Humble Brooks not so Humble, Actually

David Brooks, the oh so humble  Uriah Heep of political columnists and faux anthropologist is back after a three month hiatus.  In his first column after the break he was afraid that we are sullying our beautiful minds with opinions about politics.

I figure that unless you are in the business of politics, covering it or columnizing about it, politics should take up maybe a tenth corner of a good citizen’s mind.

This week he is back to what he does best, faux social anthropology and throwing around jargon that he does not understand to sound smart.   He uses the libertarian economist Tyler Cowen’s book, Average is over, as a jumping off point, to come up with this gem;

So our challenge for the day is to think of exactly which mental abilities complement mechanized intelligence. Off the top of my head, I can think of a few mental types that will probably thrive in the years ahead.

Mechanized intelligence? what in HAL’s name is that? Do we have androids like Star Trek’s  Data running around ruling the world that no one has told me about?

BTW is it me or does Tyler Cowen’s book sound like something Tom Friedman would come up with? According to Cowen apparently 15% of the population will thrive in this neo-feudal economy.  I hate it when economists like Cowen make such pronouncements, like it is a divine decree without any evidence to back it up. What kind of an economy we will have depends on policy decisions not some law of nature no matter what economists such as Cowen like to pretend.  More than 30 years of gutting regulations and making policies that favor the investor class leads to the inequality that we have now, its not some law of nature.

Coming back to the column, Brooks makes up some meaningless categories, synthesizers, humanizers etc. etc.   When you read a couple of paragraphs you come to the realization that despite having taught a course in humility, Brooks does not have the humility to keep his trap shut about things he does not know much about.

Twenty Elebenty: A Space Odyssey

LoL by: two_kittehs

ETA:  If I were David Brooks I would be afraid of mechanized intelligence!