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Intellectuals and Society
The influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals.
Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society—and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.
Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society—and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published December 10, 2009
About the author
Thomas Sowell
84 books4,717 followersThomas Sowell is an American economist, social commentator, and author of dozens of books. He often writes from an economically laissez-faire perspective. He is currently a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 2002 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science.
Sowell was born in North Carolina, where, he recounted in his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, his encounters with Caucasians were so limited he didn't believe that "yellow" was a hair color. He moved to Harlem, New York City with his mother's sister (whom he believed was his mother); his father had died before he was born. Sowell went to Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out at 17 because of financial difficulties and a deteriorating home environment. He worked at various jobs to support himself, including in a machine shop and as a delivery man for Western Union. He applied to enter the Civil Service and was eventually accepted, moving to Washington DC. He was drafted in 1951, during the Korean War, and assigned to the US Marine Corps. Due to prior experience in photography, he worked in a photography unit.
After his discharge, Sowell passed the GED examination and enrolled at Howard University. He transfered to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He received a Master of Arts in Economics from Columbia University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from the University of Chicago. Sowell initially chose Columbia University because he wanted to study under George Stigler. After arriving at Columbia and learning that Stigler had moved to Chicago, he followed him there.
Sowell has taught Economics at Howard University, Cornell University, Brandeis University, and UCLA. Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman.
Sowell was born in North Carolina, where, he recounted in his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, his encounters with Caucasians were so limited he didn't believe that "yellow" was a hair color. He moved to Harlem, New York City with his mother's sister (whom he believed was his mother); his father had died before he was born. Sowell went to Stuyvesant High School, but dropped out at 17 because of financial difficulties and a deteriorating home environment. He worked at various jobs to support himself, including in a machine shop and as a delivery man for Western Union. He applied to enter the Civil Service and was eventually accepted, moving to Washington DC. He was drafted in 1951, during the Korean War, and assigned to the US Marine Corps. Due to prior experience in photography, he worked in a photography unit.
After his discharge, Sowell passed the GED examination and enrolled at Howard University. He transfered to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He received a Master of Arts in Economics from Columbia University, and a Doctor of Philosophy in Economics from the University of Chicago. Sowell initially chose Columbia University because he wanted to study under George Stigler. After arriving at Columbia and learning that Stigler had moved to Chicago, he followed him there.
Sowell has taught Economics at Howard University, Cornell University, Brandeis University, and UCLA. Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman.
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April 9, 2020
What Makes You So Smart?
“There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in society than the era in which we live.” True or not, for Sowell this is not a good thing. According to him “An intellectual’s work begins and ends with ideas.” But since ideas are not facts, intellectuals, particularly ‘public’ intellectuals, often speak unintelligently and when those to whom they speak have power, the rest of us suffer.
This widespread lack of intelligence among intellectuals comes about because intellectuals live in closed communities, usually among academics, who provide confirmation of each other’s ideas without reference to the “world outside”. Such isolation creates ideologies which “seek to explain conflicting social visions by differing ‘value premises’ among those on opposing sides of various issues.” Sowell believes this is a dead end because “Ideological differences based on differing value premises are ultimately differing tastes, on which there is said to be no disputing.”
Sowell has a different vision. He seeks “to explain ideological differences by differing underlying assumptions about the facts of life, the nature of human beings and the nature and distribution of knowledge.” This is the clearly preferred option, he believes, because “differences based on beliefs about facts, causation, human nature, and the character and distribution of knowledge, are ultimately questions about different perceptions of the real world, leading to hypotheses which can be tested empirically.”
The method suggested by Sowell to carry out these empirical tests is basically common sense. At this point he has a problem however. He doesn’t approve of consensus politics as verification of what constitutes reality because “the consensus of the group about a particular new idea depends on what that group already believes in general—and says nothing about the empirical validity of that idea in the external world.” Yet he also doesn’t like ‘experts’ because they may be knowledgeable but lack judgment in a manner typical of all intellectuals. His presumption that there is common agreement about human nature and causation, much less what constitutes factual information is startling but he doesn’t seem to feel the need for its factual confirmation.
Sowell provides no solution to this impasse except to say that those carrying out the necessary empirical verification of ideas must be “held accountable”. To whom these researchers should be accountable is not clear. Their disciplinary colleagues are obviously not adequate since they will simply confirm existing biases. The electorate, one presumes, is not competent to make such judgments. By default it appears that some sort of government agency, perhaps a Directorate of Scientific Validity should be established. Stalinist perhaps, but unfortunately necessary.
This last remark is transparently sarcastic. But it is difficult to take any other stance toward Sowell’s thought. There are factoids from a wide range of sources, usually intellectuals, strewn about on every page. But these are selected tendentiously to make the point that he already had in mind. Most of the material he presents as supporting his argument is subject to vastly different interpretations than he chooses to give it. One tires quickly from his glib use of ‘notable’ opinions from economists, historians, and social scientists of which he approves and the offhand rejection of others as merely ‘intellectual’.
Sowell puts great store in science. But he seems to have little grasp of what constitutes scientific method or the content of discussions carried for centuries about the philosophy of science and the meaning of scientific results. For him scientific verification is presumed casually as a ‘thing’ that is obtainable by some pretty basic, down to earth, kick the tires, type of tests. The intellectual elites make the business of observation, experimentation and fact-checking far more complicated than it is to ensure their control over the process. And, as he has shown, these elites cannot be trusted.
Sowell quotes Eric Hoffer approvingly: “One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.” Indeed this accusation should be directed at Sowell himself. After all, this is a book of ideas condemning books about ideas. It is written by an intellectual who is trashing the work of intellectuals. It is a parody of itself, from its asinine descriptions of those who work with their minds, to the scandal of suggesting that those who do are self-serving con men (and women presumably, but there aren’t many mentioned by Sowell).
Intellectuals and Society is a polemic - or perhaps, better said, a parody of a polemic - not a serious study in how ideas are generated, or criticised, or get transformed into technology or social policy. It is facile and only superficially erudite. It is meant to play to a crowd that feels that society is on a downhill path and is looking for someone to blame, pillory, and replace. So it fits rather well with the current politics of the Right in the United States. It simultaneously justifies their skepticism about the results of science from climate change to educational curricula, and suggests that they are actually more competent than everyone else thinks they are. More dangerously, It feeds their paranoia as well as their feelings of judgmental competence. Sowell’s brand of political partisanship posing as intellect was described and castigated a century ago by Julien Benda [https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...]. Benda called it treason. I think that’s the correct word.
I think it was John dos Passos who said that Americans believe that their neighbors have no right to know more than they do. Intellectuals and Society is a confirmation of that hypothesis.
Postscript: Sowell’s populist message has a pedigree in American philosophy. George Santayana was the darling at Harvard of what would now be called the neo-liberal set at the turn of the 20th century. Sowell shares many of the same prejudices, misconceptions, and contradictions with Santayana. See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
“There has probably never been an era in history when intellectuals have played a larger role in society than the era in which we live.” True or not, for Sowell this is not a good thing. According to him “An intellectual’s work begins and ends with ideas.” But since ideas are not facts, intellectuals, particularly ‘public’ intellectuals, often speak unintelligently and when those to whom they speak have power, the rest of us suffer.
This widespread lack of intelligence among intellectuals comes about because intellectuals live in closed communities, usually among academics, who provide confirmation of each other’s ideas without reference to the “world outside”. Such isolation creates ideologies which “seek to explain conflicting social visions by differing ‘value premises’ among those on opposing sides of various issues.” Sowell believes this is a dead end because “Ideological differences based on differing value premises are ultimately differing tastes, on which there is said to be no disputing.”
Sowell has a different vision. He seeks “to explain ideological differences by differing underlying assumptions about the facts of life, the nature of human beings and the nature and distribution of knowledge.” This is the clearly preferred option, he believes, because “differences based on beliefs about facts, causation, human nature, and the character and distribution of knowledge, are ultimately questions about different perceptions of the real world, leading to hypotheses which can be tested empirically.”
The method suggested by Sowell to carry out these empirical tests is basically common sense. At this point he has a problem however. He doesn’t approve of consensus politics as verification of what constitutes reality because “the consensus of the group about a particular new idea depends on what that group already believes in general—and says nothing about the empirical validity of that idea in the external world.” Yet he also doesn’t like ‘experts’ because they may be knowledgeable but lack judgment in a manner typical of all intellectuals. His presumption that there is common agreement about human nature and causation, much less what constitutes factual information is startling but he doesn’t seem to feel the need for its factual confirmation.
Sowell provides no solution to this impasse except to say that those carrying out the necessary empirical verification of ideas must be “held accountable”. To whom these researchers should be accountable is not clear. Their disciplinary colleagues are obviously not adequate since they will simply confirm existing biases. The electorate, one presumes, is not competent to make such judgments. By default it appears that some sort of government agency, perhaps a Directorate of Scientific Validity should be established. Stalinist perhaps, but unfortunately necessary.
This last remark is transparently sarcastic. But it is difficult to take any other stance toward Sowell’s thought. There are factoids from a wide range of sources, usually intellectuals, strewn about on every page. But these are selected tendentiously to make the point that he already had in mind. Most of the material he presents as supporting his argument is subject to vastly different interpretations than he chooses to give it. One tires quickly from his glib use of ‘notable’ opinions from economists, historians, and social scientists of which he approves and the offhand rejection of others as merely ‘intellectual’.
Sowell puts great store in science. But he seems to have little grasp of what constitutes scientific method or the content of discussions carried for centuries about the philosophy of science and the meaning of scientific results. For him scientific verification is presumed casually as a ‘thing’ that is obtainable by some pretty basic, down to earth, kick the tires, type of tests. The intellectual elites make the business of observation, experimentation and fact-checking far more complicated than it is to ensure their control over the process. And, as he has shown, these elites cannot be trusted.
Sowell quotes Eric Hoffer approvingly: “One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation.” Indeed this accusation should be directed at Sowell himself. After all, this is a book of ideas condemning books about ideas. It is written by an intellectual who is trashing the work of intellectuals. It is a parody of itself, from its asinine descriptions of those who work with their minds, to the scandal of suggesting that those who do are self-serving con men (and women presumably, but there aren’t many mentioned by Sowell).
Intellectuals and Society is a polemic - or perhaps, better said, a parody of a polemic - not a serious study in how ideas are generated, or criticised, or get transformed into technology or social policy. It is facile and only superficially erudite. It is meant to play to a crowd that feels that society is on a downhill path and is looking for someone to blame, pillory, and replace. So it fits rather well with the current politics of the Right in the United States. It simultaneously justifies their skepticism about the results of science from climate change to educational curricula, and suggests that they are actually more competent than everyone else thinks they are. More dangerously, It feeds their paranoia as well as their feelings of judgmental competence. Sowell’s brand of political partisanship posing as intellect was described and castigated a century ago by Julien Benda [https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...]. Benda called it treason. I think that’s the correct word.
I think it was John dos Passos who said that Americans believe that their neighbors have no right to know more than they do. Intellectuals and Society is a confirmation of that hypothesis.
Postscript: Sowell’s populist message has a pedigree in American philosophy. George Santayana was the darling at Harvard of what would now be called the neo-liberal set at the turn of the 20th century. Sowell shares many of the same prejudices, misconceptions, and contradictions with Santayana. See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
December 17, 2010
This is a strange book. It's an intellectual speaking out against his profession. Sowell defines intellectuals as a people for whom ideas are the beginning and ending of their work. Tenured professors are the most ready example, but intellectuals can also be found outside academia. For example authors, commentators and public speakers who are paid to continue producing ideas. The key is that intellectuals need only continue to attract an audience for their ideas in order to remain relevant.
This reliance on ideas insulates intellectuals in a way that is uncommon in almost any other profession, they are relieved of accountability. Intellectuals can be, and often are, completely wrong and, as long as they can maintain their audience, they are insulated from the negative consequences of their ideas. Intellectuals and Society is about the sources and rationalization of the ideas of intellectuals, the way their ideas are propagated, why they are so often wrong, and the effects of the ideas on the world.
Sowell is a conservative and, not unexpectedly, his targets are liberals like Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Edmund Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, John Dewey and others. It may seem like an arbitrary or biased selection, but the reason for the focus on liberals comes down to a fundamental difference between liberalism and conservatism. Despite the popular assumption that conservatives only want the status quo, both conservatives and liberals want change. The difference lies in the types of change each wants. Liberals favor change that centralizes and idealizes decision making and power while conservatives seek the type of change that distributes power and that values tradition over ideology.
Liberals often assume that an individual or small group, knows better than the masses. First-hand experiences succumbs to prevailing notions. A concentration of knowledge is seen as being superior to distributed knowledge. Reason trumps experience. One-day-at-a-time rationalization wins over long-term and big picture thinking. Mundane knowledge is shunned for the specialized knowledge of elites. Sowell calls this the vision of the anointed.
Historically, Sowell argues, that type of reform has a bad track record. There are undeniable successes, civil rights, for example, but the failures of mistaken intellectuals, as seen in the section on intellectuals and war, were often catastrophic. Sowell is thorough, insightful and, while nobody will accuse him of having a great sense of humor, he is convincing.
This reliance on ideas insulates intellectuals in a way that is uncommon in almost any other profession, they are relieved of accountability. Intellectuals can be, and often are, completely wrong and, as long as they can maintain their audience, they are insulated from the negative consequences of their ideas. Intellectuals and Society is about the sources and rationalization of the ideas of intellectuals, the way their ideas are propagated, why they are so often wrong, and the effects of the ideas on the world.
Sowell is a conservative and, not unexpectedly, his targets are liberals like Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Edmund Wilson, George Bernard Shaw, John Dewey and others. It may seem like an arbitrary or biased selection, but the reason for the focus on liberals comes down to a fundamental difference between liberalism and conservatism. Despite the popular assumption that conservatives only want the status quo, both conservatives and liberals want change. The difference lies in the types of change each wants. Liberals favor change that centralizes and idealizes decision making and power while conservatives seek the type of change that distributes power and that values tradition over ideology.
Liberals often assume that an individual or small group, knows better than the masses. First-hand experiences succumbs to prevailing notions. A concentration of knowledge is seen as being superior to distributed knowledge. Reason trumps experience. One-day-at-a-time rationalization wins over long-term and big picture thinking. Mundane knowledge is shunned for the specialized knowledge of elites. Sowell calls this the vision of the anointed.
Historically, Sowell argues, that type of reform has a bad track record. There are undeniable successes, civil rights, for example, but the failures of mistaken intellectuals, as seen in the section on intellectuals and war, were often catastrophic. Sowell is thorough, insightful and, while nobody will accuse him of having a great sense of humor, he is convincing.
March 24, 2020
The influence of the establishment political intelligentsia has helped spread many misconceptions about economics, race, history, foreign policy, and justice. Sowell, using empirical evidence and wit, tears down these misconceptions and shows the reader how proposals offered to problems are misguided. Among the notable intellectuals called out in this book are Arthur Schlesinger, John Rawls, Paul Krugman, Noam Chomsky, and John Dewey. I’m glad an updated and revised version of this book was released.
May 23, 2010
Though I've read a number of excellent new non-fiction releases in the past couple years, this one beats them all. Not only that, it'll likely be the most fascinating, disturbing, and brilliant thing I read all year.
Sowell lays out a beautifully researched case for his theme of elitist intellectuals in the West constantly attempting to subvert democracy in favor of oligarchy. Sowell defines intellectuals as professionals who live by ideas, whose end product is abstract and often ideological, and whose notions--whether they are successful or disastrous--are checked neither by the marketplace (as are the activities and notions of the "merchant class"), by elections (as are the ideas of politicians), or by other real-world repercussions (as are the work of scientists, for example). Rather, intellectuals need only continue to maintain the goodwill and indulgence of other intellectuals--that is, their peers in academia, media, and the arts.
Sowell supplies numerous examples. Just one is the mathematician Bertrand Russell and his career as public intellectual and pundit for many decades. Russell for a very long time advocated pacifism and was part of the movement toward military disarmament in Britain through the 1930s, stating that if "you are prepared to be defenseless and trust to luck, the other people, having no longer any reason to fear you, will cease to hate you, and will lose all incentive to attack you." Of course it was such notions (Sowell marks a sharp distinction between "notion" and "knowledge") being in vogue right up to the eve of WWII that created much talk about "merchants of death" and the vile "international Bedlam rearmament race" in reaction to Britain's growing but still modest Royal Air Force. Sowell remarks: "We now know that those aircraft and munitions provided the narrow margin by which Britain survived Hilter's aerial onslaught . . . despite a widespread view in 1940 that Britain would not survive."
Most pernicious, however, is not the expression of contrary, baseless, and even dangerous notions by intellectuals--no, much worse is the fact that such pundits continue, undisgraced, to disseminate their nonsense on a wide scale, unchecked by their own consciences, by significant public outcry, or by the rebuff of their peers. And they have the gall, time and again, to assert their right to promote cultural imperialism and to talk about the "stupidity" of conservatives, of ordinary people, and of democratic process. It is just such a bizarre climate among Western intellectuals that makes it possible for someone like Russell to swing from zealous pacifism to making the following sort of hawkish comment (in 1948), with no serious repercussions to his career as a pundit:
"Either we must have a war against Russia before she has the atom bomb or we will have to lie down and let them govern us. . . . Anything is better than submission."
And a decade later Russell was back on the pacifism bandwagon, advocating, if need be, letting the USSR rule the world if it meant preventing a war between nuclear powers. Conclusion? Someone with a healthy attitude toward his own ego would have shut up after the Royal Air Force saved his country from Germany's National Socialist party.
Ah, those crazy intellectuals. You can't live with them. You can't live without them.
Sowell lays out a beautifully researched case for his theme of elitist intellectuals in the West constantly attempting to subvert democracy in favor of oligarchy. Sowell defines intellectuals as professionals who live by ideas, whose end product is abstract and often ideological, and whose notions--whether they are successful or disastrous--are checked neither by the marketplace (as are the activities and notions of the "merchant class"), by elections (as are the ideas of politicians), or by other real-world repercussions (as are the work of scientists, for example). Rather, intellectuals need only continue to maintain the goodwill and indulgence of other intellectuals--that is, their peers in academia, media, and the arts.
Sowell supplies numerous examples. Just one is the mathematician Bertrand Russell and his career as public intellectual and pundit for many decades. Russell for a very long time advocated pacifism and was part of the movement toward military disarmament in Britain through the 1930s, stating that if "you are prepared to be defenseless and trust to luck, the other people, having no longer any reason to fear you, will cease to hate you, and will lose all incentive to attack you." Of course it was such notions (Sowell marks a sharp distinction between "notion" and "knowledge") being in vogue right up to the eve of WWII that created much talk about "merchants of death" and the vile "international Bedlam rearmament race" in reaction to Britain's growing but still modest Royal Air Force. Sowell remarks: "We now know that those aircraft and munitions provided the narrow margin by which Britain survived Hilter's aerial onslaught . . . despite a widespread view in 1940 that Britain would not survive."
Most pernicious, however, is not the expression of contrary, baseless, and even dangerous notions by intellectuals--no, much worse is the fact that such pundits continue, undisgraced, to disseminate their nonsense on a wide scale, unchecked by their own consciences, by significant public outcry, or by the rebuff of their peers. And they have the gall, time and again, to assert their right to promote cultural imperialism and to talk about the "stupidity" of conservatives, of ordinary people, and of democratic process. It is just such a bizarre climate among Western intellectuals that makes it possible for someone like Russell to swing from zealous pacifism to making the following sort of hawkish comment (in 1948), with no serious repercussions to his career as a pundit:
"Either we must have a war against Russia before she has the atom bomb or we will have to lie down and let them govern us. . . . Anything is better than submission."
And a decade later Russell was back on the pacifism bandwagon, advocating, if need be, letting the USSR rule the world if it meant preventing a war between nuclear powers. Conclusion? Someone with a healthy attitude toward his own ego would have shut up after the Royal Air Force saved his country from Germany's National Socialist party.
Ah, those crazy intellectuals. You can't live with them. You can't live without them.
April 12, 2017
the most comprehensive attack on the evangelical left that I've read
July 7, 2019
Some people who have reviewed this book negatively either A) have never read it, or B) are uncomfortable with the truths they have discovered. The key to understanding what Thomas Sowell means when he talks about intellectuals is that intellectuals are not simply "thinking people." Intellectuals are people whose *end product* is simply an idea, and this idea is not subject to traditional real-world validation processes, but is subjected to the weaker form of validation known as peer review. Why is this important? Einstein's peers in academia might have bashed some of his scientific theories, but history proved that Einstein's theories were more than just *his* theories when the first atomic bomb went off. Engineers' designs are put to the test every day. An auto mechanic's repair practices are validated daily as well. Every time an airline cuts ticket prices and more people buy tickets, theories about price elasticity are validated.
Academics who pontificate over supposed societal wrongs and how to fix them, however, are not subjected to this same type of validation. In this sense, intellectuals operate in a dangerous world where they can be extremely wrong on a variety of matters, but since an echo chamber usually emerges from their typically like-minded peers, these wrongs are not discovered until they have already caused societal damage. Furthermore, intellectuals have a natural set of incentives that causes them to make controversial statements, because no academic ever became famous or achieved stardom from simply agreeing with everyone else. The fatal flaw most intellectuals make is the subtle play where they hope that since you know they are an expert in an extremely narrow field that they must be an expert as well in all kinds of adjacent fields (which they are clearly not). Ultimately, things that improve over time tend to have a good feedback mechanism. That's why private companies tend to perform much better than government services. If a private company is not satisfying its target consumers, it sees that impact immediately in the form of quick feedback: loss of profit. Government agencies, like intellectuals, do not see this kind of quick feedback mechanism, allowing them to operate in an undesirable manner for far longer than a private company would be able.
Pick this book up to learn of the dangers that insulated intellectuals can do and to understand how natural incentives drive this behavior. This is yet another Thomas Sowell classic, and if you enjoyed his other classic works, you will enjoy this one as well.
Academics who pontificate over supposed societal wrongs and how to fix them, however, are not subjected to this same type of validation. In this sense, intellectuals operate in a dangerous world where they can be extremely wrong on a variety of matters, but since an echo chamber usually emerges from their typically like-minded peers, these wrongs are not discovered until they have already caused societal damage. Furthermore, intellectuals have a natural set of incentives that causes them to make controversial statements, because no academic ever became famous or achieved stardom from simply agreeing with everyone else. The fatal flaw most intellectuals make is the subtle play where they hope that since you know they are an expert in an extremely narrow field that they must be an expert as well in all kinds of adjacent fields (which they are clearly not). Ultimately, things that improve over time tend to have a good feedback mechanism. That's why private companies tend to perform much better than government services. If a private company is not satisfying its target consumers, it sees that impact immediately in the form of quick feedback: loss of profit. Government agencies, like intellectuals, do not see this kind of quick feedback mechanism, allowing them to operate in an undesirable manner for far longer than a private company would be able.
Pick this book up to learn of the dangers that insulated intellectuals can do and to understand how natural incentives drive this behavior. This is yet another Thomas Sowell classic, and if you enjoyed his other classic works, you will enjoy this one as well.
November 12, 2020
Moved to gwern.net.
May 2, 2013
I wish I had a year to comb through this amazing book of selective bias and write a lengthy rebuttal. If you read this book, keep in mind that his arguments are constructs of half-truths and ironically, represents the perfect example of what he calls, "verbal virtuosity". I found this review on Amazon and I'm reposting it here, as I agree with it in its entirety:
In this unbelievable book, Thomas Sowell has produced what must be the most incomplete discussion of modern U.S. History ever written. The book contains many factual errors and uses such lopsided statistics that one can get dizzy, even after the first chapter. I don't even know where to begin:
-Sowell implies that (liberal) intellectuals have great power and influence in our society. WAY off the mark. Big corporations, well-funded think-tanks and industry lobbying-groups call the shots in this age and Sowell knows it. To make matters worse, most think-tanks are either conservative or libertarian. Hardly a liberal arena....
-Sowell says that these intellectuals are "not accountable" for they propose or advocate. Well, neither are many OTHER folks in our society. (For-profit) doctors and hospitals for medical errors and wrongful deaths, Big Pharma for the very same reasons, accountants, CEOs and boards of directors for their company's profit-losses and/or stock collapse, big-money lawyers who sue without merit, etc., etc..
-And why *are* most college professors "liberal" ? Or at least "not conservative" ? Because they know the facts. Any honest teacher of history knows that the GOP has done little good for our country. The failed Presidents (Grant, McKinley, Harding, Hoover, Nixon, Bush I, Bush II, the stolen elections in the 1870s and 80s, the 1995-2007 Congress (very bad). And many other things...
-Sowell asks who the "robber barons" stole from, back in the 1800 and 1900s. How about the taxpayer - who paid for SUBSIDIES that went right into the rich-man's pockets.
-He mentions how the Ford Motor co. paid their employees well. Ya, 100 years ago ! How about since 1970 - where (national) wages have fallen 15%, adjusted for inflation. And this, in the age of RECORD corporate profits.
-The author blames the government (Pres. Hoover) for partially causing the Great Depression, by enacting tariffs. Actually, it was *business* that pushed for the protectionist bill...and Hoover simply went along with it. Over 1,000 economists (academics) urged Hoover NOT to sign the bill into law - but he did anyway....
-Throughout the book, Sowell (very carefully) doesn't mention the failed CONSERVATIVE intelligentsia. From Milton Friedman's market philosophies - being a big cause of the depression we're in now, to tax cuts "stimulating business investment", these ideas have been *disastrously* wrong...and have done great harm to our nation.
-Also, the for-profit "medical" intelligentsia - pushing for many tests, procedures and surgeries that have proven to be in-effective. Government simply goes along with what they want - they are the "experts", after all. But their ideas and theories have subsequently bankrupted our nation and contributed to what is likely the largest cause of death in the U.S. - the U.S. health care system.
-Sowell defends monopolies. Sure, they're not *all* bad...but too many are. From no-competition cable TV to Microsoft Windows to Frito-Lay, they routinely rip-off the American consumer. Or sell them low quality products. Take Frito-Lay - they don't have to make a good potato chip, since they control the market. So they make (cheap) chips that break. I get through about half a bag before I have to throw it out.
-On the Vietnam War, Sowell blames the liberal academia for our defeat there. Ouch ! To put it in perspective, there was concern that we didn't have enough troops in Iraq - with only 130,000 originally. This wasn't a problem in Vietnam - where we had (at one point) *500,000* troops in action. Plus heavy carpet-bombing throughout the (full) eight-year campaign - conservatives never got over the fact that we were ultimately defeated. But like always - they blame someone (or something) else....
-On gun rights, the author attacks liberals for advocating gun-control. This would have been a problem if they succeeded. BUT THEY DIDN'T: 35-40% of American homes contain a gun and there's no end in sight.
-Sowell attacks environmentalists for driving-up home prices. Maybe they did a little. But it's not even CLOSE to what *free-market* intelligentsia have done to home prices, since the 1990's !! Whether "securitizing" mortgage debt, removing capital-gains taxes on houses (causing "flipping"), lowering standards of risk assessment for home buyers, rubber-stamping bonds (from for-profit rating agencies), etc, etc. These forces did FAR more damage than any environmentalist could hope to do. We can't even blame the CRA of 1977 - proven to be a false reason for the housing bubble-crash.
-We also can't blame environmentalists for the Gulf Oil Spill. Big Oil was drilling offshore well before environmental laws kicked-in. But I'm sure Sowell tried to pull a fast-one here as well.
-Last, but not least, is Sowell's citation of the Federal Reserve system as "government". IT IS NOT GOVERNMENT. The Fed is a private banking cartel that sells *to* and buys *from* the government (the U.S. Treasury). This unbelievable statement by a professor of economics is shocking and sad. Sad because it's a *deliberate* attempt into fooling our nation's readers into thinking the Fed is part of the public-sector. The Fed is owned by profit-banks, *makes* profits in their business activity and has never been audited by Congress...or its investigative arms. This, because it is "not an agency" - quoting Ben Bernanke last year. Blaming the Fed for what they've done to our financial system (and country at large) is basically blaming a private-money cartel. A cartel that was created by the Morgans and Rockefellars nearly a century ago.
In this unbelievable book, Thomas Sowell has produced what must be the most incomplete discussion of modern U.S. History ever written. The book contains many factual errors and uses such lopsided statistics that one can get dizzy, even after the first chapter. I don't even know where to begin:
-Sowell implies that (liberal) intellectuals have great power and influence in our society. WAY off the mark. Big corporations, well-funded think-tanks and industry lobbying-groups call the shots in this age and Sowell knows it. To make matters worse, most think-tanks are either conservative or libertarian. Hardly a liberal arena....
-Sowell says that these intellectuals are "not accountable" for they propose or advocate. Well, neither are many OTHER folks in our society. (For-profit) doctors and hospitals for medical errors and wrongful deaths, Big Pharma for the very same reasons, accountants, CEOs and boards of directors for their company's profit-losses and/or stock collapse, big-money lawyers who sue without merit, etc., etc..
-And why *are* most college professors "liberal" ? Or at least "not conservative" ? Because they know the facts. Any honest teacher of history knows that the GOP has done little good for our country. The failed Presidents (Grant, McKinley, Harding, Hoover, Nixon, Bush I, Bush II, the stolen elections in the 1870s and 80s, the 1995-2007 Congress (very bad). And many other things...
-Sowell asks who the "robber barons" stole from, back in the 1800 and 1900s. How about the taxpayer - who paid for SUBSIDIES that went right into the rich-man's pockets.
-He mentions how the Ford Motor co. paid their employees well. Ya, 100 years ago ! How about since 1970 - where (national) wages have fallen 15%, adjusted for inflation. And this, in the age of RECORD corporate profits.
-The author blames the government (Pres. Hoover) for partially causing the Great Depression, by enacting tariffs. Actually, it was *business* that pushed for the protectionist bill...and Hoover simply went along with it. Over 1,000 economists (academics) urged Hoover NOT to sign the bill into law - but he did anyway....
-Throughout the book, Sowell (very carefully) doesn't mention the failed CONSERVATIVE intelligentsia. From Milton Friedman's market philosophies - being a big cause of the depression we're in now, to tax cuts "stimulating business investment", these ideas have been *disastrously* wrong...and have done great harm to our nation.
-Also, the for-profit "medical" intelligentsia - pushing for many tests, procedures and surgeries that have proven to be in-effective. Government simply goes along with what they want - they are the "experts", after all. But their ideas and theories have subsequently bankrupted our nation and contributed to what is likely the largest cause of death in the U.S. - the U.S. health care system.
-Sowell defends monopolies. Sure, they're not *all* bad...but too many are. From no-competition cable TV to Microsoft Windows to Frito-Lay, they routinely rip-off the American consumer. Or sell them low quality products. Take Frito-Lay - they don't have to make a good potato chip, since they control the market. So they make (cheap) chips that break. I get through about half a bag before I have to throw it out.
-On the Vietnam War, Sowell blames the liberal academia for our defeat there. Ouch ! To put it in perspective, there was concern that we didn't have enough troops in Iraq - with only 130,000 originally. This wasn't a problem in Vietnam - where we had (at one point) *500,000* troops in action. Plus heavy carpet-bombing throughout the (full) eight-year campaign - conservatives never got over the fact that we were ultimately defeated. But like always - they blame someone (or something) else....
-On gun rights, the author attacks liberals for advocating gun-control. This would have been a problem if they succeeded. BUT THEY DIDN'T: 35-40% of American homes contain a gun and there's no end in sight.
-Sowell attacks environmentalists for driving-up home prices. Maybe they did a little. But it's not even CLOSE to what *free-market* intelligentsia have done to home prices, since the 1990's !! Whether "securitizing" mortgage debt, removing capital-gains taxes on houses (causing "flipping"), lowering standards of risk assessment for home buyers, rubber-stamping bonds (from for-profit rating agencies), etc, etc. These forces did FAR more damage than any environmentalist could hope to do. We can't even blame the CRA of 1977 - proven to be a false reason for the housing bubble-crash.
-We also can't blame environmentalists for the Gulf Oil Spill. Big Oil was drilling offshore well before environmental laws kicked-in. But I'm sure Sowell tried to pull a fast-one here as well.
-Last, but not least, is Sowell's citation of the Federal Reserve system as "government". IT IS NOT GOVERNMENT. The Fed is a private banking cartel that sells *to* and buys *from* the government (the U.S. Treasury). This unbelievable statement by a professor of economics is shocking and sad. Sad because it's a *deliberate* attempt into fooling our nation's readers into thinking the Fed is part of the public-sector. The Fed is owned by profit-banks, *makes* profits in their business activity and has never been audited by Congress...or its investigative arms. This, because it is "not an agency" - quoting Ben Bernanke last year. Blaming the Fed for what they've done to our financial system (and country at large) is basically blaming a private-money cartel. A cartel that was created by the Morgans and Rockefellars nearly a century ago.
April 30, 2023
This is a fascinating idea: a study upon the nature and influence of intellectuals themselves upon society. What more appropriate group for study than the people dedicated to study? Many people have described the nature of academia, or the processes of research and development in American life, but as far as I know, nobody has turned the spotlight on intellectuals as a group. That lack means that such an analysis is not only warranted, but even needful.
Unfortunately, Sowell fails in this analysis on every meaningful level. In describing the errors of what he deems to be the intellectuals of American society he makes several fundamental errors that fatally doom this effort to describe the processes of intellect, and he does so in ways that should have been obvious to anyone before they sat down to write. In brief, in his criticism of intellectuals in American culture, Sowell commits—almost systematically—every error of logic, shallow misinterpretation and sin of omission that he accuses his subjects of performing. In many cases he commits the error he is describing an intellectual of committing AS HE IS DESCRIBING IT. He does so without any apparent recognition of his own participation in the exact same processes in a way that must be recognized as irretrievably hypocritical if not pathetically naïve.
I can't fully address the fallacious errors of this book because it is so rife with them that doing so would require a similarly lengthy text. Let’s just say that the logical errors are so fundamental, and Sowell’s embracing of them so complete, that they appear on nearly every single page, in every example, and in his every argument.
Let’s start with his first and probably least offensive error of logic. Sowell begins by defining intellect, its role in society and the differences between intellect and intelligence, or even that elusive concept: wisdom. “The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect,” according to his definition. Or, more succinctly: “Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect.” Now, right off, we’ve got a problem because that’s simply not the operative definition of intellect in the common understanding of the word. Here's what a dictionary has as a definition:
Unfortunately, Sowell then goes on to further lobotomize the definition by casting it across society so broadly as to make it a meaningless standard. His examples are drawn from the halls of academia to be sure, but he also includes editorialists, journalists, playwrights, psychologists, politicians (notably some who were anti-intellectual) religious leaders, doctors and a range of industrialists. Now, it is certainly true that there are intellectuals amongst any or all of those groups of people, but what Sowell does in lumping them together so haphazardly is create a pool of intellectuals and—at best—non-intellectuals from whom he can draw his examples. He then picks and chooses amongst them to make his case. In doing so, he seems to have redefined “intellectual” to mean “anyone with a public voice” no matter where that voice comes from, nor how it is expressed.
Furthermore, according to Sowell, intellectuals cannot be people who go about actually implementing the fruits of their ideas. They are not “policy wonks” or social engineers. They leave such things to others. Specifically mentioned, therefore, as NOT intellectuals are people like Jonas Salk and Bill Gates, whose mental efforts actually produced something that changed society directly. Intellect, it seems, is intelligence less judgment, action AND success.
I suppose if one really wants to parse the concept down, one could exclude Bill Gates from the concept of intellectuals on the basis of the relative newness and specificity of his intellectual efforts on a global and historical scale. It would be an error to do so, but it’s a comprehensible one. However, I defy anyone to reasonably describe Jonas Salk as not an intellectual. Sowell had to turn a particularly strange and elaborate backflip in order to justify that one.
In short, Sowell defines intellect as anybody he deems foolish, ineffectual or shallow, and whose efforts have had no meaningful influence on society.
(Yet he seems to have no sense that he might himself qualify according to his own standards.)
This failure of comprehension permeates the entire book, and Sowell goes into rhapsodic fallacious detail in describing the common errors of human beings as the faults of intellectuals.
Just one, of many, examples of this error:
Furthermore, what he attributes to the intelligentsia is, in fact, simply part of the human condition. Everyone acts outside their specialties, and we are all incentivized to do so. Not to do so is to deny a fundamental human quality. Specialization has a role, but to only act within that specialization is to reject intelligence itself.
Where Sowell’s efforts to describe a social phenomenon don’t simply fail but become truly offensive is in his presentation of other's ideas. Sowell either misrepresents the ideas that other scholars have presented or fails to comprehend them so badly as to make himself a fool exactly of the kind he is attempting to critique. I’ll give two examples, just to illustrate the point.
First, in his description of reactions to the police:
When intellectuals object to the number of shots fired in a particular situation, they are pointing out that the transition between an everyday policing problem and the more military role of the police in suppressing violence has been blurred or bypassed. They are pointing out that shots should not have been fired at all, let alone dozens or sometimes hundreds of them. That Sowell is unable to recognize this objection for what it is, and must instead cite statistics about the number of hits at a particular range, illustrates his failure to comprehend even the most obvious of intellectual statements.
(You may be able to see one of the reasons Sowell didn't cite examples for that particular objection. Doing so would make his argument and position quite vulnerable. He'd be in danger of siding with cases of police brutality and malfeasance, and that would undermine his true objective for this book. More on that in a bit....)
I could go into more detail about the specific examples that Sowell cites. Let’s just say that as he extrapolates into broader and even more meaningful areas (civil liberties, social justice, the justifications and prosecutions of war) Sowell goes from offensive to truly misguided and repugnant. In rationalizing the American participation in the Iraq War, for example, Sowell abandons any arguments where reasonable people can disagree and dives right into the horrific logic of submental rationalizations employed by the truly misguided. He engages in such sophistries as this:
I’ll conclude on this note: Where Sowell goes to some pains to explain that many of the people he describes as intellectuals are not engaging in their efforts cynically, having read this book I have no such expectation of Sowell. In fact, the only justification for this book that I can see is that it is a cynical resume for a lifelong bad faith operator. It is filled with so many errors of logic and assertion that it can only be a curriculum vitae for someone seeking grant money from think tanks funded by deep pockets. These organizations are actively and constantly seeking justification and arguments for the money they spend on political support. This book is a play for some of that funding, and the high-paying speaking engagements that go with it. It has no real value other than to outline the script for buyers of such a product. Nobody should bother attending such a lecture any more than they should bother with this book. It’s not, in fact, about intellectuals at all. It wasn’t written by one. It doesn’t serve any meaningful or worthwhile purpose other, perhaps, as an illustration of the lengths and breadths of mental hypocrisy and narcissism.
Unfortunately, Sowell fails in this analysis on every meaningful level. In describing the errors of what he deems to be the intellectuals of American society he makes several fundamental errors that fatally doom this effort to describe the processes of intellect, and he does so in ways that should have been obvious to anyone before they sat down to write. In brief, in his criticism of intellectuals in American culture, Sowell commits—almost systematically—every error of logic, shallow misinterpretation and sin of omission that he accuses his subjects of performing. In many cases he commits the error he is describing an intellectual of committing AS HE IS DESCRIBING IT. He does so without any apparent recognition of his own participation in the exact same processes in a way that must be recognized as irretrievably hypocritical if not pathetically naïve.
I can't fully address the fallacious errors of this book because it is so rife with them that doing so would require a similarly lengthy text. Let’s just say that the logical errors are so fundamental, and Sowell’s embracing of them so complete, that they appear on nearly every single page, in every example, and in his every argument.
Let’s start with his first and probably least offensive error of logic. Sowell begins by defining intellect, its role in society and the differences between intellect and intelligence, or even that elusive concept: wisdom. “The capacity to grasp and manipulate complex ideas is enough to define intellect,” according to his definition. Or, more succinctly: “Intelligence minus judgment equals intellect.” Now, right off, we’ve got a problem because that’s simply not the operative definition of intellect in the common understanding of the word. Here's what a dictionary has as a definition:
1. the faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels or wills; capacity for thinking and acquiring knowledge.Intellect is not intelligence less judgment. Judgment is part of understanding. You can no more divorce judgment from intellect than you can remove knowledge, thought or comprehension. One of the reasons we do not have an artificial intelligence is that we have been unable to develop a machine with judgment. Machines can rate, value and compare, but they do not judge. That’s what an intellectual does. Sowell’s definition “intelligence minus judgment” describes a machine, not an intellect.
2. capacity for thinking and acquiring knowledge of a high or complex order.
3. a particular mind or intelligence, esp. of a high order.
4. a person possessing a great capacity for thought and knowledge.
5. minds collectively.
Unfortunately, Sowell then goes on to further lobotomize the definition by casting it across society so broadly as to make it a meaningless standard. His examples are drawn from the halls of academia to be sure, but he also includes editorialists, journalists, playwrights, psychologists, politicians (notably some who were anti-intellectual) religious leaders, doctors and a range of industrialists. Now, it is certainly true that there are intellectuals amongst any or all of those groups of people, but what Sowell does in lumping them together so haphazardly is create a pool of intellectuals and—at best—non-intellectuals from whom he can draw his examples. He then picks and chooses amongst them to make his case. In doing so, he seems to have redefined “intellectual” to mean “anyone with a public voice” no matter where that voice comes from, nor how it is expressed.
Furthermore, according to Sowell, intellectuals cannot be people who go about actually implementing the fruits of their ideas. They are not “policy wonks” or social engineers. They leave such things to others. Specifically mentioned, therefore, as NOT intellectuals are people like Jonas Salk and Bill Gates, whose mental efforts actually produced something that changed society directly. Intellect, it seems, is intelligence less judgment, action AND success.
I suppose if one really wants to parse the concept down, one could exclude Bill Gates from the concept of intellectuals on the basis of the relative newness and specificity of his intellectual efforts on a global and historical scale. It would be an error to do so, but it’s a comprehensible one. However, I defy anyone to reasonably describe Jonas Salk as not an intellectual. Sowell had to turn a particularly strange and elaborate backflip in order to justify that one.
In short, Sowell defines intellect as anybody he deems foolish, ineffectual or shallow, and whose efforts have had no meaningful influence on society.
(Yet he seems to have no sense that he might himself qualify according to his own standards.)
This failure of comprehension permeates the entire book, and Sowell goes into rhapsodic fallacious detail in describing the common errors of human beings as the faults of intellectuals.
Just one, of many, examples of this error:
In short, at all levels of the intelligentsia, and in a wide range of specialties, the incentives tend to reward going beyond whatever expertise the particular member of the intelligentsia may have, and the constraints against falsity are few or non-existent. It is not that most of the intelligentsia deliberately lie in a cynical attempt to gain notoriety or to advance themselves or their cause in other ways. However, the general ability of people to rationalize to themselves, as well as to others, is certainly not lacking among the intelligentsia.Here we again run into one of the constant logical loops that Sewell completely fails to acknowledge or, apparently, to recognize. He could very well be talking about himself in that paragraph. In fact, he *is* talking about himself. Sowell is trained as an economist. He’s written books on social theory and commentary, but his authority to do so is derived through his education and his experience as a pundit, not his expertise.
Furthermore, what he attributes to the intelligentsia is, in fact, simply part of the human condition. Everyone acts outside their specialties, and we are all incentivized to do so. Not to do so is to deny a fundamental human quality. Specialization has a role, but to only act within that specialization is to reject intelligence itself.
Where Sowell’s efforts to describe a social phenomenon don’t simply fail but become truly offensive is in his presentation of other's ideas. Sowell either misrepresents the ideas that other scholars have presented or fails to comprehend them so badly as to make himself a fool exactly of the kind he is attempting to critique. I’ll give two examples, just to illustrate the point.
First, in his description of reactions to the police:
...many of the intelligentsia express not only surprise but outrage at the number of shots fired by the police in some confrontation with a criminal, even if many of these intellectuals have never fired a gun in their lives, much less faced life-and-death dangers requiring split-second decisions.Now, here Sowell draws upon and stumbles over his experience as a pistol instructor for the Marine Corps. (This is the kind of error he attributes to many intellectuals early in the book.) The problem is that Sowell’s military experience has nothing to do with the objection, and his apparent inability to see past that training makes his assessment a problem. What he fails to recognize is that the nameless intellectuals (he avoids referencing anyone or a particular case on this issue--though it would have been much easier to do so than nearly any other example he cites--since the logic here gets quite shaky) he describes are not objecting to the actual number of shots fired alone. Intellectuals, in fact, understand not only the rate of fire of modern weapons but also their accuracy—just as most Americans, or anyone with a television, is capable of grasping that simple and obvious reality, regardless of their status as a combat veteran. When someone objects to the number of shots fired in a particular case it is done when there is also a contrast between that reaction and the situation with which the police officer was confronted. When it turns out the suspect was not armed, did not make any threatening move, was detained without proper cause, or was otherwise not an appropriate target of police fire at all. When a policing situation goes so far as to require a military style response, intellectuals are perfectly capable of understanding and recognizing that transition. No intellectual objected to the number of shots fired in taking down the Boston bombers, who were themselves armed with firearms and explosives. Intellectuals do not object to the more than 2,000 shots fired in the North Hollywood shootout in and of itself, though someone (including, say, a police officer reviewing the situation and preparing a report on it to his department) could quite legitimately ask why those robbers had 44 minutes to engage the police, thus allowing for such a long exchange AND so many shots fired.
When intellectuals object to the number of shots fired in a particular situation, they are pointing out that the transition between an everyday policing problem and the more military role of the police in suppressing violence has been blurred or bypassed. They are pointing out that shots should not have been fired at all, let alone dozens or sometimes hundreds of them. That Sowell is unable to recognize this objection for what it is, and must instead cite statistics about the number of hits at a particular range, illustrates his failure to comprehend even the most obvious of intellectual statements.
(You may be able to see one of the reasons Sowell didn't cite examples for that particular objection. Doing so would make his argument and position quite vulnerable. He'd be in danger of siding with cases of police brutality and malfeasance, and that would undermine his true objective for this book. More on that in a bit....)
I could go into more detail about the specific examples that Sowell cites. Let’s just say that as he extrapolates into broader and even more meaningful areas (civil liberties, social justice, the justifications and prosecutions of war) Sowell goes from offensive to truly misguided and repugnant. In rationalizing the American participation in the Iraq War, for example, Sowell abandons any arguments where reasonable people can disagree and dives right into the horrific logic of submental rationalizations employed by the truly misguided. He engages in such sophistries as this:
In fact, all the Americans killed in the two Iraq wars put together were fewer than those killed taking the one island of Iwo Jima during the Second world War or one day [emphasis included] of fighting at Antietam during the Civil War.I’m not going to describe why that bloody accounting is offensive, and if you need an explanation you’ll not be capable of understanding it, so let’s just leave it at this: comparing the casualties in wars for survival to the American involvement in Iraq is not to slip off the slope, but to leap from it.
I’ll conclude on this note: Where Sowell goes to some pains to explain that many of the people he describes as intellectuals are not engaging in their efforts cynically, having read this book I have no such expectation of Sowell. In fact, the only justification for this book that I can see is that it is a cynical resume for a lifelong bad faith operator. It is filled with so many errors of logic and assertion that it can only be a curriculum vitae for someone seeking grant money from think tanks funded by deep pockets. These organizations are actively and constantly seeking justification and arguments for the money they spend on political support. This book is a play for some of that funding, and the high-paying speaking engagements that go with it. It has no real value other than to outline the script for buyers of such a product. Nobody should bother attending such a lecture any more than they should bother with this book. It’s not, in fact, about intellectuals at all. It wasn’t written by one. It doesn’t serve any meaningful or worthwhile purpose other, perhaps, as an illustration of the lengths and breadths of mental hypocrisy and narcissism.
June 28, 2012
The title of this work, and the thrust of its argument, may initially deceive. It is not a critique of the mind or of intellectual pursuits. It is rather a critique of the god-like mentality many intellectuals assume, wreaking social havoc in their arrogant presumption of knowledge. By "intellectuals," Thomas Sowell means those professional thinkers whose end products are ideas, as distinguised from the end products of other professional thinkers like architects or engineers.
Intellectuals and Society is vintage Sowell and contains his usual brilliant insights on the economy, yet he discusses far more than just economic concerns. The book takes a broader arc and deals more generally with the application and centralized enforcement of untested ideas. Sowell reminds us that ideas have consequences, and ideas spawned from intellectual hubris often have disastrous ones, especially when implemented in a universal manner. He also stresses a rather obvious, yet often ignored, fact--to wit, that even the smartest or wisest of men is ignorant on most subjects. Moreover, an isolated genius cannot serve as substitute for the accumlated wisdom of millions.
My one critique would be Sowell's section on war and foreign policy. Pointing out the error of intellectuals prior to World War 2--he critiques those who cried for peace when there was none to be had--Sowell seems to make the opposite mistake, assuming that nations must therefore always take an agressive posture in their foreign relations. This seemed too broad a prescription based on too small a body of evidence. Regardless, even in this section, Sowell has many insightful nuggets, and his historical commentary is quite thoughtful.
Overall, a great book. Sowell repeats himself somewhat throughout, but his words are both eloquent and clear, making them a real pleasure to read. Conservatives will enjoy.
Intellectuals and Society is vintage Sowell and contains his usual brilliant insights on the economy, yet he discusses far more than just economic concerns. The book takes a broader arc and deals more generally with the application and centralized enforcement of untested ideas. Sowell reminds us that ideas have consequences, and ideas spawned from intellectual hubris often have disastrous ones, especially when implemented in a universal manner. He also stresses a rather obvious, yet often ignored, fact--to wit, that even the smartest or wisest of men is ignorant on most subjects. Moreover, an isolated genius cannot serve as substitute for the accumlated wisdom of millions.
My one critique would be Sowell's section on war and foreign policy. Pointing out the error of intellectuals prior to World War 2--he critiques those who cried for peace when there was none to be had--Sowell seems to make the opposite mistake, assuming that nations must therefore always take an agressive posture in their foreign relations. This seemed too broad a prescription based on too small a body of evidence. Regardless, even in this section, Sowell has many insightful nuggets, and his historical commentary is quite thoughtful.
Overall, a great book. Sowell repeats himself somewhat throughout, but his words are both eloquent and clear, making them a real pleasure to read. Conservatives will enjoy.
April 30, 2010
This book is so poor that it is hard to keep a straight face when discussing it.
For the better part it sounds like a 'rant' against 'smart people who assume too much' on the part of the author. Mixing wild examples, assumptions and generalizations on the basis of limited experiences, the author vents his frustration.
Just to make it worse the author does not make a critique of intellectuals in general, just of those who are 'liberal', 'left', etc. There are intellectuals, who are bad, and presidents, economists, etc. who are good. John Kenneth Galbraith is a bad intellectual, Prof. Milton Friedman is an enlightened economist.
The book has no moral value and, alas, no intellectual merit either.
For the better part it sounds like a 'rant' against 'smart people who assume too much' on the part of the author. Mixing wild examples, assumptions and generalizations on the basis of limited experiences, the author vents his frustration.
Just to make it worse the author does not make a critique of intellectuals in general, just of those who are 'liberal', 'left', etc. There are intellectuals, who are bad, and presidents, economists, etc. who are good. John Kenneth Galbraith is a bad intellectual, Prof. Milton Friedman is an enlightened economist.
The book has no moral value and, alas, no intellectual merit either.
December 14, 2020
Intellectuals, as defined for this book, are people whose entire trade is in ideas. Not people like engineers or physicists, who have to put the ideas into action and see when they fail.
It's a painful history. The history of rejecting outside evidence -- such as praising the USSR during famine. The imposition of visions that assume that people's mundane and detailed knowledge of their own lives is not relevant next to the ideas of an intellectual who does not know them. The suppression of facts and the hyping of ill-found stories in the service of ideas. And much more.
It's a painful history. The history of rejecting outside evidence -- such as praising the USSR during famine. The imposition of visions that assume that people's mundane and detailed knowledge of their own lives is not relevant next to the ideas of an intellectual who does not know them. The suppression of facts and the hyping of ill-found stories in the service of ideas. And much more.
April 1, 2013
This recently published book (2010) makes a very thorough case against government action of most any kind, with the exception of war. I spent over an hour looking through Sowell's latest book at Borders. The blurb inside the jacket caught my attention because it mentioned how intellectuals influence our democratic process by shaping the thinking of the electorate, rather than directly persuading elected officials. I saw this as a significant insight into how our system works. I extend the theory to any media person with a large audience, the impact of their ideas is greatly amplified. Rush Limbaugh could be an example. A good communicator with a big audience has diproportionately expanded political speech, similar to the expansion of speech rights for corporations under the new Supreme Court ruling. I would argue that the media figure actually has greater power than the corporation. Remember the clashes between GOP chairman Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh over which of them speaks for the Republican Party?
We have all understood how big business and lobbyists are dominating our political debate and many of us see this as very bad for our nation. But I haven't heard much discussion about the great influence of the very small minority of opinion shapers. So I was disappointed to see that Sowell turned from what could have been a full analysis of this phenomenon and instead chose to pursue a one-sided attack on government. That said, he makes some very good points that should give pause to anyone attempting to govern. There is no question that history is full of examples of unintended consequences, government actions that backfire and make the situation worse, and "public intellectuals" being proven totally wrong by unfolding events. Sowell lists these out with relish. It is a truth that we cannot generally see weaknesses in our own beliefs. People with different convictions are only too happy to point these out, and we can learn from them. Sowell is not immune to this, he sees none of the failings of his own hands-off dogma. I will point these out and show that his overall conclusions are incorrect even though much of what he says is true.
One of the main arguments of "Intellectuals and Society" is that there is far more intelligence distributed among the many actors in the market than can be contained in a small group of experts. This makes sense in a certain way, and is really just a restatement of the Adam Smith's invisible hand. Yet we have an example right before us in recent history where the invisible hand guided market players to make extremely risky loans against no collateral. I have heard Wall Street experts describe how in this climate even prudent managers were basically forced to participate because if they didn't they would be outperformed in the short term by those who did, due to the bubble economics at play. In fact, any bet against the bubble would be impossible to collect, since if you were right then the counterparty to the bet was bankrupt. So experts may frequently be wrong, but the market can also be "wrong", or at least lead us somewhere we don't want to go.
When experts attempt to tinker with complex systems they can easily cause big problems, sometimes bigger than the problem they're trying to solve. Sowell uses this to argue against intervening in the system. Taken to the extreme, this means essentially no government. But what is government other than a very greatly expanded version of a group of people combining forces for greater efficiency? If a neighborhood gets together and decides to take care of their own garbage service to save money, this takes some organization, a group decision, and a willingness to abide by that decision. We accept leadership and top-down decisions in the corporate structure (and all of us who have worked in this environment know how disconnected from day-to-day reality these can sometimes be). Yet corporations can have great success being guided by an elite at the top.
Believe me, I'm very much in favor of keeping things simple and keeping an organization lean and small. But does that mean that you should forgo any consolidation of forces to protect individual freedom? This is the trade-off. If you never want someone to tell you what to do, then you are reduced to a lone-wolf status, with no benefit from others resources or know-how. I am arguing that good government may sometimes tell you what to do, but you are getting a great benefit from its efficiencies and combined resources. (I know the idea of efficiencies and government in the same sentence seems ridiculous, but bear in mind that we have a huge country here and so obviously there is a fair degree of waste in this process when you consider the many levels of government involved).
I would grant that our government is too big and too centralized, so we can easily find problems with it. I would be happier with a much more local level of organization. However, this is what we've got, I don't think that means that it is useless. I don't think it means that we would be better off with nothing.
We have all understood how big business and lobbyists are dominating our political debate and many of us see this as very bad for our nation. But I haven't heard much discussion about the great influence of the very small minority of opinion shapers. So I was disappointed to see that Sowell turned from what could have been a full analysis of this phenomenon and instead chose to pursue a one-sided attack on government. That said, he makes some very good points that should give pause to anyone attempting to govern. There is no question that history is full of examples of unintended consequences, government actions that backfire and make the situation worse, and "public intellectuals" being proven totally wrong by unfolding events. Sowell lists these out with relish. It is a truth that we cannot generally see weaknesses in our own beliefs. People with different convictions are only too happy to point these out, and we can learn from them. Sowell is not immune to this, he sees none of the failings of his own hands-off dogma. I will point these out and show that his overall conclusions are incorrect even though much of what he says is true.
One of the main arguments of "Intellectuals and Society" is that there is far more intelligence distributed among the many actors in the market than can be contained in a small group of experts. This makes sense in a certain way, and is really just a restatement of the Adam Smith's invisible hand. Yet we have an example right before us in recent history where the invisible hand guided market players to make extremely risky loans against no collateral. I have heard Wall Street experts describe how in this climate even prudent managers were basically forced to participate because if they didn't they would be outperformed in the short term by those who did, due to the bubble economics at play. In fact, any bet against the bubble would be impossible to collect, since if you were right then the counterparty to the bet was bankrupt. So experts may frequently be wrong, but the market can also be "wrong", or at least lead us somewhere we don't want to go.
When experts attempt to tinker with complex systems they can easily cause big problems, sometimes bigger than the problem they're trying to solve. Sowell uses this to argue against intervening in the system. Taken to the extreme, this means essentially no government. But what is government other than a very greatly expanded version of a group of people combining forces for greater efficiency? If a neighborhood gets together and decides to take care of their own garbage service to save money, this takes some organization, a group decision, and a willingness to abide by that decision. We accept leadership and top-down decisions in the corporate structure (and all of us who have worked in this environment know how disconnected from day-to-day reality these can sometimes be). Yet corporations can have great success being guided by an elite at the top.
Believe me, I'm very much in favor of keeping things simple and keeping an organization lean and small. But does that mean that you should forgo any consolidation of forces to protect individual freedom? This is the trade-off. If you never want someone to tell you what to do, then you are reduced to a lone-wolf status, with no benefit from others resources or know-how. I am arguing that good government may sometimes tell you what to do, but you are getting a great benefit from its efficiencies and combined resources. (I know the idea of efficiencies and government in the same sentence seems ridiculous, but bear in mind that we have a huge country here and so obviously there is a fair degree of waste in this process when you consider the many levels of government involved).
I would grant that our government is too big and too centralized, so we can easily find problems with it. I would be happier with a much more local level of organization. However, this is what we've got, I don't think that means that it is useless. I don't think it means that we would be better off with nothing.
April 14, 2013
In a free society with limited government, individuals make millions of decisions and live with the consequences. As our government has grown bigger and more intrusive, intellectuals have played a major role telling us what programs will work for our own good. However, they are often wrong, but that doesn't stop them. They pay no consequences. Here is the author quoting Eric Hoffer:
"One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation. The intellectuals who idolized Stalin while he was purging millions and stifling the least stirring of freedom have not been discredited. They are still holding forth on every topic under the sun and are listened to with deference. Sartre returned in 1939 from Germany, where he studied philosophy, and told the world that there was little to choose between Hitler's Germany and France. Yet Sartre went on to become an intellectual pope revered by the educated in every land." -- Eric Hoffer, "Before the Sabbath"
Here is the main premise put forth by Dr. Sowell. We all possess knowledge, all 350 million of us. If you take all the intellectuals in Washington, they can't possibly possess even 1% of that knowledge. So how is it that we will all be better off by letting the people with 1% of the knowledge tell the people with 99% of the knowledge what to do? "If no one has even one percent of the knowledge currently available, not counting the vast amounts of knowledge yet to be discovered, the imposition from the top down of the notions in favor among elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster."
Savor that and more.
"One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputation. The intellectuals who idolized Stalin while he was purging millions and stifling the least stirring of freedom have not been discredited. They are still holding forth on every topic under the sun and are listened to with deference. Sartre returned in 1939 from Germany, where he studied philosophy, and told the world that there was little to choose between Hitler's Germany and France. Yet Sartre went on to become an intellectual pope revered by the educated in every land." -- Eric Hoffer, "Before the Sabbath"
Here is the main premise put forth by Dr. Sowell. We all possess knowledge, all 350 million of us. If you take all the intellectuals in Washington, they can't possibly possess even 1% of that knowledge. So how is it that we will all be better off by letting the people with 1% of the knowledge tell the people with 99% of the knowledge what to do? "If no one has even one percent of the knowledge currently available, not counting the vast amounts of knowledge yet to be discovered, the imposition from the top down of the notions in favor among elites, convinced of their own superior knowledge and virtue, is a formula for disaster."
Savor that and more.
February 12, 2022
Brain dead analysis that recommends talk radio and the internet as sources for reaching political truths which will lead to a political party saying COVID is just a flu, people refusing to get vaccinated, claiming black people got to the head of the line for vaccines, believing that climate change is a Chinese hoax, believing that there are good people on both sides as Nazi’s drive their cars into people, and that Trump really did win the election. The MAGA hat morons did not come out of nowhere, they’ve been inspired by feeling based drivel like this book for years and this book shows all that moronic drivel at its incoherent worst.
February 16, 2022
In this book Thomas Sowell launches a withering critique of intellectuals and a range of positions associated with them. He castigates them for ignoring relevant evidence, discussing areas outside their expertise, relying on friendly peers as a substitute for rigour, using dodgy metrics or comparisons and rationalizing their positions for unconvincing reasons. Yet Sowell seems completely unaware of how he himself has written a book rife with these exact shortcomings to an absurd extent. Thomas Sowell is a bad intellectual and this book should not be viewed by anyone as authoritative or substantively correct. (Goodreads has removed the hyperlinks I included so I will write the sources in square brackets)
The few positive aspects are outweighed by the sheer number of dubious assertions, ignoring of strong arguments/evidence that contradict him and his overconfident conclusions. Examining some of Thomas Sowell’s contentions should highlight the reasons why you should read him with extreme scepticism.
Bad politics/Bad history
Sowell is very wrong about the nature of the left wing/right wing divide and subsequently he completely misunderstands political ideologies and the roots of their appeal. The arguments he uses create large political and historical puzzles.
He sets out his arguments on p99
He accepts that left wing as a concept is mostly valid and argues that the left is united by an opposition to inequality that can be reduced by the government. He uses the term throughout the book. While I have minor problems with his understanding of the concept left wing, they are extremely minor compared to my problems with his incorrect understanding of the right wing. He does not accept that right wing is a useful category. How Sowell would square this with the large research in political science which measures and uses the left/right concept to understand patterns of behaviour I don’t know.
This argument is convenient as it allows him to criticise the left in broad terms repeatedly for
the failures of a variety of projects while not requiring any such analysis of failed right-wing projects. His argument is that:
1. There is too much heterogeneity on the right because ideologies on the right lack a common vision unlike the left who are committed to government action to combat inequality.
2. Additionally Sowell thinks communism and fascism are remarkably similar and that the moderate left more closely resembles fascism than do conservatives.
Right wing ideologies are undergirded by a belief that inequality is natural and that efforts to create equality are unwise and produce counterproductive consequences because inequality is normal and attempts to create equality contradict human nature or simply reality. The left by contrast as Sowell notes seek to combat inequality as they mostly view forms of inequality as socially constructed and therefore malleable.
The centrality of inequality helps explain why ideologies that strongly differ in their methods, policies and conceptual frames nevertheless do share some common ground. Stalinists, social democrats, anarchists, socialists, left-wing liberals and progressives have very different ideological assumptions and policy outcomes, but they do share the view that much of the existing inequality is undesirable and can be ameliorated.
Likewise, libertarians, conservatives, centre right liberals, fascists, and anarcho-capitalists have sharp disagreements, but they share a viewpoint that societies should accept human inequality as a necessary and important feature of life and that attempts to create equality leads to failure or suboptimal outcomes. Think of the USSR as an example. Whether it be market regulations, traditions being overturned or simply the inherent unequal distribution of talent, right wing ideologies seek to harness this fact of life.
Fascism is not left-wing!
Argument 2 is only plausible by using the narrowest of perspectives to examine fascism and communism. Fascism and communism are regularly compared, both may be totalitarian, but as Robert Paxton noted the motivating passions, political analysis and policies were quite distinct flowing from their respective ideological worldviews.
Fascists are obsessed with the superiority and purity of the national culture and seek to firmly entrench the national native groups position of strength, purity and revival.
Communists meanwhile are driven by a desire to end economic domination, the existence of private property and to free the working class from this economic relationship who in turn are seen as destined to overthrow the system and usher in a new freer life (somehow).
The two ideologies cannot fit together because each ideologies success is a massive threat to the other. A fascist success is a failure to end economic and political subordination while a communist success destroys the nation, its cultural heritage, its racial and ethnic purity, the natural hierarchies of culture, nation, race/ethnic group, are all destroyed.
Sowell’s arguments continue in this section and get more detached from reality as he argues fascist policies were more similar to the democratic left than any right-wing ideology in the USA.
He accomplishes this by first relying on extremely questionable sources like "Liberal Fascism". (A recurring theme)
He weakly claims that fascist policies were consistent with the left because they were top down, collective decisions chosen by the anointed. Sowell accomplishes this by using verbal virtuosity himself, having defined right wing out of existence he can now triumphally explain how these government policies were left wing. Examining the motivations behind the policies leads to the obvious conclusion that fascist policies are inconsistent with trying to reduce inequality among humans.
The behaviour of fascist and communist politicians makes no sense if they are ideologically similar or aligned. Why would German Conservatives back Hitler as chancellor if Hitler himself was left-wing? The whole point was to block any chance of a socialist or communist taking power. Indeed, the experience of seeing Munich taken over by left-wing revolutionaries is what Volker Ullrich attributes the radicalisation of Hitler to. The behaviour of Italy’s king in inviting Mussolini to head the government is baffling if fascism is a left-wing ideology. The behaviour of figures on the left like Stalin becomes equally baffling. It not only gets history wrong but raises big puzzles relating to modern day communists and fascists who view the world through completely opposed lenses. Apologists for both ideologies crimes are predictable by ideological persuasion. I have never seen a right-winger engage in apologetics for Soviet communism and I have yet to see a leftist engage in apologetics for Hitler likely because there is not even the basic common ground around inequality and hierarchy.
In short Sowell ignores a great deal of historical and political science evidence which creates obvious historical and modern problems in advancing his claims that right-wing does not mean anything and that fascism is left-wing.
Crime
In discussing America’s level of gun crime on page 196 he mentions some countries have even more murder and lists Brazil and Russia as examples. These are terrible comparisons! Russia is not even democratic! Brazil is like 3 or 4 times poorer than America on a per capita basis. He even argues against dodgy comparisons of this type in the book, these countries differ on so many key variables from America that it makes a simple comparison fraught.
He mentions on page 284 a study which found that after the UK handgun ban that handgun crime went up 40% and another source which states general gun crime went up 10%. His source for the first claim is Peter Hitchens. Sowell never mentioned the fact that the study was commissioned by the Countryside Alliance's Campaign for Shooting. Nor does Sowell mention the pertinent fact that How gun crime was measured was changed in 1998 and again in 2002 inflating the statistics.[Firearm crime statistics by Gavin Berman 2012] This is probably because he is unfamiliar with the UK and simply took his sources at their word without investigating further. Gun crime in Britain has decreased since 2002.
Sowell's description of the UK implies that its strong gun control was causing a boom in murder rates/crime. On page 285 he mentions murder rates were going up in the UK while going down in USA, Italy, and France during the late 1990s as tighter gun control was passed in Britain. Discussing the raw numbers brings some clarity into why gun control is retained in the UK. Far fewer gun related murders occurred in the UK with tighter gun control compared to the USA with looser laws.
The peak annual figure in England/Wales (does not include Scotland or NI) was about 100 at the end of the 20th century. [Homicide Statistics By Grahame Allen & Yago Zaye 2021 page 16] America had over 17000 homicides involving guns in 2015 for comparison. [Violent death rates in the US compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015 by Erin Grinshteyn and David Hemenway] This study shows overall gun death rates (includes suicides etc) in 2015 for the US was 11.2 per 100,000. This compares to 0.2 for the UK respectively. These vast disparities in gun homicides and more general gun related death are not discussed by Sowell. The US gun homicide rate is also an outlier as the source shows.
When these figures are stated, it becomes obvious why gun control can seem desirable. Most high-income countries and the US are not even close in gun deaths despite Sowell wondering why ”none of this has caused second thoughts about gun control among either the American or British intelligentsia”.
He states that Luxembourg has a much higher murder rate despite having gun control than France, Belgium or Germany. This seems to be based on his source using incomplete fragmentary data in a different publication. The source even has a footnote which states that the data they are using comes from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics which seems to be flawed as they say “This section of the reports gives no explanation of why it selects the various nations whose homicide statistics it covers. Also without explanation the nations covered differ from year to year”. [Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide by Don B Gates and Gary Mauser] Other data that I could find does not show Luxembourg having a murder rate much different from its neighbours. [International Statistics on Crime and Justice 2010 p14]
Finally, Sowell notes that Britain and USA were equal, or Britain was worse for many violent offenses like assault/robbery. Sowell seems to not realise that this only makes the much higher lethality of American crime more likely to be caused by the unusual availability and quantity of guns. Crime is a very difficult area of study, but Sowell treats the subject with certainty and does not engage with evidence that contradicts his easy answers.
Racism.
Sowell discusses how racism is taken as the default explanation for complex circumstances and that other explanations are more convincing and that inferring racism causally as a factor is challenging. He frequently mentions rates of different racial groups facing rejection of mortgages as an example. What Sowell does not do is engage with the experimental evidence that racism is sadly still prevalent and a contributing factor in the 21st century. There is a voluminous literature on the subject, but he does not challenge or discuss this experimental evidence. This allows him to conclude that discrimination is no longer an explanation for black Americans poorer performance in life outcomes. Oddly he accepts the effects of past discrimination were relevant in the past but seems to dismiss any potential those events and policies could have long run effects, instead Sowell offers a cultural explanation.
Sowell discusses the overuse of racism as an explanation in the context of United States history. He discusses how black northerners were integrated successfully but this progress was undone by an influx of black southerners who brought with them cultural norms which did not fit the north. These norms caused behavioural differences like crime etc which alienated whites who in turn put up barriers and enacted discriminatory policies which allows segregated housing and ghettos to exist. Had these cultural differences not conveyed racial differences then the problem would not exist if Sowell is correct.
However, there is a second possibility that could explain the relative freedom of blacks in Northern states and the later backlash against this freedom. When there are small numbers of a group, the group is not perceived as threatening and does not activate racial identities and fears among the dominant group.
Once the numbers increase and crucially once the smaller group clusters together geographically, its presence becomes obvious to everyone and becomes perceived as competition for resources and power. Ryan Esos has examined how geography magnifies or alleviates political anxieties. This can explain why this same pattern has been seen elsewhere and why even when some immigrant groups commit less crime than average the same type of backlash nevertheless occurs.
Some positives
I do agree with Sowell’s arguments on some areas. Like where he points out that public figures have made big pronouncements on economics without attempting to actually study the subject. This economic ignorance has led to uncritical support for command economies and ignorant comments on price systems by non-economists.
Unexpectedly he cites Karl Marx as a positive example and is nuanced when he discusses Marx which makes his frequent caricaturing of intellectuals and their arguments all the more disappointing. There are other points where I think he is correct, like where he points out how media organisations are prone to sensationalism, or the risks of judges being used as a substitute for political decisions. The writing is also clear throughout, but these positives are overridden by the many shortcomings in the book.
More problem areas
There are many more issues where Sowell gives a selective interpretation of the issue and declines to discuss and refute the evidence offered by those who disagree with him. Just some of the issues this happens with are:
1. The effects of the minimum wage on unemployment.
2. The effect of incarceration rates on crime rates. A very contentious debate among criminologists is reduced to an easy answer with sweeping overconfidence.
3. The causes of rising crime rates in the 1960s and the decline in the 1990s. A very contentious debate among criminologists is reduced to an easy answer with sweeping overconfidence (again).
4. The effect of the New Deal in the 1930s.
5. The reasons for Standard Oil being labelled a monopoly. Sowell gives a very narrow examination of this.
6. Did banning DDT kill millions? This is a strong claim, yet this is strongly disputed with this article arguing that instead the primary problem was an absence of government capacity to effectively implement eradication efforts, that DDT was never actually banned for anti-malaria use, DDT became more expensive over time, and that widespread resistance partially nullified the effectiveness of DDT. [The ban of DDT did not cause millions to die from malaria by Michael Palmer]
7. The effectiveness of both the Bush and Reagan administrations tax cuts.
8. Implying climate scientists are being dishonest and not sharing the data. After reading this section I found interviews he did with Peter Robinson where he outright agrees climate scientists are part of a racket and showcases how extremely out of depth he is on the issue where he lacks expertise.
There are more examples, but these ones stood out to me.
These contested areas have generated competing bases of evidence yet reading Sowell you would think the answers are well known, obvious, and only the inept could disagree. His reliance on caricaturing intellectuals as a superior class ready to override democracy and his insistence on viewing everything through the prism of two conflicting visions undermine his analysis and distort his thinking. On the basis of this book Thomas Sowell is a very bad intellectual who failed to follow his own guidelines and instead allowed motivated reasoning to ruin the quality of his thinking. It is fitting that the final source cited is Ann Coulter.
The few positive aspects are outweighed by the sheer number of dubious assertions, ignoring of strong arguments/evidence that contradict him and his overconfident conclusions. Examining some of Thomas Sowell’s contentions should highlight the reasons why you should read him with extreme scepticism.
Bad politics/Bad history
Sowell is very wrong about the nature of the left wing/right wing divide and subsequently he completely misunderstands political ideologies and the roots of their appeal. The arguments he uses create large political and historical puzzles.
He sets out his arguments on p99
He accepts that left wing as a concept is mostly valid and argues that the left is united by an opposition to inequality that can be reduced by the government. He uses the term throughout the book. While I have minor problems with his understanding of the concept left wing, they are extremely minor compared to my problems with his incorrect understanding of the right wing. He does not accept that right wing is a useful category. How Sowell would square this with the large research in political science which measures and uses the left/right concept to understand patterns of behaviour I don’t know.
This argument is convenient as it allows him to criticise the left in broad terms repeatedly for
the failures of a variety of projects while not requiring any such analysis of failed right-wing projects. His argument is that:
1. There is too much heterogeneity on the right because ideologies on the right lack a common vision unlike the left who are committed to government action to combat inequality.
2. Additionally Sowell thinks communism and fascism are remarkably similar and that the moderate left more closely resembles fascism than do conservatives.
Right wing ideologies are undergirded by a belief that inequality is natural and that efforts to create equality are unwise and produce counterproductive consequences because inequality is normal and attempts to create equality contradict human nature or simply reality. The left by contrast as Sowell notes seek to combat inequality as they mostly view forms of inequality as socially constructed and therefore malleable.
The centrality of inequality helps explain why ideologies that strongly differ in their methods, policies and conceptual frames nevertheless do share some common ground. Stalinists, social democrats, anarchists, socialists, left-wing liberals and progressives have very different ideological assumptions and policy outcomes, but they do share the view that much of the existing inequality is undesirable and can be ameliorated.
Likewise, libertarians, conservatives, centre right liberals, fascists, and anarcho-capitalists have sharp disagreements, but they share a viewpoint that societies should accept human inequality as a necessary and important feature of life and that attempts to create equality leads to failure or suboptimal outcomes. Think of the USSR as an example. Whether it be market regulations, traditions being overturned or simply the inherent unequal distribution of talent, right wing ideologies seek to harness this fact of life.
Fascism is not left-wing!
Argument 2 is only plausible by using the narrowest of perspectives to examine fascism and communism. Fascism and communism are regularly compared, both may be totalitarian, but as Robert Paxton noted the motivating passions, political analysis and policies were quite distinct flowing from their respective ideological worldviews.
Fascists are obsessed with the superiority and purity of the national culture and seek to firmly entrench the national native groups position of strength, purity and revival.
Communists meanwhile are driven by a desire to end economic domination, the existence of private property and to free the working class from this economic relationship who in turn are seen as destined to overthrow the system and usher in a new freer life (somehow).
The two ideologies cannot fit together because each ideologies success is a massive threat to the other. A fascist success is a failure to end economic and political subordination while a communist success destroys the nation, its cultural heritage, its racial and ethnic purity, the natural hierarchies of culture, nation, race/ethnic group, are all destroyed.
Sowell’s arguments continue in this section and get more detached from reality as he argues fascist policies were more similar to the democratic left than any right-wing ideology in the USA.
He accomplishes this by first relying on extremely questionable sources like "Liberal Fascism". (A recurring theme)
He weakly claims that fascist policies were consistent with the left because they were top down, collective decisions chosen by the anointed. Sowell accomplishes this by using verbal virtuosity himself, having defined right wing out of existence he can now triumphally explain how these government policies were left wing. Examining the motivations behind the policies leads to the obvious conclusion that fascist policies are inconsistent with trying to reduce inequality among humans.
The behaviour of fascist and communist politicians makes no sense if they are ideologically similar or aligned. Why would German Conservatives back Hitler as chancellor if Hitler himself was left-wing? The whole point was to block any chance of a socialist or communist taking power. Indeed, the experience of seeing Munich taken over by left-wing revolutionaries is what Volker Ullrich attributes the radicalisation of Hitler to. The behaviour of Italy’s king in inviting Mussolini to head the government is baffling if fascism is a left-wing ideology. The behaviour of figures on the left like Stalin becomes equally baffling. It not only gets history wrong but raises big puzzles relating to modern day communists and fascists who view the world through completely opposed lenses. Apologists for both ideologies crimes are predictable by ideological persuasion. I have never seen a right-winger engage in apologetics for Soviet communism and I have yet to see a leftist engage in apologetics for Hitler likely because there is not even the basic common ground around inequality and hierarchy.
In short Sowell ignores a great deal of historical and political science evidence which creates obvious historical and modern problems in advancing his claims that right-wing does not mean anything and that fascism is left-wing.
Crime
In discussing America’s level of gun crime on page 196 he mentions some countries have even more murder and lists Brazil and Russia as examples. These are terrible comparisons! Russia is not even democratic! Brazil is like 3 or 4 times poorer than America on a per capita basis. He even argues against dodgy comparisons of this type in the book, these countries differ on so many key variables from America that it makes a simple comparison fraught.
He mentions on page 284 a study which found that after the UK handgun ban that handgun crime went up 40% and another source which states general gun crime went up 10%. His source for the first claim is Peter Hitchens. Sowell never mentioned the fact that the study was commissioned by the Countryside Alliance's Campaign for Shooting. Nor does Sowell mention the pertinent fact that How gun crime was measured was changed in 1998 and again in 2002 inflating the statistics.[Firearm crime statistics by Gavin Berman 2012] This is probably because he is unfamiliar with the UK and simply took his sources at their word without investigating further. Gun crime in Britain has decreased since 2002.
Sowell's description of the UK implies that its strong gun control was causing a boom in murder rates/crime. On page 285 he mentions murder rates were going up in the UK while going down in USA, Italy, and France during the late 1990s as tighter gun control was passed in Britain. Discussing the raw numbers brings some clarity into why gun control is retained in the UK. Far fewer gun related murders occurred in the UK with tighter gun control compared to the USA with looser laws.
The peak annual figure in England/Wales (does not include Scotland or NI) was about 100 at the end of the 20th century. [Homicide Statistics By Grahame Allen & Yago Zaye 2021 page 16] America had over 17000 homicides involving guns in 2015 for comparison. [Violent death rates in the US compared to those of the other high-income countries, 2015 by Erin Grinshteyn and David Hemenway] This study shows overall gun death rates (includes suicides etc) in 2015 for the US was 11.2 per 100,000. This compares to 0.2 for the UK respectively. These vast disparities in gun homicides and more general gun related death are not discussed by Sowell. The US gun homicide rate is also an outlier as the source shows.
When these figures are stated, it becomes obvious why gun control can seem desirable. Most high-income countries and the US are not even close in gun deaths despite Sowell wondering why ”none of this has caused second thoughts about gun control among either the American or British intelligentsia”.
He states that Luxembourg has a much higher murder rate despite having gun control than France, Belgium or Germany. This seems to be based on his source using incomplete fragmentary data in a different publication. The source even has a footnote which states that the data they are using comes from the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics which seems to be flawed as they say “This section of the reports gives no explanation of why it selects the various nations whose homicide statistics it covers. Also without explanation the nations covered differ from year to year”. [Would banning firearms reduce murder and suicide by Don B Gates and Gary Mauser] Other data that I could find does not show Luxembourg having a murder rate much different from its neighbours. [International Statistics on Crime and Justice 2010 p14]
Finally, Sowell notes that Britain and USA were equal, or Britain was worse for many violent offenses like assault/robbery. Sowell seems to not realise that this only makes the much higher lethality of American crime more likely to be caused by the unusual availability and quantity of guns. Crime is a very difficult area of study, but Sowell treats the subject with certainty and does not engage with evidence that contradicts his easy answers.
Racism.
Sowell discusses how racism is taken as the default explanation for complex circumstances and that other explanations are more convincing and that inferring racism causally as a factor is challenging. He frequently mentions rates of different racial groups facing rejection of mortgages as an example. What Sowell does not do is engage with the experimental evidence that racism is sadly still prevalent and a contributing factor in the 21st century. There is a voluminous literature on the subject, but he does not challenge or discuss this experimental evidence. This allows him to conclude that discrimination is no longer an explanation for black Americans poorer performance in life outcomes. Oddly he accepts the effects of past discrimination were relevant in the past but seems to dismiss any potential those events and policies could have long run effects, instead Sowell offers a cultural explanation.
Sowell discusses the overuse of racism as an explanation in the context of United States history. He discusses how black northerners were integrated successfully but this progress was undone by an influx of black southerners who brought with them cultural norms which did not fit the north. These norms caused behavioural differences like crime etc which alienated whites who in turn put up barriers and enacted discriminatory policies which allows segregated housing and ghettos to exist. Had these cultural differences not conveyed racial differences then the problem would not exist if Sowell is correct.
However, there is a second possibility that could explain the relative freedom of blacks in Northern states and the later backlash against this freedom. When there are small numbers of a group, the group is not perceived as threatening and does not activate racial identities and fears among the dominant group.
Once the numbers increase and crucially once the smaller group clusters together geographically, its presence becomes obvious to everyone and becomes perceived as competition for resources and power. Ryan Esos has examined how geography magnifies or alleviates political anxieties. This can explain why this same pattern has been seen elsewhere and why even when some immigrant groups commit less crime than average the same type of backlash nevertheless occurs.
Some positives
I do agree with Sowell’s arguments on some areas. Like where he points out that public figures have made big pronouncements on economics without attempting to actually study the subject. This economic ignorance has led to uncritical support for command economies and ignorant comments on price systems by non-economists.
Unexpectedly he cites Karl Marx as a positive example and is nuanced when he discusses Marx which makes his frequent caricaturing of intellectuals and their arguments all the more disappointing. There are other points where I think he is correct, like where he points out how media organisations are prone to sensationalism, or the risks of judges being used as a substitute for political decisions. The writing is also clear throughout, but these positives are overridden by the many shortcomings in the book.
More problem areas
There are many more issues where Sowell gives a selective interpretation of the issue and declines to discuss and refute the evidence offered by those who disagree with him. Just some of the issues this happens with are:
1. The effects of the minimum wage on unemployment.
2. The effect of incarceration rates on crime rates. A very contentious debate among criminologists is reduced to an easy answer with sweeping overconfidence.
3. The causes of rising crime rates in the 1960s and the decline in the 1990s. A very contentious debate among criminologists is reduced to an easy answer with sweeping overconfidence (again).
4. The effect of the New Deal in the 1930s.
5. The reasons for Standard Oil being labelled a monopoly. Sowell gives a very narrow examination of this.
6. Did banning DDT kill millions? This is a strong claim, yet this is strongly disputed with this article arguing that instead the primary problem was an absence of government capacity to effectively implement eradication efforts, that DDT was never actually banned for anti-malaria use, DDT became more expensive over time, and that widespread resistance partially nullified the effectiveness of DDT. [The ban of DDT did not cause millions to die from malaria by Michael Palmer]
7. The effectiveness of both the Bush and Reagan administrations tax cuts.
8. Implying climate scientists are being dishonest and not sharing the data. After reading this section I found interviews he did with Peter Robinson where he outright agrees climate scientists are part of a racket and showcases how extremely out of depth he is on the issue where he lacks expertise.
There are more examples, but these ones stood out to me.
These contested areas have generated competing bases of evidence yet reading Sowell you would think the answers are well known, obvious, and only the inept could disagree. His reliance on caricaturing intellectuals as a superior class ready to override democracy and his insistence on viewing everything through the prism of two conflicting visions undermine his analysis and distort his thinking. On the basis of this book Thomas Sowell is a very bad intellectual who failed to follow his own guidelines and instead allowed motivated reasoning to ruin the quality of his thinking. It is fitting that the final source cited is Ann Coulter.
August 19, 2013
I have to confess that I find Thomas Sowell fascinating. I read his book “Economic Facts and Fallacies” and I have read many more. I enjoy watching him on “Youtube.” The man has a fantastic mind, he is able to tie real problems and solutions to real outcomes. He does not need to invent, slander or use pejoratives to attack those that disagree. His logic, history, facts and reality prove him right over and over again.
I love this book. I enjoyed every bit of it, and I love how Dr. Sowell ties every bit of the intelligentsia’s rhetoric back facts, numbers, reality, and history. The book follows Dr. Sowell’s thoughts on most of the materials I have read. There is nothing new here, except the ability to read Dr. Sowell’s thought. He is unapologetic, honest and forthright. Unlike the Intellectuals who will attack him personally, he has honor, and real intelligence. This work will never rise to fame, as he pulls the blinds open on the Intelligentsia, but it is a great read, even if you don’t care for Thomas Sowell.
I love this book. I enjoyed every bit of it, and I love how Dr. Sowell ties every bit of the intelligentsia’s rhetoric back facts, numbers, reality, and history. The book follows Dr. Sowell’s thoughts on most of the materials I have read. There is nothing new here, except the ability to read Dr. Sowell’s thought. He is unapologetic, honest and forthright. Unlike the Intellectuals who will attack him personally, he has honor, and real intelligence. This work will never rise to fame, as he pulls the blinds open on the Intelligentsia, but it is a great read, even if you don’t care for Thomas Sowell.
November 11, 2014
Интелектуалците са хората, чийто начален и краен продукт са идеи - идеи, които нямат връзка с практиката и за своята оценка зависят не от обективни критерии, а само от мнението на други интелектуалци. Такива области са философията, литературата (и изкуството като цяло), социологията, политологията и др.
Най-характерното за хората с тези професии е, че като цяло тяхната дейност няма никакъв практически измерител. За разлика от другите професии на ума (инженери, лекари, учени, програмисти, дизайнери) - дали си, примерно, голям философ или социолог не може да се измери или изчисли в някакви парични или материални резултати (излекувани пациенти, построени сгради, спечелени пари) - то се определя само и единствено от мнението на други философи или социолози.
Според Т.Солуел, тези хора определят обществения и политически идеен климат на нашето общество. Но тъй като действителността не им действа като спирачка (те работят само в мисълта си), творейки идеи за обществения и политически живот, те започват да приемат желаното от тях за факт, а предположенията си - за истина, пренебрегвайки реалността.
Политиките и идеите, които те проповядват всъщност често противоречат на всякакви доказателства, а често и на здравия разум, но чрез ораторско майсторство и от позицията си на интелектуални стожери, те успяват да ги оправдаят пред колегите си интелектуалци и последователите си от интелигенцията и да задават курса на развитие на обществените настроения и политики.
Така например фактът, че щедрите социални програми поощряват много хора да не работят, няма значение за интелектуалците - тяхната идея, че тези програми "помагат на бедните" и идеята за "социална справедливост" са по-важни от действителността, която създават. Същото е и с "мултикултурното общество" - за интелектуалците идеята, че трябва да приемаме и поощряваме другите култури е по-важна от факта, че е откровено глупаво да поощряваш някой, който откровено не те харесва. Примерите са много - международното разоражаване създавало мира, въпреки, че така ра��оражени остават само тези, които искат мир, но не и тези, които планират война - забраната на личното оръжие намалявала престъпленията, въпреки че ако оръжието е незаконно, ще го имат само хората извън закона ... и т.н.
Накратко - левите идеи са продиктувани от това, че създателите им, основно интелектуалци, пренебрегват реалността и я заменят с това какво трябва да бъде и как нещата стават според техните фантазии. Това описва подробно Соуел в книгата си, давайки десетки примери, обяснявайки причините.
Ако Томас Соуел не беше черен, щяха да го изядат, наричайки го "расист", "нацист" и т.н. Не, че той е такъв - нищо подобно. И книгата му няма нищо общо с тези въпроси. Но такива епитети обичат да лепят медийните интелектуалци на хората, които изобличават ирационалния им начин на мислене и кухите им идеи.
Най-характерното за хората с тези професии е, че като цяло тяхната дейност няма никакъв практически измерител. За разлика от другите професии на ума (инженери, лекари, учени, програмисти, дизайнери) - дали си, примерно, голям философ или социолог не може да се измери или изчисли в някакви парични или материални резултати (излекувани пациенти, построени сгради, спечелени пари) - то се определя само и единствено от мнението на други философи или социолози.
Според Т.Солуел, тези хора определят обществения и политически идеен климат на нашето общество. Но тъй като действителността не им действа като спирачка (те работят само в мисълта си), творейки идеи за обществения и политически живот, те започват да приемат желаното от тях за факт, а предположенията си - за истина, пренебрегвайки реалността.
Политиките и идеите, които те проповядват всъщност често противоречат на всякакви доказателства, а често и на здравия разум, но чрез ораторско майсторство и от позицията си на интелектуални стожери, те успяват да ги оправдаят пред колегите си интелектуалци и последователите си от интелигенцията и да задават курса на развитие на обществените настроения и политики.
Така например фактът, че щедрите социални програми поощряват много хора да не работят, няма значение за интелектуалците - тяхната идея, че тези програми "помагат на бедните" и идеята за "социална справедливост" са по-важни от действителността, която създават. Същото е и с "мултикултурното общество" - за интелектуалците идеята, че трябва да приемаме и поощряваме другите култури е по-важна от факта, че е откровено глупаво да поощряваш някой, който откровено не те харесва. Примерите са много - международното разоражаване създавало мира, въпреки, че така ра��оражени остават само тези, които искат мир, но не и тези, които планират война - забраната на личното оръжие намалявала престъпленията, въпреки че ако оръжието е незаконно, ще го имат само хората извън закона ... и т.н.
Накратко - левите идеи са продиктувани от това, че създателите им, основно интелектуалци, пренебрегват реалността и я заменят с това какво трябва да бъде и как нещата стават според техните фантазии. Това описва подробно Соуел в книгата си, давайки десетки примери, обяснявайки причините.
Ако Томас Соуел не беше черен, щяха да го изядат, наричайки го "расист", "нацист" и т.н. Не, че той е такъв - нищо подобно. И книгата му няма нищо общо с тези въпроси. Но такива епитети обичат да лепят медийните интелектуалци на хората, които изобличават ирационалния им начин на мислене и кухите им идеи.
August 18, 2021
Whenever you pick up a book written by Dr. Thomas Sowell, you are guaranteed a couple of things: It will be well researched and documented and you are definitely gonna learn something!
In the case of Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell you will learn that the influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but it also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals.
Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society—and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views. Facts can be stubborn things!
In the case of Intellectuals and Society by Thomas Sowell you will learn that the influence of intellectuals is not only greater than in previous eras but it also takes a very different form from that envisioned by those like Machiavelli and others who have wanted to directly influence rulers. It has not been by shaping the opinions or directing the actions of the holders of power that modern intellectuals have most influenced the course of events, but by shaping public opinion in ways that affect the actions of power holders in democratic societies, whether or not those power holders accept the general vision or the particular policies favored by intellectuals. Even government leaders with disdain or contempt for intellectuals have had to bend to the climate of opinion shaped by those intellectuals.
Intellectuals and Society not only examines the track record of intellectuals in the things they have advocated but also analyzes the incentives and constraints under which their views and visions have emerged. One of the most surprising aspects of this study is how often intellectuals have been proved not only wrong, but grossly and disastrously wrong in their prescriptions for the ills of society—and how little their views have changed in response to empirical evidence of the disasters entailed by those views. Facts can be stubborn things!
April 6, 2013
A terrible and poorly argued book. I didn't know who Sowell was when I picked it up but I certainly won't be reading anything else by him.
A common approach of his is to define a term, make grandiose and universal claims about it, no-true-scotsman any obvious exceptions (he'll often have one word for the "good" version of something and another for the "bad" as if they were fundamentally different things - what's the difference? Apparently, whether or not they agree with his politics), then make a non-sequitur conclusion that why liberals are dumb and wrong all the time. If he just wanted to say that, he didn't need a book to do it.
A common approach of his is to define a term, make grandiose and universal claims about it, no-true-scotsman any obvious exceptions (he'll often have one word for the "good" version of something and another for the "bad" as if they were fundamentally different things - what's the difference? Apparently, whether or not they agree with his politics), then make a non-sequitur conclusion that why liberals are dumb and wrong all the time. If he just wanted to say that, he didn't need a book to do it.
February 1, 2010
It is always difficult, if not impossible, to foretell what books will still be read generations from now. If I had to bet, I would bet that this book will be among them. I am not sure if I enjoyed it quite as much as the Vision series, but it is close. Dr. Sowell believes it is his most important work. A reader is always a little wiser after having read the works from this great scholar.
March 28, 2020
Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite writers and thinkers. He cuts through the propaganda crap that is shamelessly pedaled by so many politicians, media elites and think tanks.
April 30, 2021
"A scientist who filtered out facts contrary to some preferred theory of cancer would be regarded as a disgrace and discredited, while an engineer who filtered out certain facts in building a bridge could be prosecuted for criminal negligence if that bridge collapsed as a result, with people on it.
But those intellectuals whose work has been analogized as “social engineering” face no such liability—in most cases, no liability at all—if their filtering out of known facts leads to social disasters..."
This one was outstanding. It is my second from author Thomas Sowell, after his 2018 book Discrimination and Disparities.
Intellectuals and Society is a monumental full-court press against (as Orwell said): "ideas so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them..."
Given that, this book has garnered many negative reviews; likely from many of the very people that Sowell writes about here. How ironic...
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and one of the most formidable contrarian thinkers of the modern age, IMHO.
Thomas Sowell:
The writing here is exemplary. Sowell writes with an extremely pointed and concise style, while still managing to produce an easily readable book.
There are so many excellent quotes here... Even more amazing, considering that Sowell was ~80 years old at the time of his writing of this book. A brilliant mind, for sure.
As its title implies, Intellectuals and Society talks about how modern societies and social policies have been influenced - and indeed shaped by "intellectuals".
While this sounds great upon a cursory examination, Sowell takes a deep dive into how this paradigm often collapses, and yields results contrary to initial aims:
Intellectuals and Society also fields the left-right dichotomy, and its moral implications. Sowell coins the term "the anointed" to describe the identity of the modern leftist "progressive", noting that:
Some of the other topics covered here by Sowell include :
*Karl Marx and Communism.
*Income distributions.
*Positive sum economics, economic prosperity and the "poor" classes.
*Disparate outcomes in group-level performance.
*Propaganda and manipulating scientific data.
*Gun crime statistics and war treaties.
*Media corruption and propaganda, including the softening of language; referred to here as "verbal cleansing."
*Causes of crime, and debates around how to deal with criminality.
*Multiculturalism as a doctrine.
*Wars and the intelligentsia: WW1, WW2, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Iraq wars are covered.
*Teachers, academics, and politicians.
*Slavery, imperialism, and the modern leftist vision of Western civilization.
Intellectuals and Society also has some super-interesting writing about the influence of the intelligentsia on a post-WW1 society, that helped create a culture of pacifism that permeated through France and much of western Europe. Sowell argues that this culture of pacifism would eventually lead to an emboldened Hitler violating the treaty of Versailles with military build-ups, Germany annexing the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, then on to Poland and starting the Second World War. Sowell writes this of The Battle of Britain:
Near the end of the book, Sowell talks about the prevalence of dislike for one's own society by members of the intelligentsia, a political termed coined by the late conservative author Sir Roger Scruton as "oikophobia" :
This was a superlative work. Thomas Sowell has knocked it out of the park with this one. The voices of heterodox opinions are more important now than ever before, IMHO - and Sowell is one of the sharpest thinkers towards this end that I have come across.
Intellectuals and Society was an incredibly well reasoned, written, edited, and presented book. I was blown away by the caliber of the writing here, to be quite honest. I didn't expect the book to be as good as it was...
I would most definitely recommend this one to anyone interested.
An easy 5-star rating, and a place on my "favorites" shelf.
But those intellectuals whose work has been analogized as “social engineering” face no such liability—in most cases, no liability at all—if their filtering out of known facts leads to social disasters..."
This one was outstanding. It is my second from author Thomas Sowell, after his 2018 book Discrimination and Disparities.
Intellectuals and Society is a monumental full-court press against (as Orwell said): "ideas so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them..."
Given that, this book has garnered many negative reviews; likely from many of the very people that Sowell writes about here. How ironic...
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and one of the most formidable contrarian thinkers of the modern age, IMHO.
Thomas Sowell:
The writing here is exemplary. Sowell writes with an extremely pointed and concise style, while still managing to produce an easily readable book.
There are so many excellent quotes here... Even more amazing, considering that Sowell was ~80 years old at the time of his writing of this book. A brilliant mind, for sure.
As its title implies, Intellectuals and Society talks about how modern societies and social policies have been influenced - and indeed shaped by "intellectuals".
While this sounds great upon a cursory examination, Sowell takes a deep dive into how this paradigm often collapses, and yields results contrary to initial aims:
"A sense of superiority is not an incidental happenstance, for superiority has been essential to getting intellectuals where they are. They are in fact often very superior within the narrow band of human concerns with which they deal. But so too are not only chess grandmasters and musical prodigies but also computer software engineers, professional athletes and people in many mundane occupations whose complexities can only be appreciated by those who have had to master them.Sowell cites many examples of "intellectuals" opining out of their depth, and commenting on topics they have zero relevant experience with. He mentions the topic of police shootings here:
The fatal misstep of many among the intelligentsia is in generalizing from their mastery of a certain kind of knowledge to a general wisdom in the affairs of the world—which is to say, in the affairs of other people, whose knowledge of their own affairs is far greater than what any given intellectual can hope to have. It has been said that a fool can put on his coat better than a wise man can put it on for him..."
"...Similarly, many of the intelligentsia express not only surprise but outrage at the number of shots fired by the police in some confrontation with a criminal, even if many of these intellectuals have never fired a gun in their lives, much less faced life-and-death dangers requiring split-second decisions. Seldom, if ever, do the intelligentsia find it necessary to seek out any information on the accuracy of pistols when fired under stress, before venting their feelings and demanding changes. In reality, a study by the New York City Police Department found that, even within a range of only six feet, just over half the shots fired by police missed completely. At distances from 16 to 25 yards—less than the distance from first base to second base on a baseball diamond—only 14 percent of the shots hit..."
Intellectuals and Society also fields the left-right dichotomy, and its moral implications. Sowell coins the term "the anointed" to describe the identity of the modern leftist "progressive", noting that:
"...The two visions differ fundamentally, not only in how they see the world but also in how those who believe in these visions see themselves. If you happen to believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values and other features of the tragic vision, then you are just someone who believes in free markets, judicial restraint and traditional values. There is no personal
exaltation resulting from those beliefs. But to be for “social justice” and “saving the environment,” or to be “anti-war” is more than just a set of beliefs about empirical facts. This vision puts you on a higher moral plane as someone concerned and compassionate, someone who is for peace in the world, a defender of the downtrodden, and someone who wants to preserve the beauty of nature and save the planet from being polluted by others less caring. In short, one vision makes you somebody special and the other vision does not. These visions are not symmetrical..."
"...Because the vision of the anointed is a vision of themselves as well as a vision of the world, when they are defending that vision they are not simply defending a set of hypotheses about external events, they are in a sense defending their very souls—and the zeal and even ruthlessness with which they defend their vision are not surprising under these circumstances. But for people with opposite views, who may for example believe that most things work out better if left to free markets, traditions, families, etc., these are just a set of hypotheses about external events, and there is no such huge personal ego stake in whether those hypotheses are confirmed by empirical evidence. Obviously everyone would prefer to be proved right rather than proved wrong, but the point here is that there are no such comparable ego stakes involved among believers in the tragic vision.
This difference may help explain a striking pattern that goes back at least two centuries—the greater tendency of those with the vision of the anointed to see those they disagree with as enemies who are morally lacking. While there are individual variations in this, as with most things, there are nevertheless general patterns, which many have noticed, both in our times and in earlier centuries. For example, a contemporary account has noted: Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, foolish, a dope. Disagree with someone on the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, a sell-out, insensitive, possibly evil..."
Some of the other topics covered here by Sowell include :
*Karl Marx and Communism.
*Income distributions.
*Positive sum economics, economic prosperity and the "poor" classes.
*Disparate outcomes in group-level performance.
*Propaganda and manipulating scientific data.
*Gun crime statistics and war treaties.
*Media corruption and propaganda, including the softening of language; referred to here as "verbal cleansing."
*Causes of crime, and debates around how to deal with criminality.
*Multiculturalism as a doctrine.
*Wars and the intelligentsia: WW1, WW2, the Cold War, Vietnam, and the Iraq wars are covered.
*Teachers, academics, and politicians.
*Slavery, imperialism, and the modern leftist vision of Western civilization.
Intellectuals and Society also has some super-interesting writing about the influence of the intelligentsia on a post-WW1 society, that helped create a culture of pacifism that permeated through France and much of western Europe. Sowell argues that this culture of pacifism would eventually lead to an emboldened Hitler violating the treaty of Versailles with military build-ups, Germany annexing the Sudetenland and Czechoslovakia, then on to Poland and starting the Second World War. Sowell writes this of The Battle of Britain:
"Here, as in many other situations, the intelligentsia’s effect on the course of events did not depend upon their convincing the holders of power. All they had to do was convince enough of the public so that the holders of power became fearful of losing that power if they went against the prevailing vision—pacifism, in this case. If Baldwin had lost power, he would have lost it to those who would turn the pacifist vision into a reality potentially disastrous to the country. Britain, after all, narrowly escaped being invaded and conquered in 1940, and only because of a belated development of its interceptor fighter planes that shot down German bombers during the aerial blitz that was intended to prepare the way for the invasion force being mobilized across the English Channel. Had the pacifists in the Labor Party come to power in 1933, it is by no means clear that this narrow margin of survival would have been in place..."
Near the end of the book, Sowell talks about the prevalence of dislike for one's own society by members of the intelligentsia, a political termed coined by the late conservative author Sir Roger Scruton as "oikophobia" :
"...They have romanticized cultures that have left people mired in poverty, violence, disease and chaos, while trashing cultures that have led the world in prosperity, medical advances and law and order..."
"...To condemn their country’s enemies would be to be like the masses but to condemn their own society itself sets the anointed apart as moral exemplars and incisive minds—at least to like-minded peers. Given the incentives and constraints, it is hard to see how they could do otherwise, when whatever significance that they might have in the larger society so often depends on their criticisms of that society and their claims to have special “solutions” to whatever they define as its “problems....”
This was a superlative work. Thomas Sowell has knocked it out of the park with this one. The voices of heterodox opinions are more important now than ever before, IMHO - and Sowell is one of the sharpest thinkers towards this end that I have come across.
Intellectuals and Society was an incredibly well reasoned, written, edited, and presented book. I was blown away by the caliber of the writing here, to be quite honest. I didn't expect the book to be as good as it was...
I would most definitely recommend this one to anyone interested.
An easy 5-star rating, and a place on my "favorites" shelf.
August 27, 2021
I liked the book because it revolves around an interesting idea. Ironically, it's the book about intellectuals, meaning it's about people whose end products are ideas. The problem with these people is the fact that there's no 'external control' of consequences their ideas cause. While everyone else, like engineers that build a bridge, have the result of their work validated, and, depending on result, they're being held accountable, meaning they'll face consequences if bridge collapse, such validation doesn't exist when it comes to intellectuals and their ideas. They create their products (ideas), but they're never facing responsibility if these same ideas cause bad results. They'll retain their credibility, popularity and air time - even if they're talking things, predict future or proposing action that ends up hilariously wrong. It's due to so called 'academic freedom' that they can talk and be listened to over and over again. I guess the main intention of this book is to demystify their 'talk'. Just because someone is an intellectual, and by intellectual we mostly imagine someone from humanistic fields of study, it doesn't mean they ought to be listened like their opinions have more meaning and weight than some average opinion about some actual issue. One of the main traits of an intellectual is the vision of the perfect world that exists only in intellectual's head. For example, they'll often talk against war, for peace, against arms, against racism, social injustice, for migration etc. So they'll often propose some stupid plans on how to combat problems that arise in reality, but the problem is that their 'solutions' serve only one purpose - to fit the reality to their vision of the world and human nature, completely neglecting the possibility that maybe their vision is stupid and useless. Of course, they'll use their verbal virtuosity to euphemistically call it 'idealism'. Like, when you're so called 'idealist' it means you can, without any responsibility, talk platitudes and propose bad reforms and stupid political action. Western intellectuals strongly agitated for disarmament of their western nations (Britain, France etc.) in the eve of the WW2, just because...well, peace & love! The same stupid vision of the world also made them agitate for mass migration into the Europe in 2015, with the help of their friends in the media that disseminated idea of mass migration. (I remember) - again, because 'peace and love'. They'll often condemn any possible mistreatment done by police if the 'victim' fits their narrative (meaning if the victim is black, gay etc.), while completely ignore injustice when the identities of actors and their roles in the event do not fit the narrative, meaning it may perpetuate 'negative stereotypes' which will hurt their vision of the world as it should be (in their heads).
I'm not against someone talking about society's issues in the public discourse, even if these issues is out of his field of expertise. It's just that we should validate individually person's ideas by result and consequences his ideas cause. It's just undeserving for some intellectual to talk stupid things and propose often harmful actions without being validated by society itself. If some intellectual has a bad record of his predictions, then why is he still relevant in the public discourse? Relevancy and credibility of an intellectual should be earned, and not just given based on a title. Unfortunately, a lot of these bafoons are relevant, over and over again.
I'm not against someone talking about society's issues in the public discourse, even if these issues is out of his field of expertise. It's just that we should validate individually person's ideas by result and consequences his ideas cause. It's just undeserving for some intellectual to talk stupid things and propose often harmful actions without being validated by society itself. If some intellectual has a bad record of his predictions, then why is he still relevant in the public discourse? Relevancy and credibility of an intellectual should be earned, and not just given based on a title. Unfortunately, a lot of these bafoons are relevant, over and over again.
September 20, 2010
This is perhaps the finest literary societal critique I have ever read. In a masterful display of powerful analytic thought, well-researched fact, and effectively no bias towards any particular group, Sowell tears into the intellectual foundations of our society and reveals just how cancerous they have become. This book was by no means a simple and quick read. It is incredibly thorough in its background research and it is beautifully written. This is an absolute must read if you are interested in intellectual thought rather than the emotional dribble put forth by so many academicians today. Note to our society's thinkers. Write more books like this!
April 8, 2018
Tricky to rate. I'll go with 4/5 because some parts (on class and race) are excellent, including the counter-arguments to the infamous observations on race and IQ in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.
Despite too many less-than-stellar chapters, I found this door-stopper worth the time. There seems to be a bit of a mean streak in his writing, but Thomas Sowell is still one of my favorite contemporary thinkers.
Despite too many less-than-stellar chapters, I found this door-stopper worth the time. There seems to be a bit of a mean streak in his writing, but Thomas Sowell is still one of my favorite contemporary thinkers.
July 27, 2014
Lies My Teacher Told me blows away kids in high school. This book does the same but for college graduates. Holy crap I feel lied to! What an incredible read!
I don't want to pretend like this book is perfect though. Sowell has a much better grasp of how politics, economics, and history are "spun" than he does art or fiction or stories in general. Sowell would greatly benefit from reading Hero With a Thousand Faces, Deschooling Society, and The Romantic Manifesto, among other things.
I don't want to pretend like this book is perfect though. Sowell has a much better grasp of how politics, economics, and history are "spun" than he does art or fiction or stories in general. Sowell would greatly benefit from reading Hero With a Thousand Faces, Deschooling Society, and The Romantic Manifesto, among other things.
April 19, 2018
Perhaps the most exhaustive and scathing critique of the evangelical left I’ve ever encountered. No, I don’t mean all viewpoints from “the Left” but solely the sect of leftism with a crusading zeal to spread their ideology.
I couldn’t stop reading it and made as many excuses as I could to continue.
This book encompasses a number of Sowell’s other pieces within it broken down into chapters or subsections. This may be his magnum opus regarding his critiquing works.
I couldn’t stop reading it and made as many excuses as I could to continue.
This book encompasses a number of Sowell’s other pieces within it broken down into chapters or subsections. This may be his magnum opus regarding his critiquing works.
November 16, 2014
I love books that address the problem of "experts" and elitist thinking that filters down to the mainstream. So, I was sure I would love this book. However, the arguments presented by Sowell were so poorly constructed and had such gaping holes, there was no point to finishing this book. The good points were constantly lost and muddied in the mire of bad arguments.
September 9, 2016
The basic aspect of this book was a profound one, that experts earn trust by mastering a particular area and also develop the ability to persuade, BUT that they quickly wander from this evidence-based expertise and offer opinions and assumptions that we follow unexamined. This idea is repeated a lot but not fully developed with examples and implications.
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