Irving Wladawsky-Berger

Are There Limits to the Predictability of Elections?

The elegant mathematical models of classical mechanics depict a world in which objects exhibit deterministic behaviors. These models make perfect predictions within the accuracy of their human-scale measurements.

But, once you start dealing with atoms, molecules and exotic subatomic particles, you find yourself in a very different  world, one with somewhat counter-intuitive behaviors governed by the laws of quantum mechanics.  The orderly, predictable models of classical physics have now given way to wave functions, uncertainty principles, quantum tunneling and wave-particle dualities.

But, the world of the very small is not the only one with non-deterministic behaviors.  So are highly complex systems, especially those systems whose components and interrelationships are themselves quite complex.  This is the case with social systems, which are based on individuals, groups, and institutions.  It’s quite a challenge to make accurate predictions in such systems due to the the dynamic nature of human behaviors.  Terms, like emergence, long tails, and butterfly effects - every bit as fanciful as quarks, charm and strangeness, - are part of the social systems lexicon.

Which brings us to the 2020 US election. “The polls were wrong again, and much of America wants to know why,” wrote NY Times journalist David Leonhardt in a recent article. “This is a disaster for the polling industry and for media outlets and analysts that package and interpret the polls for public consumption, such as FiveThirtyEight, The New York Times’ Upshot, and The Economist’s election unit,” said David Graham  in The Atlantic.

Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines

On November 18, the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future released its final report, The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines.  The Task Force was commissioned in the spring of 2018 by MIT President Rafael Reif to address what may well be the most critical question of the digital economy: as emerging technologies raise aggregate economic output and the wealth of nations, will they also enable people to attain higher living standards, better working conditions, greater economic security, and improved health and longevity?  An interim report was released in September, 2019.

“Amidst a technological ecosystem delivering rising productivity, and an economy generating plenty of jobs (at least until the COVID-19 crisis), we found a labor market in which the fruits are so unequally distributed, so skewed towards the top, that the majority of workers have tasted only a tiny morsel of a vast harvest,” is the Task Force overriding conclusion.  Yet, it argues that with better policies in place, more people could enjoy good careers even as new technologies transform the very nature of work.

What Is the Social Responsibility of Business?

On September 13, 1970, the NY Times Magazine published an essay by University of Chicago economist and 1976 Nobel Prize recipient Milton Friedman - “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.”  Friedman’s essay turned out to be one of the most influential ever published in the world of business.  To mark its 50th anniversary, the NY Times reached out to 22 business leaders and top economists and asked their opinion on what Friedman got right and wrong in his essay.

“Friedman, who died in 2006 at the age of 94, was no mere economist; he was a kind of celebrity,” noted Andrew Ross Sorkin, NY Times financial columnist and editor.  “He became a regular on the talk-show circuit.  PBS even gave him a 10-part series. His economic theories, among the most consequential of the 20th century, still hold sway over large parts of corporate America, maybe none more so than this 1970 manifesto on corporate governance.”

“In a free-enterprise, private-property system, a corporate executive is an employee of the owners of the business,” wrote Friedman in his 1970 essay.  “He has direct responsibility to his employers.  That responsibility is to conduct the business in accordance with their desires, which generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.”  Business concerns beyond making profit, - such as “promoting desirable social ends,” or “providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else,” - amounted to “preaching pure and unadulterated socialism.”

To better appreciate the importance of Friedman’s essay, let’s take a brief look at the historical context around the time it was published.

The Public Face of Science - Implications of the Covid Crisis

The Public Face of Science was launched four years ago by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to better understand the complex relationship between scientists and the American public.  The initiative has now published three reports.

The first, Perceptions of Science in America, was published in 2018.  It found that a majority of Americans have expressed a great deal of confidence in the scientific community, a confidence which has remained stable over the past thirty years.  But, it also found that confidence in science varied based on demographics, including age, race, educational attainment, regional location, political affiliation and other characteristics.  The report recommended additional research to better understand why certain topics were particularly controversial, especially climate change, vaccine safety, and genetically modified foods.

It was followed by Encountering Science in America, which was published in 2019.  This second report explored the diverse and expanding range of opportunities for people to learn about science outside the classroom, including visits to science centers and museums, general news sources, online information, social media, and entertainment.  It concluded that such a complex landscape calls for a multifaceted approach to the public face of science, and recommended additional research to better understand how effective communications and engagements shape the public’s interest in their understanding and support of science.

Priorities for the Future, the third and final report, was published in August of 2020.  While the report doesn’t directly address the implications of Covid-19 to the Public Face of Science initiative, it does so in an accompanying document which highlights the critical role played by science in ensuring the well-being of individuals and society during the pandemic.  “[T]he experience with COVID-19 reinforces the need for continuing thoughtful work to address public access to reliable scientific content and to enhance the public’s capacity to identify and reject misinformation and disinformation (intentionally false information).”