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You see no irony that, last year, thinking the NSA had implemented a comprehensive surveillance state would be an irrational belief that should be suppressed by active management of public discussion?

I think it's an awful idea, but then again, most ideas that come out of academia are awful. My point is that it should be viewed as what it is: a professor toying with a concept under a certain set of premises, not the sinister thing the article is trying to make it out to be.

Sunnstein is no lover of government suppression of speech. He has written at length about the importance of vigorous debate to democracy. I think he fails to appreciate the ways in which many of his proposals could backfire, but that's hardly a failing unique to him (how many people on this very chatblog opposed Citizens United, and think its a good idea to let the government prosecute companies for airing unauthorized political movies critical of a front running Presidential candidate?).

OK, so who is wearing a tinfoil hat:

a) Anti-GMO

b) Anti-nuclear

c) Chupacabra believers

d) Anti-surveillance

e) Pro-bitcoin

It's all fun and academic games until a vampire kills your goats.

A and B aren't really conspiracy theories as much as they are skeptical views on the safety of technological advances.

Are you suggesting that because some conspiracies have occurred, all conspiracy theories are worth consideration?

All theories, all ideas are worth consideration and should be evaluated on their merits (or lack thereof).

> most ideas that come out of academia are awful

And much, if not most, of the National Security State was built with the ideas of academics.

Sunstein and his ilk should be kept far, far away from the levers of power.

At this point, doesn't every every comment that supports, in even the slightest way, government positions, become suspect? Including your comments of course.

Conspiracy theorists have suddenly gained vast new powers.

> Sunnstein is no lover of government suppression of speech.

The Guardian: "He has also proposed reformulating the first amendment, arguing that in some instances it goes too far in protecting damaging forms of speech." http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/nsa-surveillanc...

The Guardian doesn't give a citation so there is no way to evaluate the claim.

I don't think Sunnstein's views on speech are in general inconsistent with what you typically find on say HN: http://mtprof.msun.edu/fall1994/TrRev.html ("Sunstein's focus is on the relationship between the media--newspapers, television, radio--and political culture. For him, the media, increasingly owned and controlled by a dwindling number of privately owned conglomerates, are in the propaganda and bread-and-circuses business. They make sure that the American public is not exposed to radically new viewpoints and that it is distracted from serious issues by an endless array of tabloid topics, from Nancy Kerrigan's knee to John Bobbitt's penis.") See: http://mtprof.msun.edu/fall1994/TrRev.html.

He favors restrictions on e.g. hate speech and political speech by corporations, which is not inconsistent with what many (most?) liberals believe. But he's also made it clear he thinks such restrictions should generally be based on harm, not ideas. http://www.gvpt.umd.edu/lpbr/subpages/reviews/sunstei2.htm ("A subject matter restriction on unprotected speech should probably be upheld if the legislature can plausibly argue that it is counteracting harms rather than ideas."). I don't agree with him on any of these points, but his views are not outside the mainstream, and are consistent with those of say European countries that have outright bans on hate speech.

"He ... is a proponent of government mechanics to get people to do the right thing"

Sounds like the last person I want anywhere near my government.

"when they would ordinarily fall prey to fallacious reasoning"

The first problem here is that the idea of a "fallacy" only makes sense in the context of logic, and politics often diverges from logic. Even if we could have a political system that was logically consistent, there would need to be some set of axioms on which that system is based, and the approach of "protecting" people from fallacious reasoning would only serve to prevent those axioms from being changed.

Put in less polite terms, he is proposing that the government protect itself from political dissent. I believe there is a name for such a system...

First, your point doesn't make sense. Why would protecting people from fallacious reasoning prevent the axioms of the system from being changed? Fallacious reasoning is not reasoning that is incorrect under one set of axioms that may be correct under a different set of axioms. It's reasoning that draws illogical inferences from available evidence. An argument that is fallacious under one set of axioms will still be fallacious under a different set.

Second, you're taking his argument wildly out of context. There is a well-established literature on the fact that human behavior often deviates from the rational actor model, as a result of cognitive bias and fallacious reasoning, and that results in economic inefficiency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics. He's not talking about political dissent. He's talking about things like people not saving enough because of hyperbolic discounting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting. So we pass laws that force people to save (e.g. Australia's superannuation). That sort of thing.

I don't think his solutions are practical. I'm just pointing out that they're not sinister.

"Fallacious reasoning is not reasoning that is incorrect under one set of axioms that may be correct under a different set of axioms"

In fact it is reasoning that might be correct under a different sent of axioms. The very basic fallacy involving division by zero to show that 1=2 is illustrative: you can certainly set up a system of axioms where 1=2 is not a false statement (it may be a boring system, but it does exist).

"He's not talking about political dissent"

Unless you are arguing against economically rational laws and policies, which quite a lot of political groups and dissenters do.

    "He's no anarco-libertarian--he has a very strong belief 
    in the ability of the state to improve society."

And herein lies the problem, whose definition of "improve" are we working with?

The definition of improve is so wholly subjective as to be useless. To me improve means more freedom. To someone else, it may mean more security. Two different definitions of improve can be totally at odds with one another.

The other word there that is very subjective, enough so to be downright dangerous, is "society". Is society defined as just the United States and it's citizens and to a much lesser extent our allies? Or is it defined as all of humanity, regardless of your citizenship or country of domicile?

For me, society === humanity. I fear the actions of those who define society more narrowly than that because it almost always means the improvements to the in-group they consider "society" come at the expense of the well-being of the groups not included in their definition of "society".

My experience has been that people with a narrower definition of "society" tend to think of solutions in terms of a pareto optimality and not seek out solutions that maximize welfare via a nash equilibrium.

So his assumption would be that politicians do not believe in "nutty irrational things" or less so than the general public. A questionable assumption for which he himself provides the counter example:

Here's a government boffin who seriously believes that it would be a great idea for the government to behave exactly like conspiracy theorists expect it to behave in order to convince them that the government would never behave like that.

Amazing.

"He writes a lot about behavioral economics and is a proponent of government mechanics to get people to do the right thing..."

As we see from recent events, the government's idea of "the right thing to do" is questioned by many intelligent people on HN and elsewhere. I'd prefer that our government stay out of the propaganda business.

Again, you have to understand that Sunstein is an academic. When he says "the right thing to do" he means "what an economically rational actor" would do, not "what the government thinks an economically rational actor would do." The step from the former to the latter is the difference between academia and reality. The fact that the latter might make certain ideas unworkable does not mean that its sinister to consider the former in an academic context.

"When he says "the right thing to do" he means "what an economically rational actor" would do"

Which is not even remotely close to how the majority of healthy adults live their lives. If our society consisted of people who only made economically rational decisions, we would live in a society of psychopaths (if such a society were even possible).