Bits and Bobs

Musk, Terkel, Oppenheimer, rubber bands, stale chewing gum, nickels and dimes, and whatever else I pull from the grab bag.

Is Elon Musk a genius or a fool?

If you’ve spent any time reading this newsletter, you know I will not answer the question, “is Elon Musk a genius or a fool?”

I will condemn it.

Built into any binary is the assumption that there are only two possibilities and they are mutually exclusive. Which can be true. But usually isn’t.

This is a “usually isn’t” situation. Musk may be a genius in some situations, a fool in others. He may have been a genius once but is a fool now, or vice versa. And most importantly, genius and fool are opposite ends of a long spectrum, so Musk may fall somewhere between the two extremes, with the slider moving various distances to the left or right, depending on a vast multitude of potentially relevant factors, from the subject he’s dealing with to how much sleep he got last night and whether he ate breakfast this morning.

All of that is indisputable, not because we should all share the same view of Elon Musk but because Elon Musk is a human. And everything I wrote is true of me, you, and all members of our species. It’s a truism. it should be so freaking obvious it doesn’t have to be said.

But it does have to be said — loudly, repeatedly — because that is not how most people talk about Elon Musk. Or most public figures.

Instead, people routinely imagine an extreme binary — “is Elon Musk a genius or a fool?” — and insist that one answer or the other is correct. Think I exaggerate? Look at conversations about the man on social media. Or better, Google “is Elon Musk a genius or a fool?” and marvel at how many articles — like this column in The Los Angeles Times — have been framed exactly that way.

Having chosen sides, people process information in wildly biased fashion. Team Genius excuses or ignores a host of statements and actions that were, shall we say, less than brilliant. Team Fool does the same in reverse, denying Musk credit for anything that a fool could not have done.

I’ve written before about the gulf between this juvenile tendency to put white hats and black hats on public figures and sophisticated portrayals of people in shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men. Television dramas are increasingly mature, rich, and complex, like the best biographies; most discussion of public figures is still at the level of cheesy 1950s Westerns.

For years, Musk was mostly judged to have a white hat, and still his fans are as worshipful as disciples of Jesus. But more recently, thanks mostly to Musk’s purchase of Twitter and strident political declarations, he is usually given a black hat, with all that entails. Musk was born rich, people claim. He got lucky with PayPal. He didn’t found Tesla and deserves no credit for revolutionizing an old and stodgy industry. The huge accomplishments of SpaceX are all due to its engineers, no credit whatsoever to its impulsive CEO. And so on. Musk always has been, and always will be, a fool.

If you follow me on Twitter (stuff your “X,” Elon) you know I am angry about much that Musk has said and done. But I reserve my most furious loathing for this sort of analysis, which is not only breathtakingly stupid, it is, under the wrong circumstances, destructive. We really must do better.

That’s why I so enjoyed reading Scott Alexander’s review of the 2015 biography of Musk.

I read the book to try to figure out who that was. Musk is a paradox. He spearheaded the creation of the world’s most advanced rockets, which suggests that he is smart. He’s the richest man on Earth, which suggests that he makes good business decisions. But we constantly see this smart, good-business-decision-making person make seemingly stupid business decisions. He picks unnecessary fights with regulators. Files junk lawsuits he can’t possibly win. Abuses indispensable employees. Renames one of the most recognizable brands ever.

Musk creates cognitive dissonance: how can someone be so smart and so dumb at the same time? To reduce the dissonance, people have spawned a whole industry of Musk-bashing, trying to explain away each of his accomplishments: Peter Thiel gets all the credit for PayPal, Martin Eberhard gets all the credit for Tesla, NASA cash keeps SpaceX afloat, something something blood emeralds. Others try to come up with reasons he’s wholly smart - a 4D chessmaster whose apparent drunken stumbles lead inexorably to victory.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, And The Quest For A Fantastic Future delights in its refusal to resolve the dissonance. Musk has always been exactly the same person he is now, and exactly what he looks like. He is without deception, without subtlety, without unexpected depths.

Read the whole essay. Elon Musk is the living embodiment of the view that we should use the word “and” more than “or.”

But remember, this is bigger than Elon Musk. Why do people so readily invoke ridiculously simplistic binaries when we discuss public figures? That’s the really consequential tendency we should mull. And resolve to overcome.

By the way, if you read this newsletter, there’s a good chance you have been reading Scott Alexander for years. If not, do yourself a favour and subscribe immediately.

Studs Terkel

In addition to having the coolest name ever, Studs Terkel was a legendary writer and broadcaster whose radio show aired in Chicago, on WFMT, from 1952 to 1997.

Each episode, Terkel spoke with one guest for an hour, ensuring a deep and serious conversation. He delivered one episode a day, five days a week. For 45 years. Do the math.

And the guests! Dorothy Parker, Alger Hiss, Dizzy Gillespie, Martin Luther King Jr., Muhammad Ali, Frank Zappa…. It’s an astonishing list. And that’s only the famous names. Terkel also spoke with countless authors about their latest books. And so many others. You could write a reasonably comprehensive history of the 20th century drawing on only the lives and work of people interviewed by Studs Terkel.

Which is why I was thrilled when I stumbled across … the complete Studs Terkel archive. It’s an elegantly organized site that makes it easy to find and listen to shows.

Imagine nearly a half-century of the world’s best podcast. All there. Free. Waiting for you to listen, any time, anywhere in the world.

In the 1990s, people dreamed of the possibilities the Internet created. Many of those dreams turned to ash. But some were realized. This is one.

“Science-informed policy”

In Scientific American, Dan Correa, CEO of the American Federation of Scientists, argued recently that the Christopher Nolan movie Oppenheimer should serve as a reminder to scientists that “scientists have a duty to engage with politics and that failing to speak out carries its own consequences.”

It’s hard to argue with that. Ideally, public affairs would always be well informed by science and if scientists can help push us closer to that ideal, splendid.

But Correa makes no distinction between scientific questions and others, and thus no distinction between scientists speaking as scientists to raise awareness of science, and scientists speaking as citizens to address non-scientific questions. Both are perfectly legitimate and welcome. It is good that concerned citizens speak up, whether those citizens are scientists or not. But the distinction between scientific and non-scientific questions, and scientists speaking as scientists or concerned citizens, is fundamental. It should be underscored.

So let’s be precise: Scientists speak as scientists when they address scientific questions for which they have professional expertise and a solid corpus of science to draw on. When they go beyond that, they may still be informed, smart, and thoughtful. But they speak as informed, smart, and thoughtful citizens. And their views deserve no less and no more respect than those of other citizens.

Here’s a scientific question: “Does wearing masks on public transit reduce the probability of Covid transmission?” That is an empirical question. It can and should be answered by science, as best science can. Voters, activists, corporations, or politicians may feel they know what the correct answer is but their feelings don’t matter. Or at least they should not matter. Science can and should settle it.

Here’s a non-scientific question: “Should it be mandatory to wear a mask on public transit?” Answering that question requires judgments about how much risk is acceptable, to whom, under what circumstances, and it’s impossible to make judgments like that without resort to values. That makes it a political question, not a scientific question. The answer should still be informed by good science — whether wearing a mask reduces transmission, by how much, how dangerous infections are, and so on — but it cannot be settled by science.

This is why some academics who study the relationship between science and public policy think the popular phrase “science-based policy” (or “evidence-based policy”) is a mistake. They prefer “science-informed policy” because it more accurately reflects that science can contribute to the policy decision, but it cannot settle it.

I think — or perhaps I would like to think — most scientists understand and appreciate the distinction. But based on comments I have heard scientists make in public forums and social media, there are some who think that anyone with a white lab coat and a PhD deserves special deference on all questions.

Sorry, no.

On strictly scientific matters for which a scientist has expertise, yes, let us defer. But when scientists speak as Correa is urging, on wider matters, they speak as concerned citizens and deserve only the respect all concerned citizens are owed.

In this regard, Correa’s choice of illustration is unfortunate. On matters of physics and atomic energy, Robert Oppenheimer and other atomic scientists deserved great deference. But on the morality of developing and deploying nuclear weapons? On international relations and maintaining peace? Sorry, no. They were concerned citizens only.

Ironically, the very report Correa cites — One World or None: A Report To The Public On The Full Meaning Of The Atomic Bomb — underscores the point.

Here is how the introduction opens:

It was inevitable that mankind should have atomic fire. The worldwide growth of science and technology is the main line of the rapid evolution of man into a social being whose community is the world. The release of atomic energy is but a dramatic step in this evolution. It is a part of our age-old quest to use the forces of nature for shaping the world according to our desire.

No group of men had the power to prevent the coming of the atomic age.

That claim is often made — and was popular among scientists like Robert Oppenheimer who suffered psychological turmoil for what they had done — but it is disputed by some historians today, as I wrote before. Who is right? That’s impossible to settle definitively. It’s not a scientific question.

Then the introduction lays out the general argument of the collection:

The terrific blast at Hiroshima shocked the world into a realization that catastrophe lies ahead if war is not eliminated. This great fear has for the time being overshadowed the hope that atomic energy may vastly enrich human life if given a chance.

We now have before us the dear choice between adjusting the pattern of our society on a world basis so that wars cannot come again — or of following the out- worn tradition of national self-defense, which if carried through to its logical conclusion must result in catastrophic conflict.

Hence “one world or none.”

It’s 2023. For the past 77 years, the world followed “the out-worn tradition of national self-defense” yet we have not suffered “catastrophic conflict.”

The scientists’ arguments weren’t unreasonable. But they weren't science. And they wrote as citizens, not scientists.

Tunnel visions

During the First World War, after the frontlines in France and Belgium had settled into stalemate, the war went underground.

While the armies on the surface continued to pound each other with impotent rage, vast numbers of men on both sides dug bunkers, tunnels, mines, chapels, barracks, depots, forts, and staging grounds deep underground. Years of this work produced vast complexes and transportation networks, even whole towns.

Much of it survived the war. In 1998, on the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war, I had the honour of interviewing some of the last survivors of the war in Arras, a medieval French town that played a strategic role throughout the conflict (and was pounded into rubble as a result.) Under Arras, I walked some of the tunnels — carved into chalk, a soft stone easily excavated and shaped — where Canadian soldiers staged the assault that took Vimy Ridge in 1917. Those particular tunnels were (and are) open to the public. But most of this subterranean empire is too dangerous to have tourists tramping through it, so it’s sealed off. Much of it is known and mapped. But there’s undoubtedly more that has been lost to memory, rooms and passages that witnessed immense tragedy but have known only silence and darkness since 1918.

But a select few (whom I envy deeply) are granted official permission to explore and study. One of them is National Geographic photographer (and ER physician) Jeff Gusky.

An old cliche about war is that it is boredom punctuated by horror. Soldiers wait for orders, then move from here to there, then wait some more. And more. And more. If they wait underground, surrounded by chalk that can be carved with a bayonet, they will occupy their time with graffiti and bas reliefs whose intricacy grows in proportion to the wait.

The artwork left by legions of bored, exhausted, frightened, lonely men who died long ago is Jeff Gusky’s muse.

Gusky’s photos are spare and silvery, unnervingly familiar yet strangely empty and alien. The screen capture above doesn’t remotely do them justice.

Have a look at his haunting website. He is also on Twitter.

The Rest is History

Regular readers know I’m a huge fan of The Rest is History, a podcast hosted by Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook.

The other history podcasts I’ve encountered are of two types: 1) Academics stumbling and mumbling their way through some esoteric subject, as the eyeballs of even their own grad students glaze over; 2) non-academics going on at great and gory length about the ruler who made a pyramid of his enemies’ skulls and celebrated by fornicating with slaves and camels in his yurt.

I love stories with skulls and yurts as much as the next middle-aged dad but there’s so much more to history than rulers and wars and kinky sex. And I know the value of esoteric academic work, but communication for a mass audience is a skill and if you aren’t interested in learning it, don’t make a podcast. Harrumph.

Like no other podcast I’ve come across, Holland and Sandbrook manage to be simultaneously entertaining for a mass audience and go far beyond piles-of-skulls rubbish. Recent episodes about fashion in London in the 1960s were a fascinating illustration. No kings, battles, skulls or slaves. But quite interesting in their own right, not least because Holland and Sandbrook tie it to wider historical currents, so they don’t merely tell stories, they show why the stories matter. They’re articulate and succinct — the latter is a particularly rare skill — and they know when and how to be funny and when to play it straight. The result is the perfect balance of substance and style.

A recent episode about the Marquis de Sade is an even better illustration.

De Sade wasn’t a ruler but aside from that his life — a litany of crime, violence, and wild sexual perversion played against a backdrop of revolution, executions, and wars — is perfect for the piles-of-skulls treatment. Holland and Sandbrook deliver some of the salacious stories, but they deliberately understate them. Then they do something no one else would: They discuss de Sade’s ideas and how they presaged the degraded interpretations of Darwinism and Nietzsche that fostered fascism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

They produce these shows at a breathtaking rate. While writing and publishing first-rate books. (Tom Holland’s latest is about to be released in the United States.) I have no idea how they manage all that but I’m grateful they do.

How lucky we are

We are the wealthiest humans who ever lived. By a large margin.

I’ve written about that, oh, several dozen times, using many different data sources and illustrations. But I only recently came across what I think is one of the simplest and most powerful demonstrations of this fact.

The “Lendbreen tunic” is a wool shirt that emerged from the Norwegian glacier that preserved it for roughly 1,700 years. In this Norwegian reconstruction, we see how much skilled labour that went into the creation of such a crude tunic.

I’m not going to attempt to summarize it. Just watch. It’s amazing.

OK, I’ll just mention the most basic fact: The estimated total time required to make that one shirt is … 760 hours!

Remember that the next time you buy a shirt of vastly better quality for less than you earn in one hour.