A Civilizing Process for 21st Century Discourse

A new secondary school curriculum strand for the future

In my last post, I provided a sketch of how the norms of Socratic dialogue lead to truth seeking. The mutual expectation that we each have an obligation to be consistent and coherent has been the most powerful heuristic for truth-seeking and discovery for 2500 years. Socratic Humanities, based on the approach outlined in my book, The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, is one of two core courses that all full time students take at The Socratic Experience, my virtual school for grades 3-8. We mostly read and discuss classic texts from around the world, which gives them a broad understanding of diverse moral and political beliefs beyond the parochialism of contemporary time and place.

The other core course that all full time students take is a STEM course. With respect to mathematics, we cover the standard sequence using apps including Kahn Academy and MathSpace supplemented by challenging problem solving from Brilliant.org, SAT math problems, and math competition problems. With respect to science, in middle school we cover standard topics and then let students specialize in high school, some taking standard topics others focused more on topics relevant to entrepreneurship and finance.

But after a few years of piloting various elements, this year we’re adding a complementary sequence to our STEM track that includes:

1. Progress studies

2. Decision Education

3. Empirical modeling

4. Forecasting and Prediction Markets

I see a strand of these STEM related topics as an additional element on the education side to civilize for the 21st century (though again online platforms that incentivize integrity such as Integrally.One are essential in the public sphere).

I’ll provide a high level outline of each:

1. Progress Studies

Economic historian Deirdre McCloskey has appropriately described the increase in standard of living as the “Great Fact.” For anyone who prefers innocent babies to live rather than die, anyone who prefers to eat adequately rather than experience periodic famines, anyone who enjoys clean clothes and hot showers, in short anyone who appreciates that they can read this in comfort, the “Great Fact” of modern progress is indeed the greatest fact of all.

In 2019, Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison wrote an influential article in The Atlantic proposing a new “Science of Progress,”

By “progress,” we mean the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries.

They go on to note that many thinkers and academic disciplines have studied aspects of progress, but that it is time for an integrated framework. This would include the role of economic and legal institutions, scientific research and engineering, cultural trends and attitudes, and anything else we might discover that tends to support human progress.

But if young people are ignorant of where progress has come from, and which aspects of our society are likely to be needed to support ongoing progress, then the next generation may see the loss of all we’ve gained. The Islamic “Golden Age” came to an end as did the innovative period of China during the Song dynasty, in both cases in part due to the suppression of independent thought. 20th century Marxism, led primarily by intellectuals, was devastating to those nations where it was most completely practice. In addition to the 100 million deaths, innovation mostly crept to a standstill and quality of life remained lower than in nations that maintained free enterprise. Insofar as young people today, especially college educated young people, are pro-socialist and anti-capitalist, there is a frightening possibility that the 21st century could see a repeat of the Marxist nightmare of the 20th century. For that reason alone, young people should learn the foundations of progress.

They need to be aware of the stunning progress that we’ve experienced, the role of institutions that support private property, rule of law, and freedom, the role of science, technology, engineering, and entrepreneurial innovation, and they need to know the role of tolerant, optimistic cultural norms that celebrate creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. They can also be introduced to institutional innovations that may accelerate and deepen progress, such as entrepreneurial jurisdictions and innovations in education. This curricular element will also serve to improve their mental health relative to those students indoctrinated into doom and gloom, resentment and envy, which are sadly staples of many mainstream schools and universities.

2. Decision Education

Decision education is an outgrowth of the work of Howard Raiffa and Ron Howard, who began moving from statistical decision theory to practical decision analysis many decades ago. Ron Howard and Carl Spetzler founded the Strategic Decisions Group which consulted for many organizations on decision making and soon discoverd that statistic decision theory was far from adequate for real world decision making. Carl Spetzler, in turn, founded the Decision Education Foundation, now led by his son, Chris Spetzler (who happens to be a parent at The Socratic Experience).

The diagram is an excellent summary:

1. If we don’t have the right frame, we’re not likely to make the best decision. So first we must ask, “What am I really deciding?”

2. The next step is clarify what we really want out of a decision. There will inevitably be tradeoffs among our priorities, so if we are not clear about our values, “What do I want,” then we’re not likely to make a quality decision.

3. The next step is to spend some time brainstorming on possible alternative among which we are deciding. If we don’t consider creative alternatives, then our decision is not likely to be optimal because we inadvertently limited our decisions space and may not even have considered the best options. Thus “What can I do?” in an open-ended thought process is a step on the way to making quality decisions.

4. At this point, when we’ve defined the frame, clarified values, and explored worthy alternatives, we need to gather useful information about those alternatives by answering the question, “What do I need to know?”

5. Obviously, we need to reason clearly. For simple decisions, we may simply need to pause and think logically. For more complex decisions we may need various formal decision tools, including statistical decision analysis for organizational decision-making. Thus “Am I thinking straight?” ranges from the simple to the complex.

6. The last step may be the most obvious - but it is remarkable how often it is neglected. If I haven’t made a commitment to follow through, if I can’t answer decisively “yes” to the question, “Will I do it?” then the entire process was decision theater, not quality decision making.

These six steps require a wide range of skills, ranging from a Socratic “know thyself” for several of them all the way down to research and formal statistical tools for some decisions. Each can be achieved at various levels of depth and sophistication. The goal is to have these themes recur across grades 3-12 so that gradually the six steps of good decision-making become second nature.

And as critical as these steps are for personal decision making, they also map onto the optimal decision making process for larger organizations and governments. The complexities become considerable in large organizations with multiple decision makers, but by means of starting with a deep internal knowledge of the process for oneself, we hope to develop young people who are at least aware of how far from decision quality most orginization decision making is, and what it would take to develop quality decision making in larger organizations.

3. Empirical modeling

Empirical modeling is the most traditional science activity in this curricular program. At the most basic level, students in middle school can create a spreadsheet showing that Distance = Rate * Time and play around with various real world scenarios: How long does it take to drive from Austin to Dallas at 70 mph, how long will it take a man to walk a mile at 5 miles per hour, etc. At the other end, of course, models can become endlessly complex, from modeling disease contagion, to economic systems, to climate. But the idea is to include a strand of modeling throughout the program so that developing and testing a model becomes second nature to students.

Spreadsheets are a simple tool for doing this because they allow students to create simple formulae after a brief introduction to spreadsheets. For our creative and entrepreneurial students, a deeper dive into financial models will become part of their high school STEM experience. More intellectually oriented students can dive into ever more complex empirical models.

In addition, a particular set of themes that are worth cultivating for our modeling are those outlined in Larry Siegel’s Fewer, Richer, Greener. Siegel is an investment analyst who is a long term optimist. His book is an empircally-driven approach to showing how in the future there will be fewer human beings, but they will be much richer, and the world will be much “greener.” Students (and teachers and parents) are free to disagree with any of his prognoses, but insofar as they are data-driven, they would need to come up with more accurate models than does he (and the sources he cites).

Because these issues are both controversial and saturated with media coverage that is often sensational and inaccurate, this focus will help students understand the extent to which our media ecosystem is often far removed from sound empirical analysis.

1. Forecasting and prediction markets

In 1990 economist Robin Hanson published “Could Gambling Save Science? Encouraging an Honest Consensus” in which he proposed a futures market in ideas. This concept later became more commonly known as a prediction market. His rationale at the time,

“Academia is still largely a medieval guild, with a few powerful elites, many slave-like apprentices, and members who hold a monopoly on the research patronage of princes and the teaching of their sons. Outsiders still complain about bias, saying their evidence is ignored, and many observers [Gh,Re,Syk,Tu] have noted some long-standing problems with the research component of academia. (Teaching is not considered here.)

Peer review is just another popularity contest, inducing familiar political games; savvy players criticize outsiders, praise insiders, follow the fashions insiders indicate, and avoid subjects between or outside the familiar subjects. It can take surprisingly long for outright lying by insiders to be exposed [Re]. There are too few incentives to correct for cognitive [Kah] and social [My] biases, such as wishful thinking, overconfidence, anchoring [He], and preferring people with a background similar to your own.”

He then explained how the problem was that academic publishing does not provide truth-seeking incentives - whereas a prediction market would.

Philip Tetlock first published Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? in 2005 after finding that “experts” did no better than ordinary people at predicting the future - even in domains in which they were regarded as experts. Tetlock went on to learn about forecasters who were more accurate at predicting future trends. The best, those who consistently outperform the norm, he describes as “Superforecasters” in his 2015 book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. These superforecasters were discovered through the Good Judgment Project, launched in 2011 to see if some people could consistently provide more accurate predictions (Relevantly, Carl Spetzler, encountered above in the section on Decision Education, was on the original advisory board of the Good Judgment Project.) More recently, superforecasters were 30% more accurate in making geopolitical predictions than were intelligence analysts with access to classified information.

There are several platforms where students can first learn to follow forecasting or prediction markets and then learn to make their own predictions. The two I’m most interested in having them learn are:

1. Metaculus

2. Good Judgment Open

I’ve previously had students attempt predictions in these competitive environments - and it is VERY difficult. That said, simply making the attempt to outpredict others reduces the extent to which students express glib opinions based on media headlines to a dramatic extent.

Without in any way attempting to influence a student’s beliefs, the very fact of being exposed to the world of prediction markets trains students in epistemological modesty. If we want students to develop better judgment, we need first for them to know that they don’t know (Socratic inquiry 101). The tools we will have provided for them both in our Socratic Humanities courses as well as in the list of topics above will prepare them well to be more rational and accurate thinkers than they would otherwise have been.

But What About Biology, Chemistry, and Physics?

Students who want to take standard biology, chemistry, and physics may do so through ASU, which provides great conventional courses. Only about 20% of college students major in STEM fields.

In 1999, Phi Delta Kappa, one of the most respected educational organizations in the United States, published an article “Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread: Manufacturing Crises in Education.” The article makes the case that enemies of public education deliberately manufacture crises in order to undermine support for public education. The author recommends that, in response to many of the alleged failings of public education, we should apply the “So what?” test. One of his examples of a manufactured alarmist finding is the statistic that fewer than 10 percent of students are attentive in their high school science classes. He claims that this is a “So what?” finding that should be ignored. His rationale:

“No ‘index of attentiveness’ is provided, tempting readers who have not been in recent close contact with large groups of adolescents to infer that 10 percent is a low value.”

There is no reason to believe the situation has gotten better - it might be even worse today.

At the same time, there is no reason for students who are not interested in a STEM career to learn most of the content of high school science. I love science but find that most of high school science was a waste of time. I’ve never needed to balance chemical equations as an adult.

Often people justify required science courses in order to encourage students to become rational decision makers or scientifically literate. There is little evidence that this has been an effective strategy after a century of required biology, chemistry, and physics courses.

The program above can be integrated into a wide range of topics, including science, business, social studies, and more. In my experience, students immediately understand why these themes and the associated skills ARE relevant to their lives. And the opportunities to apply mathematics in decision education, empirical modeling, and forecasting are unlimited.

In the meantime, students are learning skills that are valuable to them and which could provide a civilizing process for 21st century discourse.