Engineering and the Fact-Value Distinction

"Contemporary events differ from history in that we do not know the results they will produce." -- Friedrich Hayek

The fact-value distinction is fundamental to philosophy, and perhaps counter-intuitively, to engineering as well. I explicitly attended a graduate program where I could learn from a University of Chicago-trained Straussian, where emphasis is placed on “facts.” The key here is realizing the "fact" part is realistic, complex, and the way things "are," while the "value" part is convincing, simple, and the way things "should be." Straussians explicitly embrace complexity and "facts," while society in general embraces simplicity and "values," effectively arguing that facts are messy things that can be ignored if inconvenient.  

Here the situation becomes somewhat confused, but let me try to establish an analytic baseline and then draw some final conclusions. Straussians, who are followers of Leo Strauss, are essentially traditionalists and are often described as “close-reading,” meaning that they read closely to determine original meaning and intent. This tends not to be the philosophical stance at MIT, home to Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, and Jonathan Gruber, which is more “progressive” and value-oriented and less concerned about tradition and fact-oriented. Why might this be the case? There are two arguments to be made here. The first concerns technological optimism of the kind that was on display at the Chicago World’s Fair from 1933 to 1934, “A Century of Progress,” that featured the motto, “Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms.” And it appears that MIT continues with this technological optimism in that they seek to improve society through technology.

This is a fine sentiment or “value,” as far as it goes, but “facts,” reality, and life are all more complicated. Tom Wolfe in his 1987 piece, “The Great Relearning,” develop several vignettes with the common theme of progressive policies undertaken with the best of intentions that, unfortunately, bear bitter fruit, chief among them the sexual revolution. The problem is, such radical changes – and by “radical” and mean fast, significant, and fundamental – almost always turn out poorly because their advocates don’t understand the systems being radically changed and they certainly don’t understand the consequences. Here is where engineering has something significant to say about complex systems generally and social systems specifically. When I was programming and I made changes to my code base, I basically had no idea what was going to happen, so I was very careful with my changes and was always able to back out the changes I made. The interesting thing is that nobody knew more about that code than I did, and I was constantly surprised by the way consequences lined up, and my experience is not unusual. The problem is, politicians, policy makers, and philosophers are constantly advocating fundamental changes to society without knowing half as much about the systems they seek to change as I knew about my code. So is it any wonder that the history of social change is strewn with such debacles?

Of course these observations, while semi-well known, are immensely unpopular. It would be simple enough to run through the books and citations, but the video “Beware the Boom and Bust” provides an quick window with Keynes proposing popular but problematic policies and Hayek more unpopular but effective ones. Hayek of course wrote the well-known The Road to Serfdom, which is almost universally reviled by those on the value side of the fact-value distinction, which indicates, to my way of thinking, its inherent value and worth. But it is worth also considering for a moment the progressive response to Hayek, The Road to Reaction by Herman Finer. Hayek’s description of the Fabian Finer is worth recounting: "a specimen of abuse and invective which is probably unique in contemporary academic discussion." As factual arguments come into conflict with progressive values, reactions such as Finer’s are becoming all too common.

The key philosophic dichotomy in the 21st century therefore seem to have progressed from the fact-value distinction to one that is more grounded in complexity, with a natural tension emerging from the fact that nature is complex, but human success is furthered by being convincing, and simple arguments are more successful than complex ones, especially in a media age. So when I see the topics addressed by the Apple University – that is, making the complex simple – I think making products easy to use is great consumer design, but I wonder, does this also mean that they’re simplifying the world? Does this mean that Apple thinks that the rich complexity of reality can be simplified into notions of “social justice” that seldom turn out as initially envisioned?