their educational mission by picking brighter, more capable students to teach.

Not really.

Gladwell continues.

The administration and alumni were up in arms. Jews were thought to be sickly and grasping, grade-grubbing and insular. They displaced the sons of wealthy Wasp alumni, which did not bode well for fund-raising.

A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president in the nineteen-twenties, stated flatly that too many Jews would destroy the school: “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate . . . because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also.”

The solution of Harvard (and others) to this problem is the  “diversity-based” admissions policies of most US universities.

There are people in this country who see “a political-economic elite dominated by white males persecuting anybody who doesn’t fit into their culture.”

There are others who perceive “an intellectual-cultural elite dominated by social justice activists persecuting anybody who doesn’t fit into their culture.”

The narratives of the two groups are surprisingly symmetrical.  If you find yourself agreeing with one narrative, you might consider the high degree of symmetry between the two. From this post by Scott Alexander