The golden rule is that, however bizarre the beliefs we are studying may seem to be, we must begin by trying to make the agents who accepted them appear as rational as possible.
Skinner’s golden rule of interpretive charity is cited by Jeffrey Friedman in Power Without Knowledge, a book that I am still not recommending.
I could phrase Skinner’s golden rule as, “Explain the beliefs of others the way that you would explain your own beliefs.” Because introspection leads me to find that my own beliefs are not based on a moral or mental defect, then I should not attribute your differing beliefs to a mental or moral defect.
So how to deal with disagreement? For example, I believe it is ok to eat meat, but other people disagree. I believe that what the Fed can control does not have much effect on the economy, but other people disagree.
My explanation for disagreement that is golden-rule compatible is that people decide what to believe by deciding who to believe. We probably start out by trusting our parents. We proceed to trust teachers. At some point, we develop a set of friends and peers that we trust. We develop trust in certain authors. We may trust celebrities, including business and political celebrities. Often, we distinguish domains–I trust my doctor’s opinion on upper respiratory infections, but not on health care reform.
From people we trust, we learn both what to think and how to think. When I don’t want to go to the trouble of working something out for myself, I let other people tell me what to think. I let my dentist tell me that I have a cavity and what I should have him do about it. But when I want to work out something for myself, I am using what I learned from other people about how to think.
Some implications of this hypothesis:
1. You and I have different beliefs in large part because over the course of our lives we have encountered different people who influenced what and how we think. Somewhere along the way, some thoughts were seeded into your brain that lead you to hold a point of view that I am convinced is wrong.
2, When you express a point of view that differs from mine, unless you change my mind, my trust in you is going to fall. If you contradict a view that I hold strongly, then my trust in you will fall really far. I think that this may explain the phenomenon known as “confirmation bias” or “motivated reasoning.” When you show me a study that supports my beliefs, I do not have to worry about whether I trust the methods used in the study. But when you show me a study that contradicts my beliefs, I have to either change my mind or find something wrong with the study. So I look more closely at the methods, probing for flaws. If I do find flaws, my trust in the study’s authors falls by a lot.
3, To change someone’s mind, you have to earn their trust. It seems that we rarely do this, and in fact we rarely try to do this.
4. What sorts of people earn our trust? In my case, I believe that my father set the tone with his First Iron Law of Social Science, “Sometimes it’s this way, and sometimes it’s that way.” All of my life, I have been inclined to trust people who look at multiple sides of an issue and who are able to live with ambiguity and uncertainty. But many others seem to prefer to trust those who display high confidence. Like Harry Truman, many people long for the the one-handed economist.
Amen, brother Kling, amen [says the atheist without irony].
Now I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop: what explains the process by which a new meme, or non-consensus but correct meme, takes hold and the seed blooms and joins the rest of the accumulated wisdom embedded in the institution we call civilization?
I hope you are not only considering the social epistemology of this question but the applied science as well. I’ve been listening to the muffled overture of this book for weeks now. I hope you set the bar higher than the output of Tyler Cowen and GMU EconClub. This group has promoted many important ideas but your developing social epistemology idea deserves a broader audience. It is shared knowledge after all; something we all must learn.
Thanks for great insights here, Arnold.
people decide what to believe by deciding who to believe.
This includes books, like Atlas Shrugged or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; two big Libertarian strands for a set of very non-popular beliefs.
Also, for many less rational folk, TV / movie / rock stars & celebrities, as mentioned.
But I don’t quite think “who to trust” is really decisive, but for almost every trusted person, there are still some opinions one has that are in disagreement with the trusted one’s.
People’s emotions, including who to trust, make them decide about issues. They then use their reason to rationalize why their decision is correct, including choosing who to believe.
Your last point on (3) is hugely important: “we rarely try to do this” (gain their trust).
But I don’t think your claim is quite true. Arguments and references are exactly trying to gain trust. You are one of my own two must trusted/ read/ interesting bloggers.
The other is
http://www.thenewneo.com/ — an ex-‘lifelong Dem’, Jewish dancer thinker who has a great series on her blog of:
https://www.thenewneo.com/category/a-mind-is-a-difficult-thing-to-change/
Most of the time, in disagreement, we are trying to change the other person’s mind.
It’s not clear we’re really trying to “gain their trust” — but it’s also not clear what that really means, since in different contexts it means different things. Trusting your doctor to prescribe good medicine, but not good health care reform.
I trust neo, and you (Arnold), to give me your honest thoughts about things, and have found myself quite interested in most of those things you’ve noted.
I trust you, but I’m sure you’re wrong about one thing – Universal Basic Income. (I’d prefer some voluntary National Service/ Guaranteed Job offer). But how can any who disagree with you on UBI gain your trust? Or, why don’t I trust you on this? or think it is a good idea and could work?
Let me say how a UBI advocate could hugely increase my trust – show me a place that is experimenting with UBI and it seems to be working well. That would be my same request for any who support socialism. Denmark is NOT socialist; tho Venezuela is.
I also oppose high taxes + high social safety nets, but those who advocate such policies do have Denmark plus others to point at.
How to earn trust? quickly? With a father, or a blog, it’s slowly, over time. But for most people, and most political decisions, they don’t want to spend/ waste the time, and want a quick answer. High confidence people DO seem to generate more trust with more people (not with me).
For many, maybe most people, a big part of their politics is to avoid: [living] with ambiguity and uncertainty.
I’m not sure for less than avg IQ people who have often made, and lived thru, their own mistakes, that their avoidance of uncertainty is wrong for them.
I thought I was an exception to the stereotypical libertarian who discovered Atlas Shrugged in his youth but I’ve been rethinking that since the death of Neil Peart, drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush. The pieces written about Peart since his death, all by men, refer to his “literary” lyrics and his homage to Ayn Rand in the liner notes of the album 2112.
This was as close as I’ve ever come to a n=1 self-experiment on memory, influence, and personality types. I remember listening to the first side of 2112 on vinyl many times. This occurred at a point before I transferred my vinyl collection to cassette tape so there is a specific timeline involved but I was confused at why I don’t remember ever hearing of Ayn Rand until well after University. I still have my old vinyl and carefully documented cassette tape “liners” in my hand writing. I was shocked that I didn’t actually own 2112 but I had a well used and water damaged copy of the live album “All the World’s a Stage” and sure enough, the first tape I recorded shows my musical priorities with “Dark Side of the Moon” on Side A of the tape and “2112” on Side B; I must have borrowed the vinyl from a friend to get a pristine unscratched version.
Through Amazon Prime Music I’ve re-listened to this music that I haven’t listened to in decades. The crowd noise fires old well used neurons in my brain. I know all the lyrics as the songs unfold. The message is a caricature of every libertarian themed sci-fi genre fiction I’ve ever read/seen/heard. And like these genres, Rush’s fanbase is almost exclusively male, as captured in the comedy “I Love You Man”.
So my question I now have is whether I indirectly absorbed Atlas Shrugged through the rock space opera written by Neil Peart? Second, why is libertarian thought male dominated? Its not really a case of “people vs things”.
Question #3: (maybe Edgar can answer/research this one) Many of the Neil Peart tributes link to a YouTube video of Rush in Rio. The crowd is way more impressive than the band or their performance. I was caught completely off-guard that Brazilians love Rush. I think I saw a comment somewhere that the song was used as the TV Theme song for the Brazilian version of MacGyver. Is this the whole reason?
Tom G, your Annapolis anecdote reminded me of a Situational Leadership course offered by my employer that I once attended; you may have encountered it, most big enterprise software businesses hone in on the same useful ideas/techniques. The course targeted managers and emphasized that direct reports have different characteristics measured on three sliding scales: ability, confidence, and commitment. Your managerial style must match the situation with your direct report. My class was lead by a U.S. reserve officer and the movie we watched to reinforce the lessons was “12 O’Clock High”.
the military is very good at creating the structure that enables young men that lack ability, confidence, and commitment to quickly become key contributors to highly effective teams. When you are surrounded by confident and self-motivated superstars it’s easy to forget the path they took to get there and the majority of people who, by definition, will never have exceptional abilities.
I think I need to re-apply my Situation Leadership insights to non-work institutions.
I was FAR more influenced, first, by Heinlein’s Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Freedom to act, constrained by Responsibility for the results of your actions.
My non-custodial mother told me in high school about Rand, but noted I probably didn’t need The Fountainhead, and should just go to Atlas Shrugged. I actually like The Fountainhead more, tho.
How could I go to, and stay for two years at, the US Naval Academy (Annapolis). I like a challenge? I thought more discipline would be good for me? Parents told me I could go anywhere as long as I paid for it all myself?
I could take it, and live thru it, but didn’t like being on duty 24/7, under UCMJ, instead of the usual Constitutional rights and freedoms.
Ideas ARE far more like “things” than are people. Men are, on average, more interested in ideas than are women. Ayn Rand was a VERY strange woman, with many masculine personality traits.
And no children.
A good civilization requires good customs for raising children, and the Christian monogamy, combined with a taboo on marrying cousins (thus breaking up clans), so far is optimal in history.
I’ve always wanted “optimal” laws. I’m now convinced religion’s morals are the emergent optimal ways of living for humans as the people have evolved along with their customs and laws.
Nice post.
A lot of times you will hear someone say that they learned a lot about how big a place the world is when they left home and did something like
1. Joined the military
or rather differently,
2. Went to college far from home and lived in a college dorm.
In both those situations, the average person suddenly leaves an accustomed environment and meets a bunch of peers who are(1) roughly the same age and (2) involved in some shared project, yet (3) some of them have different experiences, beliefs, and attitudes.
This could be an essay of its own, so allow me to stop here.
His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices
-Byron
Thank you, edgar. All the interesting, suffering prose in blogs about some new outrage is often best summarized in a stanza. And you pick good ones.
Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet laureate,
And representative of all the race.
Although ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at
Last, yours has lately been a common case.
– Byron
In my youth I remember being fascinated by some very old newspaper pages discovered in the walls of a building I was helping to renovate. What struck me was how unimportant the main articles were and how weird and wonderful the advertisements were.
I have little interest in Lord Byron’s poetry, but his social network never ceases to amaze me. In addition to being the biological father of Ada Lovelace he was also host to the very libertine group that famously inspired Mary Shelley (daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin) to write her novel Frankenstein. This Bob Southey take-down adds color and context to a time and a place much like those old newspaper ads preserved alongside desiccated mouse remains. It is also directly relevant to the politics of our time.
I think this (deciding what to believe by deciding who to believe) is a big part of the answer, maybe most of it, but unlikely to be all of it. There is probably a residual that depends on how one is “wired,” i.e. instincts about what is worth pursuing in the world that shape not only who we listen to but how we react to what we listen to.
I can’t prove this, because I can’t do a controlled experiment where two people are exposed to exactly the same intellectual influences and we see how differently (or not) they turn out to think. But I observe that lots of people have lots of overlap with my intellectual influences and have taken away quite different beliefs from those highly-overlapping influences. At the general level, most people who were raised in the sort of upper-middle-class highly educated liberal circles I was are more modern-liberal and less libertarian than I am, and my parents tell me I was a rather stubbornly instinctive libertarian from an early age in a way that most kids were not. At the specific level, most people exposed to the particular texts and/or particular individuals who have been important in shaping my beliefs don’t take away the same lessons I do from them.
Speaking of which, the methodological propensity to have one’s beliefs shaped by texts as opposed to in-person interactions with individuals is itself something that seems to vary a lot from person to person. Of course there are cultural influences on this– growing up in a bookish home probably affects it, as does growing up with the Jewish intellectual tradition’s emphasis on the importance of text– but again, different people raised in the same culture still seem to vary in that propensity.
The golden rule is that, however
bizarrereasoned the beliefs we are studying may seem to be, we must begin by trying to make the agents who accepted them appear asrationalevil as possible.Updated for the modern era.
Awesome. The man who wants to eliminate
stateshas mastered the strikethrough.A very succinct way of making your point. Well done.
“All of my life, I have been inclined to trust people who look at multiple sides of an issue and who are able to live with ambiguity and uncertainty.”
Hallelujah (said another atheist without irony). This might be why I enjoy reading your blog so much.