Transparency

The Obama Administration is really big on “open government” and “transparency.” Now, we can debate forever whether their actions accord with their rhetoric, but their rhetoric on these points is clear. And the CTO and CIO are running around trying to get all of the agencies on board with initiatives aimed at more open and transparent government, making public datasets more accessible, and so on.

That’s all well and good. But I’ve long thought that transparency, like privacy, is not an absolute value. That is, there are always tradeoffs (although, and this is the subject of another post someday maybe, I also think that the term “tradeoff” is an over-simplification). There are downsides to transparency just as there are to privacy. Larry Lessig has written a fairly thoughtful piece for TNR (blech) titled “Against Transparency.” It’s a bit of a subtle argument but the upshot is, essentially, that human nature is not well-posed to cope appropriately with the kids of transparency and disclosure that some are encouraging. Or, as Rafe put it:

all the transparency in the world doesn’t change the fact that people draw spurious conclusions because people don’t pay enough attention to fully understand the information they’re given (for perfectly rational reasons).

Lessig focuses his argument on disclosures of campaign contributions and what the contemporaneous correlation between donations and votes might (or might not) mean. He ultimately ties his whole argument together at the end by arguing for publicly-funded campaigns. I share his skepticism about the inability of most to have enough time or attention to fully appreciate the implications of raw (or nearly-raw) data:

To understand something–an essay, an argument, a proof of innocence– requires a certain amount of attention. But on many issues, the average, or even rational, amount of attention given to understand many of these correlations, and their defamatory implications, is almost always less than the amount of time required. The result is a systemic misunderstanding–at least if the story is reported in a context, or in a manner, that does not neutralize such misunderstanding. The listing and correlating of data hardly qualifies as such a context. Understanding how and why some stories will be understood, or not understood, provides the key to grasping what is wrong with the tyranny of transparency.

My own unease in response to the rhetoric I hear about transparency comes from thinking about how detailed breakdowns of funding of scientific research will be viewed. “Too much” transparency will make it far too easy, I fear, for anti-science types (and remember, we’ve got a whole political party who might as well be full of flat-earthers when it comes to simple facts, to say nothing of science and research) to demagogue legitimate science just because it sounds weird and very few in the general population understand how research works. Remember.. who was it.. McCain?… ranting about bear DNA?

But, there are those who take issue with Lessig’s argument. David Weinberger walks through the article section by section and gives his take. In this later post, he links to a few other responses. All in all, this seems an important conversation to be having.