Overcoming Bias

Honest Politics

Robert Samuelson in today's Post:

There's a vast gap between the country's problems and the candidates' agendas and rhetoric. The candidates dissemble because they believe that Americans don't want the truth. It would be too upsetting.  They're probably right. Let's imagine what a candidate inoculated with truth serum might say. ...

"I know you worry about the economy. So do I. But, frankly, if you elect me, I won't do much about it. ... We must also cut spending ... cuts should focus on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. ... raising eligibility ages ... 'Energy independence' is a fraud. ... All we can do is limit our dependence by shifting to more-efficient vehicles and increasing domestic production. ... Without major technological breakthroughs, making big cuts in greenhouse gases will be impossible. ... Unless we stop poor people from coming across our Southern border ... we won't reduce [USA] poverty."

Of course, our hapless candidate would be dismissed as misinformed, offensive, possibly racist and, of course, unelectable. People say they value candor, but in practice they don't. ... Politics is mostly ... about offering up convenient scapegoats and instant solutions for voters' complaints, even if the villains and promises are often false.  We in the media bless this process by treating much of the self-serving rhetoric with undeserved seriousness.  Is it any wonder that our genuine problems persist year after year and, in the end, foster public cynicism?

Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality

Followup to:  The Dilemma: Science or Bayes?

Scott Aaronson suggests that Many-Worlds and libertarianism are similar in that they are both cases of bullet-swallowing, rather than bullet-dodging:

Libertarianism and MWI are both are grand philosophical theories that start from premises that almost all educated people accept (quantum mechanics in the one case, Econ 101 in the other), and claim to reach conclusions that most educated people reject, or are at least puzzled by (the existence of parallel universes / the desirability of eliminating fire departments).

Now there's an analogy that would never have occurred to me.

I've previously argued that Science rejects Many-Worlds but Bayes accepts it.  (Here, "Science" is capitalized because we are talking about the idealized form of Science, not just the actual social process of science.)

It furthermore seems to me that there is a deep analogy between (small-'l') libertarianism and Science:

1. Both are based on a pragmatic distrust of reasonable-sounding arguments.
2. Both try to build systems that are more trustworthy than the people in them.
3. Both accept that people are flawed, and try to harness their flaws to power the system.

Happy Conservatives

At Freakonomics, Arthur Brooks on why conservatives seem happier:

In my last post I showed the large happiness differences between religious Americans and secularists, and argued that this is a big part of the reason conservatives are so much happier than liberals. But I also noted that religion and other lifestyle distinctions still only explain about half the gap. ...

In my book I argue that conservatives are more optimistic about the future than liberals are, and believe in each individual's ability to get ahead on the basis of achievement. Liberals are more likely to see themselves and others as victims of circumstance and oppression, and doubt whether individuals can climb without governmental help.

I wonder:

• Would you or I be happier if we let ourselves think more conservatively, such as by attending church more and believing we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps?
• Would society be happier if we encouraged more conservative thoughts?
• If so, who wants such outcomes?  (Or, are they good outcomes?)

Me, I want to believe whatever is true even if that makes me unhappy.  And with that attitude, I doubt attending church would make me happier.

Added 13May: Tyler suggests "Robin could play up the relatively conservative thoughts he already believes in."  But playing up particular beliefs will give them more weight in my mind, and move me more to similar beliefs. 

Caplan Pulls Along Ropes

Last May I wrote:

The space of all policies ... is huge - with thousands or millions of dimensions. ... The policy world can thought of as consisting of a few Tug-O-War "ropes" set up in this high dimensional policy space.  If you want to find a comfortable place in this world, where the people around you are reassured that you are "one of them," you need to continually and clearly telegraph your loyalty by treating each policy issue as another opportunity to find more supporting arguments for your side of the key dimensions.  That is, pick a rope and pull on it.   If, however, you actually want to improve policy ... then prefer to pull policy ropes sideways.

Bryan Caplan prefers to pull along the ropes:

Ancient Political Self-Deception

From Gene Expression:

There are certain things which are sacred, certain lines you don't cross. ... I was thinking about [this] a few months ago when I read Rome & Jerusalem: A Clash of Ancient Civilizations and God's Rule - Government and Islam.  You see, the ancient Romans and Muslims did not have kings. Kings were tyrants, and the early Roman and Islamic polities rejected such tyranny on principle. So of course, instead of kings, the Roman Empire was headed by an emperor, while the Muslims had caliphs. Get it? When Augustus defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra the official narrative was that the doughty republican traditions of Rome had bested once more the oriental despotism of the Hellenistic world, with their Greek kings and queens. Similarly, the righteous AbbasidsUmayyads. In its place they established a genuine Islamic state which was guided by the traditions of the community as opposed to profane naked autocracy. Right....

As you can see here, the extent of the self-deception and semantic delusion is really humorous. Now, it is true that the early emperors of Rome tended to keep up the illusion that they were simply stewards of the Roman Republic with some verisimilitude. Augustus' shtick was that his was a restorationist project; he was no dictator or king, just the First Citizen. Similarly, the early Abbasids were ostensibly bringing the vision of the Islamic community to its true fulfillment (especially the Shia party), whereas the Umayyads had been worldly Arab tribalists more in keeping with the values of the jahiliya. ... Muslim soldiers were enraged and shocked when the conqueror of Spain allowed his Visigothic wife to convince him to don a crown and so indicate kingship; they accused him of becoming a Christian.

I've been saying for years that people prefer democracy mainly because they think it raises their social status - being ruled by a king makes you lower status relative to people who "rule themselves."  We can't quite fool ourselves into thinking a king is just a "steward", but we apparently can think we really rule because we elect our rulers.

Added 2Apr:  Nazi Hermann Göring:

Oh, [democracy] is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.  [HT Caplan] 

Biases in Processing Political Information

In a post last year, Eliezer discussed a useful paper exploring the many biases that affect how people process political information. 

Via this blog, here's comedian Lenny Bruce making a similar point:

I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate and their comment would be, “He’s really slaughtering Nixon.” Then we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, “How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy?” And then I realized that each group loved their candidate so that a guy would have to be this blatant -- he would have to look into the camera and say: “I am a thief, a crook, do you hear me, I am the worst choice you could ever make for the Presidency!” And even then his following would say, “Now there’s an honest man for you. It takes a big guy to admit that. There’s the kind of guy we need for President.”

Reject Random Beliefs

A recent New Scientist mentions a 2005 American Political Science Review paper on the genetic basis of political beliefs, which includes this key table, breaking variation in opinions (among 30,000 Virginia twins) on 28 specific topics into three origin components: genetic (heritability), family (shared environment), and other (unshared environment):

If Self-Fulfilling Optimism is Wrong, I Don't Wanna be Right

Often, I hear claims like the following: "too many people are cynical about electoral politics."  It's hard to know just what to make of that sort of assertion.  For cynicism is most likely true about electoral politics, and, moreover, as a good little Bayesian, I should count the cynicism of just about everyone else as evidence to strengthen that belief. 

"But!," the anticynic might say, "cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophecy!  If we all believe that politics is run by crooks, we won't demand better at the voting booth [for example, because we vote strategically for the least offensive guy we think can win rather than the one we trust]!  If enough people are optimistic, your optimism will be self-fulfilling too!" 

So imagine the following belief/payoff correspondences.  If you hold a true cynical belief, you get payoff A.  If you hold a false cynical belief (cynicism in a nice world), you get payoff B.  If you hold a true optimistic belief, you get payoff C, and if you hold a false optimistic belief, you get payoff D.  Suppose C>A>B>D (or C>A>D>B -- it doesn't matter.)  And suppose that the world is nice if M people are optimistic (where N is the number of people in the world, and N>M>1) and nasty otherwise.

Anyone who knows game theory will immediately see that this world amounts to a coordination game with two nash equilibria: everyone optimistic in a nice world and everyone cynical in a nasty world.  And the nice world equilibrium has higher payoffs for all.

Now suppose we're in a nasty world.  How do we get to the nice world?  It seems like we'd do best if someone came along and deceived at least M people into thinking we're in the nice world already! 

This shows us that not only can individually rational behavior be collectively suboptimal, so can individually rational (truth-maximizing) belief.  Should we support demagoguery? 

I imagine the self-fulfilling false belief problem works on some individual cases too.  For example, suppose I have more success in dating if I'm confident?  Suppose I'm a person who has poor success in dating.  True beliefs for me are not confident ones, but I'll do better if I adopt falsely confident beliefs, which will then be retroactively justified by the facts.  Should I engage in self-deception? 

Sneaking in Connotations

Followup to:  Categorizing Has Consequences

Yesterday, we saw that in Japan, blood types have taken the place of astrology - if your blood type is AB, for example, you're supposed to be "cool and controlled".

So suppose we decided to invent a new word, "wiggin", and defined this word to mean people with green eyes and black hair -

        A green-eyed man with black hair walked into a restaurant.
      "Ha," said Danny, watching from a nearby table, "did you see that?  A wiggin just walked into the room.  Bloody wiggins.  Commit all sorts of crimes, they do."
        His sister Erda sighed.  "You haven't seen him commit any crimes, have you, Danny?"
      "Don't need to," Danny said, producing a dictionary.  "See, it says right here in the Oxford English Dictionary.  'Wiggin.  (1)  A person with green eyes and black hair.'  He's got green eyes and black hair, he's a wiggin.  You're not going to argue with the Oxford English Dictionary, are you?  By definition, a green-eyed black-haired person is a wiggin."
      "But you called him a wiggin," said Erda.  "That's a nasty thing to say about someone you don't even know.  You've got no evidence that he puts too much ketchup on his burgers, or that as a kid he used his slingshot to launch baby squirrels."
        "But he is a wiggin," Danny said patiently.  "He's got green eyes and black hair, right?  Just you watch, as soon as his burger arrives, he's reaching for the ketchup."

Let's Do Like Them

I finally watched the movie Sicko.  Though it argued quite unfairly (which of course does not make its conclusion wrong), it did make one good point at the very end.  Since I can find no script online, let me paraphrase:

If another country makes better cars, we drive them.  If another country makes better wine, we drink it.  So if other countries have found a better way to take care of each other, why shouldn't we adopt that too? 

As we prepare to vote on Super Tuesday, let us remember that there is little new under the political sun.  Most policy issues faced by a city, state, or nation are pretty similar to issues faced by other similar regions.  Thus when considering how to solve their problems, each locale should pay close attention to other locales' experiences.  A successful new approach will be tried first in one locale, and then copied by many other locales.  So the typical good policy will be to copy and adapt a new approach first tried somewhere else. 

Yet when politicians propose solutions to long-standing problems, they rarely describe their solutions as variations on solutions tried elsewhere.  They rarely say "that idea seems to be working well over there; let's try it over here."  Voters would apparently feel insulted to have to follow another locale's lead, and politicians would seem weak to suggest such following.  Alas, "not invented here" is not just for corporations.