Statistical objectivity in environmental policy rests on unwarranted assumptions about the physical world

Evidence

Dominant ways of thinking about environmental law and policy obscure these needs. They aspire to objectivity and optimality, yet they distort and confuse. Decisions about how to behave in the face of uncertainty concerning potentially devastating consequences of human action are masked by statistical procedures that, notwithstanding their technical sophistication, depend on fl atly unwarranted assumptions about the physical world. Society’s level of commitment to the avoidance of harm is derived from real or contrived market decisions in a pro cess that, at best, is beset by methodological diffi culties and, at worst, misconstrues the very nature of the problem at issue. Perplexing and unavoidable choices about how to infl uence the environmental context of future generations— choices that will, in a nontrivial sense, infl uence the content and quality of their lives— are elided through an elaborate mathematical fi ction, the discount rate. — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere, 15

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the core thesis that discount rate and market-derived valuations function as masking devices rather than neutral technical tools.
• XREF: The ‘elaborate mathematical fiction’ of the discount rate invokes the reader’s polyad thread critiquing value-neutrality in technical standards, echoing the soundscape course’s account of objective measurement as constructed. — connects to: Cost-benefit analysis causes the very distortions it claims to prevent — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 237; Foundational legal goals cannot be priced because they ground the market itself — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 570; Precautionary ozone policy succeeded precisely by distrusting risk-assessment tools — Douglas A. Kysar, Regulating from Nowhere: Environmental…, 135 (+3 more)
• recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source

Broader Connections

• Scientific objectivity requires severing the observer’s connective relationship with the observed #expands (0.78) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 152
• The philosophical-scientific worldview blocks environmental ethics from valuing insentient nature #expands (0.72)
• Neoliberals rejected the sociology of knowledge as hostile to scientific objectivity #expands (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 87