Adversarial Collaboration: An Idea Whose Time has Come

I first heard of this phrase, adversarial collaboration, from this presentation by Daniel Kahneman at Edge.org.

This seems like an excellent idea with broad application in many fields.

I see that the University of Pennsylvania has an Adversarial Collaboration Project. Here is an excerpt from its description page:

As originally conceived by Economics Nobel Prize Laureate, Daniel Kahneman, adversarial collaborations call on scholars to: (1) make good faith efforts to articulate each other’s positions (so that each side feels fairly characterized, not caricatured); (2) work together to design methods that both sides agree constitute a fair test and that they agree, ex ante, have the potential to change their minds; (3) jointly publish the results, regardless of “who wins, loses or draws” on which topics. Each collaborator serves as a check on their adversary to confirm that the hypotheses are falsifiable, the scientific tests are fair, and the interpretations accurately characterize the findings. Because adversarial collaborations restrict scholars’ abilities to rig methods in favor of their own hypothesis and to dismiss unexpected results, adversarial collaborations are likely to advance debates faster and generate more reliable knowledge than traditional approaches.

Through this initiative, we hope to discover best practices for participating in adversarial collaborations and to normalize such practices in order to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the social sciences and its reputation among policy makers and the public.

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A Woman Biologist Defines “Woman”

Heather Heying offers this precise definition of woman in her article, I am a Woman and a Biologist. Here's an excerpt:

Women are adult human females.

Adults are individuals who have attained the average age of first reproduction for their species. They have reached the age of maturity. The term adult applies across many species, and is used to distinguish them from juveniles, who are not yet capable of reproduction.

Humans are members of the genus Homo. Our relatives in the genus Australopithecus, now extinct, are sometimes categorized as human as well. Every individual Homo sapiens is a human.

Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen).

It’s the definition of that last word—female—that will be difficult for some to accept.

Some people imagine that, because words are a social construct, so too, inherently, are the concepts that they describe. Some words do describe social constructs: offended, justified and controversy, for instance. These things have no reality in the physical universe, or if they do, that reality can be negotiated by social means.

Many words, however, do describe an underlying reality. Words like bulldozer, grasshopper, and woman.

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“What is a Woman,” Australian Department of Health Version

The British Department of Health struggles to answer a question: "What is a woman?" What's amazing is that I am absolutely sure that every member of this panel (and everyone reading this) freely and confidently uses this word in private conversation.

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Matt Orfalea’s New Mashup on the “Lab Leak Conspiracy Theory”

My faith that legacy media outlets will take journalism seriously has plummeted in recent years. Matt Orfalea's "conspiracy theory" mashup explores one issue (of many recent issues) where media coverage has been abysmal.

The news outlets kept claiming that the virus could never ever have emerged in a lab, yet they avoided this Peter Daszak video like kryptonite. Whenever they pompously trumpeted that the lab leak was a conspiracy theory, they NEVER mentioned this 2016 video featuring Peter Daszak, president of Eco-Health.

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Jonathan Haidt Explains Why Progressives Should Support Heterodox Academy

Jonathan Haidt, speaking on behalf of Heterodox Academy, which he co-founded. Here is an excerpt:

Universities are by their very nature progressive institutions. They encourage students and faculty to study the existing order and try to come up with something better. They broaden students’ minds and encourage curiosity about different people and ways of living. The ranks of nearly all progressive institutions are full of the top students from our top universities.

But something started going wrong on many campuses in the early 2010s. The combination of more polarizing social media, an intensifying culture war, and a changing Republican party drove an intense new kind of activism among a subset of progressive students that — whatever its noble motives — is damaging what is most precious about university life: the ability to have open and wide-ranging conversations. Students and faculty across the political spectrum now say that they are “walking on eggshells,” afraid that one slip could bring about terrible social consequences. As they learn to avoid making verbal “mistakes” in an unforgiving environment, students are being trained in habits of mind and heart that are antithetical to their own mental health, their own success in life, and the success of their political activism.

This is why many leading progressives have been warning, since 2015, that the new university culture is harmful to the country overall and to the Democratic party in particular . . .

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