Epistemologic Question asked of Colleagues Economists, and Three Proposals in European Parliament hosted Committee of the Regions Plenary

European Commission DG ECFIN Annual Research Conference 2010--nice part of Speech by Commissioner Olli Rehn, Brussels, European Commission, November 22, 2010

European Parliament hosted Committee of the Regions Plenary, 2010--modest question, Brussels, October 5, 2010

Is it up to governments to mold public opinion about low carbon technologies?--Brief Interview with Euronews and European Voice

(original here www.commentvisions.com/2010/10/12/other/not-in-my-backyard/

Thank you for watching... Send me an email or post a comment to learn what my daughter (who is now 11 y.o.) said about this;)

Happy June 1 (Ziua Copilului), Mica

On June 1, may you have the most wonderful childhood, Mica. Stay strong and as passionate about the many things you like as you have been so far, and more! With all my love, Daddy

of cups, pints, miles, kilometers... and innovative accountable governance...

In their 1998 “Understanding Policy Fiascoes” book, Mark Bovens and Paul t’Hart analyze a framework of understanding “system failure” in policy making, and test the framework on several (ex-post) high profile cases.

In his decades long work on Pragmatic Eliminative Induction, William N. Dunn offers a complementary systematic methodology meant at identifying “hidden” from the untrained eye strong relationships that not-so-well-researched factors affecting socio-economic phenomena have on these phenomena.

In their best-selling book “Freakonomics” Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner also look systematically at “the hidden side of everything”. This book offers a great popular introduction towards understanding what is called usually Quasiexperimentation (Cook and Campbell 1979)

In his classic work on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, Paul Sabatier

When children are tested for their logical reasoning, they often have to solve problems such as:

“Pint is to glass the same as ___ is to highway.” The answer is of course mile.

For non-US people that would translate of course in:

“Centiliter is to glass the same as ___ is to highway.” The answer should be kilometer instead.

Malcolm Gladwell points out in his Outliers book some interesting facts about socio-cultural and other environmental factors affecting success of individuals or behaviors of communities, and/or both. It goes without saying that the above test is by far discriminatory to anyone for whom the International System of measurements is embedded in their perception and thinking. The reasoning time necessary when working with notions outside your core “vocabulary” would be clearly much larger than for those to whom pint belongs in their core set of notions they easily understand well, from having been subjected to them for long times. Whereas a US grown child jumps straight to the core of the question, for a non-US born child it take a set of intermediary questions they need to ask and answer before ever starting addressing the core logical inference question. We mean such “elementary” questions as “what is a pint?” Except of course for the non-US child these are not that elementary. Furthermore, there may even be a negative psychological effect of the test on the non-US test taker subjected to the US focused test.

Things may get even more interesting when dealing with the “glass, cup, pint, ounce” test. Which one does not belong in the list? It turns out it is glass. Yet, cup in the above list is a very odd member of the category of volume measuring units to which it belongs. In every non-American English speaker’s mind cup can be closer to glass than it would be to pint and ounce. Cup is a measuring unit, but it is also a synonym for mug, and hence perceived as being in the same category as glass (if looking at glass as a glass of water, and not as what is a window made from).

Our question is then:

What is to truly innovative accountable governance what was the early 1970s oil crisis to highway traffic fatalities?

Moreover, what barriers to our understanding and addressing comprehensively the question are there? We mean the barriers hidden from the untrained eye, such as the ones in the above simple tests with pints and cups and glasses and mugs… Can one draw the systemic diagram of all the factors affecting our ability to trace down the core factor(s) affecting the likelihood of developing an innovative accountable governance system? What would it take?

The power of language...

When we call something "pragmatic eliminative induction" we probably lose 99 % of the listeners from the first... well... three words...

Why don't we then call it "a time tried and tested way to find your missing links"?

Indeed... let's look around us... surrounded by light bulbs, AC (albeit NOT DC as Edison envisaged!) current plugs in walls, or mass produced vehicles and everything else...

We can help replicate anew that massive change (induced by a James Watt, a Henry Ford or a Thomas A. Edison or so many others) in today's "new" world, by simply helping people with asking the "approximately right" questions, and enough of them.

We can then help some more by sitting down and crunching some (right) numbers (in the right ways), exercise that would give us new direction...

What are your unresolved questions? (We didn't say problems!) Needing help asking them all?

Help is usually inside! It's often simply a matter of knowing how/where to look...

Knowledge transfer... in the XXI-st Century takes how long?

An Initiative
to Establish the “European Park Service” (EPS)
and to
place the full weight of EU institutions and legislation
behind attempting to harness all the potential benefits
of a stronger European Policy in protecting natural parks and protected historic sites

In the US, President Woodrow Wilson has established the National Park Service in 1916. It came as a natural continuation of pioneer work by President Theodore Roosevelt having set aside over 150 million acres of public land for conservation purposes.

Today, National Parks in the US are not solely Yellowstone WY and Grand Canyon AZ--the two most well known by people worldwide--but almost 400 different parks receiving a total of about 275 million visitors/year (www.nps.gov).

The range of types of parks is amazing. They are natural and historic. They protect, preserve, conserve and educate. From a small steel "mill" of late 1700s at Hopewell Furnace to history rich Valley Forge (both 60 km W of Philadelphia), from Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Gettysburg in PA or San Antonio Missions in TX, or from Big Bend, Padre Island or Palo Alto Battlefield in TX to Cape Cod in Massachusetts or Mount Denali in Alaska.

When you visit any park you get a familiar feel, friendly rangers welcome you smiling with useful info, you can watch nice documentaries, or take part in very informative activities for children or adults, to say nothing about the well crafted educational Junior Ranger programs, my daughter's favorite.

The NPS has a budget of $2.92 billion with 20,579 employees for FY 2009. An 85 $ annual pass gives you free access to all Parks where an entrance fee is collected.

Could we try to replicate this in Europe (all its 27 EU members, or all 40+ countries)?

In Europe, countries have established and keep adding on their own National Parks. A few resources integrate information about all the parks, among which a great one is the Europarc Federation, at: www.europarc.org, or another great resource at: www.visiteurope.com. The EU has a number of funding opportunities for preservation and conservation efforts by national/local authorities or NGOs (LIFE+, projects budget for 2009: 249.9 million Euro; Natura 2000 Network).

Yet, there is no integrated body at European level to provide a common ground, strategic vision, enforcement when needed, and sharing of best practices, as well as a common feel to visitors and why not an effective marketing campaign to beneficiaries, children and their families.

Would an integrated effort make sense?

Can it lead to avoiding things like this:

tinyurl.com/dunare-gunoi

while organizations like the Int'l Committee for the Protection of the Danube River (ICPDR) claim 15 years of success stories: tinyurl.com/dunare-win

If so, how can it be achieved best? What would it take to bring such small initiative to the ears of European powerful and influential policy makers? Which doors do we need to knock at?

-----

NOTE: Modestly asked by Dr. Adrian S. Petrescu, father of Mica, a ten years old Romanian-American child having visited and benefited from some forty (out of 391 total) US National (Natural and/or Historic) Parks. As she herself puts it, “I have another 350 to get a Junior Ranger badge from”… Dedicated in deep respectful memory of five men of leadership, US Presidents Abraham Lincoln (IL), Theodore Roosevelt (NY), Dr. Woodrow Wilson (NJ), and Lyndon B. Johnson (TX), and Everett Townsend, a Texan frontier-man and pioneer like few other. It comes in pious remembrance of their contributions to understanding impact on policies by/for children (Lincoln), and to the establishment of US/State (and global) National Parks (Roosevelt, Wilson), or for their love for (Johnson), and relentless initiative to “father” (Townsend) the (TX) Big Bend National Park, respectively.

Who "teaches" who? When in doubt, ask... a child...

Lead Change: A Children's Museum in Every Town?

Five years ago a 5 y.o. girl thought of a Children's (Science & Technology Hands On) Museum for every child in the world.

If big people nurture children's innovativeness and their desire to learn from very early on in life, some global issues improve naturally in time.

Starting with knowing why not to let the water run when we brush our teeth, and making it "uncool" to waste the water. All because we saw the cycle of water in nature (at the Toledo COSI Science Center) and we realize that letting the water run kills the "fishies" in the lake...

Or who knows... Children like to play and they are often blind to differences adults see. A child you can play with at the museum or playground is a playmate to a child. To an adult often they have race or color or ethnicity or social status or safety or risks concerns which adults then convey to children. If only it was the other way, if the children would teach the adults instead...

If we would fuel the passion for knowledge with hands on experiences that the children (not the educators!) find well... "cool"... then we could learn from "Mom, did you get my text message? No? Wait, I'll teach you how to open it!"

Let's! What do you think?

We can make this a reality.

It is a small idea my daughter had back in Chicago five years ago (as she just turned five y.o.) and that we want to convince the world it would be a good one. To have a Children's Museum in Every Town, a Hands On broad science experience accessible to children from anywhere and everywhere in the entire wide World...

Spread the Word!

(BTW, if one thinks, this is what Benjamin Franklin used to do back in his days, except it was by regular printing on regular paper. Thank You, Web 2.0 if we have to call it that, for a great medium.)

Thank you,
Daddy/Adrian and Daughter

PS Doing this requires not (just, or necessarily) money, but rather support and a much different vision. Vision support. It could need "face time" with top decision makers. A viral idea self-distribution, much beyond the unfortunately all too old by now "write your representative".

Most models transferring North/West Money to the South were tried and failed. A "solution" made in New York (UN) or Washington DC (World Bank) will not work in Rwanda, but one based on passion and possibility built in Rwanda will...

Even in the US children in SE Michigan could not go in this past decade to the Children's Museum (three are available within 30-50 miles) with their school because _there [was] no money_.

The money is spend on punishing crime which happens in part because we didn't spend _much less_ money on schools/children's museums 15 years ago or less... In case you missed it, read "Freakonomics", by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, here:

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/

Did we go to a Hands On museum as a child? What if we take our children twice a month, take pictures, and we all tell stories about it in school.

Somewhere in farmland Pennsylvania there may be children not having access to one as it is too far away...it can be built by volunteering...by folks donating their used toaster and their time in the old unused firehouse (Ann Arbor MI Hands On Museum was built this way in the 1980s--and it is great and very inspiring)

Talk with other parents and school administrators about it? Write the story by the child to the senator? priceless...

In time it will make it to the UN, the World Bank, and even Bill & Melinda Gates (with Warren Buffett) Foundation,

but mainly to children...they are powerful:

“A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting, and when you are gone, attend to those things which you think are important. You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they are carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states, and nations. He is going to move in and take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations... the fate of humanity is in his hands.” (Abraham Lincoln)

That is the idea... Can we think of ways to pass it on? Some day some child somewhere where there was not previously a Children's Museum will smile at science or technology... That smile will be a Thank You to all of us! Can we make it happen? Let's!