EXPLAINED IN 600 WORDS

Our collective ignorance

When journalists write articles, the goal is typically to provide readers with information about something we know to be true. But today I want to do something different: I want to focus on what we don’t know.

Covid-19, of course, gave the whole world a crash course in how little we can know about something that affects all of us — even after nearly two years when it might feel like we’ve learned a lot.

For one, we still don’t know all that much about why Covid-19 surges come and go. As University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm has said, “We still are really in the cave ages in terms of understanding how viruses emerge, how they spread, how they start and stop, why they do what they do.”

We’re even in the dark about the good stuff. Children’s natural defenses against the coronavirus have held up — including against the delta variant — but experts can’t really say why.

But it’s not just Covid-19. As someone who writes about a wide range of topics, I’m often struck by how little we know about any of them.

Consider economics. Recently, the Federal Reserve — perhaps the most grounded, mainstream economic institution there is — published a paper from senior adviser Jeremy Rudd that went viral in wonky circles. The introduction: “Mainstream economics is replete with ideas that ‘everyone knows’ to be true, but that are actually arrant nonsense.” The paper goes on to highlight how weak the evidence is for various widely accepted economic ideas, including theories about inflation and unemployment.

Neil Irwin at the New York Times summarized the takeaway: “It is vivid evidence that macroeconomics, despite the thousands of highly intelligent people over centuries who have tried to figure it out, remains, to an uncomfortable degree, a black box.”

Or consider politics. A big debate among Democrats right now is whether they should pursue “popularism”: Do a bunch of polling, then focus on the party’s policy ideas that are popular and stop talking about the rest. This sounds intuitive. But as Ezra Klein explained at the New York Times, it’s not clear if this will work. Do voters really pay much attention to what politicians say about policy? Or are voters focused more on other things, like culture issues or what other people they trust say about the political candidates in question?

Very smart people disagree on these questions. And as Klein acknowledged at the end of his article, “both sides are right” — to the extent they both make good points that could prove true about how politics work. But, really, who knows?

This problem appears even with things many of us thought to be true before. Just look at a US expert panel’s recent guidelines to not recommend a daily regimen of low-dose aspirin for most people at high risk of heart disease. The net benefits of aspirin were widely accepted as truth just a few years ago.

It’s not to say we’re literally ignorant about everything. From vaccines’ efficacy to humanity’s role in global warming, there are some things we have very strong evidence for.

But the world’s collective ignorance is important. It’s not just about inspiring monastic meditation on how little we know. It should lead us to have a little more humility — and, crucially, flexibility — in how we go after the world’s major problems.

Yet the US’s political and policymaking systems are often built in the opposite direction. Politicians are punished for “flip-flopping,” even if they’re adjusting to new facts on the ground. There are so many checks in place against passing new laws that the default state for Congress in recent years is gridlock.

It leaves American policymaking in a bind: There’s a lot we don’t know about, but it’s also hard to change things once we do finally learn how something works.

PAPER OF THE WEEK

Early intervention, long-term improvement

A recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research took another look at an early childhood intervention in Jamaica — finding that it produced benefits three decades later.

A team of researchers led by Paul Gertler analyzed outcomes for now-adults who were deemed to be disadvantaged and stunted — typically a result of malnutrition and disease — as children in Kingston, Jamaica, in the late 1980s. These then-kids were randomized into two-year home-based interventions. One intervention focused on improving nutrition, another on boosting mother-child interactions for cognitive, language, and other psychosocial gains, and a third combined both. They were compared to control groups that didn’t get the nutritional or psychosocial intervention.

The researchers found “large and statistically significant effects on income and schooling; the treatment group had 43% higher hourly wages and 37% higher earnings than the control group.” As the authors noted, this aligned with earlier findings from the same intervention in Jamaica and other studies of similar experiments.

In other words, this is just part of a growing evidence base for early childhood interventions producing big, seemingly lifelong impacts.

Given this growing field of research, as well as other evidence on the benefits of preschool education, the study should also give lawmakers in Congress a bit to think about as they consider whether to scrap day care and universal preschool programs from their looming reconciliation bill.

LISTEN TO THIS

On Tuesday’s episode, Dylan, Jerusalem, and Dara were joined by Rebecca Leber from Vox to talk about climate refugees, and they discussed a recent paper on social mobility. Listen here.

Also: On Friday’s episode, Dylan interviewed Mia Ives-Rublee about Congress’s fight over home-based care for older adults and people with disabilities. Listen here.