From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Social Engineering -- and Awareness (was: Is car pooling for real?)
Followup-To: sci.energy,sci.environment
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<Jym.24Jul1992.9am5@naughty-peahen.org>
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:30:13

In article <Jym.24Jul1992.9am5@naughty-peahen.org> jym@remarque.berkeley.edu (Jym Dyer) writes:

   >> Folks, you just can't get people to car pool.  20th century
   >> Westerners, at least, are just too independent.

   =+= But when you take a good look at it, you see that this
   independence is illusory.  Not only is this kind of commuting
   heavily dependent on a powerful infrastructure (the oil biz),
   it's also a huge sink of money (and thus time).

I don't mind achieving my personal independence at the cost of there
being a powerful infrastructure.  That doesn't make the independence
illusory.  I don't aspire to the independence of a hermit in
the woods.  Why I didn't even visit Innisfree when I was last
in Ireland.

   =+= 20th century Westerners -- Americans, especially -- like
   to *pretend* they're independent, but that's no substitute for
   the real thing.  Except, of course, for those whose realities
   are beamed to them out of the TV set. :-)

I almost never watch TV.

   > The actual solution to the traffic problem is technological -
   > which the social engineers will hate, because they like
   > engineering people.  Namely, computer controlled cars will
   > permit safe travel at 80 miles per hour . . .

   =+= You seem to have suddenly latched on to a new bogeyman
   called The Social Engineer, because you've been flaming about
   them in a number of messages.  But what were the people who
   designed our current freeway system but social engineers?

The term "social engineering" was invented by people who favored
it (just as the term "political correctness" was invented by
people who favored it.  "Social engineering"  was used
to advocate the manipulation of people for the higher purposes
of the "public policy community".  "Public policy community" is
another term invented and used by our would-be bosses that we
will eventually succeed in turning into a pejorative - after
which they will accuse the conservatives of having invented
it.

   =+= This is another manifestation of *pretending* to be
   independent.  Our current freeway system is the _status_quo_,
   so it's possible to pretend that it's just the way things are,
   not the result of any conscious social engineering.  But to
   rail at "social engineering" because it may involve a change
   that you *would* be aware of is just plain silly!

   =+= And your whole computer controlled car scenario is just more
   social engineering:  but because it preserves one visibile part
   of the _status_quo_, you can pretend it's not.

Neither the freeway system nor computer controlled cars was social
engineering as it was conceived by its advocates.  Both were
proposed as ways of letting people do what they want, not as
ways of making people want what someone thinks they should want.

       <_Jym_>

Here's what the OED has about social engineering.

     social engineering orig. U.S., the application of
     sociological principles to specific social problems; hence
     social engineer, a specialist in this field

Here are the illustrative quotations (which only partly support
my opinion about usage):

      `Of course you are too busy..and..need someone on your
     staff whose sole business will be the planning and direction
     of movements to improve industrial conditions; in other
     words you need a social engineer.'  Social engineering is a
     new profession.  1980 Gazette (Montreal) 22 Mar. 109/2
     Woodward and Armstrong..revile the efforts of President and
     Congress to appoint Supreme Court judges who will not act as
     left-of-center social engineers. 1899 Social Engineering
     Sept. 18 The following subjects were adopted for A Course of
     Lectures on Modern Social Problems... Social Engineering a
     New Profession. 1919 M. Beer Hist. Brit.  Socialism II. xiv.
     287 The Fabian Society appears to form an institute for
     social engineering. 1945 K. R. Popper Open Society I. ix.
     138 The Platonic approach..can be called Utopian
     engineering, as opposed to that kind of social
     engineering..which may be described by the name of piecemeal
     engineering. 1980 Jrnl. R. Soc. Arts May 351/2 A sort of
     extension of Architecture..as a vast subject in its own
     right with a powerful social-engineering content. 1843 J. S.
     Mill Logic II. iv. v. 273
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

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