Quality Tends To Go To Hell

Judge Richard Posner has published a fun little essay in the most recent Atlantic Monthly (not yet available online, but sure to be posted on Reductio Ad Absurdum when it is) entitled "The Professors Profess." Posner's targets are academics who pontificate ad nauseaum on subjects well outside their fields of expertise (although his argument could also be applied to bloggers) and often wind up embarrassing themselves. As Posner puts it,

Academics are smart and fast, and, in nonscientific fields such as law and history, they can be glib. They are able to supply plausible commentary at short notice on pretty much any subject that engages the interest of the public. The greater that interest, the greater the outpouring of instant commentary. But when academics speak off the cuff, especially about matters outside their areas of expertise, quality tends to go to hell.

I just love how Posner puts it so matter-of-factly: quality tends to go to hell.

And it's true. Paul Krugman, who was once a respected economist (and perhaps still is, although with nearly every column lately, his reputation takes a deserved hit), perhaps illustrates this best, and conveniently his latest column contains a whopper similar to those that Posner criticizes in his essay:

I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.

More than anything, it's goofy predictions like that, rather than Krugman's own Enron non-scandal that has lately become Andrew Sullivan's obsession, that suggest Krugman should leave the punditry business and retreat to the safety of the academy. But this is what can happen, as Posner suggests, when we expect pundits to wax knowledgeably on a variety of subjects well outside their expertise, and to Krugman's credit, at least he has more training in the social sciences, his area of broad commentary, than journalists like Robert Scheer or Maureen Dowd, or even a couple of mechanics (albeit mechanics who are popular on NPR), whose commentary on social affairs is somewhat more lacking.

One of the positives of Jim Bennett's "technological reformation" -- the explosion of internet publishing -- is that such nonsense no longer goes unanswered and unchallenged. One of the (minor) drawbacks is that the chatter level on the net has grown significantly (bloggers writing about bloggers writing about pundits, slicing and dicing and quoting in staccato bursts). The explosion of chatter probably helps explain the success of sites like Arts and Letters Daily, which filters the chatter and highlights some real gems in the field of letters and culture. That's my own goal with Reductio Ad Absurdum, although the focus is politics and culture. And even that is a reaction to my past one-line slicing and dicing (chatter!) of various articles that had epitomized Reductio when it was still on this site. Some writing on the web deserves to be read and considered and perhaps even read again, with minimal slicing and dicing. In other words, quality has not totally gone to hell.

[Posted at 21:23 CST on 01/30/02] [Link]