Why Speculate?
A talk by Michael Crichton (cont'd)
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NOBODY KNOWS THE FUTURE.
Now, this is not new information. It was Mark Twain who said, 'I've seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass."
And much of what politicians say is not so much a prediction as an attempt to make it come true. It's argument disguised as analysis. But it doesn't really persuade anybody. Because most people can see through it.
If speculation is worthless, why is there so much of it? Is it because people want it? I don't think so. I myself speculate that media has turned to speculation for media's own reasons. So now let's consider the advantages of speculation from a media standpoint.
1. It's incredibly cheap. Talk is cheap. And speculation shows are the cheapest thing you can put on television, They’re almost as cheap as running a test pattern. Speculation requires no research, no big staff. Minimal set. Just get the talking host, book the talking guests — of which there is no shortage — and you're done! Instant show. No reporters in different cities around the world, no film crews on location. No deadlines, no footage to edit, no editors...nothing! Just talk. Cheap.
2. You can't lose. Even though the speculation is correct only by chance, which means you are wrong at least 50% of the time, nobody remembers and therefore nobody cares. You are never accountable. The audience does not remember yesterday, let alone last week, or last month. Media exists in the eternal now, this minute, this crisis, this talking head, this column, this speculation.
One of the clearest proofs of this is the Currents of Death controversy. It originated with the New Yorker, which has been a gushing fountainhead of erroneous scientific speculation for fifty years. But my point is this: many of the people who ten years ago were frantic to measure dangerous electromagnetic radiation in their houses now spend thousands of dollars buying magnets to attach to their wrists and ankles, because of the putative healthful effects of magnetic fields. These people don't remember these are the same magnetic fields they formerly wanted to avoid. And since they don't remember, as a speculator on media, you can't lose.
Let me expand on this idea that you can't lose. It's not confined to the media. Most areas of intellectual life have discovered the virtues of speculation, and have embraced them wildly. In academia, speculation is usually dignified as theory. It's fascinating that even though the intellectual stance of the pomo deconstructionist era is against theory, particularly overarching theory, in reality what every academic wants to express is theory.
This is in part aping science, but it's also an escape hatch. Your close textual reading of Jane Austen could well be found wrong, and could be shown to be wrong by a more knowledgeable antagonist. But your theory of radical feminization and authoritarian revolt in the work of Jane Austen is untouchable. Your view of the origins of the First World War could be debated by other authorities more meticulous than you. But your New Historicist essay, which might include your own fantasy about what it would be like if you were a soldier during the first war...well, that's just unarguable.
A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics — and probably, nobody ever will.
But that’s not the only strategy one can employ. Because the media-educated public ignores and forgets past claims, these days even authors who present hard data are undamaged when the data is proven wrong. One of the most consistently wrong thinkers of recent years, Carol Gilligan of Harvard, once MS Magazine's Scientist of the Year, has had to retract (or modify) much of what she has ever written. Yet her reputation as a profound thinker and important investigator continues undiminished.
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You don't have to be right, any more. Nobody remembers.
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Then there is the speculative work of anthropologists like Helen Fisher, who claim to tell us about the origins of love or of infidelity or cooperation by reference to other societies, animal behavior, and the fossil record. How can she be wrong? It's untestable, unprovable, just so stories.
And lest anyone imagine things are different in the hard sciences, consider string theory, for nearly twenty years now the dominant physical theory. More than one generation of physicists has labored over string theory. But—if I understand it correctly, and I may not — string theory cannot be tested or proven or disproven. Although some physicists are distressed by the argument that an untestable theory is nevertheless scientific, who is going to object, really? Face it, an untestable theory is ideal! Your career is secure!
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In short, the understanding that so long as you speculate,
you can't lose is widespread. And it is perfect for the
information age, which promises a cornucopia of knowledge,
but delivers a cornucopia of snake oil.
Now, nowhere is it written that the media need be
accurate, or useful. They haven't been for most or
recorded history. So, now they're speculating....so what?
What is wrong with it?
1. Tendency to excess. <font size=4>
The fact that it's only talk makes drama and spectacle unlikely — unless the talk becomes heated and excessive. So it becomes excessive. Not every show features the Crossfire-style food fight, but it is a tendency on all shows.
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2. “Crisisization” of everything possible.<font size=4>
Most speculation is not compelling because most events are not compelling—Gosh, I wonder what will happen to the German mark? Are they going to get their labor problems under control? This promotes the well-known media need for a crisis. Crisis in the German mark! Uh-oh! Look out! Crises unite the country, draw viewers in large numbers, and give something to speculate about. Without a crisis, the talk soon degenerates into debate about whether the refs should have used instant replay on that last football game. So there is a tendency to hype urgency and importance and be-there-now when such reactions are really not appropriate. Witness the interminable scroll at the bottom of the screen about the Queen Mother's funeral. Whatever the Queen mother's story may be, it is not a crisis. I even watched a scroll of my own divorce roll by for a couple of days on CNN. It's sort of flattering, even though they got it wrong. But my divorce is surely not vital breaking news.
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3. Superficiality as a norm. <font size=4>
Gotta go fast. Hit the high points. Speculation adds to the superficiality. That’s it, don’t you think?
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4. Endless presentation of uncertainty and conflict may
interfere with resolution of issues.<font size=4>
There is some evidence that the television food fights not only don’t represent the views of most people — who are not so polarized — but they may tend to make resolution of actual disputes more difficult in the real world. At the very least, these food fights obscure the recognition that disputes are resolved every day.
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Compromise is much easier from relatively central
positions than it is from extreme and hostile, conflicting
positions: Greenpeace Spikers vs the Logging Industry.
5. The interminable chains of speculation paves the way<font size=4>
to litigation about breast implants, hysteria over Y2K and global warming, articles in the New Yorker about currents of death, and a variety of other results that are not, by any thoughtful view, good things to happen. There comes to be a perception — convenient to the media — that nothing is, in the end, knowable for sure. When in fact, that’s not true.
Let me point to a demonstrable bad effect of the assumption that nothing is really knowable. Whole word reading was introduced by the education schools of the country without, to my knowledge, any testing of the efficacy of the new method. It was simply put in place. Generations of teachers were indoctrinated in its methods. As a result, the US has one of the highest illiteracy rates in the industrialized world. The assumption that nothing can be known with certainty does have terrible consequences.
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As GK Chesterton said (in a somewhat different
context), “If you believe in nothing you’ll believe in
anything.” That’s what we see today. People believe in
anything.
But just in terms of the general emotional tenor of life,
I often think people are nervous, jittery in this media
climate of what if, what if, maybe, perhaps, could be…when
there is simply no reason to feel nervous. Like a bearded
nut in robes on the sidewalk proclaiming the end of the
world is near, the media is just doing what makes it feel
good, not reporting hard facts. We need to start seeing
the media as a bearded nut on the sidewalk, shouting out
false fears. It's not sensible to listen to it.
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We need to start remembering that everybody who said that Y2K wasn't a real problem was either shouted down, or kept off the air. The same thing is true now of issues like species extinction and global warming. You never hear anyone say it's not a crisis. I won't go into it, because it might lead to the use of facts, but I'll just mention two reports I speculate you haven't heard about. The first is the report in Science magazine January 18 2001 (Oops! a fact) that contrary to prior studies, the Antarctic ice pack is increasing, not decreasing, and that this increase means we are finally seeing an end to the shrinking of the pack that has been going on for thousands of years, ever since the Holocene era. I don't know which is more surprising, the statement that it's increasing, or the statement that its shrinkage has preceded global warming by thousands of years.
The second study is a National Academy of Sciences report on the economic effects to the US economy of the last El Nino warming event of 1997. That warming produced a net benefit of 15 billion dollars to the economy. That's taking into account 1.5 billion loss in California from rain, which was offset by decreased fuel bills for a milder winter, and a longer growing season. Net result 15 billion in increased productivity.
The other thing I will mention to you is that during the last 100 years, while the average temperature on the globe has increased just .3 C, the magnetic field of the earth declined by 10%. This is a much larger effect than global warming and potentially far more serious to life on this planet. Our magnetic field is what keeps the atmosphere in place. It is what deflects lethal radiation from space. A reduction of the earth's magnetic field by ten percent is extremely worrisome.
But who is worried? Nobody. Who is raising a call to action? Nobody. Why not? Because there is nothing to be done. How this may relate to global warming I leave for you to speculate on your own time.
Personally, I think we need to start turning away from media, and the data shows that we are, at least from television news. I find that whenever I lack exposure to media I am much happier, and my life feels fresher.
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In closing, I’d remind you that while there are some
things we cannot know for sure, there are many things that
can be resolved, and indeed are resolved. Not by
speculation, however. By careful investigation, by
rigorous statistical analysis. Since we’re awash in this
contemporary ocean of speculation, we forget that things
can be known with certainty, and that we need not live in
a fearful world of interminable unsupported opinion. But
the gulf that separates hard fact from speculation is by
now so unfamiliar that most people can’t comprehend it. I
can perhaps make it clear by this story:
On a plane to Europe, I am seated next to a guy who is
very unhappy.
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Turns out he is a doctor who has been engaged in a two-year double blind study of drug efficacy for the FDA, and it may be tossed out the window. Now a double-blind study means there are four separate research teams, each having no contact with any other team — preferably, they're at different universities, in different parts of the country. The first team defines the study and makes up the medications, the real meds and the controls. The second team administers the medications to the patients. The third team comes in at the end and independently assesses the effect of the medications on each patient. The fourth team takes the data and does a statistical analysis. The cost of this kind of study, as you might imagine, is millions of dollars. And the teams must never meet.
My guy is unhappy because months after the study is over, he in the waiting room of Frankfurt airport and he strikes up a conversation with another man in the lounge, and they discover — to their horror — that they are both involved in the study. My guy was on the team that administered the meds. The other guy is on the team doing the statistics. There isn't any reason why one should influence the other at this late date, but nevertheless the protocol requires that team members never meet.
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So now my guy is waiting to hear if the FDA will throw out
the entire study, because of this chance meeting in
Frankfurt airport.
Those are the lengths you have to go to if you want to be
certain that your information is correct. But when I tell
people this story, they just stare at me
incomprehendingly. The find it absurd. They don't think
it's necessary to do all that. They think it's overkill.
They live in the world of MSNBC and the New York Times.
And they've forgotten what real, reliable information is,
and the lengths you have to go to get it. It's so much
harder than just speculating.
And on that point, I have to agree with them.
Thank you very much. |
