Selection pressure refers to the factors in the environment which shape the evolution of a species through reducing reproductive success. This is the biological definition, more or less, but, slightly loosened, it can also apply to less tangible aspects of, say, a society. Scientific American interviewed Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg regarding his lecture given when he received the William James Fellow Award. It’s on the American educational system. His concerns? That we don’t teach wisdom.
Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE—what I call the alphabet tests—are reasonably good measures of academic kinds of knowledge, plus general intelligence and related skills. They are highly correlated with IQ tests and they predict a lot of things in life: academic performance to some extent, salary, level of job you will reach to a minor extent—but they are very limited. What I suggested in my talk today is that they may actually be hurting us. Our overemphasis on narrow academic skills—the kinds that get you high grades in school—can be a bad thing for several reasons. You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place. …
Do we know how to cultivate wisdom?
Yes we do. A whole bunch of my colleagues and I study wisdom. Wisdom is about using your abilities and knowledge not just for your own selfish ends and for people like you. It’s about using them to help achieve a common good by balancing your own interests with other people’s and with high-order interests through the infusion of positive ethical values.You know, it’s easy to think of smart people but it’s really hard to think of wise people. I think a reason is that we don’t try to develop wisdom in our schools. And we don’t test for it, so there’s no incentive for schools to pay attention.
This is a fascinating subject. Wise people I might consider to place on the list include the Dalai Lama and Pope Francis – but not Pope Benedict XVI. While I have little truck with religions in general, I do grant that, at their best, they teach the balancing of material desires with communal needs, and while some ideologies[1] will happily suggest that communal needs are minimal, will take care of themselves, or are merely excuses for socialism, I think it’s becoming increasingly clear that this theoretical hand waving has some visible faults in it.
His brief discussion of ethical reasoning is thought-provoking:
A lost source of ethics
I don’t always think about putting ethics and reasoning together. What do you mean by that?
Basically, ethical reasoning involves eight steps: seeing that there’s a problem to deal with (say, you see your roommate cheat on an assignment); identifying it as an ethical problem; seeing it as a large enough problem to be worth your attention (it’s not like he’s just one mile over the speed limit); seeing it as personally relevant; thinking about what ethical rules apply; thinking about how to apply them; thinking what are the consequences of acting ethically—because people who act ethically usually don’t get rewarded; and, finally, acting. What I’ve argued is ethical reasoning is really hard. Most people don’t make it through all eight steps.
Granted, it’s an interview, but I was a little disturbed when he stated that those who act ethically are not rewarded. Look, people don’t do things that are not rewarding on any level; many even won’t if there’s a delay involved. It’s not human nature; it’s evolution. If you’ve just lessened your reproductive chances, or those of your group, then that choice will most likely be discarded. An ethical choice will have some benefit, perhaps in the future. Maybe your choice means a lower probability that a riot will occur in the next ten years – because your’s is but one of many similar choices made. And that lack of a riot definitely benefits you. What really happens is that by being ethical, you’ve given up immediate gratification for delayed gratification.
All that said, I enjoyed the interview. Does he really think wisdom can be taught? Or is wisdom a politically charged term? Will atheists and Baptists clash over the definition of wisdom? I do agree that how we teach children today will shape how they act tomorrow, and if we don’t find ways to teach ethics and wisdom as being part of their everyday lives, then we’ll be poorer for it. Thus we have selection pressures; if we don’t emphasize ethics and wisdom, and instead put everything on results, then we’ll end up with a poorer society. And you can define poorer any way you wish.
So then I turn around and decide to drop in on Retraction Watch, which I always find amazing. First, I’m appalled to read this:
Springer purge of fake reviews takes down 10+ more neuroscience papers
Ten more? Oh, there’s a link, let’s see HOLY SHIT!
A new record: Major publisher retracting more than 100 studies from cancer journal over fake peer reviews
Springer is retracting 107 papers from one journal after discovering they had been accepted with fake peer reviews. Yes, 107.
To submit a fake review, someone (often the author of a paper) either makes up an outside expert to review the paper, or suggests a real researcher — and in both cases, provides a fake email address that comes back to someone who will invariably give the paper a glowing review. In this case, Springer, the publisher of Tumor Biology through 2016, told us that an investigation produced “clear evidence” the reviews were submitted under the names of real researchers with faked emails. Some of the authors may have used a third-party editing service, which may have supplied the reviews. The journal is now published by SAGE.
OK, so perhaps some of these originate outside the United States – but let’s not kid ourselves. Our ethics – or lack thereof – does tend to invade other countries. As a visibly successful country, it should not be surprising that many of our practices are adopted by other countries as part of their effort to keep up.
So it’s not all that hard to point at this as an exhibit backing up up Professor Steinberg’s contention that we’ve lost the ability to teach ethics & wisdom. Certainly, as my Arts Editor observed tonight, we’ve substituted the holy icon of wealth for any real respect for wisdom. And while this is inevitable for a creatures which had to demonstrate its fitness before it could mate (true on both sides of the line) back a few hundred thousand years ago, today that is not as appropriate as it may have once been. Today we have easy access to technologies which can wipe out eco-systems which, in turn, support us. We lack the ethics & wisdom to realize that by damaging these systems, we endanger ourselves and our children – it’s so much easier to build that housing development, sell the houses, and be fat, dumb, & happy with a clutch of children. Wisdom? That’s a harder, less beneficial gig.
But what we’re seeing in the report from Retraction Watch appears to be an actual industry growing up around cheating. That’s appalling, although actually fairly common throughout history. Now, I read that competition in academia is intense – but I’m a little bewildered that these folks, reputedly fairly bright, don’t understand the damage they’re risking to themselves. Between the immediate blot that they’re associated with fake peer reviews, and the quite possible chance that their results, which might be taken for gospel given the positive reviews, if it turns out their work is bad, could lead to the development of ineffective medications (this is for oncology research, ‘member?), and thus cost the lives of people who might have otherwise benefited from the development of effective medicines, well, how likely is it that they’ll be hired for important work – if they’re known as cheats?
Professor Steinberg, if you hadn’t guessed, laments the fading of the McGuffey Readers as one effective method for teaching ethics & wisdom. Rather than requiring grad students take and pass an ethics course[2], perhaps it’d be more effective for them to prove they’ve read all the McGuffey Readers – and live them.
It should make for some interesting essays.
1This is quite at odds with the common definition of libertarianism, which puts the individual and his primal, tangible desires at the center of the Universe – and then preaches that, by doing so, all will be well.
2Teaching an ethics course merely teaches one how to game the system.
