How will we govern super-powerful AI?
The AI constitution can mean the difference between war and peace—or total extinction.
08 January, 2021
- The question of conscious artificial intelligence dominating future humanity is not the most pressing issue we face today, says Allan Dafoe of the Center for the Governance of AI at Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute. Dafoe argues that AI's power to generate wealth should make good governance our primary concern.
- With thoughtful systems and policies in place, humanity can unlock the full potential of AI with minimal negative consequences. Drafting an AI constitution will also provide the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of past structures to avoid future conflicts.
- Building a framework for governance will require us to get past sectarian differences and interests so that society as a whole can benefit from AI in ways that do the most good and the least harm.
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What is the purpose of universities?
For centuries, universities have advanced humanity toward truth. Professor Jonathan Haidt speaks to why college campuses are suddenly heading in the opposite direction.
08 January, 2021
Credit: Institute for Humane Studies, and Adobe Stock
- In a lecture at UCCS, NYU professor Jonathan Haidt considers the 'telos' or purpose of universities: To discover truth.
- Universities that prioritize the emotional comfort of students over the pursuit of truth fail to deliver on that purpose, at a great societal cost.
- To make that point, Haidt quotes CNN contributor Van Jones: "I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong—that's different."
<p>Imagine someone had a knife and told you, "This is a great knife. The only problem is it can't cut anything."</p><p>You'd think, <em>Then it's not a great knife.</em></p><p>"<em>Telos</em> is the Greek word that Aristotle and others use to define the end or purpose of something," <strong>Jonathan Haidt</strong>, professor at New York University Stern School of Business and bestselling coauthor of <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/dp/0735224919?tag=amz-mkt-chr-us-20&ascsubtag=1ba00-01000-s1060-mac00-other-smile-us000-pcomp-feature-scomp-wm-5&ref=aa_scomp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>The Coddling of the American Mind</em></a>, says in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xi499A4VsN8&t=28s" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">recorded lecture</a> at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs. The <em>telos</em> of a knife is to cut. What, Haidt asks, is the <em>telos</em> of a university?</p>
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<p><span>Truth—that's the purpose of higher education, Haidt says. The academy aims to be an arena where truth is sought, discovered, and explored. When the university is functioning at its best, students learn to present arguments and receive counter-arguments in pursuit of truth.</span></p><p>The question is then: Are today's universities achieving their purpose?</p><p>In his lecture, Haidt suggests that changes in campus culture over the past decade have rerouted university resources away from the pursuit of truth and towards creating an emotionally and intellectually comfortable environment for students.</p><p>"From out of nowhere, students in 2014 began asking for trigger warnings," Haidt says. A growing contingent among student bodies and administrators seemed to believe students were fragile and needed to be aggressively protected from "bad" ideas, offensive imagery, and provocative arguments. Students began reporting faculty, protesting speakers, and publicly shaming peers whose words made them uncomfortable.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTI2NjQ3NS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NTY4MzI2Nn0.6sKah5XVHLOLAcK5dFmyuxRk65-XBNNll3Ow9QEOTSc/img.jpg?width=980" id="73a87" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="29b948cc5bcb85976d5337221ae99640" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="2000" data-height="1125" />
CNN contributor Van Jones speaks onstage at the EMA IMPACT Summit in 2018.
Credit: Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Environmental Media Association
<p>There are many places and institutions whose purpose, or <em>telos</em>, is comfort. But a university is not one of those places. To make that point, Haidt quotes CNN contributor Van Jones:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">I don't want you to be safe ideologically. I don't want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong—that's different. I'm not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity. I'm not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That's the whole point of the gym. <em>This</em> is the gym.</p><p>By prioritizing comfort over the pursuit of truth, universities are ignoring their purpose. Higher education should be an arena of open inquiry and free expression, where ideas are exchanged, tested, and scrutinized. A liberal education should be "an invitation to be concerned not with the employment of what is familiar but with understanding what is not yet understood," <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Jpu7BAAAQBAJ&pg=PT286&lpg=PT286&dq=%22an+invitation+to+be+concerned+not+with+the+employment+of+what+is+familiar+but+with+understanding+what+is+not+yet+understood.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=bmqaS1BxSm&sig=ACfU3U0aOokPZOGJlLFUVO9-a8VBV50tCw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_u-jd1_btAhWqzVkKHSdKBMsQ6AEwAnoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=%22an%20invitation%20to%20be%20concerned%20not%20with%20the%20employment%20of%20what%20is%20familiar%20but%20with%20understanding%20what%20is%20not%20yet%20understood.%E2%80%9D&f=false" target="_blank">according</a> to philosopher Michael Oakeshott.</p><p>What are the social repercussions if universities fail to achieve their purpose? New generations could lose more than academic muscle; they could lose the ability and inclination to pursue and prioritize truth. They could become so dependent on emotional comfort that they refuse to contemplate "what is not yet understood" in good faith, instead catastrophizing everything that doesn't fit into comfortable frameworks.</p><p>This is already happening, Haidt points out in his lecture. "We isolate young people from the adult skills that they will one day have to master," he says. This manifests in <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/05/28/727509438/college-students-and-their-parents-face-a-campus-mental-health-epidemic" target="_blank">growing anxiety, depression, and other disorders</a> among college students.</p><p>With college enrollment on the decline, and the global economy under tremendous strain, universities need to realize their <em>telos</em>—or they'll risk losing their essential role in society.</p>
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The social determinants of health, explained
Want to tell someone's future in the US? You don't need a crystal ball, just their zip code.
06 January, 2021
Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
- Social determinants of health, such as income and access to healthy food, affect well-being long before people may enter medical facilities.
- They're one reason neighborhoods in the same city can maintain life expectancy gaps larger than a decade.
- With growing awareness of how societal ills determine health, medical professionals and their partners are devising more holistic approaches to health.
<p>New York City is a vibrant, vivacious city. No one knows this better than the people who live on its Upper East Side. Residents of this Manhattan neighborhood enjoy easy access to Central Park, a panoply of top-tier restaurants and markets, and some of the country's most renowned museums and cultural venues. But the real perk to calling the Upper East Side home is measured in years.</p><p>Upper East Side residents maintain an average<a href="https://data.cccnewyork.org/data/map/1341/life-expectancy#1341/a/3/1573/25/102/a" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://data.cccnewyork.org/data/map/1341/life-expectancy#1341/a/3/1573/25/102/a" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">life expectancy of 86.4 years</a>, a number on par with the most peaceful, prosperous countries in the world. For a population to enjoy so many precious years represents historic achievements in education, infrastructure, and health care. Yet these hard-won achievements have not been distributed equally. A mere 15 miles away, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville, the average life expectancy is a full decade shorter.</p>
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Just 15 miles from Brownsville, Brooklyn, residents of the Upper East Side in Manhattan have an average life expectancy of 86.4 years.
Source: NYC DOHMH; Bureau of Vital Statistics, 2006-2015
<p>Such life-expectancy gaps are common across the United States.<a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-chicago-has-largest-life-expectancy-gap-between-neighborhoods-20190605-story.html" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-chicago-has-largest-life-expectancy-gap-between-neighborhoods-20190605-story.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Residents of Chicago's Streeterville</a> neighborhood can rest easy knowing they will live to be, on average, 90 years old. Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, however, maintains a life expectancy of around 60 years. That's ten years lower than<a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?order=wbapi_data_value_2012+wbapi_data_value&sort=asc" target="_blank"> </a><a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?order=wbapi_data_value_2012+wbapi_data_value&sort=asc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the world average</a>—in the world's most affluent country. The phenomenon is not just an urban affliction. On the whole, rural community members have lower life expectancies as<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0112-rural-death-risk.html" target="_blank"> </a>they become more likely to die from <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0112-rural-death-risk.html" target="_blank">these five leading causes</a> than their city-dwelling peers.</p><p>While it may be tempting to write off these life gaps as the result of lifestyle choices or bad luck, they aren't. They are the consequences of a complex intersection between social, environmental, and cultural conditions that fall under 'social determinants of health.'</p><blockquote>You can have the best treatments, the best physicians, the best facilities, but unless a patient's non-clinical needs are addressed, none of it will make a difference.</blockquote>
The 80/20 rule of health
<p>Social determinants of health are those conditions in a person's life and environment that can either aid or degrade their health. They include employment, education, food availability, living conditions, communal support, neighborhood quality, socioeconomic status, and the wider systems that surround these conditions. When such determinants aren't wholesome, they erode health long before someone enters a hospital—at which point, health professionals may have only minutes to turn the tide of years of eroded health.</p><p>As Udai Tambar, vice president for community health at Northwell Health, said, "You can't medicate for social issues, and that's, in a way, the system we have developed. We're trying to medicate for social risks and social factors. <a target="_blank"></a>You can have the best treatments, the best physicians, the best facilities, but unless a patient's non-clinical needs are addressed, none of it will make a difference."<a href="#_msocom_1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Today, experts generally agree that 20 percent of health outcomes are derived from the care received at medical facilities, 80 percent from the non-clinical care attributed to one's lifestyle, environment, and social circumstances.</p><p>The data bear this out.<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-dozen-facts-about-the-economics-of-the-u-s-health-care-system/#:~:text=The%20combination%20of%20long%2Dterm,7%20percent%20of%20total%20spending." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-dozen-facts-about-the-economics-of-the-u-s-health-care-system/#:~:text=The%20combination%20of%20long%2Dterm,7%20percent%20of%20total%20spending." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">U.S. health-care spending</a> has nearly quadrupled since 1980, and the country has invested that bankroll heavily in hospitals, nursing facilities, prescription drug development, and medical specialist training. Each is valuable in its own right, yet as a systematic whole, this massive, decades-long investment has not netted proportionate health dividends. In addition to country-wide life gaps, the U.S. has one of the lowest life expectancies, the highest suicide rate, the highest chronic disease burden, and the highest obesity rate when<a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2020/jan/us-health-care-global-perspective-2019" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">compared to other major OECD nations</a>.</p><p>These other OECD countries don't spend more on health than the United States. In terms of absolute dollars, the<a href="https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">U.S. handily outspends these countries</a>. Instead, these countries spend<a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/2018-12/Multinational%20Comparisons%20of%20Health%20Systems%20Data%202018_RTikkanen_final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.commonwealthfund.org/sites/default/files/2018-12/Multinational%20Comparisons%20of%20Health%20Systems%20Data%202018_RTikkanen_final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a larger portion of their GDP</a> on social services, helping to mitigate deleterious social determinants long before a hospital visit. By<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/social-spending-not-medical-spending-is-key-to-health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/social-spending-not-medical-spending-is-key-to-health/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">one estimate</a>, other major OECD countries allot, on average, $1.70 for social spending for every dollar on health. The U.S. system is almost the inverse, spending .56 cents on social services for every dollar on health.</p><p>"You need social equity to get health equity," Tambar added.</p>There’s no pill to cure poverty
<p>This pattern of spending is one reason for the U.S. health-wealth divide, a pernicious and destructive social determinant of health. We've seen this divide's handiwork in the life expectancy differences between the Upper East Side and Brownsville, but those are samples of a whole.<a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30398-7/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30398-7/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">According to a 2017 paper in </a><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30398-7/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>The</em></a><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30398-7/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30398-7/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><em>Lancet</em></a>, the "life expectancy of the wealthiest Americans now exceeds that of the poorest by 10-15 years." And these life-gap metrics signal the end consequences of a myriad of unmet social needs.</p><p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a>Consider the health barriers common in impoverished areas, where residents lack access to healthy, affordable food. Limited funds make it impossible to update or maintain safe housing without mold or lead-contaminated<a href="https://www.epa.gov/lead/protect-your-family-sources-lead" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.epa.gov/lead/protect-your-family-sources-lead" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">paint</a> or<a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources/water.htm#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20sources%20of,1986%20may%20also%20contain%20lead." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/prevention/sources/water.htm#:~:text=The%20most%20common%20sources%20of,1986%20may%20also%20contain%20lead." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">water pipes</a>. Narrow or nonexistent transportation options cut off residents from employment opportunities or health-care access. And being surrounded by street crime, unsafe public spaces or no greenways generates sustained high stress, which <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/index.cfm/_api/render/file/?method=inline&fileID=123ECD96-EF81-46F6-983D2AE9A45FA354" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">research shows</a> grinds away at our physical health as fiercely as it does our mental wellbeing.<a href="#_msocom_1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p><p>Each of these conditions is bitter in and of itself, but these social determinants often come packaged as part of a social circuit that magnifies the effects of each.</p><p>Unfortunately, dietary fads and the U.S.'s rugged individualism have loudly espoused health to be the culmination of lifestyle choices (for some, even moral rectitude). While lifestyle and choice certainly have their role, an understanding of these social determinants shows how inextricably tied our choices are to our social conditions. As Tambar points out, a person can be well-versed in nutrition, but if their neighborhood is a food desert, their choices are constrained. Social circumstances can limit or adversely influence health in inimical ways.</p><p>As Dr. Mary Travis Bassett, Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University,<a href="https://bigthink.com/videos/mary-bassett-on-new-york-city-health-disparities" target="_self"> </a><a href="https://bigthink.com/videos/mary-bassett-on-new-york-city-health-disparities" target="_self">told </a><a href="https://bigthink.com/videos/mary-bassett-on-new-york-city-health-disparities" target="_self"><em>Big Think</em></a>: "Nobody picks a substandard building to live in with terrible issues of rodent infestation and indoor allergens that trigger asthma. That's not a lifestyle choice. […] It's not about choice; it's about the fact that people don't have enough choice."</p>Going to the source
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTIyNDM0Ni9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzMTMwNTc3MH0.m2s2NNhfZz8Aca8H9IL3PK_B5ecVNurz82PuF8s88Js/img.jpg?width=980" id="87250" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="b2ca94d906942d55c11a83821ad79632" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="6720" data-height="4480" />Credit: Getty Images
<p>Negative social determinants of health provide a massive challenge to the health-care community, but experts and medical professionals aren't powerless to meet it. As Michael Dowling, CEO of Northwell Health, writes in his book <a href="https://healthcare-reboot.com/" target="_blank">"Health Care Reboot"</a>:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">This trend toward greater awareness of the social determinants of health is one of the most encouraging developments in health care, for it creates greater awareness among providers of the whole patient, including all of the various elements—most of them outside what might be considered strictly medical issues—that affect an individual's overall health and wellbeing.</p><p>An outgrowth of this growing trend goes by the name "<a href="https://bigthink.com/Northwell-Health/health-care-2634148633" target="_self">upstreamism</a>." Upstreamist practitioners don't only focus on the patient's downstream symptoms; instead, they also turn their attention upstream to incorporate the patient's social determinants of health in their diagnosis. Dowling illustrates this paradigm with an example of a patient with chronic, life-interrupting headaches. Her upstreamist doctor provided her the usual medication but added the unusual prescription of a visit by a community health worker. The health worker found the patient's apartment walls to be infested with high levels of mold. The doctor and health worker told the patient to have her landlord fix the problem and provided the number for a public-interest attorney should the landlord fail to comply.</p><p>Dowling's story shows the holistic approach of upstreamism: to take into account all the determinants of health, not only those found within hospital walls. Sometimes, Dowling notes, that will require medical professionals to take the lead. But other times, when there are extra-symptomatic drivers of health, it will mean <a href="https://www.northwell.edu/news/insights/faith-based-leaders-are-the-key-to-improving-community-health" target="_blank">partnering with</a> or supporting social service workers, law enforcement, or legal minds to secure a combination of services to heal the whole person.</p><p>It's for these reasons that many health-care organizations are spearheading initiatives and outreach programs to directly target social determinants of health <em>before </em>they become medical issues. Examples include<a href="https://www.northwell.edu/center-for-gun-violence-prevention/news/the-latest/northwell-receives-1-4m-nih-grant-to-establish-gun-violence-prevention-screening" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a><a href="https://www.northwell.edu/center-for-gun-violence-prevention/news/the-latest/northwell-receives-1-4m-nih-grant-to-establish-gun-violence-prevention-screening" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Northwell's first-of-its-kind gun-violence screening program</a> and<a href="https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2015/10/20/peds.2015-3301" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> the American Academy of Pediatrics'</a> fight for food security for U.S. children.</p><p>As Tambar points out, this holistic outlook means changing our approach to more than just medicine. It will require many aspects of our society to adopt a multi-lens approach, one that adds an interdisciplinary depth to social problems beyond a solitary profession's expertise. He concluded, "What people are realizing is to holistically serve someone, it's not about you doing it all. It's about partnering with the best person who can do something you can't do."</p>
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I don’t believe in blind idealism: An interview with Katarzyna Boni
The author of "Auroville: The City Made of Dreams" talks about the difficulties of establishing (and writing about) utopian societies.
29 December, 2020
ARUN SANKAR/AFP via Getty Images
Is it possible to bring a utopia to life? When searching for an ideal world, do we part with reality or maybe give it a new shape?
<p> And is creating alternative realities something only cult leaders do? Stasia Budzisz discussed these and other questions with Katarzyna Boni, whose reportage Auroville: The City Made of Dreams was published in Polish in June 2020.</p><p><strong>Stasia Budzisz: You came across one of the communities of Auroville, the</strong> <strong>city of the future, by accident in 2009. You knew nothing about it, but what you found frightened you, and you decided to run away. What happened there?</strong></p><p><strong>Katarzyna Boni:</strong> I was travelling alone around the south of India. At some point, I felt that my journey made no sense; all I did was check the landmarks off a list from a travel guide. I figured it was the right moment to try some volunteering. I found a local community that planted trees and decided to join it. And so I ended up in Auroville, although the community was located on the outskirts rather than in the city itself. When choosing a project to volunteer on, I didn't even know I was applying to an Aurovillian community – I just liked the idea of planting trees in exchange for food and shelter. I only learned about Auroville itself from my pocket guide. Two weeks in, I didn't want to stay for a moment longer. I ran away to the Himalayas, at the exact opposite end of India. Several factors had prompted my reaction. First of all, I was at a stage of my life where I was changing jobs. I wasn't yet in my thirties; I was still trying to give shape to my identity. I knew my dreams, but didn't really know what to do with myself and what path to follow in order to get there. In the community, I met people whose situation was similar to mine, except they genuinely believed this place was going to save them. And I am severely allergic to this way of thinking, as I don't believe in blind idealism. Back then, I saw Auroville as a settlement established by Americans and the French, convinced that communism was the best thing to happen to us because they forgot to ask Poles about the reality of it. I was cynical and mocking about Auroville.</p><p><strong>You wrote that you wondered whether Auroville was a cult, and yet several years later, you went back there and wrote a book about a utopia. How did you come up with that idea?</strong></p><p>The idea to write a book around this topic had been there for a long time; I even set up a whole separate project about it. But then I started working on a <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/literature/what-lies-under-the-water-katarzyna-boni" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">reportage in Japan</a> – <em>Ganbare!</em> – and it consumed all my attention. I decided that my 'utopias' could wait and I shelved them for later. Then, just as <em>Ganbare!</em> was published, I got back on track with that topic. At first I thought I would write about various places that try to bring utopian ideas to life and are currently on different levels of realization. I was interested in the energy found at various stages of making a dream reality, how this energy changes over time, and how dreams and reality start to influence one another. At some point, I had a several-pages long list, including intentional communities and ideas for whole new nations (such as Liberland). I thought I would visit several places and then see what I might write. I wanted to visit South Korea, where a city of the future was created based on technology to facilitate every aspect of life. To me, Songdo is at the very beginning of its journey towards fulfilling this utopian dream. I wanted to visit Christiania which, as it seemed to me, was near the end of this road. I perceived Christiania as a ripe dream, if not overripe. I don't know how much of it was true, since I never ended up visiting. Auroville was supposed to be the place to illustrate a dream in the process of being realized. I started with it, and once I took a good look at it from up close, I decided it deserved its own book. I think I made the right decision.</p>
<p><strong>Why do you think that?</strong></p><p>Auroville is one grand experiment. People came to the desert with their children and started establishing a new city, this new world from which a new kind of human was supposed to emerge. Auroville turned 50 in 2018, and I was curious about its children and who they grew up to be. What worked out, and what didn't. I no longer needed other stages of utopias to describe what I found interesting.</p><p><strong>Generating a new human species does sound a bit frightening and cult-like.</strong></p><p>I had the same impression, which was why I ran away from Auroville the first time I was there. Once I returned, I knew I would have to face my reluctance. Indeed, some people there spoke in a very cult-like way. One of my interviewees said Auroville is inhabited by 12 clans that, in his opinion, provide a very natural way of distributing social roles within a community. There was a clan of priests, a clan of businesspeople, a clan of farmers. Still, Auroville is definitely not a cult. There is no initiation ceremony required for someone to stay there, even if they live there for a year, as I did. The trial period one has to undergo is a time you need to understand what the point is of working for this community. I recently spoke to an Aurovillian about how they're handling the COVID pandemic. I asked whether the city helps the businesses (which are, in fact, owned by the city, since due to a governmental solution, Auroville is a foundation with an array of non-governmental organizations underneath. Were the taxes lowered, for example? My goodness, did she take an offence! "Kasia, what are you talking about? It's Auroville that needs me now, not the other way round. Now more than ever." I realized that, once again, I had missed the fundamental truth about Auroville: it's the citizens who make the city, and they are not 'made' by it.</p><p>Auroville is not meant to provide a comfortable life; all it gives to its people is the means of basic survival, and everyone must take care of the rest. It is the citizens' responsibility to make sure that Auroville – the idea in which they believe – survives. Therefore, the question Aurovillians ask themselves is "How can I support my community?" rather than "What can I get out of my community now?" It's the complete opposite of the situation we are experiencing here, but I would not call it a cult. Those people have an idea that they believe in, and they understand it's not possible to achieve it from the position of making demands. They have to roll up their sleeves and work for it. As for a new species of human, it all depends on how literally we read into this concept. Siri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher from the University of Cambridge, whose thought served as the blueprint for Auroville, insisted that humans are not the final stage of evolution and that something else will appear after us. However, Aurobindo considered it from the perspective of consciousness rather than biology, as he believed we can still become better versions of ourselves. That's how I see it. But in the 1970s, some people believed their children's consciousness was already more advanced than everyone else's. I'm pretty sure they were soon cured of that conviction. Today, nobody means a new species of human literally.</p><p><strong>What image of Auroville did you have in your mind when you returned to this city to write a book about it?</strong></p><p>I tried to keep my mind open, although I was going there with my own thesis. While my work on the book about Japan had taught me that such preconceived notions tend to go down quickly, I still need them for inspiration and ideas; they draw me into a new subject. The starting point was the dreams that shape reality. In Auroville, it's perceptible. Before the humans arrived, there was nothing there, just emptiness. Dreams and reality were my first lead. Then, I wanted to see what they managed to achieve within those 50 years and what they did not; whether our society could learn from it, too.</p><p><strong>In your book's title, you refer to Auroville as <em>The City Made of Dreams</em>. Why did you choose dreams as the starting concept?</strong></p><p>I wanted to write about a place in which one can see how dreams shape reality, and how reality shapes dreams, as well as see the moment in which the dream is no longer just that. It's the moment when the reality has changed your goal so much, it's no longer what it was when you were at the beginning of your journey. What to do then? Will you decide that you have changed along with your dream and want to keep going at it, despite it being different? Do you stick to it or leave it all and change your life again?</p><p><strong>How much time did you spend in Auroville?</strong></p><p>One year, not including my first time there in 2008, but it was not a year all in one go – I split it into several visits. Initially, I thought I'd make it three stays – two months long each time – but after my first visit, I already knew that was way too little time. The first visit allowed me to get into the community, but it was still just scratching the surface. I was only beginning to realize who was who and which issues I found interesting, but I didn't even manage to conduct one interview. Not because the people of Auroville are wary of strangers or don't want to talk to outsiders. They are simply very busy. Sometimes, they told me they could meet me in three months from now, which was why I needed more time. Aurovillians don't have whole days at their disposal to spend talking to reporters and journalists, of whom many visit. The city saw a surge of journalists in 2018 when it was celebrating 50 years of existence. I was in a more comfortable situation, as I had arrived in Auroville a year before. It was a good time to start working on my project. Over the course of my first two months there, I realized the subject could fill the entire book. The next two months gave me my first interactions with the main characters of the story. That was when I decided to go back there for eight more months – also because I just wanted to experience normal life in Auroville. Did you know that in total, I spent four years working on this subject?</p>
<p><strong>That's a long time. You wrote that at some point, you thought about staying in Auroville for good.</strong></p><p>If you live somewhere for a year and, due to the nature of your job, you try to get to know it in-depth, understand it, learn as much as possible about it, at some point, you get really drawn in. It's natural to ask yourself whether you would like to stay there.</p><p><strong>You had to dig deep into the memories of Aurovillians, but in your book, you point out that those who reach the community today are not focused on the city's past. Where did you find documents on the history part of your book if they don't teach the history of Auroville in their schools?</strong></p><p>I did it bit by bit, in snippets. Of course, I looked for information in books about the first years of Auroville – in the Pioneer's biographies and in my interviews with them. However, some things reached me as single sentences, dropped during my trips around Auroville, for example. This way, I learned about the conflict that divided the community in the 1970s, and I started researching it. If you keep asking, then sooner or later you will get some answers. But at first I didn't even know myself what I was looking for. I grasped at various threads, arranged meetings and interviews, not knowing whether they'd take me anywhere at all. I often felt like I was stumbling in the dark. On the one hand, I knew what interested me and what questions to ask. On the other hand, I had no idea where it was going to lead me and what story I was going to tell. As if I was wandering around a labyrinth with many exits, each of them leading towards a completely different landscape. This experience was radically different from what I discovered when working on <em>Ganbare!</em>. In that book, it was obvious that I was writing about ways of handling trauma and loss. That was the core of my conversations and the people I chose to feature in that book. And here, everyone – not only an Aurovillian but someone just passing through Auroville as well – could be a potential character. The breakthrough came when I met Auroson, the first child of Auroville. He was the first aurochild and the first new human.</p><p><strong>When exactly did you meet?</strong></p><p>I found out about him during my second visit to Auroville. We made contact, but we did not meet at that time. In November 2017, when I came over for eight months, we were already in touch on a regular basis. We talked for many hours, and we became friends.</p><p><strong>Who were your sources?</strong></p><p>I divided them into two groups: those who could tell me their personal stories and those who could explain how Auroville handles the development of society. That is – how Aurovillians work on changing the system, how they look for solutions and which solutions have already been put to the test. When talking to the former, I wanted to know what made them come to Auroville. I also looked for people from both sides of the conflict that divided the community. I was very fortunate, since many of the Pioneers came back to celebrate the city's 50th anniversary. Most of those interviews did not appear in the book since they were very similar and repetitive: arrival at the city, meeting the Mother, transformation, then life in the desert. As for the latter group, I wanted to know what Auroville does about various areas of life that it wants to improve, such as education, management, economy, architecture, culture, health and nutrition. I tried to meet with the people responsible for urban planning, with farmers, teachers, mediators, and with people who were brought up in Auroville since early childhood, at various stages of its existence. In order to draw in the children, I organized a creative writing class in one of the schools, but it was not very successful. Only one girl came back.</p><p><strong>Congratulations!</strong></p><p>Thank you. Discouraging people from writing is a very useful thing to do.</p><p><strong>In your book, you admitted that you didn't talk to everyone you wanted to interview. You didn't find the courage to chat to Jurgen, even though you had spent several months waiting for him in a café. It's a very honest admission for a reporter. Did you get cold feet?</strong></p><p>I turned out to be a reporter who's afraid of people. No, I did not speak to him. At that moment, it was more than I could have dealt with. It's not like I was waiting there just for him. The 'café', or rather a tea-serving booth, was a place I had already frequented earlier, before someone said: "Oh, you must talk to Jurgen." I started coming more often, Jurgen was never there, and when he finally showed up, I was taken by surprise, so instead of coming up to him and introducing myself, I just kept on drinking my tea. I was not in the mood for talking, and I found him a little intimidating, too. I could have always spoken with him later, after all. This happened several times. In the end, I found it embarrassing to start a conversation at that point. What would I even say? "You know what, Jurgen, I've been sitting here smiling at you, and it's lovely to drink tea in silence together, but I'm actually a reporter and I've heard of you before. Could we talk about your life now?" I realized that I don't have to come up to him. That not everything in my life has to revolve around doing research for my book. Sometimes, it's good to let it go. I felt similar about a certain woman. I waited three months to talk to her, and then it turned out I couldn't make conversation with her – she just frightened me.</p><p><strong>Did you learn any other hard lessons while writing about Auroville?</strong></p><p>It was difficult to decide whom I should describe and how to do it. I resolved not to write about my friends (whose stories were fascinating, and I would have loved to tell them, but I could not do it precisely because of our friendship). The relationship you establish with someone as a book interviewee is different than a relationship with a friend. This could also lead to a grudge; perhaps some of the things they shared were said in confidence granted by our friendship, and only some were meant for publication? It was also important for them to know whether I viewed them as friends or just book material. Auroson was the only exception to this rule, but our relationship was clear from the very beginning. Still, we became very close and sometimes I was not quite sure whether I was talking to him as a reporter or as a friend.</p><p>In Auroville, I came across one more difficulty that I didn't have to deal with in Japan: here, many people simply refused to meet with me. In Japan, it was also easier for me to conduct the interviews, as they were all focused on just one topic. I arrived at a place wrecked by a tsunami, a place recovering from a trauma. Both I and the main characters of my book were clear on what we were going to discuss. In Auroville, it was much more difficult. I had to serve as a guide to a conversation whose topic was incredibly broad. I sought out turning points in a person's life, something that made them chase their dreams, but I also looked for something that defined them, showed who they were, where they started and where they arrived. So I could have said: "Tell me all about your life, since your birth until now, and only then will I start asking you more detailed questions." Of course, this was usually impossible. Therefore, the course of the interviews usually depended on how aware my interviewees were of the turning points of their lives.</p><p>In Japan, it was obvious that our conversations were all built around the events of 11th March 2011 and everything that came after. People exposed their emotions in front of me, but they did not have to look for some meta-level inside themselves that would allow them to view their lives from an observer's perspective. My role is to facilitate entering that level with my questions. In Japan, I knew what questions to ask. In Auroville, I had no idea.</p><p>On top of that, the question about the meaning of our existence was always hanging right there in front of us, and that's the most difficult question to handle, as it provokes banalities. Especially when writing a reportage on spirituality. There was one more problem at hand – I realized I find it easier to write about strong, painful emotions. They're so overwhelming that they turn out to be enough to draw readers into the story. In Auroville, there is no drama. All we get is mundane day-to-day life. I had to problematize it and find a way of describing it so that it remained interesting and absorbing, despite its lack of emotional highs and lows.</p><p><strong>Do you think Auroville's existence makes sense today?</strong></p><p>Yes and no. I think it depends on how we approach this city. After all, we don't need Auroville to change the world or to work on becoming better versions of ourselves. It's not like the world won't survive without it. Auroville has no importance to the world. Seeing how India – and the world in general – has moved forwards, we must keep in mind that Auroville has become somewhat stagnant, especially when it comes to technology. Still, just because I lived there doesn't mean I understand everything that happens there. I keep asking questions. I think that Auroville is not pointless, because there are people still coming there today, wanting to try the thing it has to offer. This way, they can take something out of it, other than various ecological solutions – for example, they can discover that they don't need Auroville to change. But this city provides an impulse, teaching them to ask the right questions. In my opinion, Auroville shows that change, while being slow and difficult, is actually possible. It requires enormous open-mindedness, endurance and conviction. The fact that changes happen so slowly is less comforting; today, we need changes to take place much more swiftly. But perhaps it would happen faster if more people worked to make them come true?</p><p><strong>So how is the 1968 utopia different from the 2018 utopia?</strong></p><p>The premise remains the same, but it's the concept that was successful, not the city itself. The final vision is so vague that everything can work out – there is no ultimate goal, no ideal you strive to achieve. All we get is a clue: creating a place of human unity. Of course, it was said in advance that the city would reach its peak once it housed 50,000 people. Next, we would have to set up more communities until they covered the entire globe. But this recipe provided no measures. You have to try and figure it out yourself to make it happen. Auroville is not an escape from reality, because here, everyone takes responsibility for their actions. Everything is clear from the very beginning. Even the omnipresent Mother had no rigid guidelines to follow.</p><p><strong>What was your relationship with Mother?</strong></p><p>I don't want to say who Mother was. But it is thanks to her that Auroville exists at all today. She convinced UNESCO and 124 countries to support its conception. She was a charismatic woman, a woman who could change people's lives with just one look. She kept on changing their lives even after she passed away – many Aurovillians insist they can still feel Mother looking after them. I didn't manage to establish a relationship with Mother. It's not like I didn't try to. Today I think I respect her, although I did not like her at first. I had my doubts about her, precisely because I saw her as a cult guru. Even though she is no longer alive, everyone – even those who are not very religious – keep referring to her words. I found Mother unsettling. Perhaps it was because I had never met someone so charismatic, even though I know such people do exist. She could evoke genuinely extreme emotions in people. When telling me about their meetings with Mother, Aurovillians had tears in their eyes. And yet, I didn't trust her, as I didn't trust the whole narrative that grew around her. On top of it, she stared at me from the photographs almost everywhere I went. As if she actually was the Mother of the People. I felt invigilated. I saw no love in her gaze.</p><p><strong>Sometimes, people who have met John Paul II say they experienced similar emotions.</strong></p><p>Yes, I also thought of this comparison when I was thinking about other charismatic people I might know. I think that meetings with John Paul II evoked similar emotions: elation, understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, concern, tenderness, love. People who describe their experience of meeting a person they considered charismatic often report it in a very similar way. I did not feel comfortable around Mother, but I knew I could not write my book without her.</p><p><strong>The structure of your book is very purposeful. From the very beginning, we don't know what to expect and how the story will unfold. Was that your conscious writing choice when you started to put it all together?</strong></p><p>No, it emerged during the writing process. I knew I wanted to write the story of a city through the stories of its people and that each of these stories had to push the city's story forward. But I had no idea what the final form would be. It was the same with <em>Ganbare!</em> – I had two drafts ready before I understood how to make a book out of them. In this case, there were even more drafts to work on.</p><p><strong>Your book ends with a brutal statement about what life is.</strong></p><p>Perhaps I needed Auroville to understand that.</p><p><em>Parts of this interview have been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.</em></p><p><em></em>Reprinted with permission of <a target="_blank" href="https://przekroj.pl/en/">Przekrój</a>. Read the <a href="https://przekroj.pl/en/society/i-dont-believe-in-blind-idealism-stasia-budzisz" target="_blank">original article</a>. </p>
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Want Americans to graduate college? Make it affordable.
Research from MIT's School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative found making college more affordable cut dropout rates and boosted degree attainment.
29 December, 2020
Credit: Adobe Stock
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<p>The <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/02/11/6-key-findings-about-going-to-college/" target="_blank">benefits bestowed by a college degree</a> are well-known. Degrees open access to job opportunities and, with them, economic stability. The average earning potential of a college graduate is roughly twice that of someone with only a high school diploma. Graduates are less likely to live in poverty, more likely to be married, and more likely to be satisfied with their life and career choices. And the number of jobs that require a degree or postsecondary school training <a href="https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/recovery-job-growth-and-education-requirements-through-2020/" target="_blank">continue to increase</a>.</p><p>Many Americans can recite this litany, yet when it comes to attaining college degrees, the United States is woefully behind its Western peers. According to <a href="https://www.ed.gov/college" target="_blank">the U.S. Department of Education</a>, America was the world leader in degree attainment by young adults a generation ago. Today, it ranks thirteenth. Nearly half of students who begin college don't finish within six years, with <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/research/eight-economic-facts-on-higher-education/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a quarter of low-income students</a> dropping out by their second year. </p><p>Meanwhile, tuition continues to rise. Even after adjusting for inflation, the costs of attending a four-year public school have doubled in only three decades. Such ballooning expenses have spearheaded <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/12/how-student-debt-became-a-1point6-trillion-crisis.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a $1.6 trillion student debt crisis</a>.</p><p>For many young people looking toward a brighter future, college has become a gateway locked from the inside. As the Department of Education concluded: "Today, college remains the greatest driver of socioeconomic mobility in America, but if we don't do more to keep it within reach for middle-class families and those striving to get into the middle class, it could have the opposite effect."</p><p>Research has looked into the predicament and now suggests a daring, counterintuitive means of increasing degree completion among young people: We make college affordable.</p>
The study groups
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNDk1OTU2OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY1NzYyMjgyMH0.HoOUfA4eXLgFltk-M_Mu3E3qORUh2shzeYoVa3wk86E/img.jpg?width=1245&coordinates=0%2C237%2C0%2C237&height=700" id="861dd" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="cfef9e15abee21ae82c46b76199c4436" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="1245" data-height="700" />An aerial view of MIT and Harvard Bridge. The university's School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative partnered with the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation for the study.
Credit: Adobe Stock
<p>The study comes from <a href="https://seii.mit.edu/" target="_blank">MIT's School Effectiveness & Inequality Initiative</a>. Its researchers wanted to determine the effect scholarships had on degree attainment. As they put it, </p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Financial aid is typically motivated by a desire to increase postsecondary attainment by making college more affordable. This raises the question of whether aid meets this test by boosting educational attainment. As with any sort of award or subsidy, it's worth considering the extent to which financial aid changes behavior. The fact that aid is motivated by the desire to increase schooling does not mean aid programs accomplish this."</p><p>To test this question, they partnered with <a href="https://buffettscholarships.org/" target="_blank">the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation</a>, an organization that offers scholarships to first-time freshman attending public colleges in Nebraska. The researchers designed a partially randomized study around the Foundation's 2012–2016 scholarship applicants, a cohort of roughly 16,500 students seeking aid. </p><p>Because low-scoring applicants were unlikely to complete college, they were not provided a scholarship and were removed from the study. Similarly, while high-scoring applicants were awarded a scholarship, they too were removed from the study as their degree completion was likely with or without the financial abetment. This left a middle pool of applicants, each sporting a comparable level of need and college-readiness.</p><p>The Foundation awarded scholarships randomly to this middle group of applicants; those who did not receive scholarships served as the controls. Because the number of applicants far exceeded the available aid, no student was artificially denied a scholarship for the study's sake. All told, the study included 3,699 scholarship-awarded participants and 4,491 controls. Most sought degrees at four-year colleges though some matriculated into two-year schools.</p><p>As this group was comparable in areas such as GPA, colleges attended, and expected family contributions, any statistically significant difference between the recipients and the controls would provide some evidence of a causal connection between financial aid and degree attainment.</p>Easing the six-year itch
<p>The researchers followed the students' college careers, from freshman year to spring 2019, and found that the scholarships did change behavior. Enrollment was only slightly higher for the aid recipients than the controls—98.7 percent compared to 96.1—but as the two groups' college careers continued, a noticeable difference emerged in dropout rates. By the end of their fourth year, only 71.6 percent of the control group remained, a dropout rate of 24.5 percent; meanwhile, the scholarship group only declined by 18 percent.</p><p>The scholarships also bolstered degree completion. Though bachelor degree completion was roughly even by the end of the fourth year, the aid recipients began to pull ahead after that. By the end of their sixth year, 71 percent of the award recipients received their degree, 8.4 percentage points more than the control. This suggests that as degree completion began to drag on longer, the infusion of extra financial resources made the final push more manageable.</p><p>The researchers not only found that aid promotes full-time enrollment, but that it benefitted historically underrepresented groups most, including non-white and first-generation applicants. These findings support a <a href="https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/handle/10919/100548" target="_blank">growing</a> <a href="https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED545465.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">body</a> of <a href="https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/12507/Shulenburger_University.pdf;sequence=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">research</a> that suggests college affordability directly impacts student decision-making and degree attainment.</p><p>The study, titled "<a href="https://seii.mit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/SEII-Discussion-Paper-2020.06-Angrist-Autor-Pallais.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Marginal Effects of Merit Aid for Low-Income Students</a>," is part of an ongoing research study. Additional reports will be released as the study continues.</p>What does college affordability mean?
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="2f032882b6038c7d6734ac69f95fbb69"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qZTnmMxnU0A?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>Scholarships are one way of making college more affordable, but they are part of a much larger conversation as to what affordability means.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/24/why-college-tuition-keeps-rising.html" target="_blank">ballooning cost of tuition</a> in recent decades is another concern. Factors for this surge include a massive increase in demand, cuts in state funding, new student services, and <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/article/executive-compensation-at-public-and-private-colleges/#id=table_public_2019" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">bloated administrative compensation</a>. While colleges could certainly rein in some of their more extravagant expenses, and legislators agree to fund more, <a href="https://www.luminafoundation.org/files/publications/ideas_summit/College_Affordability-What_Is_It_and_How_Can_We_Measure_It.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the question of affordability</a> goes further still. </p><p>It concerns the quality of education, whether students are dependent or independent, their resources before matriculating, what they can expect from the investment after graduation, and how much of their future income they are willing (or able) to pay. The calculus must also consider <a href="https://bigthink.com/kenzie-academy/software-engineering-school" target="_self">available alternatives</a>, their costs, and their potential outcomes. It's a multifaceted balancing act between what's available, what students can afford, and what schools can offer with the resources they have available—which, of course, ties directly to the funds that schools have available. </p><p>In <a href="https://www.higheredtoday.org/2017/05/16/think-college-affordability/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an op-ed for Higher Education Today</a><em>, </em>Susan Baum, a senior fellow in the Education Policy Program at the Urban Institute, correctly points out that a "low-cost program designed purely to train people for an occupation that is unlikely to exist in 10 years, while appearing 'affordable,' is not affordable at all."</p><p>So then, how should we think about college affordability?</p><p>Baum recommends we start the conversation with need-based considerations at the forefront. "The financial resources available to a student at the time of enrollment are critical. Students have very different starting points for measuring outcomes and value depending on their circumstances," Baum writes. But it also requires us to think beyond funding; we need to consider the resources colleges need to provide a valuable education as well as the types of experiences that students want. </p><p>If we want more students to graduate, we need to discover the right balance between moderate spending, need-based aid, and program quality, a balance that will make college accessible to all who desire to attend.</p>
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