索羅斯在大學(xué)的演講(I)

1、Transcript: Open SocietyThe following is a transcript of a lecture given by George Soros at Central European University on October 28, 2009.Today I shall introduce the third pillar of my conceptual framework, namely, open society. In the previous lectures I was summarizing the conclusions of a lifet

2、ime of study and experimentation. Here I will be breaking new ground because my views on open society have changed over time and they are still evolving. As a result, the next two lectures will be much more exploratory in character. The connection between open society and reflexivity is far fro

3、m obvious. On a personal level they are closely connected. As you will recall, I was studying economic theory and at the same time I was reading Karl Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies. It was Popper's insistence on our inherent fallibility that led me to question the basic assumptions of

4、 economic theory and develop the concept of reflexivity. But on a conceptual level the connection is only indirect. It is the first pillar, fallibility, that connects the other two. Fallibility in this context means not only that our view of the world is always incomplete and distorted but also

5、 that in our effort to simplify an extremely complex reality, we often misconstrue it. And our misconceptions play an important role in shaping the course of history. If there is anything really original in my thinking it is this emphasis on misconceptions. It provides a strong argument in favo

6、r of critical thinking and open society. Popper did not give an exact definition of open society because he considered exact definitions incompatible with our imperfect understanding. He preferred to approach things from the opposite direction by first describing them and then giving them a lab

7、el. The form of social organization he named open society bore a close resemblance to democracy.The net effect of his approach was to justify democracy by an epistemological argument. Since perfect knowledge is beyond the scope of the human intellect, a society characterized by the freedom of speech

8、 and thought and free elections is preferable to a society which imposes its ideology by force. Having been exposed to Nazi persecution and communist oppression, I found this argument very persuasive.Popper's philosophy made me more sensitive to the role of misconceptions in financial markets an

9、d the concept of reflexivity allowed me to develop my theory of bubbles. This gave me a leg up as a market participant.After a successful run as a hedge fund manager I went through a kind of mid-life crisis. I was approaching fifty. My hedge fund had grown to $100 million of which about $40 million

10、belonged to me personally. I felt that I had made more than enough money for myself and my family and running a hedge fund was extremely stressful and depleting. What would make it worthwhile to continue? I thought long and hard and finally I decided to set up a foundation devoted to the promot

11、ion of open society. I defined its mission as opening up closed societies, correcting the deficiencies of open societies and promoting a critical mode of thinking. As time went by, I became increasingly involved in philanthropy. I established a foundation in Hungary in 1984 when it was still un

12、der communist rule, in China in 1986, in Poland and the Soviet Union in 1987 and as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disintegrated, I set up a network of foundations that covered almost the entire former communist world. In this way I acquired some practical experience in building open societies

13、. I learned a lot.  I discovered things that I should have known in the first place. For instance, that the disintegration of closed societies does not necessarily lead to the birth of open societies; it may just result in a continuing disintegration until a new regime emerges which bears more

14、resemblance to the regime that had collapsed, than to an open society. The event that forced me to thoroughly reconsider the concept of open society was the re-election of President Bush in the United States in 2004. Here was the oldest and most successful democracy in the world violating the p

15、rinciples for which it was supposed to stand by engaging in human rights violations in the name of fighting a war on terror and invading Iraq on false pretenses. Yet, he was re-elected. How was that possible?  I had to ask myself: what was wrong with America? I wrote a couple of books trying to

16、 answer that question. I blamed the Bush administration for misleading the people and I blamed the people for allowing the Bush administration to mislead them. As I probed deeper, I started to question my own conceptual framework. I discovered a flaw in the concept of open society. Popper was m

17、ainly concerned with the problems of understanding of reality. He put forward an epistemological rather than a political argument in favor of open society. He argued that and I quote  "only democracy provides an institutional framework that permits reform without violence, and so the use o

18、f reason in politics matters." But his approach was based on a hidden assumption, namely, that the main purpose of thinking is to gain a better understanding of reality. And that was not necessarily the case. The manipulative function could take precedence over the cognitive function. Inde

19、ed, in a democracy, the primary objective of politicians is to get elected and stay in power. This rather obvious insight raised some additional questions about the concept of open society. How could Popper take it for granted that free political discourse is aimed at understanding reality? And

20、 even more intriguingly, how could I, who gave the manipulative function pride of place in the concept of reflexivity, follow him so blindly?Both questions led me to the same conclusion: our view of the world is deeply rooted in an intellectual tradition which either ignores the manipulative functio

21、n or treats it as subservient to the cognitive function. * * *It is easy to see how this view of the world became so engrained. The aim of the cognitive function is to produce knowledge. Knowledge is expressed by statements that correspond to the facts. To establish correspondence, statements a

22、nd facts have to be separate and distinct. Hence the pursuit of knowledge requires that thoughts should be distinguished from their subject matter. This requirement led philosophers, whose primary preoccupation is with thinking, to the belief that reason and reality are separate. This dualism had it

23、s roots in Greek philosophy, and it came to dominate our view of the world during the Enlightenment. The philosophers of the Enlightenment put their faith in reason. Reason was supposed to work like a searchlight, illuminating a reality that lay there, passively awaiting discovery. The active r

24、ole, that reason can play in shaping reality,  was largely left out of the account. In other words, the Enlightenment failed to recognize reflexivity. This resulted in a distorted view of reality but one that was appropriate to the age when it was formulated.At the time of the Enlightenment, hu

25、mankind had as yet relatively little knowledge of or control over the forces of nature, and scientific method held out infinite promise. It was appropriate to think of reality as something out there, waiting passively to be discovered, and reason as actively engaged in exploring it. After all, at th

26、at time not even the earth had been fully explored. Gathering facts and establishing relationships among them was richly rewarding. Knowledge was being acquired in so many different ways and from so many different directions that the possibilities seemed unlimited. Reason was sweeping away centuries

27、 of traditional relationships and religious dogma and generating a triumphant sense of progress. The difficulties that reflexivity poses to a proper understanding of human affairs went largely unnoticed. The leaders of the French Revolution believed that reason could help reconstruct society fr

28、om the ground up, but their faith in reason was excessive. Society failed to follow the dictates of reason and the euphoria of 1789 deteriorated into the terror of 1794. The Enlightenment misinterpreted reality by introducing a dichotomy between thinking and reality which would enable reason to

29、 attain perfect knowledge. The dichotomy was not inherent in the subject matter but introduced by the philosophers of the Enlightenment in their attempt to make sense of reality. The mistake made by the Enlightenment has been given a name: postmodernists call it the Enlightenment fallacy. I sha

30、ll adopt that term here but I want to make it clear that I am talking about a fertile fallacy which contains a valuable kernel of truth. Let me explain more precisely what I mean by a fertile fallacy. We are capable of acquiring knowledge, but we can never have enough knowledge to allow us to b

31、ase all our decisions on knowledge. It follows that if a piece of knowledge has proved useful we are liable to over-exploit it and extend it to areas where it no longer applies, so that it becomes a fallacy. That is what happened to the Enlightenment. The dichotomy between reason and reality wo

32、rked very well for the study of natural phenomena but it was misleading in the study of human affairs.  Fertile fallacies are the equivalent of bubbles in financial markets.The Enlightenment fallacy is deeply rooted in our view of the world. It led Karl Popper to proclaim that the same standard

33、s and criteria applied in both the natural and the social sciences, and it led economic theory to model itself on Newtonian physics. Neither Popper's elegant model of scientific method nor economic theory recognized reflexivity. What is worse, even I, who discovered-or invented-reflexivity in fi

34、nancial markets, failed to recognize that Popper's concept of open society was based on the hidden assumption that the cognitive function takes precedence over the manipulative function-that we are pursuing the truth and not simply trying to manipulate people into believing what we want them to

35、believe.The Enlightenment fallacy is also at the root of the efficient market hypothesis and its political derivative, market fundamentalism. The fallacy in these two intellectual constructs was exposed in a spectacular fashion by the collapse of the financial system; my discovery of a flaw in open

36、society was less spectacular because the concept is less widely accepted, but on a personal level it was equally earthshaking. It forced me to rethink the concept of open society.I have not abandoned my belief in the merits of open society, but I realize that it needs stronger arguments to buttress

37、it. Popper took it for granted that in an open society the cognitive function takes precedence over the manipulative function; I now believe that this has to be introduced as an explicit requirement for an open society to flourish. Let me explain how I reached that conclusion.In a democracy politica

38、l discourse is not aimed at discovering reality-that's the cognitive function, but getting elected and staying in power-that's the manipulative function. Consequently, free political discourse does not necessarily produce more far-sighted policies than an authoritarian regime that suppresses

39、 dissent. To make matters worse, in the political battle to manipulate reality a commitment to abide by the truth has become a handicap. The Bush administration had at its disposal a powerful right-wing propaganda machine working for it that did not feel any need to respect the facts. This gave

40、 it a decided competitive advantage over more old-fashioned political practitioners who were still under the influence of the Enlightenment fallacy and felt constrained by the facts. Frank Luntz, one of the most successful right-wing propagandists in the US, openly admitted that he used George

41、Orwell's 1984 as his textbook in devising his slogans. As a believer in the open society, I found this shocking. How could Orwellian newspeak be as successful in an open society as in a totalitarian state with its Ministry of Truth which could use Stalinist methods to keep people in line?This li

42、ne of enquiry provided me with a clue to the question: what is wrong with America? People are not particularly concerned with the pursuit of truth. They have been conditioned by ever more sophisticated techniques of manipulation to the point where they do not mind being deceived; indeed, they seem t

43、o positively invite it. People have become used to receiving messages pre-packaged; hence the influence of paid political advertising. They are more interested in being entertained than informed; hence the influence of populist commentators like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh.* * *The tech

44、niques of manipulation have developed gradually over time. They originated in the commercial arena towards the end of the nineteenth century when entrepreneurs discovered that they could improve their profit margins by differentiating their products through branding and advertising. This prompted re

45、search into the motivation of consumers, the testing of messages and the use of focus groups, setting in motion a reflexive process which changed the behavior of the public. It led to the development of a consumer society and spread from there to politics and culture. These trends undermined th

46、e hidden assumptions on which economics and politics were based. Economic theory has taken the conditions of demand and supply as given and showed how free markets under the conditions of perfect competition led to the optimum allocation of resources. But the shape of the demand curve was not indepe

47、ndently given; it was subject to manipulation by advertising. The theory of representative democracy assumed that candidates would present themselves and their programs and the electorate would choose the ones they preferred; it did not anticipate that the candidates would study public opinion

48、and then tell the electorate what it wanted to hear.Both these theories failed to take into account that reality can be manipulated.The manipulation of reality also became a major theme in the arts. It was literary criticism that eventually led to the development of the post-modern worldview which t

49、urned the Enlightenment upside down: it denied the existence of an objective reality that could be discovered by reason; instead it saw reality as a collection of often contradictory narratives.* * *I had dismissed the post-modern worldview out of hand because it was in conflict with my profound res

50、pect for an objective reality. I did not realize the connection between the post-modern worldview and the Bush administration's propaganda machine until an article by Ron Suskind opened my eyes. He quoted one of the operators of that machine as saying "we don't study facts; we create th

51、em." This forced me to change my mind. I had to take the post-modern position more seriously and recognize it as a fertile fallacy, fully equal in its influence to the Enlightenment, and currently perhaps even more influential. But I still regard the post-modern fallacy as more of a fallac

52、y and less fertile than the Enlightenment fallacy. By giving precedence to the manipulative function it ignores the hard core of objective reality that cannot be manipulated. This is more of a defect in my eyes than the Enlightenment's neglect of the manipulative function.* * *According to the E

53、nlightenment, reason and reality are separate and independent of each other. The only way people can turn reality to their advantage is by understanding the laws that determine the course of events. Under these conditions it could be taken for granted that discovering those laws has to come first. T

54、his led to the development of natural science, which is the greatest achievement of the human intellect.  It is only in the study of human affairs that the fallacy crept in.By contrast, the post-modern worldview is thoroughly misleading. It has spawned an amoral, pragmatic approach to politics.

55、 It can be summed up as follows. Now that we have discovered that reality can be manipulated, why should the cognitive function be given precedence? Why not engage directly in manipulation?  Why not pursue power rather than truth?There is an answer that I find decisive. While reality can be man

56、ipulated, the outcome is bound to diverge from the manipulator's intentions. The divergence needs to be kept to a minimum and that can be done only through a better understanding of reality. It is this line of argument that led me to introduce a commitment to the pursuit of truth as an explicit

57、requirement for open society.* * *This abstract argument can be reinforced by a concrete example. Look at the Bush presidency. It was remarkably successful in manipulating reality. By declaring war on terror it managed to line up the nation behind the President and pave the way to the invasion of Ir

58、aq. The invasion was meant to establish the supremacy of the United States in the world, but it achieved the exact opposite. America lost power and influence precipitously and George W. Bush is widely considered the worst president the United States ever had.This example ought to be convincing. Yet,

59、 now that the concept of reflexivity is gaining recognition, the danger is that it will be misinterpreted in favor of the post-modern fallacy. A reflexive reality is just too difficult to understand and people are easily misled by simple answers. It takes a lifetime to understand the argument that a

60、 valid prediction does not necessarily prove that the theory on which it was based is also true, while a paid political announcement takes only 30 seconds.It is tempting to adopt the post-modern view of the world but it is very dangerous to disregard the existence of an objective reality. One way to bring home objective reality is to draw attention to death as a fact of life. The mind finds it difficult to accept