Ideological Turing Tests

Responding to Paul Krugman’s claim that liberals better understand their opponents’ arguments than do convservatives, Bryan Caplan has an interesting idea to test whether intellectuals are able to correctly state their opponents positions:

If someone can correctly explain a position but continue to disagree with it, that position is less likely to be correct…the ability to pass ideological Turing tests – to state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as their proponents – is a genuine symptom of objectivity and wisdom…

Here’s just one approach.  Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room.  Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a liberal.  Then put Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room.  Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn’t really a libertarian.

I’d tend to describe Krugman and Caplan, respectively, as a Thinking Liberal and a Thinking Libertarian, meaning that they actively engage opposing ideas.  But I also suspect they’d both fail a well-designed ideological Turing test quite miserably.  The key would be to ask questions that effectively challenge a belief structure.  It’s difficult to convincingly defend ideas against criticisms you find legitimate; either you concede defeat, or you resort to caricaturing the opposing view.  No matter how well you think you understand an opposing view, chances are that somewhat who actually believes it understands it, and can defend it, much better.

The Sky Is Falling

There’s a strain of reasoning that runs something like this:

1. A trend is occurring.  (Usually backed by data in charts)
2. Extrapolating far forward along that trend leads to a very bad result.  (Often uncertain or vague, but definitely bad)
3. Therefore, we must do something right now.  (Often the specific something is an action the arguer wants to take anyway)

This reasoning is applied to issues such as peak oil, climate change, fiscal deficits, trade deficits, overpopulation, disappearing bees, ozone depletion, etc.  Megan McArdle’s post on antibiotics seems to largely fit the bill.  Note that these issues are not Black Swan-type events; Black Swans are inherently unpredictable.  These problems are White Swans.

Posts about White Swans are often meant to evoke fear and panic, but my sense is that White Swans predictions almost never play out, and the reason they’re prevented has little to do with the proposed solution.  Indeed, any of the following may occur:

1. The analysis is wrong, and the problem does not exist.  This may be the case with antibiotics, as suggested here (see the fifth chart especially).
2. There is already a solution or safeguard in place.  This is how I feel about peak oil; the safeguard is pricing mechanisms.
3. Raising awareness of the problem will lead to it being solved, without taking any policy action.  I’ve argued that this may be how climate change plays out.
4. The problem requires a solution, and the proposed solution is the best solution.  (searching for examples)
5. The problem requires a solution, but the proposed solution is not the best solution.  (searching for examples)

Overall, I’d say my thinking boils down to this: if you think there’s a problem that will manifest in 30 years, it’s appropriate to spend the next, say, five years talking about it, instead of rushing to action.

Pre-Empting All Possible Opposition

There’s a nasty rhetorical trick I’ve been seeing lately, which involves making a (weak) argument, then stating that opposition to the argument will occur for a particular reason, and then attacking that reason.  For instance, here’s Matt Yglesias, after citing a study that alleges wage discrimination based on gender:

Some people are going to be very resistant to this conclusion. They’ll think that in a competitive labor market with many employers and many workers, employers who discriminate against women in their salary offerings will be at a disadvantage. No firm will want to disadvantage itself in this way, thus the discrimination shouldn’t exist. Consequently, this apparently [sic] effect is almost certainly due to some other variable that’s not accounted for. So it’s worth pointing out that by this logic, the gender disparity in employment that existed in 1961 wouldn’t exist either. But obviously it did.

Yglesias is being intellectually lazy here, and by prematurely denouncing his opponents as partisan hacks, he becomes one himself.  In order to have intelligent dialog, thinking liberals–a term I’d normally use to describe Yglesias–need to engage their thinking conservative opponents.  Arguments opposing Matt Yglesias’s position are not constrained by Matt Yglesias’s ability to imagine opposing arguments.  Indeed, it’s possible to resist the study he cites without relying on the neoclassical theory of labor markets in its purest form.  For instance, there’s this study, which pegs gender-based wage discrimination at 5-7%, rather than 17%.

I’m not arguing that gender-based wage discrimination doesn’t exist.  I’m confident it does.  And that’s a bad thing.  But it does a disservice to the cause to cite one study from amongst many and then cut off opponents by accusing them of bad faith.

Different Forms of Racism

My perception of discussions of racism is that they tend to suffer from equivocation errors.  Racism is a politically charged term that has many different meanings, and too often conservations reach this awkward point.  I’m going to attempt to break apart three separate types of racism, which are related but independent.  I don’t mean this analysis to be exhaustive; it’s merely one way of framing the discussion.

Talk Radio and the Conservative Split

Ross Douthat writes:

It’s important, I think, to distinguish “talk radio conservatives” from “the base” writ large: The former is a subset of the latter, and…not a large enough subset to actually decide a primary campaign… The underlying theory behind the talk radio critique of Daniels is basically that you can’t trust a man who disarms liberals with his seeming reasonability, and what you need instead is somebody who takes the fight to the left at every opportunity. This is an excellent description of the qualities required … to be a good talk radio host. But when applied to the presidential scene, it amounts to a kind of politics of schadenfreude, in which actual conservative accomplishments count for nothing, the ability to woo undecided voters is downgraded or dismissed, and all that matters is how much a prospective candidate irritates liberals.

I think this interpretation, which casts blame upon specific conservative media figures, is both accurate and actionable.  There’s a clear path for thinking conservatives to take to restore power to their side: criticize the crazy people on their own side.  Or in other words, be Conor Friedersdorf.

Be Careful with Segmentation Analysis

I find this research from Pew really interesting, as it tries to segment voters beyond a one-dimensional political spectrum.  Segmentation can produce meaningful results, but it can also be misinterpreted.  For instance, consider this chart:

The Fallacy of Mood Affiliation

Tyler Cowen writes:

It seems to me that people are first choosing a mood or attitude, and then finding the disparate views which match to that mood and, to themselves, justifying those views by the mood.  I call this the “fallacy of mood affiliation,” and it is one of the most underreported fallacies in human reasoning.

He also cites examples of the phenomenon:

2. People who see a lot of net environmental progress (air and water are cleaner, for instance) and thus dismiss or downgrade well-grounded accounts of particular environmental problems.  There’s simply an urgent feeling that any “pessimistic” view needs to be countered.

4. People who see raising or lowering the relative status of Republicans (or some other group) as the main purpose of analysis, and thus who judge the dispassionate analysis of others, or for that matter the partisan analysis of others, by this standard.  There’s simply an urgent feeling that any positive or optimistic or deserving view of the Republicans needs to be countered.

This is solid analysis and Cowen’s correct that it’s highly under-reported. It’s not entirely new, however.  Consider Robert Pirsig in his excellent book Lila:

Any person of any philosophic persuasion who sits on a hot stove will verify without any intellectual argument whatsoever that he is in an undeniably low-quality situation: that the value of his predicament is negative. This low quality is not just a vague, woolly-headed, crypto-religious, metaphysical abstraction. It is an experience. It is not a judgment about an experience. It is not a description of experience. The value itself is an experience.

Pirsig’s point is that value judgments precede rational analysis.  For some people, any argument that is pessimistic about the environment, or that defends Republicans, immediately evokes a low-quality response, in the same way that sitting on a hot stove does.  Cowen wants to shift the focus of discussion from our gut-level response, to high-level analysis, which is admirable.  The path to get there is to recognize this process, examine it, and be willing to compromise when gut-level response and high-level analysis contradict.  Note that I’m not advocating we ignore our gut-level value judgment (and Pirsig definitely isn’t); our value judgments are really important, and when they conflict with some analysis, it may be because the analysis is flawed.

Neurosurgeon/philosopher Edward de Bono makes a similar case in this book, by illustrating the process by which the human brain filters ideas into buckets based on prior experience.  The same way our mind associates the idea “cat” with a broad set of quite different prior experiences, it also associates the idea “bad argument” with a broad set of quite different prior experiences.  Furthermore, we link these ideas to each other, based on prior experience.  So if someone has been exposed to a decent number of arguments that they consider both bad and conservative, they become likely to assign the label bad to a new argument at the same time they recognize it as conservative, regardless of the merits of the argument.  What differentiates thinkers from partisans hacks is they recognize the fallibility of their prior assumptions, and are able to analyze the world through multiple frameworks.

In Which I Confess Ignorance

Spurred on by Connor’s lengthy response to my post on Wisconsin unions (I was waiting for someone to take the bait), I will wade into this issue, rather than sweeping it under the rug.  While I don’t see American class warfare a problem of the same magnitude as poverty, war, corruption or crime, I’ll grant that it’s an interesting question, to which there are better and worse answers.  I have an opinion on the NFL labor dispute, so I well ought have an opinion on the situation in Wisconsin, which is admittedly a more important issue.

But I confess, I lack crucial knowledge!  For all the reporting on protests, I don’t understand key details regarding the issues at stake.  I get that the bill limits unions ability to collectively bargain, but I don’t understand what that means.  Particularly, what is the current (pre-legislation) basis of collective bargaining?  When public-sector unions collectively bargain, who do they bargain with, and what leverage does each side have?  Are public-sector unions able to strike if the other side doesn’t meet their demands?  Who is the other side, the governor?  Other elected or appointed figures?

By my cursory reading of the bill, public-sector employees would still be able to organize themselves to negotiate for higher salaries and benefits, but they’d need to negotiate with the state legislature–who can enact laws that increase salaries and benefits.  It doesn’t seem like a particularly harsh blow against anyone’s rights to force unions to negotiate with representatives of the people who write their members’ checks.  What am I missing here?

The Pragmatic Value of Models

Earlier I posted about my preference for simultaneously accepting multiple models that conflict with each other, and applying them to different situations.  One reason to do so is that one model may be more accurate in particular applications.  This occurs in both cosmology and social science.  A second reason to do so is that, independent of accuracy, some models have greater pragmatic value in particular applications–that is, they’re more useful even if less accurate.

Consider two theories of basketball.  Theory A says that in any basketball game, the better team–the team that has better talent, strategy, and work-ethic–will always win.  Theory B says that while talent, strategy and work-ethic are important, luck is also a factor; thus the best team usually wins, but sometimes loses, at no fault of their own.  Both theories are internally consistent, and consistent with observed phenomena, though they conflict with each other.  In deciding which model to use, I find I prefer Theory A when I’m playing basketball, and Theory B when I’m gambling on basketball, regardless of which model I believe to be more accurate.  I consider the ability to accept the viability both models, given their dissonance, and to casually switch between them, to be a fairly useful skill.  Even though I know that one theory must be wrong, Theory A makes me a better baller, and Theory B makes me a better gambler, so I benefit from applying both at different times.

I had similar thoughts when reading Why I am Not’s post on charity.  The author finds something fishy with the economics of charity auctions, and proposes they may less than perfectly altruistic.  So there are two models: first, that charity auctions are highly altruistic, and that attendees ought to celebrate themselves; second, that charity auction attendees are stuck-up self-congratulating jerks.  Regardless of the accuracy of these models, I’d recommend using the second in pithy blog posts, while begrudgingly sticking to the first while attending charity auctions.  Even if you believe charity auctions are wasteful, hiding your true feelings has social utility, and will keep you from coming across as weird.

Class Wars Swept Under the Rug?

I find myself highly troubled by the ongoing class wars is the United States, mostly because of the amount of effort and energy being wasted on it.  America is an enormously wealthy country by international or historic standards.  Neither the American middle class nor the American upper class are oppressed group, yet each frames its argument as if the fate of the world depends on their getting a larger piece of the pie.

Scott Sumner makes an interesting argument about means testing.  Union-workers make a compelling case to defend their negotiating power.  No one wants their taxes raised or benefits cut, and its fairly easy to argue persuasively that your case is special.

And all I can think is, stop whining.  Deal with it.  There are serious problems in the world.  There’s a large budget shortfall, and the only way to address it is to cut spending or raise taxes.  There are honest arguments to be had about how to do so, but any argument that can be accurately summarized as “Don’t take my shit” is going to get mocked.  Here on this blog.  By me.