unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

Discover how the American dream of meritocracy, rather than being a ladder to success,  may actually be fueling inequality, eroding the middle class, and even harming the elites it was meant to reward.

Our guest today is Daniel Markovits, the Guido Calabresi Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Private Law. Markovits publishes widely and in a range of disciplines, including law, philosophy, and economics. 

Greg LaBlanc sits down with Daniel in this episode to discuss his influential book, 'The Meritocracy Trap.' Listen as they inquire into the historical and structural reasons behind this phenomenon, the heritability of elite status through education, and the challenges of reconciling societal norms with economic realities. They also touch upon the precarious status of non-elite workers in the face of technological advancements and the cultural shifts needed to address these systemic issues.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

How leisure took priority over income before the 17th century

23:30: This idea of seeking to maximize your income and viewing your wage as the price of your leisure is quite new historically. Until the 17th century or so, people thought of their income as, in some sense, secondary to their virtue. And they wanted to earn enough money or make enough money to be able to fund socially appropriate consumption. And after that, they preferred the combination of less money and more leisure over the combination of less leisure and more money. And you see this because when wages went up, the labor they yielded went down.

What did the founding fathers fail to foresee in this new type of aristocracy?

02:43: Meritocracy allocates income, status, and general advantage based on accomplishment. There are two obvious inputs into a person's accomplishment: their natural talent and their effort. But there's a third input, and this is the one the founders, I think, didn't really foresee. The third input is the extent of the person's training.

Is inequality more transmissible than it was in the past? 

12:08: I think it's more transmissible for two reasons, maybe three. First, human capital might survive the war, whereas physical capital gets destroyed. Second, this mechanism of elite transmission has a happy side effect if you're a dynasty: the way in which you give your children wealth also gives them the skills and character to keep their wealth. Whereas if you just give your children a bequest, when you die, they could be wastrels and free it away.[12:47] And then the third, which I think is really important, and this matters a lot to what we do about this, is that because we still in some way associate labor income with merit and virtue, elite labor income is extremely resistant to political redistribution.

Are the economic elites using DEI for their own economic privilege?

16:38 [Daniel Markovits]: The DEI is, in a fundamental way, consistent with the meritocratic vision.

16:43: [Gregory LaBlanc]: Right. I mean, that's why elites can all agree that diversity is a good thing and that we need to knock out any kind of remaining obstacle to achievement. 

16:53 [Daniel Markovits]:  The darker side of this. And the thing that I think when populists, including right-wing populists and some sort of nativist populists, complain about elite commitments to DEI, the thing I think that they're not wrong about is that economic elites use their commitment to diversity. Partly, they genuinely believe in it for the reason that it's morally required, but at the same time, they use it instrumentally to justify their own economic privilege.

Recommended Resources:

• Alexis de Tocqueville
• Gini coefficient

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Yale Law School

His Work:

• Yale Law School Center for Private Law
• The Meritocracy Trap
• A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age
• Contract Law and Legal Methods

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Why have historians often overlooked childhood despite its significance in shaping culture and political views? How did trends in family demographics and child-raising change across the country as new research became popular or new technology became widely adopted?  

Paula S. Fass is an emerita professor of history at UC Berkeley and also the author of a number of books. Her latest books are Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second-Generation Memoir, Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization, and Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America.

Greg and Paula discuss how American childhood has evolved distinctly due to factors like land availability, mother's roles, and the education system. They explore the impact of historical figures like Locke, Rousseau, and de Tocqueville and how post-WWII global changes influenced childhood. The conversation also touches on contemporary parental practices, the effects of smaller family sizes, and whether the unique characteristics of American childhood are fading in the modern world.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

How distinctive has American childhood actually been?

06:42: We in the United States, becoming aware of the fact that we're no longer so unique, have become much more conscious about not giving our children as much leeway as we used to have. What I call the managed child, helicoptering, and a variety of things like that have now become a very common American experience, precisely because we're worried that the kind of mobility—both geographic and social—and,  as a result, economic—that we used to have is now no longer a given. We are competing in a very different world than we were competing with before. And so trying to give our children a leg up, and the fear that, in fact, their mobility will be downward mobility, has led American parents to organize their children's lives much more than they have ever before.

The pressures of parenting are driving a sharp decline in birth rates in the U.S

55:11: We are now in a situation where parenting is so fraught that young people just don't want to do it. And given effective contraception, the birth rate has declined radically. 

On the intersection between politics, economics and they way children are raised in America

57:58: One of the realities that we talked about at the very beginning is the intersection between politics and economics and the way children are brought up. And certainly, the way American children were brought up in the 19th century and even in the 20th century led to an emphasis on  entrepreneurial innovative spirit. that the American economy has prided itself on. And it's not clear to me—I'm not an economic historian, and I'm not an economist—whether we are any longer providing children with the kind of home structures that would pivot them into those struggles. It is certainly possible that we've come to the point where what we prided ourselves on as Americans will no longer be the dominant form of American enterprise and American life. Yes, it's possible. And that would be related to childhood.

Can heightened awareness of children's needs lead to both overindulgence and overcontrol?

49:57: I won't describe that as an overindulgence. It is different than what happened in the 19th century, where there was not that much room for worrying so much about what your children were doing, worrying about what kinds of things they were playing with, and making sure they had appropriate reading material. Again, I won't call that overindulgence. Child consciousness, awareness of what you think children might need—yes. At the same time, that can lead to, and often does lead to, overcontrol bec

Recommended Resources:

• Ulysses S. Grant - Wikipedia
• Lenore Skenazy
• Adam Gurowski
• Claudia Goldin
• Benjamin Spock
• John B. Watson
• United States Children's Bureau
• Amy Chua

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at UC Berkeley
• Wikipedia Profile

Her Work:

• Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America
• Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization
• The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World (Routledge Histories)
• Inheriting the Holocaust: A Second-Generation Memoir
• The End of American Childhood: A History of Parenting from Life on the Frontier to the Managed Child

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How was the financial world changed by the structured use of wooden sticks with dents in them? Why did silver coins disappear from England as soon as they were minted? How did one country that aimed to eliminate money ultimately end up creating the most stable currency in Europe?

Paolo Zannoni is  Executive Deputy Chairman at Prada, and the author of the book Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World. 

Greg and Paolo discuss Paolo’s career choices between academia and banking, his research into the history of financial systems, and the key historical figures and places that have shaped modern banking practices. They also delve into the importance of trust in finance, the transparency of early banking methods, and the pivotal role Italy played in the origin of modern banking.

Zanoni and Greg discuss the significance of historical financial transactions and their transparency, comparing them to present-day financial technologies like blockchain. They also cover the interesting evolution of financial instruments such as the bill of exchange, public finance systems, and the impacts of these systems on the state and society.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Common debt before common currency

34:07: It was cheaper issuing debt in Écu than issuing debt in your own national currency. That was the beginning of the common currency and could have been the beginning of the common debt. But the first part went fast, reasonably fast, and reasonably far. The second did not take off. And that shows the areas in which the Continental Congress of the United States was much superior to the EU. The Continental Congress of the United States had common public debt because before having a common currency. That I found is so marvelous, so innovative, and so great. They did not have a common currency, but they had common debt.

When banks fail, they turn to financial history

45:55: When banks go bad, they start confronting that particular crisis of the past, and depending on how good the financial history is, they go back in time. 

How an orderly banking system preserved centuries of financial history

27:44: Bank debt was a combination between a registered IOU and a banknote. And so when the bank was making promises, they were issuing these pledges of credit, but the pledges of credit afterward, to be deposited in a bank account, had to be entered into a special ledger by bank employees. And when that ledger, when that pledge of credit was entered into the ledger, was returned, all hundreds of years of pledges of credit are neatly stacked on the shelves. That's how you can find how much Caravaggio was paid for his painting. Isn't it amazing? With enough time and knowledge, you can find almost every big transaction.

On Venice's early banking transparency

09:49: They had two features. The first one was that they were public, and banking was transacted. The banker opened up his ledger, and the two parties, maybe not at the same time, appeared in front of him. And the second was that the government was checking those ledgers. I mean, Venice had magistrates that were required to supervise the ledgers of the bank. At the ledgers of the bankers, and they did supervise the ledger of the bankers, and the only place where you find those ledgers today are in the part of the archives that comes from those magistrates and from the senate.

Recommended Resources:

• Luca Pacioli
• Fibonacci
• Liber Abaci
• Philip II of Spain
• Tally stick
• Écu
• Ferdinando Galiani - Wikipedia
• Alexander Hamilton
• Rudolf Hilferding
• Gresham's law
• unSILOed - William Goetzmann - How Finance Made Civilization Possible
• Bernardo Davanzati
• Polymath

Guest Profile:

• Board of Directors page for Prada

His Work:

• Book - Money and Promises: Seven Deals That Changed the World
• Article - Fortune - The government using taxpayer money to bail out banks will unavoidably continue. Here’s why

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The thing about sovereign debt is that if a country defaults on its loan, there are no international bankruptcy laws in place to ensure the creditors get their money back. So what happens then?

Gregory Makoff, a physicist turned banker, is a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and the author of the book, Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring. In this debut, Makoff tells the gripping story of Argentina’s years-long court battle in the U.S. to settle a massive debt. 

He and Greg chat about the tricky nature of sovereign debt, the inner-workings of the Argentina case and why it took more than a decade for the debt to be settled, and the lasting impact the case has had on sovereign debt law. 

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Is the IMF failing broke countries?

01:06:51: The biggest problem with most countries, for me, is going to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) too slowly because you're in a deeper hole. You have more debt. It hurts the debtors more. You need a bigger adjustment. So, for me, the IMF isn't the problem. It's countries hearing all this negative IMF theory and politics and that anti-IMF view hurts them. And so, I think they do as well as they can. They're a member organization. Are they perfect? Nobody's perfect. You work with them. That's why you need countries to understand IMF programs, how they work. They need to do their own economic models. They need to be proactive with the fund and say, we need this and that. We don't want to do this and that.

Bridging differences and highlighting the role of arbitrators through 'Default’

31:34: The book (Default) is really about two things. One is good-faith negotiation—getting people to settle their differences and not letting the partisans far on the left or far on the right dominate the solution. And the other one is the role of arbitrators.

Why is it that we don't have an orderly process or system for sorting out government debt?

102:10: The answer is the word sovereignty. And you can ask the same, similar question: well, why isn't there an international court that makes wars not happen? And it's, a country wants to go to war, you can't stop it. My country doesn't want to pay its debt. In fact, when you buy a security, a bond, or a loan from a foreign country and they don't want to pay, there's not much you can do about it.

Can Argentina break free from its debt trap?

33:39: What does Argentina do? It's got a big debt load again. Does it just keep defaulting? Or does it wake up someday and say, We're going to start honoring our debts? We're going to live within our means. And they elected Javier Millie. He came with a chainsaw. He said, We're going to honor contracts. It's going to hurt. But the people are exhausted by crisis of the 80s, crisis of the 90s, crisis of the 2000s, crisis of the 2010s. And they're like enough. We value financial stability more than we do short-term increased pension, increased wages. And how that plays out is incredibly important, and it's unchartered territory

Recommended Resources:

• Anne Osborn Krueger
• International Monetary Fund (IMF)
• Elliott Investment Management
• Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Guest Profile:

• Fellow Profile at Harvard Kennedy School
• Social Media Profile on X
• Book Website

His Work:

• Default: The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring

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In what ways is England’s imperial past connected to its present? What of that past is reflected in the schools and schoolwork of students? Are there ways to acknowledge and repair things from the past in a way that moves society forward?

Sathnam Sanghera is a journalist for The Times of London and the author of several books. His latest two are titled Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain and Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe.

Greg and Sathnam discuss Sanghera's unexpected transition to writing about history, the complexities of British imperial history, and its nuanced impact on the modern world. The conversation digs into topics such as the perception of British imperialism in modern education, the contradictions within British history, and the ongoing struggles with racism in the UK. 

Sathnam also highlights the enduring influences of British rule in former colonies and the evolving discussions around reparations and historical reckoning.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Nuance is a useful concept for history

07:29: I would say balance is not a very useful concept for history in general. Nuance is what you want to aim for. But the reason I think we've always struggled to talk about British Empire, except in this way of trying to balance the positives against the negatives, is because this is how empire was discussed at the time. In the 19th century, there are endless arguments about whether we should hold on to our empire, whether we were making money out of it overall, whether overall it was a good thing or a bad thing. And this continues to be the way we discuss empire. We continue trying to weigh the miles of railway we built in India against the millions of lives that were lost in the potato famine in Ireland. It's an absurd way of trying to understand history, because how do you balance railways against death? And how you might balance slavery against anti-slavery? And I guess my ultimate conclusion after five years of studying this is that you can't come down on any side.

On arguing for sophistication

45:15: As writers and historians, we always argue for sophistication. Politicians will always try to simplify things.

Are people more comfortable with nuance journalism than they are with history? 

09:22: Social media is now just setting people up against each other all the time. And politics is becoming highly polarized. Everything is turning into a football match. Where you have your side, and the other side is evil, right? And history is just as it makes it. Trying to understand imperial history through that prism, it's like saying, I want to understand the history of the climate, but I'm only going to study the sunshine, or I'm only going to study the rain. It's not going to give you a very sophisticated sense of the climate, is it? You want to study the weather in between. And that is the same is true for history. 

On the phenomenon of indentured servitude

33:52: One of the main reasons, you see, Indians, wherever you go in the world, is because the British, after they abolished slavery, realized they needed workers, and they didn't seem willing to incentivize the formerly enslaved to do the work. So they decided to send one million Indians around the world to places like Mauritius, Trinidad, Jamaica, and Guyana to do the work that the enslaved formerly did. And often they were treated as badly as the enslaved. Not quite as badly, but pretty badly. But this led to all sorts of phenomena... And so, all these phenomena exist around the world, and the way in which the British Empire changed the demographics of the planet. I don't think we think about that enough.

Recommended Resources:

• H. G. Wells
• Jallianwala Bagh massacre
• Rishi Sunak
• Narendra Modi
• Mughal Empire
• British Empire
• Sikhs
• Rudyard Kipling
• Wolverhampton Wanderers F.C.
• Enoch Powell
• Thomas Thistlewood
• Wardian case
• Malayan Emergency
• Brexit
• James Stephen

Guest Profile:

• Sathnam.com
• Wikipedia Profile
• Instagram Profile
• Twitter (X) Profile

His Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain
• Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe
• Marriage Material
• Stolen History
• If You Don't Know Me by Now: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton
• The Times Articles

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How did the teachings of the great Greek and Roman moral philosophers shape America and its founders? How has the shift away from studying those teachings had an impact on the modern political landscape? 

Jeffrey Rosen is the CEO of the National Constitution Center, a law professor at George Washington University, and the host of the podcast We the People. His recent book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America delves into the ideas of personal self governance and the historical and contemporary implications of virtues like self-mastery, moral philosophy, and happiness.

Jeffrey and Greg discuss the transformation of happiness from virtue-based to pleasure-seeking, the role of deep reading and character education, and the timeless struggle between personal gratification and civic virtue.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Is there a connection between evolving definitions of personal happiness and political changes?

07:24: Sometime in the 60s, the definition changed from being good to feeling good. It had something to do with the change in the understanding of happiness in pop culture and during the revolutions of the 60s, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and the new emphasis on seeking pleasure rather than seeking self-mastery. Both the popular understanding of happiness and what was rewarded in the political system changed. And the founders saw a connection between the need for personal self-government and political self-government, understanding that unless citizens could moderate their unreasonable emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear, they wouldn't choose virtuous leaders, educate themselves about the basic principles of liberty so that they could defend it when it was under threat, compromise, and deliberate with those who had different points of view.

An emphasis on deep reading in today’s online world

50:24: Citizens have an opportunity and a duty to read the primary sources, both the majority opinions and the dissents, so they can make up their minds. The same goes for news. We can always go back to the primary sources and make up our own minds. It is much more important to inspire these habits of deep reading and engagement so that we can take advantage of this marvelous world where all the primary sources are online.

When culture stopped valuing virtues, politics reflected the change

09:01: Once the culture stopped valuing things like self-mastery, moderation, temperance, prudence, courage, and justice to use the four classical virtues, then it became more acceptable to express this in the political arena.

What inspired Jeffrey to launch his recent book?

05:13: So, during COVID, I followed Jefferson's schedule. I got up early. I read the moral philosophy for two hours. I watched the sunrise. I wrote these sonnets, sort of summing up the wisdom, which is a weird practice until I learned that a lot of people in the founding era also wrote sonnets of virtue. There's something about this material that kind of inspires poetry. And what I learned after a year of reading this remarkable literature—it changed my life. It changed my understanding of how to be a good person and a good citizen.

Recommended Resources:

• Cicero’s Tusculanae Disputationes
• Xenophon’s Socrates
• Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Walker Howe
• Seneca’s Letters from a Stoic
• The Columbian Orator 

Guest Profile:

• Bio at National Constitution Center
• Faculty Profile at George Washington University
• We the People podcast

His Work:

• The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America
• The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America (Institutions of American Democracy)
• The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America
• The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age
• William Howard Taft: The American Presidents Series: The 27th President, 1909-1913
• Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet (Jewish Lives)
• Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law
• Jeff Rosen | New Republic 

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Does modern society have too many laws? Have we complicated legal codes to the point where we’re suffocating under them and grinding the government to a screeching halt? 

Lawyer and author Philip K. Howard is the founder of the nonpartisan coalition, Common Good, which works toward legal and government reform. He’s the author of numerous books like, The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America and most recently, Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society. 

Philip and Greg discuss the balance between rigid rules and human discretion, the importance of human judgment in law, and how legal micromanagement and excessive regulation curtails individual agency and practical wisdom.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Freedom does not exist without the authority of law

02:42: Freedom does not exist except within a framework of the authority of law. And the authority of law requires human judgment by the people in charge of law, judges, officials, and others. What's a safe workplace, etc.? Whether a seesaw is a reasonable risk? Whatever it is, they have to make those judgments so that people have a sense of where they stand. And then you get freedom back, and people can act again. You no longer have gridlock. But right now we have law, not as a kind of outer fence of a corral of freedom. We have law interceding in daily choices. There's almost nothing you can say in the workplace that doesn't have legal implications. Well, is that a free society? I don't think so. 

Has law become counterproductive?

05:53: Today, the law has become, in many areas, counterproductive. I mean, it doesn't make people feel more free; it makes them feel less free, right? And the point of the law is to provide a framework to enhance everyone's freedom, so we're not worried that the water we drink is polluted, that we feel comfortable, that we have free speech, and we can say what we think without getting into trouble. Well, that's not true anymore.

The role of law is to enhance freedom

32:06: We need to have a clearer sense of what the boundaries of our freedom are, and that requires the enforcement of norms that judges and others were not doing. So we have both too little and too much law. Ultimately, my goal—I think the role of law is to enhance freedom—everyone's freedom, freedom from abuse, freedom from dirty water, and to do what humans are good at doing.

Law doesn’t work without judgment

01:01:23: Law doesn't work without the judgment of the people—of the people in charge applying the norms of law. Law is not a speed limit sign that says 55 miles an hour. It's principles like the reasonable person standard or whatever. It's unreasonable search and seizure, free speech. All these things are principles that have to be interpreted by somebody. They're not self-executed.

Recommended Resources:

• Daniel Kahneman
• Mike Rose 
• Alexis de Tocqueville 
• The American Law Institute podcast 
• Joe Klein | Time Magazine
• Ikiru
• Vaclav Havel
• Jeremy Waldron

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Columbia University
• Professional Website
• Common Good

His Work:

• Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society
• The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America
• The Collapse of the Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom 
• The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government 
• Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions 
• Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left
• The Lost Art of Drawing the Line: How Fairness Went Too Far 
• Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America

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Out of all the ancient moral philosophies, which one feels most applicable to how we live our lives in the modern world? As today’s guest would say, we are all Epicureans now.

Catherine Wilson is an emerita professor of philosophy at the University of York. She’s written many books on the subject of ethics and philosophy, including How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well and Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory.

Catherine and Greg talk about Epicureanism’s relevance in the modern world, how it contrasts with other ancient philosophies like stoicism, and debate the role of prudence in the  pursuit of pleasure.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Why should we all be thinking about getting up to speed or at least exposing ourselves to ancient moral philosophy?

02:42: Epicureanism has been underappreciated relative to the other ancient philosophies. As we all know, Stoicism has become incredibly popular. Epicureanism is, in many ways, the foil to Stoicism. And frankly, I wouldn't go to Aristotle or Plato, particularly for moral advice. Some good parts of it, but I think Epicureanism needed a fresh look. And so what I tried to do in the book was to draw out some ways, possibly more fetch than they needed to be, some lessons or some implications that we could use now, taken directly from Epicurus and Lucretius. So that was the idea, and I think Epicureanism is really a breath of fresh air in many ways.

What makes Epicureanism appealing?

31:11: One of the most appealing features of Epicureanism is that because nature is always making new combinations and presenting you with new experiences, you're constantly having to update your beliefs and rethink your assumptions.

Epicurean perspective on meaning

41:01: The epicurean perspective is cosmological. It says you are here for a very short amount of time in the history of the universe. You came from dust; you're going to end up in dust. What you should do in that short time is have a nice life. Do the things you enjoy doing. And learning, teaching, figuring things out, and taking part in family life—those are the things that usually give people the most satisfaction in life. As human beings, that's what we like to do. So, you don't have to go to excess.

What accounts for the renewed success of stoicism? 

39:10: Stoicism says, well, you are you, and you are a fortress in yourself, and you have to not be so worried about what other people are doing that is making you miserable and believe that it's under your control whether you're miserable or not. And this seems to me completely on the wrong track when other people in other situations are making you miserable. You ought to try to change them. Speak up, or get out of there. "Don't Suffer in Silence" was, I think, the title of one of the chapters. And I think I referred there to Albert Hirschman. How do you respond to bad situations? Exit, voice, or loyalty?

Recommended Resources:

• Epicurus
• Lucretius
• René Descartes
• John Locke
• Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University of York

Her Work:

• How to Be an Epicurean: The Ancient Art of Living Well
• Moral Animals: Ideals and Constraints in Moral Theory
• Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity

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Shame and the classification of people have always been with us, but new technology can amplify the harmful effects of both. What can be learned from a careful study of algorithms at play in pivotal places in society?

Cathy O’Neil is the founder of an algorithmic auditing company called Orca, a research fellow at Harvard University, and the author of two books, The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation and Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.

Greg and Cathy discuss what algorithmic auditing is and how it comes into play when we talk about using algorithms to affect decision-making in different businesses. Cathy explains how algorithms amplify and scale issues in the human auditing system without necessarily some of the failsafes, particularly how algorithms have modified the behavior and thinking of children and teens. 

Cathy also talks about the intersection of shame with these powerful algorithms in the seductive form of social media for teens and adults alike, and how they are geared toward and successfully generate outrage and arguments for their own profit and the ultimate detriment of the user. Explore more of her data-driven research positions in this conversation that can change the way you look at shame.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

What’s the goal of shame?

38:35: Conformity might seem like the most obvious goal of shame, and I guess in useful examples of shame, like when you shame your child for beating his little brother, that's a great example: “You can't do that to their little brother. Shame on you.” That's a great example of pro-social. There are other goals of shame, and it should be said because it'll make more sense as to why it's gotten out of hand. And one of them is setting an example, like setting an example, like look at this person; look at what they did. It's too late for them to not do it. They did it, right? But we're going to use them as an example for everyone to see what's going to happen to you if you do it. So it's more like a signpost than a conformity thing. It's, I guess, sort of like trying to get other people to conform in the future rather than to that person's behavior.

Shame is required for a functioning society

03:49: Shame is not new. Shame is as old as social interaction, and it's absolutely required for a functioning society. We have to know how to sacrifice our personal goals and selfish desires for the sake of the group, which I think is the fundamental rule around shame.

How does social media amplify shame?

40:44: The social media platforms have done something really extraordinary. They've built a new business model. It's no longer necessary to implicitly and explicitly shame someone and make them buy a product from you. That's the old business model. What they've done instead is built a world, which is the online world, a platform where they get you to shame each other. You are doing it, like you're co-opted, if you will. You profit from the existence of shaming. Fights on your platform because the longer those guys engage in those shaming, the cross-shaming, let's call them shame trains, the longer they get on those shame trains and ride as hard as possible, the longer people are on your platform. And ultimately, you're selling their attention. And so they're there. So they're paying attention to the ads around them, which is really, really the business model, as we all know.

Finding the balance between shame and persuasion

52:18: Don't overestimate the choice involved. If you're shaming someone, you have to really be explicit about: is this really a choice? And if it is, then instead of shaming somebody, try to persuade them. And the way you persuade somebody of something, which is typically more successful than shaming them, is you appeal to a universal norm, which is to say you appeal to a norm that you both know you agree on.

Recommended Resources:

• Randomized controlled trial
• Bloomberg Article about OpenAI
• Cui bono?
• 2007–2008 financial crisis
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Sam Altman
• ChatGPT
• Alice Munro
• MeToo movement

Guest Profile:

• CathyOneil.org
• Profile on Wikipedia

Her Work:

• Amazon Author Page
• The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation
• Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy
• Doing Data Science: Straight Talk from the Frontline
• The era of blind faith in big data must end

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In order to study the science of success, you have to also study the science of failure. How much is performance connected to success? How do you leverage networks in your domain successfully?

Albert-László Barabási is a professor of network science at Northeastern University and the author of books like, Linked: The New Science Of Networks Science Of Networks and The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success. 

Albert and Greg chat about the evolution of network science, measuring performance vs. success, how to strategically network in your field, and the surprising findings about creativity and age.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Distinguishing success vs. performance

14:24: Performance is really about you, and your success is about us. And what do I mean by that? If we look very carefully, everything that is performance typically links to individual qualities. How fast can you run? How good of a research paper can you write? And how good of a speaker are you? And so on and so forth. However, every measure of success is really given by the community, whether that's feedback, acknowledgment, adoration, money, whether that’s likes, it's always a communal measure, right? You don't pay yourself; you don't like yourself—or you could do that, right, but not at the scale that really leads to success. It's really the community that provides that to you. Therefore, if you want to understand success, at the beginning, we do need to distinguish these two things, and you need to ask yourself: How do you measure performance? How do you measure success? And when and how is the relationship between them?

The social nature of success

32:42: This is the distinction between performance and success because success is a collective measure. We give success to you, so you need to come to us and make sure that we understand what you do. We can compare it to others who do different, similar things, and ultimately, we can acknowledge you and reward you for that. This is a collective phenomenon, and you have to work with the community; it's not a lonely journey any longer.

Is performance really measurable?

16:33: Performance is not a one-dimensional quantity. There's so many dimensions of performance when it comes to teaching, when it comes to having a podcast, when it comes to curing people, right? And hence, it becomes virtually unmeasurable. Yet, success is not unmeasurable, right? So, in most of us, the vast majority of humanity lives and works in professions where there is not an objective measure of performance, but there are very clear measures of success. And so really, all of the formula is really about how and when do these connect.

On understanding how success emerges

30:00: If you understand the forces that act on how success emerges, then you can actually start thinking about that in the domain where you are. What really matters, and where do you put your focus? I always think of these roles not as a way to manipulate the system—because you can't manipulate the system, right?—but rather as guidance on where to put your efforts.

Recommended Resources:

• Black-Scholes model
• Alessandro Vespignani
• Dashun Wang 
• The Science of Science by Dashun Wang and Albert-László Barabási

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at Northeastern University
• Professional Website

His Work:

• Linked: The New Science Of Networks Science Of Networks
• Bursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do, from Your E-mail to Bloody Crusades
• The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success

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