- I'm asked to get specific.
"All right, Brin, you're convincing that there's an all-out war against facts and all fact-using professions, from science, journalism and teaching to the FBI and Officer Corps. But what can we do about it?"
I've spoken on this at Google and Facebook, at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and many other places where there's rising concern over what seems to be a concerted campaign not only against those professions -- (see Shawn Otto's The War on Science and Tom Nichols's book The Death of Expertise) -- but against even the notion that there's such a thing as Objective Reality! That anything is testable or provable.
Mind you, this stab at the heart of enlightenment civilization won't be blunted by corporate or government action, alone. One-by-one, we must sway our fellow citizens to forego the drug high of incantations and assertions, returning instead to the adult art of pragmatic negotiation.
But law and politics can play a role! And so -- suppose we get a Congress that's willing to push back against idiocracy. What item should be number one on its 'contract' or to-do list? How about ending the War on Facts?
I wrote the following at the request of the Internet Caucus of the recent convention in San Diego, of the California Democratic Party. It is posted in full on my website here.
== Ending the tyranny of lies and liars... without a "Ministry of Truth" ==
The "Fact Act" will help restore access to useful and confirmable information for public officials, politicians and citizens. Rather than establishing some suspect "Ministry of Truth,"1 this legislation will encourage systems that use diversity, competition and grownup adversarial methods, helping leaders and the public to parse lies and distractions from assertions that are supported by strong evidence.2
Under the Fact Act,
Congress will:
ONE: Restore the
nonpartisan Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), shut down in
the Gingrich era.3 Protect
the Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office. Take
measures to ensure that scientific processes in government agencies will be
both subject to critical accountability and liberated from partisan political
pressures.
TWO: Restore full
funding and staffing to the executive Office of Science and Technology Policy
(OTSP). This bill further requires that the President must fill, by law, the
position of White House Science Adviser from a diverse and bipartisan slate of
qualified candidates offered by the Academy of Science, and the Academy will
choose one, if the president does not. The Science Adviser shall have
uninterrupted access to the President for at least two one-hour sessions per
month.4
THREE: Each member of
Congress shall be summoned to choose, from his or her home district, two
advisers: one a scientist and one a statistician, funded to counsel the member
on matters of verifiable fact, and to take press or public questions referred
to them by the member. They will not opine on political issues, only upon the
degree to which assertions are supported by factual evidence.
Likely
effects? (a) Congress-members will no longer be able to shrug off fact/scientific
questions with "I’m not a scientist." (b) Any member's refusal to
appoint these advisers will be an implicit insult to the member's home
district, implying she or he could find no one qualified.
FOUR: These congressional
advisers — scientists and statisticians — shall gather a shadow "Fact
Congress" (FC) twice a year to supervise the restored OTA and OSTP and
ensure nonpartisan professionalism. Eclectic diversity and potent minority
input will ensure there is no "Ministry of Truth."
Without usurping Congressional authority over
policy and confirmations, the FC will question top scientific appointees
regarding grasp of important concepts in their field, e.g., ability to clearly
describe factual disputes and forecast potential policy outcomes and tradeoffs,
including levels of uncertainty.
If more than one quarter of Senators or
Representatives submit a question to the Fact Congress, the FC will respond
with advice according to best available models. Congress-members may bring
their FC advisers to House or Senate committee hearings and may charge them to
form ad-hoc shadow committees, to assist with explications of fact.
FIVE: The Fact Act must
restore the media Rebuttal Rule, prying open "echo chamber" propaganda mills. Any channel or
station using airwaves or accepting advertising will be required to offer five
minutes per day during prime time and ten minutes at other times to reputable
adversaries chosen by Competitive Argument Societies (CAS) that are approved by one quarter of
the members of the Fact Congress.5
Example: If the 25% most-conservative members
of the FC approve the 'Herbert Hoover Competitive Argument Society,' then HHCAS
may send a rebuttal spokesmen to MSNBC, tackling Rachel Maddow. A CAS chosen by
the most liberal 1/4 of the Fact Congress will get rebuttal time on Fox.
Rebuttals shall feature under-banners offering
links for more details... plus links to refutation of the rebuttal, or else to
fact-debates offered by pairs of competing CAS.6
Any channel or station not using the airwaves
or accepting advertising that nevertheless engages in avid political polemic,
with the intent to influence electoral outcomes, will be required to offer — at
intervals &md a small link, in one corner, that the viewer can use (or not)
to access counter-arguments, or else to track the sources of both the channel’s
assertions and funding.
SIX: Under auspices of
the Fact Congress, Competitive Argument Societies (CAS) and other entities will
be offered infrastructure and encouragement to engage in public debates over
policy or else disputations over fact. Fact disputations will argue matters of
verifiable or falsifiable evidence, aiming to narrow — but never eliminate —
uncertainties and to target specific questions meriting further study. Amateur
or non-credentialed participation will be encouraged.
SEVEN: Whistleblower
protections will be upgraded to encourage early/discreet problem solving within
institutions, and later (if necessary) protection of whistleblowers who feel
they are unfairly repressed by their own institution. By offering a scaled
sequence of safe and secure steps, the Fact Act will encourage first
self-reform, but ultimately the adversarial discovery of cleansing truth.
EIGHT: To encourage the
establishment of a wide variety of competing, credible fact-checking services,
Congress will appoint a commission of sages from all parties, starting with the
former presidents and retirees from the Supreme Court and top federal appeals
courts, along with other eminent Americans with unimpeachable reputations.
Among the duties of this panel will be to issue findings when a fact-checking
service is accused of "partisanship."
NINE: Under the 13th and
14th Amendments, this act requires that states mandating Voter ID requirements
must offer substantial and effective compliance assistance, helping affected
citizens to acquire their entitled legal ID and register to vote. Any state
that fails to provide such assistance, substantially reducing the fraction of
eligible citizens turned away at the polls, shall be assumed in violation of
equal protection and engaged in illegal voter suppression.
Corporations
demand compliance assistance when government imposes new regulations. So, why
can’t poor folks get help to comply with voter ID laws? If a state does this,
then its demand for Voter ID might be sincere. Alas, not one red state
allocates a cent to help poor citizens, elderly, the young, or divorced women
comply with onerous new restrictions on franchisement. Most have moved to close
DMV offices in counties where many Democrats live! (Why do no Democrats make
this point? Opposing voter ID leaves Democrats open to accusations of excusing
cheaters, but denouncing the GOP's corporate-citizen "compliance
assistance hypocrisy" is a clear win.)
TEN: Congressional
committees and procedures will be reformed so that members will be free to
negotiate as individuals, with less power vested in the majority leaders to
control legislation. Each member — whether in the majority or minority — will
have authority to issue one subpoena per year, compelling adversarial testimony
before a congressional committee of his or her choosing for as long as five
hours, so that the minority will always be able to question the party in power.
These member subpoenas will have priority over those issued by committee
chairs.
ELEVEN: The
seventy-three Inspectors General of federal departments and agencies shall be
brought under an independent office of the Inspector General of the United States (IGUS), whose appointment must be ratified by the council of sages (see
SEVEN) as well as the Senate. IGUS officers shall be commissioned, uniformed, trained and
held to quasi-military standards of discretion, honesty and meticulous devotion
to law.
TWELVE: This act
directs the administration to negotiate treaties extending transparency,
accountability and truth worldwide.
endnotes
1. The "Ministry of Truth"
Orwellian accusation will surely be trotted-out , it must be
prepared-for.
2. This principle underlies our competitive,
fact-using arenas: markets, democracy, science and justice courts. We know how
to do this.
3. Even Republican appointees on OTA kept
demurring from GOP dogma, saying "That's just not true," so it was
eliminated.
4. Donald Trump is the first President since
Truman not to fill this post. Evidently, even far-right candidates like David
Gelernter made the mistake of saying to him: "I'll tell you, when
something is clearly false." That was, apparently, unacceptable.
5. This "one quarter" provision
ensures there can be no accusation of majority bullying or "voting on
facts."
6. Again, emphasizing the competitive nature
of these measures will stymie accusations of a "Ministry of Truth" or
"free speech repression."
