“Models are opinions embedded in mathematics” — Cathy O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction
Pictured: Neumann János Lajos, father of game theory. A mathematical concept utilized heavily in the prediciton of human behavior.
They say those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it. I argue an extension of that axiom should be “those who understand history are doomed to watch others repeat it.” We are witnessing a messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. After two decades of military occupation, the US government finally decided that enough was enough and that we had wasted too many resources on a conflict that only benefited defense contractors and big business. No matter how profitable that war had proven to the elite few, one fact remains: we lost the war. There are myriad reasons why we lost the conflict. However, I will be focusing on a single observation that plagues US policy decisions in several areas of society. I argue our most fatal error is the blind faith we place in emotionally detached mathematical models. One individual I conversed with about the matter of Afghanistan voiced the following confusion:
“The numbers say that we were absolutely dominating the insurgents. We killed so many of them. How could we have lost?”
This cognitive dissonance in the face of reality acting in antagonism to data echoed a conversation I had with the privileged students of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When I voiced the fact that the current socio-economic structure served little purpose to my tribe and that social mobility is almost unheard of in the social strata I’m most familiar with, this was the retort I received:
“Well, the data says that there’s more economic mobility in the United States than anywhere else on the planet. The data says so. Clearly your personal reality is false.”
Clearly, I, and so many others like me, are living a false reality. A fascinating declaration.
It doesn’t matter that I witness Black Amerikans struggling time and time again to escape the chains of the ghetto only to be knocked back down to our ‘place in society’ by unforeseen barriers such as generational poverty, intergenerational trauma, and draconian policing tactics. It doesn’t matter that the United States has some of the most dangerous cities globally, only surpassed by cartel-owned cities in South America. We can ignore that Amerika has some of the world's poorest citizens, with the majority of our wealth held by a cabalistic minority. The data says that we’re a utopia. Thus, any arguments to the contrary are on account of an alleged dissociation from reality. The official title for this warped view of reality is known as behavioralism, a political theory founded by Charles Merriam which has served as the basis for data collection for US policymakers since the 1920s. To apply behavioralism models to a situation eerily similar to the one we’re currently facing, we will approach the previous strategic blunder known as the Vietnam War.
During the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese forces lost approximately 667,130–951,895 military personnel, whereas the South Vietnamese forces lost half that number at an approximate 333,620–392,364 [Tucker, Spencer C (2011). The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History]. By these estimates, the Vietnam War should have been a unilateral victory for the South Vietnamese and their foreign allies. Instead, the world witnessed the eventual sublation of South Vietnam into North Vietnam and the expulsion of foreign military assets from the newly unified nation. US strategists failed to factor in parameters such as foreign and domestic public support, the natural advantage guerrilla warfare holds over conventional war during conflicts of attrition, and the simple fact that you cannot force foreign ideologies and philosophy upon a sovereign nation that does not want our way of life and expect them to accept the change in dogmatism blindly. These strategies only work when you’ve entirely stripped a tribe of their original cultural identity after years of subjugation and oppression, such as the historic anglicization of the Irish people. Even so, revolutionary ideologies will persist and propagate among the culturally aware individuals who refuse to forget the atrocities committed against their people.
We made the same mistakes during Korea, which ended in a stagnant stalemate that continues today. Recently, we made the same mistakes in Afghanistan which, yet again, embarrassed the perceived US military juggernaut on the global theater. Time and time again, we rely on conventional military tactics and conservative data models, which paint an enticing simulation to military command. Time and time again, we are painfully reminded how fatal data worship is when executed with blind zealotry. The shortcomings of behavioralism don’t end with military strategy. Indeed, many fatal defects of behavioralism have nothing to do with foreign adversaries.
For instance, let us analyze the 1995 case of Duane Buck, a Black resident of Harris County, Texas, and a Death Row inmate convicted of homicide. During Buck’s initial trial, the Texan court system argued between giving Buck life in prison with the chance of parole or simple execution. Buck’s defense attorney called psychologist Walter Quijano to trial to offer his professional opinion on the matter. Quijano’s opinion was as follows. The recidivism model expresses that, mathematically, impoverished Black men are more likely to return to prison upon release. The recidivism model fails to factor in the more abstract reasons behind the cyclical curse that face Black men in the United States, such as the generational trauma inflicted by years of slavery. Such conceptual and complex matters have little value to the recidivism model. The recidivism model only cares that the numbers predict a more likely return to the prison system. Thus Mr. Buck was sentenced to execution on the sole principle of his race and upbringing, which the Harris County court system eagerly agreed to. Duane Buck remains on Death Row to this day [Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O’Neil].
Let us also analyze the greatest lie that the United States tells its struggling citizens, that we are the wealthiest and most economically comfortable nation on the planet. Indeed, our country does have an impressive amount of wealth. However, we fail to emphasize that most of the nation’s wealth is held by the privileged few and not by the average citizen. Seven out of ten of the wealthiest people on the planet hail from the US with a combined wealth that eclipses the wealth of most nations [Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/]. Additionally, the supposedly stable middle class blinds policymakers to the increasingly existential economic crisis. The US middle class has maintained steady raw income with a slow but gradual increase from $74,015 in 2010 to $78,442 in 2016. This data, however, fails to address the rapidly increasing cost of living, the increasingly typical 50-60+ hour workdays required to achieve this level of income, and the fact that $80,000 doesn’t mean the same thing in New York City as it means in Little Rock [https://www.investopedia.com/insights/americas-slowly-disappearing-middle-class/].
These disparities will persist so long as data worship remains pervasive in Amerikan culture. The oligarchic elite won’t address these disparities. The results of such are too valuable for their economic agenda. Unfortunately, as long as behavioralism reigns, the average citizen will also blindly accept all data charts presented to them as fact. Recently, political theorists have pushed for a paradigm shift towards post-behavioralist political theory. This shift, I argue, is a promising first step for political theory. Post-behavioralism argues that mathematical data is integral to providing a foundation of political and social understanding but that human behavior ultimately renders mathematical quantification prostrate before empathetic reasoning and emotional intelligence [Analyzing Politics, Ellen Grigsby]. For instance, there are several glaring flaws in the United States model of democracy. The voter is not the average citizen. When only a fraction of the population votes, the opinion of the people is grossly skewed. If X% of the population is purported to support political bill Y, it is impossible to determine whether it is the population which supports the bill or the voter base which supports it. When laws are veiled by obscurantist jargon, we require trade professionals to understand the laws for us. This cabalistic approach to lawmaking alienates the typical citizen from fully understanding the laws passed. Thus, when X% of majority lawmakers decide a law is best enacted we can rest assured that the majority of lawmakers still only represents a negligible fraction of the general population.
It is up to the people to challenge the decisions of the elite, and post-behavioralism provides a handy aegis against the spear of rhetoric that behavioralist statisticians and politicians will hurl at the typical person. Armed with education, the ordinary person can challenge the status quo. Instead of accepting apocryphal sophistry (i.e., trickle-down economics), the people can rebuke contemporary Machiavellian dogma. We will not accept that the wealthy deserve the most significant amount of income because, theoretically, the success of bureaucrats equals the success of the ordinary person. We will not accept that the recidivism model claims that imprisoning as many Black men as possible is necessary. We will not accept the belief that a strong military and superior firepower are the only diplomatic options worth employing against sovereign nations who refuse to bend the knee. Mathematical models and statistical data are essential, but empathetic reasoning should hold absolute sway. Old anachronisms birthed by the likes of Hobbes and Smith have no place in modern egalitarian society. They served their purpose during the bourgeois revolution of the late Feudal Era, but they no longer hold any rapport over the current social-economic model.
Viewing the world and its myriad events through a post-behavioralist lens is integral to the cultural progress of humanity as a species. We are not data. I am not a case study. Humans are not so easily simplified. If reality ceases to agree with the data measured by emotionally detached case studies, maybe it’s time to reevaluate how we gather and analyze data.
