Dec 16, 2023·edited Dec 17, 2023Liked by Kevin Dorst
Wonderful post!
While I think I largely agree, I want to draw attention to something you mention only briefly. I don't think skepticism should only be used as a reductio. I think taking seriously the dynamics you're identifying *ought* to create a lot of pressure towards skepticism.
I was just reading about an exchange between economists Piketty, Saez, and Zucman (PSZ) on the one hand and Auten and Splinter (AS) on the other. It concerned the question of how income inequality has changed over time, with PSZ arguing that it's increased a lot, and AS denying this. The dispute turned on how one should extrapolate from reported income to unreported income, which pretty much by definition we can't measure directly. My guess is that a lot of people I know would be strongly disposed to side with one group or the other upon hearing about the dispute. Progressives concerned with inequality will side with PSZ, libertarians with more faith in markets with AS. But for me, while I guess I'm not *completely* neutral, it's so obvious to me that I can't understand the guts of the debate--I have no idea how to estimate shares of unreported income!--and only have weakly reliable, superficial cues to go on, that if it turned out with better data one side was vindicated completely, I would *not* bet at steep odds on which side it would be.
I think there's a tension between accepting all the dynamics you're pointing out but complacently holding on to your political opinions, with the cognitive upshot of this acceptance coming only in that you concede that the other side is also rational. Conceding they're also rational should have some relation to thinking they might be right, which should put some pressure on your own views.
Great stuff! Especially liked the point about baselessness.
I was wondering about the double-standard: "Either (i) people should listen to their social circles and trusted authorities, or (ii) they shouldn’t."
Won't this depend on the quality of one's circle, and the grounds on which one trusts them?
Suppose I listen to a certain expert because she made a bunch of true predictions. Isn't that different from someone who listens to an entertaining crank whose predictions turn out to be false? (Think of someone who's still into Qanon despite the lack of a "storm.") I can't help but think that, at some point, a rational agent would hit the bricks and look for better experts.
Excellent essay, I don't have much to quibble with. I'm left of center politically and I see most Republicans acting very rationally. It's rational for them to be selfish and want to pay less in taxes. It's rational of them to lie about Democrats, or at least easily accept such lies from others, because they want to win elections. It's rational to support Republican candidates if you're against abortion even if you would benefit economically from Democratic policies.
In the Prisoner's Dilemma the selfish strategy strictly dominates the altruistic strategy, so it's rational to play it. But what if the other prisoner is your spouse? I propose an experiment that adjusts the payouts until you decide to change your strategy. The ratio of increased incarceration you're willing to endure so that the other prisoner's incarceration is reduced would be the altruism factor. It's rational to have zero altruism when you're completely selfish.
In short, I don't think the people I disagree with politically are any of the 5 things you described, I just think the richest are selfish and the poorest are altruistic but have very different culture/values. What you overlook in my opinion is the active disinformation campaign by the rich Republicans to get the poor Republicans to vote. E.g. the active propaganda from oil companies against climate change, the Club for Growth against taxes, Wall Street against regulations, etc. There is no doubt that regular people exist who believe some well crafted lies, how would you characterize them?
I am a professional logician and I'm sure I believe some (but probably fewer) such lies from the other side. Let's take, for example, Hunter Biden's laptop. What does it actually show? I still have no idea.
Cool post! I'm interested in the idea that some things you say seem to suggest that thinking hard (and doing empirical studies) about rationality won't help solve issues that are commonly taken to depend on the extent to which human beings are rational. For instance, the idea that being rational cannot save you from deriving absurdities or that, since polarization has a rational mechanism, thinking rationally about politics won't eliminate the effects of it. If you are right, thinking rationally about rationality won't solve the issues we commonly think are driven by irrationality (because they aren't). At least in principle, it seems unattractive to go non-rationalist and say that solution to these issues depends mainly on some non-rational devices (like: absent a rational way to convince a political opponent, use coercion; or: emotional responses have the key in eliminating some forms of attachment to past decisions). But as things seem, perhaps thinking about the limits on what rationality can do for us really needs endorsing that some non-rational ways of solving some issues are necessary. Would you agree in making that connection between rational mechanisms of things that have bad effects and policies focusing on non-rational fixes of those effects?
Wonderful post!
While I think I largely agree, I want to draw attention to something you mention only briefly. I don't think skepticism should only be used as a reductio. I think taking seriously the dynamics you're identifying *ought* to create a lot of pressure towards skepticism.
I was just reading about an exchange between economists Piketty, Saez, and Zucman (PSZ) on the one hand and Auten and Splinter (AS) on the other. It concerned the question of how income inequality has changed over time, with PSZ arguing that it's increased a lot, and AS denying this. The dispute turned on how one should extrapolate from reported income to unreported income, which pretty much by definition we can't measure directly. My guess is that a lot of people I know would be strongly disposed to side with one group or the other upon hearing about the dispute. Progressives concerned with inequality will side with PSZ, libertarians with more faith in markets with AS. But for me, while I guess I'm not *completely* neutral, it's so obvious to me that I can't understand the guts of the debate--I have no idea how to estimate shares of unreported income!--and only have weakly reliable, superficial cues to go on, that if it turned out with better data one side was vindicated completely, I would *not* bet at steep odds on which side it would be.
I think there's a tension between accepting all the dynamics you're pointing out but complacently holding on to your political opinions, with the cognitive upshot of this acceptance coming only in that you concede that the other side is also rational. Conceding they're also rational should have some relation to thinking they might be right, which should put some pressure on your own views.
Great stuff! Especially liked the point about baselessness.
I was wondering about the double-standard: "Either (i) people should listen to their social circles and trusted authorities, or (ii) they shouldn’t."
Won't this depend on the quality of one's circle, and the grounds on which one trusts them?
Suppose I listen to a certain expert because she made a bunch of true predictions. Isn't that different from someone who listens to an entertaining crank whose predictions turn out to be false? (Think of someone who's still into Qanon despite the lack of a "storm.") I can't help but think that, at some point, a rational agent would hit the bricks and look for better experts.
Excellent essay, I don't have much to quibble with. I'm left of center politically and I see most Republicans acting very rationally. It's rational for them to be selfish and want to pay less in taxes. It's rational of them to lie about Democrats, or at least easily accept such lies from others, because they want to win elections. It's rational to support Republican candidates if you're against abortion even if you would benefit economically from Democratic policies.
In the Prisoner's Dilemma the selfish strategy strictly dominates the altruistic strategy, so it's rational to play it. But what if the other prisoner is your spouse? I propose an experiment that adjusts the payouts until you decide to change your strategy. The ratio of increased incarceration you're willing to endure so that the other prisoner's incarceration is reduced would be the altruism factor. It's rational to have zero altruism when you're completely selfish.
In short, I don't think the people I disagree with politically are any of the 5 things you described, I just think the richest are selfish and the poorest are altruistic but have very different culture/values. What you overlook in my opinion is the active disinformation campaign by the rich Republicans to get the poor Republicans to vote. E.g. the active propaganda from oil companies against climate change, the Club for Growth against taxes, Wall Street against regulations, etc. There is no doubt that regular people exist who believe some well crafted lies, how would you characterize them?
I am a professional logician and I'm sure I believe some (but probably fewer) such lies from the other side. Let's take, for example, Hunter Biden's laptop. What does it actually show? I still have no idea.
Cool post! I'm interested in the idea that some things you say seem to suggest that thinking hard (and doing empirical studies) about rationality won't help solve issues that are commonly taken to depend on the extent to which human beings are rational. For instance, the idea that being rational cannot save you from deriving absurdities or that, since polarization has a rational mechanism, thinking rationally about politics won't eliminate the effects of it. If you are right, thinking rationally about rationality won't solve the issues we commonly think are driven by irrationality (because they aren't). At least in principle, it seems unattractive to go non-rationalist and say that solution to these issues depends mainly on some non-rational devices (like: absent a rational way to convince a political opponent, use coercion; or: emotional responses have the key in eliminating some forms of attachment to past decisions). But as things seem, perhaps thinking about the limits on what rationality can do for us really needs endorsing that some non-rational ways of solving some issues are necessary. Would you agree in making that connection between rational mechanisms of things that have bad effects and policies focusing on non-rational fixes of those effects?