Nobody here but us chickens
How "trained incapacity" explains the embrace of Trump's executive order on AI
Chickens not so well educated would have acted more wisely.
—Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change
Worse things than a paradox
In Battle Lines Being Drawn, Ben Riley names names of those celebrating Trump’s recent executive order on AI in education. The order itself is an aggressively bland statement claiming to create “new educational and workforce development opportunities for America’s youth, fostering interest and expertise in AI” by directing various government entities to do AI stuff. It makes no mention of the awkward fact that many of these entities are being defunded or shuttered, but that didn’t stop people who should know better from applauding Trump’s words.
Here is Riley’s explanation for why such celebrations are unwise:
In normal times, political compromise is necessary to reach policy consensus. I get it. But you don’t get to pick and choose with fascism. I’m sorry, you don’t. Either you are willing to collaborate and benefit from the authoritarian regime—which makes you a fascist—or you fight back. It’s a choice you have to make. Today. Right now.
I hate this kind of call to choose a side. It feels strident and runs counter to how public discourse should be conducted in a democracy. Riley’s lack of tolerance is paradoxical. He proclaims pluralism and open inquiry elsewhere while calling for not tolerating those who are simply trying to navigate a complicated situation.
Riley is absolutely correct to do this. There are worse things than inhabiting a paradox, and we are currently facing one of those things.
Despite the sanewashing, axe-grinding, and bothsidesism in the news coverage of the fascist kleptocracy being imposed by the Trump regime, there is no excuse for pretending this complicated situation is business as usual. Anyone working in education knows about the chaos unleashed by illegal deportations, unwarranted revocation of student visas, and the suspension of research funding. As the saying goes, the best time to stand up was last November. The second-best time is today.
Given my associations with the AAC&U, Rutgers University, and the University of Pennsylvania, I was proud to see them join dozens of other institutions in making a clear statement “against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” It was titled “A Call for Constructive Engagement,” but it did not pretend that what is happening is anything other than a threat to democracy and free inquiry.
Leadership training
The question is why more organizations are not following the lead of the AAC&U members, Harvard, the Associated Press, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, and the Interfaith Alliance. And why are so many organizations and leaders falling over themselves to praise the executive order of an authoritarian kleptocrat?
The answer, of course, is they are jostling for their place in line. Artificial intelligence may be little more than a marketing term when it comes to the technology, but it also names a source of significant funding, something the chaos unleashed during the past 100 days has made nearly everyone desperate to obtain. Most AI money comes from private companies or Silicon Valley-based foundations looking to support research and training that promotes their vision for the AI future. Trump’s executive order rings the dinner bell, signalling that the federal government will now start dispersing money to organizations, school systems, and institutions of higher learning that are sufficiently enthusiastic about AI and, of course, about Trump himself.
Some understand what’s happening and see an advantage in pushing their way to the front. Others simply follow the habits of thought and action that have worked for years to secure funding for their organization, unable to see that something fundamental has changed.
Trained incapacity
Put another way: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Upton Sinclair delivered this line while running for Governor of California in the 1930s, but his insight goes back to Thorstein Veblen, who coined the term trained incapacity in 1914 to describe this tendency.1
Veblen wrote about how not just one’s salary but what he calls “money power” creates “an habitual, and conventionally righteous disregard of other than pecuniary considerations.” It’s about how money and the social power that comes with it influence people, training them to respond to their environment without critical awareness that environments are not static.
Kenneth Burke takes up this concept in the first chapter of Permanence and Change, writing that Veblen uses trained incapacity to mean “that state of affairs whereby one’s very abilities can function as blindnesses.” The concept explains why the Silicon Valley CEOs literally lined up behind Trump at his inauguration and why bureaucrats and NGOs praised him for saying something about AI. They are, of course, committed to free speech and the rule of law, at least in principle, and quietly disapprove as Trump dismantles the institutions that make such principles meaningful. Yet, when the noises coming out of the White House suggest that money might flow into somebody’s pockets, they respond habitually, competitively, and without seeing the consequences of their actions.
Their framework for action is understood and measured in dollars, not in evaluating the social and political risks, no matter how potentially catastrophic. The speed of the republic's collapse and the disappearance of the rule of law are not among their KPIs. Their excellent training in the successful financial management of the financials explains what they notice and what they do not.
If one is limited only to pecuniary considerations, supporting the executive order on AI seems like a reasonable compromise in the face of tricky politics. After all, for nearly a century, substantial government funding has flowed to an array of admirable work by universities and NGOs. It is nearly impossible for leaders of those organizations to imagine that this era is over and to begin to unlearn the lessons of a lifetime.
Educating Chickens
Burke uses a metaphor drawn from Pavlov’s famous experiments with bells and dogs to illustrate the potential consequences of trained incapacity.
If we had conditioned chickens to interpret the sound of a bell as a food-signal, and if we now ring the bell to assemble them for punishment, their training would work against them. With their past education to guide them, they would respond in a way that would defeat their own interests.
If the character of events changes suddenly, the trained chickens are in trouble. Their capacities are shaped by their experience. Thinking carefully and critically about their circumstances is beyond them. They are, after all, just chickens.
If one rings the bell next time, not to feed the chickens, but to assemble them for chopping off their heads, they come faithfully running, on the strength of the character which ringing a bell possesses for them. Chickens not so well educated would have acted more wisely.
Humans have a greater capacity to change their behavior when their circumstances change. Exercising that capacity right now is essential. When Riley calls out those who are blind to the stark choice facing us, he is not being unfair or intolerant. He is trying to keep us all from the chopping block.
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As far as I can tell, Veblen's first and last use of the phrase “trained incapacity” was in The Instinct of Workmanship and the State of the Industrial Arts. New York: Macmillan, 1914. See Erin Wais, “Trained Incapacity: Thorstein Veblen and Kenneth Burke,” The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society, Volume 2, Issue 1, Fall 2005, for an informative discussion of the phrase and its use by both writers.