Know Something Useful?  Give It Away

By Shlomo Maital   

      In the United States, four million people are employed, in 6,000 post-secondary education institutions (colleges and universities).   That makes Academe the fourth-largest industry, by employment —  just after public schools (6.8 million employees), hospitals (5.8 million), and fast food outlets (4.3 million).

       I spent my life in Academe.  Still am.  We professors generate a lot of ‘knowledge’.  In the US, 700,000 academic research papers every year,  just behind China (1 million).

       Why ‘quotation marks’?   Let me explain.

       For over 50 years, I’ve asked myself, what do I know that my follow economists might find interesting, useful and innovative? 

       Very late in the game, I changed the question.   What do I know, that ordinary people might find useful, interesting and UNDERSTANDABLE!!!!  Because – economics, in trying to be ‘scientific’ like physics, embraced the language of mathematics – and became incomprehensible to ordinary people.  Until recently, when behavioral economics has come to dominate.  At last. 

       I strongly believe we academics have a responsibility to tell ordinary people what we are up to, what we have discovered, in ways they can understand and use.  We are paid by their tax money (at least, for public universities, like mine, Technion), so in a real sense, we are employed by them.   They deserve our attention. 

       Our guide could be a pathbreaking article by a psychologist, George A. Miller, 55 years ago.*   The title is revealing: “Psychology as a means of promoting human welfare”.  Here is the last line of his article: “I can imagine nothing we could do that would be more relevant to human welfare … than to discover how best to give psychology away.”

         Give it away?  He means: “…give people skills that will satisfy their urge to feel more effective.”   Self-efficacy is “an individual’s belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to reach specific goals.”  Happiness, fulfillment, meaningful life, etc.

         ‘Give it away’?  This is the precise opposite of capitalism which says  “Create value …and capture it as wealth.”  Elon Musk is currently worth $200 b.  His outrageous salary demands were recently challenged in court – and rejected.  He did not become a multi-billionaire by giving stuff away.   We teach startups, create value – and patent the hell out of it, to keep others from using it.  Do you know how many energy-saving patents have been bought by Big Oil – and shelved, to keep oil demand high?  Patents are as much to prevent ideas from being used, as to spread them.

         Knowledge is, or should be, like love.  The more you give, the more you get.  Once this was what Academe stood for —  in 335 BC by Aristotle in the Lyceum in Ancient Athens.  But under capitalism, we have lost our way.   That is in part why the cure for sickle cell anemia, a terrible illness, costs over $2 million – and remains inaccessible to over 100,000 African-Americans. 

        Physicists, chemists, psychologists, economists, physicians, mathematicians – What do you know that can benefit human welfare?  Can you explain it in a way that people can understand?  And are you willing to make the effort?

        If I were a university president – I would make that the core question for tenure.

         And for all those who are not professors.  Know something useful?  Share it with others.  You will gain great satisfaction.  And you will help a lot of others.   Because knowledge and wisdom are like love.        

* Miller, G. A. (1969). Psychology as a means of promoting human welfare. American psychologist, 24(12), 1063.