From a piece by Elizabeth Kolbert in the New Yorker.
Living in small bands of hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were primarily concerned with their social standing, and with making sure that they weren’t the ones risking their lives on the hunt while others loafed around in the cave. There was little advantage in reasoning clearly, while much was to be gained from winning arguments.
I have a new, expanded edition of The Three Languages of Politics coming out soon, and, like the first edition, it discusses these sorts of cognitive biases in the context of political rhetoric.
Kolbert also discusses “the illusion of explanatory depth.”
“As a rule, strong feelings about issues do not emerge from deep understanding,” Sloman and Fernbach write. And here our dependence on other minds reinforces the problem. If your position on, say, the Affordable Care Act is baseless and I rely on it, then my opinion is also baseless. When I talk to Tom and he decides he agrees with me, his opinion is also baseless, but now that the three of us concur we feel that much more smug about our views. If we all now dismiss as unconvincing any information that contradicts our opinion, you get, well, the Trump Administration.
Here, Kolbert and her New Yorker readers are reassuring one another that they are right to be contemptuous of President Trump. To me, they are illustrating the sort of socially-motivated biased reasoning that her article is describing.
Suppose that I were to apply the illusion of explanatory depth to the response to the financial crisis, including the bank bailouts. The elites in this country believe that they understand the causes of this policy (too much deregulation) and the consequences of this policy (saved us from another Great Depression). They hold this baseless belief because their fellow elite-members hold this baseless belief. And one could argue that the Trump Administration is a consequence of the fact that the elite view is not convincing to the rest of the country. (Note, however, that I do not claim to understand last year’s election. I am just suggesting that elites can be just as shallow as Trump supporters. I would go further and suggest that flattering yourself because you hate Trump is itself a sign of intellectual shallowness.)
This from the party of Jonathan Gruber. People finally pay attention to biases and their first application is to try to delegitimize the opposition.
This post makes perfect sense to me, which makes me a little uneasy. But only a little, ’cause I know those other guys are wrong.
I don’t think evolutionary psychology is a science. People are projecting their assumptions on long ago people who didn’t leave journals.
There has been lots of anthropological research of isolated forager groups which only recently came into contact with more modern people. Not to mention those numerous recorded encounters during the ages of exploration and expansion. There are enough commonalities between these incredibly distant peoples and cultures that it is reasonable to draw conclusions about common human social instincts.
Is Kolbert’s picture of hunter gatherer society an accurate summary of all that anthropological evidence? I don’t think so. It is just a convenient picture that she can use to depreciate people she considers inferior.
There is one significant data point on their side, the Great Depression. Not a lot, but too important to dismiss.
Significant in what way? It’s odd to say we narrowly avoided a second great depression because we know how to avoid them. Well, don’t cut it so close next time why don’t ‘cha?
What tells me that this is the confidence game that Arnold describes is that they never acknowledge their post hoc fallacy.
This is why I didn’t say two data points though one could have.
Lord:
“There is one significant data point on their side, the Great Depression.”
I have to thank you for writing that. I got quite a chuckle from it.
It fairly concisely illustrates the great fallacy underlying nearly all “elitist” rhetoric, (and unfortunately, policy).
And that fallacy illustration is just this:
The only way that the Great Depression can possibly “on their side” is if they reduce the Great Depression to “one significant data point”.
It doesn’t even matter who the “they” are, or what the “their side” is. All self-proclaimed “elites” apply the exact same tactic – reducing nearly infinitely inter-related, complex, dynamic phenomena into “ONE significant data point”, in order to support “their side”.
Thanks again.
Actually I agree. It isn’t that there is one solution, or this was the best, but that there is a definite route to failure, and rather than seeking better alternatives, so many insist on repeating the failure as what we deserve.
Lord:
To what one “A definite route to failure” are you referring?
The elites in this country believe that they understand the causes of this policy (too much deregulation) and the consequences of this policy (saved us from another Great Depression).
Did you hear his rallies? How about the both the political and economic elites believed increased immigration and amnesty for long time illegal immigrants was good policy. Or that political and economic elites voted for NAFTA and increased China trade. These are policies that the WWC felt the politicians passed so the economic elite, Koch Brothers, could hire cheap labor and hurt the Rust Belt. (And Trump’s hard positions on all immigrants and somewhat minorities is what a lot of left is reacting against.) Also, remember he campaigned to protect Social Security and Medicare which were elite programs!
Since immigration and trade were policies you support how come you are analyzing these positions? (OK I have seen some sympathetic to anti-immigrant policies in terms of Muslim immigration.)
Why do you frame it like this? Very few people are anti-immigrant. Nobody even cares about Muslims except for the crazy ones. If we could tell them apart, we would.
Very few people are anti-immigrant.
Most Americans want legal immigration to be reduced, and Vox published a survey in 2015 in which “the single most popular position” was “the immediate roundup and deportation of all undocumented immigrants and an outright moratorium on all immigration until the border is proven secure.”.
Nobody even cares about Muslims except for the crazy ones.
It’s hard to believe you believe this.
Okay, and that position is not anti-immigrant. It’s amazing that you believe that a position is basically “stop lying that we can’t fix the border” is anti-immigrant.
Buddhists, Sikhs, Taoists, Jews, yada yada yada, nobody cares about anybody different. We only care about people who want to blow us up. It’s amazing you believe any different.
The dominant position on Mexicans is “we’ve let in TWENTY MILLION Mexicans. Is that not enough?”
I thought people liked diversity. All Mexicans isn’t diversity. And all Mexicans is not pro-immigrant. Amazing you believe that, if that is what you believe.
“The most significant result in the poll, however, is the strong support for reductions in legal immigration, which amounted in 2015 to roughly one new immigrant for every two Americans entering the workforce, or one immigrant for every two American births. ”
Serious question. You define a country that allows this and would choose a plateauing as “anti-immigrant?”
According to this, the US is in the top 20% of immigration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate#Countries
Okay, and that position is not anti-immigrant.
All right, I’m not quarreling about terminology. I think we kind of agree on substance. (I took “anti-immigrant” to include “wants way fewer of them.”)
We only care about people who want to blow us up.
Dude. (Seriously. I assume you’re familiar with Putnam.)
Serious question. You define a country that allows this and would choose a plateauing as “anti-immigrant?”
The government allows what the people would forbid. “There is no other for. policy-related issue on w/ Amer people & their leaders disagree more profoundly than immigration.”
Outside of the chant of “Lock Her UP!”, the loudest chant at Trump rallies was “The Wall” And he endlessly complained about trade and most of it was against NAFTA, a 23 year old trade in which Ronald Reagan campaigned on in 1980 and signed with Canada in 1988. (I find it especially ironic that you never hear about Canada portion of NAFTA and they probably took more manufacturing jobs in the 1990s. There used to be a lot of car factories north of the border but slowly replaced by Mexican ones.)
1) It seemed a bit strange that the level of illegal immigrant especially Mexican immigrants has fallen since 2008.
2) In Minnesota rallies, Trump complained about Somalian immigrants in which most were legal ones. (In reality a good portion of the Somalian are second generation.) These immigrants worked a lot of Target counters in the twin cities. (I lived in MN for 6 years and the opinion of Somalian varied a lot depending upon how urban the county was.)
3) Using basically the Matt Yglesias logic, I dont understand how eliminating illegal immigrants working as seasonal agriculture, landscaping and in house nanny/nursing is hurting the Rust Belt WWC. That is over-whelming what Mexican illegal immigrants do in California.
Yeah, because we let in 20 million illegal Mexicans. And both parties kept telling us that there was no solution. So Trump crafted “The Wall” imagery to win the election and it worked. Now his job is to walk back the promise while still fulfilling the spirit of what the voters wanted.
1) That is not strange at all, and is indeed indicative of the problem voters are concerned about. Do we want opportunistic immigrants? No. Immigrants who only want a prosperous America are not as desirable as some other categories of immigrants. And again, if 20 million illegal Mexicans is anti-Mexican, what would be pro-Mexican!?! Indeed, if we assume voters aren’t stupid, then it supports the argument that they are not concerned about the immigrants but the dysfunctional immigration system and the 2-party agreement that it cannot possibly be addressed.
They had Ben Bernanke because he was the one guy to navigate a depression. I hope we still have his cell. Be a shame to have another depression and the Bernank be out of pocket.
Fantastic article, and a good burn on Kolbert
It is astonishing how people can be so utterly lacking in self-awareness. Maybe it was Kolbert’s editor who insisted on inserting the Trump criticisms to stroke the readership.
The struggle is real. It is really weird that we need so many explanations for why one out of two parties won the beauty contest when both candidates were despised. Many on the left are in utter disbelief but I told my dad years ago we would never elect Hillary Clinton. I was sweating it out there for a couple weeks, but the point is not that I’m a prognosticator, but that it wasn’t a surprise that Clinton was an awful choice. But the left convinced themselves that we need a convoluted explanation for why Trump won, preferably one that makes the other side seem depraved.
No kidding. I laugh when people tell me Obama was pretty popular. Well he was popular when it was Trump or Clinton but not popular in the sense that would help Clinton. It was an easily loseable election for either party and Hillary nosed out Trump for it.