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Robin Hanson tonic of the day
We feel a deep pleasure from realizing that we believe something in common with our friends, and different from most people. We feel an even deeper pleasure letting everyone know of this fact. This feeling is EVIL. Learn to see it in yourself, and then learn to be horrified by how thoroughly it can poison your mind. Yes evidence may at times force you to disagree with a majority, and your friends may have correlated exposure to that evidence, but take no pleasure when you and your associates disagree with others; that is the road to rationality ruin.
Here is the link. I like that phrase, "rationality ruin." I am, of course, more of a pragmatist and less of a Platonist than is Robin. But still, Robin is the daily tonic I wish to take.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 6, 2008 at 03:13 PM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Excellent - if I had only learned this before I began to hate most pop music I probably would have had far more dates...
But really, this is great advice. It may be tough to implement for me personally. And note that this feeling is closely related to Nationalism, well just about all isms.
And why does that last phrase remind me of Eric Hoffer?
Posted by: mickslam at Nov 6, 2008 3:23:21 PM
As an investor, I think this is a really good feeling to have. It is much more profitable to be right when other people are wrong. Certainly not evil.
Don't tell the other people until you have your position on though.
Posted by: matt wilbert at Nov 6, 2008 3:30:21 PM
The question I always have after hearing such thoughts from Robin Hanson is: what about the pleasure I take from feeling virtuous for believing the things that Robin says when the majority of people do not?
Posted by: Philip Wallach at Nov 6, 2008 3:39:15 PM
So it is better to suppress thoughts that are not in line with the majority?
When your opinion goes against the majority opinion and is proved out correct, it is wrong
to feel good about being right?
NONSENSE!
what a milquetoast, beta way to think.
The majority is generally wrong and full of the ignorance of group think.
Stand up and speak out against the tyranny of the masses!
Take pride in your independent thinking!
Posted by: morgan Shevett at Nov 6, 2008 3:49:13 PM
We really do need more conformity of thought. If one guy gets and idea that is not in line with the majority then he should jsut try to forget about it and allign himself with the majority. We need institutions to help us with this...that is why I was so relieved that many other agree with many and soon we may have a national voluntary service program where we can hlep the youth conform to good ideals. It is EVIL to oppose this.
Posted by: Gabe at Nov 6, 2008 4:08:55 PM
My initial reaction was the same as Gabe's and morgan's. Having read some of the comments on Hanson's post, I'm inclined to think that what he is getting at is that there is no particular virtue in dissent, any more than in agreeing with the majority.
The idea, as one commenter put it, roughly, is to try to think clearly and be right, not to think that you and your associates are special because you are in a minority.
I'm not sure that's what he's after. As so often, I find Hanson not very clear, and suspect he enjoys being obscure.
Posted by: Bernard Yomtov at Nov 6, 2008 4:22:25 PM
How quickly things turn post election. I have heard already that "unnamed" and "anonymous" sources are untrustworthy and/or just plain BAD (with regard to stories on Obama), despite them being the norm for the past 8 years. Tax cuts, which have been derided in the United States for years now, are suddenly GOOD things to give to 95% of the population. ENCOURAGING consumption at the individual level, which was the stuff of years of scorn when - or because - Bush mentioned it is now something we NEED to do, even at the cost of reversing savings growth, even when we are Nobel prize winning economists who have been arguing the opposite for years. And now, of course, it's EVIL to go against the grain, just in general.
Hey, I thought EVIL was one of those scary words that made people uncomfortable. Or is that only when it's said with a little Texas twang?
Posted by: MM at Nov 6, 2008 4:23:26 PM
Robin Hanson is most definitely not obsure. I am trying to take no particular pleasure in pointing this out.
Posted by: josh at Nov 6, 2008 4:39:31 PM
obviously should say "obscure".
Posted by: josh at Nov 6, 2008 4:40:20 PM
I take pleasure in that I have economic beliefs with other econ majors that are in contrast with the economic beliefs of the common people, because it shows that my major is, in fact, actually doing something for me. :D
Posted by: Robert Olson at Nov 6, 2008 4:41:25 PM
"Rationality ruin" be damned. I agree with other commentors: being right and crowing about it is one of the few free pleasures in life.
In that vein, MM is speaking in tongues or something. You lost, get over it.
Posted by: meter at Nov 6, 2008 4:44:54 PM
This is perhaps the greatest driver of Obamamania. His most fanatical supporters have both an imagined "us" - the rest of the world somehow will turn permanently pro-American after their messiah is elected - and an imagined "them" - the interior rednecks, the persona they projected on Sarah Palin.
Posted by: a_c at Nov 6, 2008 4:46:14 PM
The Catholic Church files this under Pride.
Posted by: 8 at Nov 6, 2008 4:55:37 PM
I agree completely, and I feel it's also evil, and for years have tried to suppress that in my heart. But what I don't really understand is why it's evil. What exactly is it about that that makes it evil? I believe it is, but I don't understand why it is. What does Robin say?
Posted by: jason voorhees at Nov 6, 2008 4:58:53 PM
The man is worse than Lucy with the football with his threats to quit blogging, but in case he is serious this time I think it is vital that you get him on a Blogginheads, sniffles be damned!
Posted by: burger flipper at Nov 6, 2008 4:59:32 PM
Talk about projecting: the guy isn't even President yet. Jesus, at least give the guy a chance to fail. THEN you can howl at the moon.
Speaking of Palin, she apparently thinks Africa is something other than a continent. But the proponents of idiocracy remain steadfast that she has what it takes. As Ron White says: You can't fix stupid.
Posted by: meter at Nov 6, 2008 5:02:08 PM
Robin has made comments like this before, and I tend to agree, especially in the frame of experts dissenting with other experts. Most of the time when many experts disagree with few experts the many will be right and the few will be wrong. This isn't to say that one should conform his/her thoughts to other experts, but just to take extra care when forming an "absurd belief" as the GMU lunch group calls it.
Posted by: Charlie at Nov 6, 2008 5:31:53 PM
Wow. From the quote Tyler showed us, I had a reaction similar to others. I thought, "Huh? Aren't you supposed to take courage and go against the crowd? Aren't true liberals supposed to encourage dissent to make sure we are not slaves to our own prejudices?"
So I was disappointed when I clicked on the link and saw that Hanson had no elaboration; that was it.
And then I was really disappointed when the context was a discussion of religious beliefs.
So, is he saying it is evil to take pleasure from disagreeing with a secular culture? That is an extremely odd thing to say.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Nov 6, 2008 5:32:55 PM
The Catholic Church files this under Pride.
Pride is a bad sin for many reasons, including that it interferes with forgiveness of others, and also leads to assumptions of "being sinless" and that no forgiveness is needed, i.e., I do no wrong.
Pride is the flip side of despair, also a big sin.
"Pride is the excessive love of one's own excellence. It is ordinarily accounted one of the seven capital sins. St. Thomas, however, endorsing the appreciation of St. Gregory, considers it the queen of all vices, and puts vainglory in its place as one of the deadly sins."
Pride: from the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908
Despair: from the Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908
Posted by: at Nov 6, 2008 5:35:01 PM
Well the blog is "Overcoming Bias", so if we think about it in the context of cognitive biases, then Robin's point is made very clear. I interpreted "rationality ruin" as the key phrase - often we will swell up with pride when we are proven right and the masses are wrong. This is "evil" because we may sometimes let this pride cloud our judgement - what if we are "proven right" against the crowd... then all basis for continual intellectual self-critique is eliminated, because we are already so prideful and sure that we are correct. He is critiquing a feeling certainty coupled with an emotional feeling of pride as a recipe for eventually developing less rational cognitive biases.
Or at least thats how i took it.
Posted by: Trey at Nov 6, 2008 5:48:29 PM
Actually I regret my rush to judgement and snarky attitude. I've been reading star wars books with my kids and this is the same thing they teach padawans(jedi apprentices). It is ok to disagree, but do not take pleasure in it, it clouds the mind, just be coldly factual. It is what it is, you are lucky to have seen better evidence or have better logic teachers, do not delight in others being ignorant and do not feel bad for your own ignorance...just do as you must.
That said, the jedi are tremendously bad ass compared to most the other life forms in thier universe and they do seem to enjoy hanging out with one another, especially when some siths destroy the majority of the good ones in the universe.
Posted by: Gabe at Nov 6, 2008 6:21:33 PM
Read the comments and get back to me.
Posted by: bernard Yomtov at Nov 6, 2008 6:41:00 PM
Robert and meter,
I think you guys are miss-interpreting Robin. He's saying its "wrong" to take pleasure in holding an opinion because it is aligned with your favored group, or demonizes a disfavored group. Humans take pleasure in favoring "us" over "them", and that pleasure often leads to irrational outcomes.
Thats not to say there can't be rational reasons to favor or disfavor a group's consensus, or that being happy about being right is a bad thing. Just be sure your happiness actually stems from factual superiority, and not from a desire to believe what your friends believe.
In other words, if we want to be more rational we should hold opinions which are based on fact. We should not hold opinions because of what they signal to others.
Posted by: Grant at Nov 6, 2008 7:23:13 PM
Bernard said:
Read the comments and get back to me.
I'm not sure who your target was, but after reading the comments at Hanson's site (I hadn't originally), I'm even more surprised. A few of his commenters took the tack some of us here did--namely, that one of the ways you "overcome bias" is by challenging groupthink--and Hanson amazingly wondered whether there really is such a thing as groupthink bias.
So I'm going to repeat my view, that it is a good thing--in and of itself--for a few people to reflexively question the consensus. If I'm not mistaken, the Catholic Church used to assign someone to play devil's advocate on matters of doctrine, to make sure they had come up with valid arguments to defend what the "knew" was true. Of course, Hanson's cheerleaders would say the Catholic Church is evil, so it's not surprising that they used evil means...
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Nov 6, 2008 7:32:01 PM
But there is a distinctive pleasure in being one of the very few people to get it right.
At least, I think there is. (I wouldn't know; it's never happened to me.)
Posted by: Michael Drake at Nov 6, 2008 7:34:29 PM
