University of Pennsylvania professor Diana Mutz’s book "Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy looked at survey evidence as to how often people had conversations with others of differing political viewpoints. In her words:
I think you are largely right but I would be willing to bet my life that between the beginning and end of the Reagan administration, all 6 of these went up: 1)federal health regulation, 2)non-federal health regulation, 3)federal safety regulation, 4)non-federal safety regulation, 5)federal environmental regulation, 6)non-federal environmental regulation.
Same for George W. Bush. Twelve deltas, all positive.
Of course modern conservatives didn't help their own cause much: they stood up with leaders who were on the wrong side of civil rights, womens' rights and gay rights...
It is interesting to compare the attitude of most academics toward conservatives and toward libertarians. Libertarians never stood up with those leaders but they often get lumped in as not being worth taking seriously.
See Inglehart, Welzel in Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. They provide solid data from the World Values Survey documenting how fluctuations in human autonomy are strongly predictive of prevailing human values systems. More autonomy, greater desire for choice, self-expression, individualism. Less autonomy, greater reliance on religion or authoritarian types of government.
Caledonian, Even if "smarter and better-educated" != "rational", I think that smarter and better-educated should tend towards rationalism. Then I doubt that you appreciate what the function of higher education is. It might be helpful for you to review the origins of the university system.
I also suspect that you're using 'smarter' in an informal and vernacular sense. The more specific meanings of intelligence do not result in any clear trend towards rationalism.
Robin did post about this same finding last November, but readers' long-term memory will be best activated if periodically reminded of the same information. (OK, I forgot.)
Q says, "it's only as self-serving as the declaration that the liberal consensus among academics 'looks like herd behavior.'"
Maybe I should clarify: as to issues where something like an objective answer exists, the fact that lots of intelligent people believe the same thing isn't necessarily herd behavior (although it well could be). But many political issues boil down to subjective weightings of incommensurable values, where no objective solution is in the cards (e.g., the right of the fetus to live vs. the right of the woman to control her body, or the intangible value of protecting certain endangered species vs. the value of economic development). When you find a group of people who all take one side of such an issue, I don't think it's "self-serving" to suspect herd behavior of some kind.
I guessed Mutz' results long ago! In general there is more open and friendly talk across varying viewpoints among today's bluecollars than among high-income well-educated. I circulate among both. It should be pointed out that "well-educated" does not mean broadly-educated, in our time. In fact "well-educated" is a bit of a misnomer: it should be "well-specialized" or something. Some of these people you couldn't trust to take out the trash, because they would put it in the wrong dumpster, or get into an argument with the garbageman. Since Kuhnian paradigms change with time, since for example market economics was presumed to be the default organizing position for society even though none of its theoretical justifications could be calculated further than two-person exchanges, while the presumption of self-interest was a objectionable bias obvious to Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, and your grandmother and is regularly violated in new experimental studies, it is hard to claim that "superior intellects independently settle on the objectively correct viewpoint." I realize you were joking. My own friendships extend from extreme left to extreme right; I doubt I could get some of them in the same room together. I think the reason that liberals dominate in universities, (if they really do, I doubt whether it's true in the physical sciences and engineering,) is because there is a long-term thing lasting decades which could be called "intellectual fashion," and it gets buttressed by self-reinforcement, hiring practices, and the like. Of course modern conservatives didn't help their own cause much: they stood up with leaders who were on the wrong side of civil rights, womens' rights and gay rights, they tend to think that poor people get what they deserve (often relying upon market economics as the justification,) and their recent heroes have been Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, two uneducated men who increased the debt, shifted the distribution of the tax burden downward, and deregulated health, safety, and environmental issues to no good ends. God knows the modern liberals can be insufferable, but what's the alternative? A little intellectual humility would first be called for.
Caledonian, Even if "smarter and better-educated" != "rational", I think that smarter and better-educated should tend towards rationalism. I think this because the educational ideal (at least in the math,science,humanities university environment) is to cultivate rational thinking, and presumably, more intelligent people can better acquire and use the techniques education develops.
You are right that intelligent folks can create intricate justifications, but it isn't clear to me that this ability means they cannot distinguish rationalizations from rationalism.
"I don't think most people appreciate that what is generally meant by intelligence has nothing to do with the quality of decision-making. Intelligent people create more elaborate and intricate justifications for their beliefs. It takes distinctly different qualities to sort sense from nonsense."
Caledonian, I disagree. I think intelligent people (of the only type of intelligence that matters IMO, the ability to maximize persistence odds) are those that sense from nonsense. This is different than (1) creating elaborate and intricate external propaganda to get others to act in the intelligent person's interest, or (2) creating and internalizing personal belief ideas and narratives that on their surface are irrational, but optimize management of system 1 "subconscious" intelligence to meet the rationally optimized goals devised by the system 2 intelligence.
With expressions of belief like Romeo Stevens, I see the fun in Cowen's suggestion that people assign probabilities (of truth/accuracy) to their beliefs.
Naturally it may be theoretically possible to predict such reversals, but this seems to be not a trivial task. The fact is made more complex by the reality that people often find it convenient to conceal their intentions and motivations, and so describe their positions using names and terms that are grossly inaccurate.
Conservatism, as a political movement, has little to do with conservatism as a concept. A similar point holds for liberalism - what is formally called 'classical liberalism' is incompatible with Liberalism as a political identity today, and is generally considered a form of conservatism.
liberalism doesn't recognize property rights. without recognized property rights there will be constant conflict over whom should get what.liberalism supports enforced socialized welfare. enforced socialized welfare creates a disincentive to be competitive.liberalism supports collectivism. 'majority makes right' is just a different type of 'might makes right'.People see the U.S. constitution as a rock solid foundation for society. It is not, even as originally envisioned, the constitution is a precarious balance between the rights of the individual and the collectivist safety of the state. Since then we have had 232 years of supreme courts reinterpreting what the constitution means, almost always in favor of more governmental power.
The founding fathers would have been horrified by the intrusiveness of taxes, the existence of a permanent army, our needless involvement as 'world police', the passing of responsibility for minting our money from congress to the semi-private Fed, the blatant market manipulation resulting from the unification of the financial institutions (and government complicity in such), our massive contributions to corrupt NGO's such as the world bank, the gutting of state sovereignty, the legal bribery of politicians (the loopholes could be easily closed) etc.
we're in a sorry state and I don't see things getting better except in places like singapore, hong kong, dubai, and other capitalist city-states. they're profitable enough to waste billions on ridiculous architectural challenges, have high standard of living and low crime rates. they must be doing something right.
Scott: “if I didn't know what the liberal vs. conservative positions were on (say) gun control, I'm pretty sure I'd be able to predict them, given my knowledge of the liberal vs. conservative positions on lots of "unrelated" issues like abortion and gay marriage.”
I doubt that. Let’s take the issue of gay rights for instance. Based on the present situation, one may take the support of the left and the opposition of the right for granted. Yet things were quite different in the past. In early 1930s, homosexuals held many prominent positions in NSDAP and, if Roehm had more luck, homosexuality might have been legalized. On the other hand, many ideologues of the left (including Karl Marx, Erich Fromm and Jean-Paul Sartre) considered homosexuality to be a bourgeois vice, sometimes even directly linking it to fascism. Later many left-wing movements found it politically convenient to reverse their attitudes (ironically when some communist parties in the Western Europe turned to advocating gay rights their financial sponsor in the East was still sending homosexuals to the Siberian prison camps).
Naturally it may be theoretically possible to predict such reversals, but this seems to be not a trivial task.
If rationalism forces people to eliminate certain types of arguments, it makes sense that smarter and better educated folks might tend to come to the same conclusions on policy issues. No, because "smarter and better-educated" != "rational".
I don't think most people appreciate that what is generally meant by intelligence has nothing to do with the quality of decision-making. Intelligent people create more elaborate and intricate justifications for their beliefs. It takes distinctly different qualities to sort sense from nonsense.
I can testify to how easy it is for conversation among academics, the most educated group of people, to turn into a one-position echo chamber.
I think that is mostly worrying for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. If academics are unwilling to criticise each others ideas, whether for reasons of academic politics or any other reason, what use are they?
Uh...now what was the question, again?
Lee A. Arnold,
I think you are largely right but I would be willing to bet my life that between the beginning and end of the Reagan administration, all 6 of these went up: 1)federal health regulation, 2)non-federal health regulation, 3)federal safety regulation, 4)non-federal safety regulation, 5)federal environmental regulation, 6)non-federal environmental regulation.
Same for George W. Bush. Twelve deltas, all positive.
Of course modern conservatives didn't help their own cause much: they stood up with leaders who were on the wrong side of civil rights, womens' rights and gay rights...
It is interesting to compare the attitude of most academics toward conservatives and toward libertarians. Libertarians never stood up with those leaders but they often get lumped in as not being worth taking seriously.
See Inglehart, Welzel in Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. They provide solid data from the World Values Survey documenting how fluctuations in human autonomy are strongly predictive of prevailing human values systems. More autonomy, greater desire for choice, self-expression, individualism. Less autonomy, greater reliance on religion or authoritarian types of government.
Caledonian, Even if "smarter and better-educated" != "rational", I think that smarter and better-educated should tend towards rationalism. Then I doubt that you appreciate what the function of higher education is. It might be helpful for you to review the origins of the university system.
I also suspect that you're using 'smarter' in an informal and vernacular sense. The more specific meanings of intelligence do not result in any clear trend towards rationalism.
Robin did post about this same finding last November, but readers' long-term memory will be best activated if periodically reminded of the same information. (OK, I forgot.)
Q says, "it's only as self-serving as the declaration that the liberal consensus among academics 'looks like herd behavior.'"
Maybe I should clarify: as to issues where something like an objective answer exists, the fact that lots of intelligent people believe the same thing isn't necessarily herd behavior (although it well could be). But many political issues boil down to subjective weightings of incommensurable values, where no objective solution is in the cards (e.g., the right of the fetus to live vs. the right of the woman to control her body, or the intangible value of protecting certain endangered species vs. the value of economic development). When you find a group of people who all take one side of such an issue, I don't think it's "self-serving" to suspect herd behavior of some kind.
"when a bunch of superior intellects independently settle on the objectively correct viewpoint"
You've obviously never read the comments at the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos.
I guessed Mutz' results long ago! In general there is more open and friendly talk across varying viewpoints among today's bluecollars than among high-income well-educated. I circulate among both. It should be pointed out that "well-educated" does not mean broadly-educated, in our time. In fact "well-educated" is a bit of a misnomer: it should be "well-specialized" or something. Some of these people you couldn't trust to take out the trash, because they would put it in the wrong dumpster, or get into an argument with the garbageman. Since Kuhnian paradigms change with time, since for example market economics was presumed to be the default organizing position for society even though none of its theoretical justifications could be calculated further than two-person exchanges, while the presumption of self-interest was a objectionable bias obvious to Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, and your grandmother and is regularly violated in new experimental studies, it is hard to claim that "superior intellects independently settle on the objectively correct viewpoint." I realize you were joking. My own friendships extend from extreme left to extreme right; I doubt I could get some of them in the same room together. I think the reason that liberals dominate in universities, (if they really do, I doubt whether it's true in the physical sciences and engineering,) is because there is a long-term thing lasting decades which could be called "intellectual fashion," and it gets buttressed by self-reinforcement, hiring practices, and the like. Of course modern conservatives didn't help their own cause much: they stood up with leaders who were on the wrong side of civil rights, womens' rights and gay rights, they tend to think that poor people get what they deserve (often relying upon market economics as the justification,) and their recent heroes have been Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, two uneducated men who increased the debt, shifted the distribution of the tax burden downward, and deregulated health, safety, and environmental issues to no good ends. God knows the modern liberals can be insufferable, but what's the alternative? A little intellectual humility would first be called for.
Caledonian, Even if "smarter and better-educated" != "rational", I think that smarter and better-educated should tend towards rationalism. I think this because the educational ideal (at least in the math,science,humanities university environment) is to cultivate rational thinking, and presumably, more intelligent people can better acquire and use the techniques education develops.
You are right that intelligent folks can create intricate justifications, but it isn't clear to me that this ability means they cannot distinguish rationalizations from rationalism.
"I don't think most people appreciate that what is generally meant by intelligence has nothing to do with the quality of decision-making. Intelligent people create more elaborate and intricate justifications for their beliefs. It takes distinctly different qualities to sort sense from nonsense."
Caledonian, I disagree. I think intelligent people (of the only type of intelligence that matters IMO, the ability to maximize persistence odds) are those that sense from nonsense. This is different than (1) creating elaborate and intricate external propaganda to get others to act in the intelligent person's interest, or (2) creating and internalizing personal belief ideas and narratives that on their surface are irrational, but optimize management of system 1 "subconscious" intelligence to meet the rationally optimized goals devised by the system 2 intelligence.
With expressions of belief like Romeo Stevens, I see the fun in Cowen's suggestion that people assign probabilities (of truth/accuracy) to their beliefs.
Naturally it may be theoretically possible to predict such reversals, but this seems to be not a trivial task. The fact is made more complex by the reality that people often find it convenient to conceal their intentions and motivations, and so describe their positions using names and terms that are grossly inaccurate.
Conservatism, as a political movement, has little to do with conservatism as a concept. A similar point holds for liberalism - what is formally called 'classical liberalism' is incompatible with Liberalism as a political identity today, and is generally considered a form of conservatism.
liberalism doesn't recognize property rights. without recognized property rights there will be constant conflict over whom should get what.liberalism supports enforced socialized welfare. enforced socialized welfare creates a disincentive to be competitive.liberalism supports collectivism. 'majority makes right' is just a different type of 'might makes right'.People see the U.S. constitution as a rock solid foundation for society. It is not, even as originally envisioned, the constitution is a precarious balance between the rights of the individual and the collectivist safety of the state. Since then we have had 232 years of supreme courts reinterpreting what the constitution means, almost always in favor of more governmental power.
The founding fathers would have been horrified by the intrusiveness of taxes, the existence of a permanent army, our needless involvement as 'world police', the passing of responsibility for minting our money from congress to the semi-private Fed, the blatant market manipulation resulting from the unification of the financial institutions (and government complicity in such), our massive contributions to corrupt NGO's such as the world bank, the gutting of state sovereignty, the legal bribery of politicians (the loopholes could be easily closed) etc.
we're in a sorry state and I don't see things getting better except in places like singapore, hong kong, dubai, and other capitalist city-states. they're profitable enough to waste billions on ridiculous architectural challenges, have high standard of living and low crime rates. they must be doing something right.
Jeffey Friedman summarizes Philip Converse on such issues here. Bryan Caplan gives a preview of that issue of Critical Review here.
Scott: “if I didn't know what the liberal vs. conservative positions were on (say) gun control, I'm pretty sure I'd be able to predict them, given my knowledge of the liberal vs. conservative positions on lots of "unrelated" issues like abortion and gay marriage.”
I doubt that. Let’s take the issue of gay rights for instance. Based on the present situation, one may take the support of the left and the opposition of the right for granted. Yet things were quite different in the past. In early 1930s, homosexuals held many prominent positions in NSDAP and, if Roehm had more luck, homosexuality might have been legalized. On the other hand, many ideologues of the left (including Karl Marx, Erich Fromm and Jean-Paul Sartre) considered homosexuality to be a bourgeois vice, sometimes even directly linking it to fascism. Later many left-wing movements found it politically convenient to reverse their attitudes (ironically when some communist parties in the Western Europe turned to advocating gay rights their financial sponsor in the East was still sending homosexuals to the Siberian prison camps).
Naturally it may be theoretically possible to predict such reversals, but this seems to be not a trivial task.
If rationalism forces people to eliminate certain types of arguments, it makes sense that smarter and better educated folks might tend to come to the same conclusions on policy issues. No, because "smarter and better-educated" != "rational".
I don't think most people appreciate that what is generally meant by intelligence has nothing to do with the quality of decision-making. Intelligent people create more elaborate and intricate justifications for their beliefs. It takes distinctly different qualities to sort sense from nonsense.
I can testify to how easy it is for conversation among academics, the most educated group of people, to turn into a one-position echo chamber.
I think that is mostly worrying for reasons that have nothing to do with politics. If academics are unwilling to criticise each others ideas, whether for reasons of academic politics or any other reason, what use are they?