Comment: If Joe Rogan asks you to debate, be suspicious

By Tyler Cowen / Bloomberg Opinion

As an economist who is skeptical of Modern Monetary Theory, also known as MMT, I am often urged to take part in a public debate with its advocates. I routinely decline, in part because I cannot answer “yes” to this question: Will this debate bring us closer to the truth?

The most common (and correct) criticism of MMT, presented by Paul Krugman and Larry Summers, is simply that its advocates have never presented a coherent model showing how their arguments fit together. But repeating that basic point is not so effective in a public debate, especially if MMT advocates are making all kinds of specific claims about inflation, interest rates and deficits. A lot of macroeconomics is counterintuitive anyway, so mere verbal sallies do not settle whether a particular set of claims is valid.

Rather than staging a debate, it is better to ask MMT advocates to outline their claims more formally and push those claims through peer review. Then we can see what the evidence indicates.

Crypto is another attraction for public debates that are misleading. It is easy to find a long list of frauds and fraudsters associated with crypto, and present their offenses to a receptive crowd. The skeptic can then challenge whether crypto has any legitimate uses at all. The best rejoinder — many innovations end up being useful in ways that are not immediately evident — is not exactly guaranteed to “wow” the audience, despite its validity.

Existential risk from super-smart artificial general intelligence (AGI) is another topic on which public debate is unlikely to land upon the truth. The most extreme worriers can present a long list of concerns, and then ask their disputants to prove that the risk from AGI is zero or non-zero. In any case, a captive public audience is likely to go away worried. Vivid disaster scenarios are often easier to communicate and more memorable than an explanation of how, through decentralized systems and checks and balances, things might work out fine.

A better approach is to ask AGI worriers to act like climate scientists. That is, they should formally model their arguments, present those models for peer review, and then test those models against incoming data. Just how robust are predictions of doom in a world where most individuals and institutions will invest their resources in cooperative AI?

Perhaps the AGI worriers will show they have a point. But in the meantime, slinging arguments back and forth will make their doom scenarios look more plausible than they probably are.

Recently, Joe Rogan offered to donate $100,000 to a charity of vaccine scientist Peter Hotez’s choice if he appeared on his podcast to debate presidential candidate and longstanding vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most scientists consider the major questions settled; and not in Kennedy’s favor.

Of course people should always be open to revising their views. But a public debate is not a sufficiently-structured setting for adjudicating right from wrong on these issues. The claims of vaccine skeptics generally have not held up when confronted with data and methodological critiques. Instead, the skeptics tend to rely on unverified anecdotes or misunderstandings of the data.

There is a justifiable argument that the peer review process itself is unfair. Yet scientific rebels, from the late Nobel economics laureate Robert E. Lucas to mRNA vaccine scientists, have managed to use it to persuade others. Despite its faults, the peer review process does help to strengthen arguments.

As a general rule, one should not debate publicly with conspiracy theorists. Some conspiracies may be true and should not be dismissed out of hand. But any discussion needs to start by demanding the best available documented evidence, and then subjecting it to rigorous scrutiny. This is very often impossible to do in a public debate, where the unverified anecdote is elevated and methodological issues are obscured or unexamined. Furthermore, it takes more time to rebut a charge than to level it, and in the meantime the rebutter has no choice but to repeat some of the other side’s talking points.

So when someone demands a public debate on an issue, be suspicious. Why can’t the supposed truth be established by other means? Is it really helpful to throw so many scientific questions into the boiling cauldron of our delightful but chaotic culture of public debate? It may not be realistic, and it would definitely not be as exciting, but in many cases a better use of public resources would be to spend $100,000 on a panel of experts to summarize the best available evidence.

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. He is coauthor of “Talent: How to Identify Energizers, Creatives, and Winners Around the World.”