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I loved this question, and answer
Question for the day: what do libertarianism and the Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics have in common? Interest in the two worldviews seems to be positively correlated: think of quantum computing pioneer David Deutsch, or several prominent posters over at Overcoming Bias, or … oh, alright, my sample size is admittedly pretty small.
...My own hypothesis has to do with bullet-dodgers versus bullet-swallowers.
And it ends with this:
So who’s right: the bullet-swallowing libertarian Many-Worlders, or the bullet-dodging intellectual kibitzers? Well, that depends on whether the function is sin(x) or log(x).
Read more here and can you guess who the pointer is from?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 13, 2008 at 11:45 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Alternatively:
Logic says! If P, then Q.
Bullet-swallower: P, hence Q!
Bullet-dodger: But ~Q, so ~P!
One man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens...
Posted by: david at May 13, 2008 12:11:23 PM
I think it's more a case of "are you prepared to believe in something without evidence because it sounds kinda cool?"
Posted by: Theophile Escargot at May 13, 2008 12:31:26 PM
Anybody who is a "believer" in either many-worlds or Copenhagen should have his physicist card taken away (assuming he had one in the first place).
Philosophers and ideologues hold beliefs deeply based on little or no evidence. Physicists hold beliefs lightly even with strong evidence.
Posted by: Matt at May 13, 2008 12:48:20 PM
Agree. Here "bullet swallower" equates to "believes things that are not well-supported by evidence", while "bullet dodger" equates to "common sense skepticism about strong claims".
Posted by: Andrew Edwards at May 13, 2008 1:01:50 PM
"bullet dodger" equates to "common sense skepticism about strong claims".
How about some common sense about the poorly supported but deep beliefs of liberals, for example that government programs solve far more problems than they cause, because the intentions behind them are good? Or that politicians actually know more about health care than HMOs? Or that private managers are "greedy" but public managers are altruistic "civil servants"?
Posted by: googaw at May 13, 2008 2:12:46 PM
Or that politicians actually know more about health care than HMOs?That's confusing, but it's either wrong or misleading-- which one it is depends on what you're talking about.
If you're talking about coverage in general, they claim that the current system is inefficient, and I agree. But they also go on to say that it's bad because health insurers run on greed (misleading and silly), and that we'd be best off with a single-payer system (very debatable). That's as far as they go there.
If you're talking about politicians knowing more about things such as prescribing drugs then yes, liberals in general do think that (i.e. the FDA). But it's not fair to wag your finger at liberals because people in general-- liberals and conservatives-- think that the government should heavily regulate and even ban drugs despite what doctors say and consumers want.
Posted by: Daniel Reeves at May 13, 2008 3:19:48 PM
How about some common sense about the poorly supported but deep beliefs of liberals
You mean beliefs about liberals? Because those are some strong claims about the beliefs of a very large group of people.
Seriously, is there any evidence that anyone thinks that politicians are more knowledgeable about healthcare than HMOs? I don't think that relative expertise is generally the issue....
That said, I think the proposition that "civil servants always act for society's interests" deserves to be pressured in the same way as the proposition "civil servants never act for society's interests". Both claims seem pretty wrong to me when compared to the data. As do most simple, broad claims about human behavior in complex systems.
Posted by: Andrew Edwards at May 13, 2008 3:48:10 PM
I thought the MWI was the favored contender in physics nowadays, but strong skepticism by commenters here. Physicists around able to weigh in?
Incidentally, I never noticed a correlation between MWI and libertarianism before.
Perhaps that's because I'm in the latter group and I find MWI disturbing.
Posted by: Scott Scheule at May 13, 2008 3:48:34 PM
When one google's "bullet-swallower" and the first hit is the linked post...
One must formulate a hypothesis before one can test it. That requires no faith in the conclusion, just in a deterministic universe.
And if we don't have a deterministic universe, then all is lost. So, it's a Pascal's wager on that point.
Besides, how does one make any action without having some type of faith that a positive result will come? If it isn't faith, then it must be habit. What about the first time? And if you didn't come up with it for the first time based on some measure of faith, who told you? That would be faith in some authority, something libertarians do have a tendency to discount.
"Both theories seem to have a strong following with nerds who read science fiction and post to Internet discussion groups, but a relatively poorer following with both John Q. Public and Alistair K. Intellectual."
Fair enough on that, though I don't read much fiction. And my theory on the public as well as intellectuals is that they are both ignorant about anything other than their particular specialty, both of which they are biased towards government support of because they are important, and underappreciated, and sometimes important things are not supported by a free market. They don't believe libertarianism, therefore they don't believe libertarianism.
"In a lifetime of websurfing, I don’t think I’ve ever read an argument by a libertarian or a Many-Worlds proponent that didn’t sound like the latter."
A lifetime of websurfing? Is this guy 10? Anyway, in a lifetime of websurfing, I don't think I've ever heard a non-libertarian offer an idea for a test of a libertarian conclusion.
Besides, libertarianism just isn't that extreme. It is the fact that the logic is cohesive that allows libertarian arguments to be taken to the extremes without breaking down into reliance on fallacies.
Posted by: Andrew at May 13, 2008 5:31:36 PM
I don't think the analogy really holds when you press people for why they believe the things that they do. The "bullet-dodgers" are either tautologically wrong--not believing what the evidence indicates--or they are placing a greater weight on other evidences, one's that the "bullet-swallowers" don't take into account as much.
If it's really the case that the evidence isn't for or against a proposition, then both groups are wrong if they are asserting that the evidence argues for their position.
As far as his approximation analogy goes, the swallowers are clearly correct unless there is a good reason to think that the function behaves very differently outside the initial point, in which case the other side is right. You can't have it both ways.
Posted by: at May 13, 2008 6:08:10 PM
Matt,
You must be an ideologue, then, because your account of how philosophers hold their beliefs doesn't hold true of any of the philosophers I know.
Posted by: Jason Brennan at May 13, 2008 8:12:44 PM
Cute, so if I invent the right metaphor I can make people who disagree with me sound worse? (Not much content to the post besides this attempt at front-loaded terminology.)
One could just as easily write the same basic post but call the two groups "bullet-deniers" and "bullet-spotters". If one wished to make the opposite side look worse, of course.
I say this being neither a libertarian nor as someone who believes in MWI (I find MWI intriguing but don't fully believe in it).
Posted by: Sonic Charmer at May 13, 2008 9:23:39 PM
I thought the MWI was the favored contender in physics nowadays, but strong skepticism by commenters here. Physicists around able to weigh in?
Yes that's my feeling too, as a physicist who did his MSc on this stuff, then moved on. I'd say MWI is a belief I hold lightly, it doesn't seem as important a question as it once was, but nevertheless anyone dismissing MWI probably hasn't thought hard about it.
I don't like the analogy to Libretaianism at all, though. I mean, quantum mechanics has a pretty serious claim to being (at the bottom of) a full description of reality.
While if you think the free-market stuff of Econ101 is anything close to a complete description of human behaviour, you clearly need to get stoned, go to church, watch more serial killer movies, etc.
Posted by: improbable at May 13, 2008 9:48:44 PM
"Libretaianism"!?! sorry.
Posted by: improbable at May 13, 2008 9:50:20 PM
I think this is a terrible analogy.
For one, I don't think libertarianism (at least its consequentialist strain) makes any particularly strong or extreme claims. I've always read libertarianism as saying "people who have power over others do not tend to act in the best interest of their subjects". Of course thats not always and everywhere true, but who really argues that government always and everywhere causes harm (Rothbard, maybe?). I believe the fore-mentioned statement is generally true, and so hold to it unless evidence is produced to the contrary.
I don't think the many-worlds interpretation is particularly extreme either. It seems extreme from our perspective, but so what? Why should the truth of science be judged in relation to what hairless apes call "normal"? If one accepts science and evolution, one must accept that our brains and society evolved to deal with things very far removed from quantum physics, and I'd say that makes our judgment of what an "extreme" claim is to be pretty poor.
Posted by: Grant at May 13, 2008 11:41:32 PM
I'll agree it's a bad analogy. One can perform the policy experiment to see what the difference in outcome between a given regulation and the lack thereof is, even if the experiment is often hard to control. On the other hand, there is no consensus on what kind of experiment, if one even exists, could distinguish between MWI and other interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Posted by: Cyrus at May 14, 2008 7:57:10 AM
I second the "theories that sound cool" poster.
I'm not sure what it means to believe the many worlds interpretation. It's back-formed so as not to change any laws of physics, so in that sense there's nothing to believe -- you'll get the same answer to any question about this universe as with any other interpretation. You can make up six interpretations before breakfast, as long as you don't change any physics in the process.
If belief in the many worlds interpretation means a belief in the physical reality of the other worlds, in some way that could in principle be measured or verified, the number of supporters would be far smaller.
Posted by: Zach at May 14, 2008 10:18:00 AM
