Reading through the comments lately a correlation stands out: those who are dead wrong are on average more passionate than those who are more nearly right. This correlation seems an obvious explanation for the usual boring academic demeanor; those of us who want to be thought right must try not to seem too passionate. But though I accept this sad fate for now, my curiosity (passionately?) cries out: why?!
Robin Hanson, at Overcoming Bias, made this observation several days ago. "Reading through the comments lately a correlation stands out: those who are dead wrong...
A people's position is a spiderweb of beliefs - you need to break each of the strands before it moves very far even if it is built in a terrible location. if that belief is held in place by many strands it will be slow to move. So when the wind of logic blows past it will blow the weakest ones downwind but the strongest will remain. Over time all the little spiders who make weak webs all accumulate down wind and rebuild their webs there (with the local spiders). Up-wind there are only spiders with strong webs with many connections.
hope I didn't overplay the metaphore. Anyway basicaly i think some people are jsut prone to building certain (if not all subjects) deep into the heart of their belief structure, while others are prone to be 'open minded' or 'flip floppers' if you like.
I'm nervous, Robin, when I see you write the words "dead wrong." Those are inherently passionate words, as I read them. Unless you're talking about formal statements made in formal system, then you must be making a judgment of some kind, and such a judgment is going to be based on a lot of philosophical and personal predicates that surely are open for debate. But the words "dead wrong" strike me (and you must realize they might) as a sign that you don't feel that reasonable people could have different predicates.
To Kat: I wouldn't say that I "use" passion, in a debate (though I do use it in other contexts)-- in debate, it's more like passion uses me. Sometimes it seems to help and sometimes it seems to hurt. Sometimes it hurts me with some onlookers and wins yet other onlookers to my cause. Debate is not necessarily an intellectual process, but it is always a semiotic and rhetorical process. Passion can be part of the semiosis (witness a dog baring its teeth) and passionate rhetoric can be extremely persuasive (that's how Pietro Angelerio came to be drafted as Pope Celestine V on the basis of a single letter written to the College of Cardinals). My point was simply that passion can get into a debate in ways not necessarily correlated with rightness or wrongness.
Actually, dispense with the whole 'passionate' thing. I'd be impressed if he could demonstrate that as many as three commenters have lately been 'dead wrong'.
People are passionate about many things, but few things in areas where you can objectively label them "dead wrong". People may believe passionately that abortion is murder, or that you shouldn't torture people, or that the US should erect physical and economic barriers to protect its native industries and citizens. You may feel these beliefs are deeply mistaken, but none of them are "dead wrong" -- they are statements of value, among other things. If someone believed passionately that the world was 6000 years old, they would be dead wrong, but I don't think you get too many commenters like that. So how about just ONE example of what you are talking about? Make up something if you have to. Otherwise this is just a evidence-free smear on passion as such.
M, it should obvious why I didn't list specific examples of commenters who are "dead wrong"; such people would then feel obligated to defend themselves at length, and this would turn into a post about them.
Readers, please feel free to substitute people you think are dead wrong and ask if the pattern still seems to hold. Or let the claimed pattern be about those who see themselves as making a locally contrarian claim.
I think I should make another post someday about what we economists are looking for in an explanation of a social pattern.
I was actually joking, mtraven, because you offered the exact same thing as a counter-example. As I explained in the thread, I am not in favor of torture replacing imprisonment because it does not incapacitate. It was funny to see someone argue against it with "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" though.
So the only example of Robin's original claim that Reading through the comments lately a correlation stands out: those who are dead wrong are on average more passionate than those who are more nearly right is my own writings? Not much of a sample, and by offering it you are implying that my opposition to torture is not just passionate (which is true), but "dead wrong", ie, that it is quite obviously the case that we should punish crime with torture?
Au contraire, Caledonian: having been back and read mtraven's comments on that thread (assuming I've got the right torture thread) i'd say it's a very useful example.
For one thing, it highlights that at least one person here is labelling as 'dead wrong' someone who was basically arguing for a moral commitment (rejection of torture) over an ideological commitment (utilitarianism); this in turn suggests that the criterion for rightness really is 'disagrees with me' rather than any kind of demonstrable failure of rationality.
Hm, this topic seems to have died down without a single example being offered to support the thesis. Not what I'd expect from this evidence-based community.
I'd imagine it's a simple filter effect. If something is obviously wrong, then the only advocates left are going to be those with personality traits that make them less amenable to reasoned argument. Those personality traits probably correlate highly with being loud, belligerent, dogmatic, contrarian, etc. For this reason they're rarely worth arguing with.
Are You Passionate When You Are Wrong?
Robin Hanson, at Overcoming Bias, made this observation several days ago. "Reading through the comments lately a correlation stands out: those who are dead wrong...
A people's position is a spiderweb of beliefs - you need to break each of the strands before it moves very far even if it is built in a terrible location. if that belief is held in place by many strands it will be slow to move. So when the wind of logic blows past it will blow the weakest ones downwind but the strongest will remain. Over time all the little spiders who make weak webs all accumulate down wind and rebuild their webs there (with the local spiders). Up-wind there are only spiders with strong webs with many connections.
hope I didn't overplay the metaphore. Anyway basicaly i think some people are jsut prone to building certain (if not all subjects) deep into the heart of their belief structure, while others are prone to be 'open minded' or 'flip floppers' if you like.
I'm nervous, Robin, when I see you write the words "dead wrong." Those are inherently passionate words, as I read them. Unless you're talking about formal statements made in formal system, then you must be making a judgment of some kind, and such a judgment is going to be based on a lot of philosophical and personal predicates that surely are open for debate. But the words "dead wrong" strike me (and you must realize they might) as a sign that you don't feel that reasonable people could have different predicates.
To Kat: I wouldn't say that I "use" passion, in a debate (though I do use it in other contexts)-- in debate, it's more like passion uses me. Sometimes it seems to help and sometimes it seems to hurt. Sometimes it hurts me with some onlookers and wins yet other onlookers to my cause. Debate is not necessarily an intellectual process, but it is always a semiotic and rhetorical process. Passion can be part of the semiosis (witness a dog baring its teeth) and passionate rhetoric can be extremely persuasive (that's how Pietro Angelerio came to be drafted as Pope Celestine V on the basis of a single letter written to the College of Cardinals). My point was simply that passion can get into a debate in ways not necessarily correlated with rightness or wrongness.
Actually, dispense with the whole 'passionate' thing. I'd be impressed if he could demonstrate that as many as three commenters have lately been 'dead wrong'.
People are passionate about many things, but few things in areas where you can objectively label them "dead wrong". People may believe passionately that abortion is murder, or that you shouldn't torture people, or that the US should erect physical and economic barriers to protect its native industries and citizens. You may feel these beliefs are deeply mistaken, but none of them are "dead wrong" -- they are statements of value, among other things. If someone believed passionately that the world was 6000 years old, they would be dead wrong, but I don't think you get too many commenters like that. So how about just ONE example of what you are talking about? Make up something if you have to. Otherwise this is just a evidence-free smear on passion as such.
M, it should obvious why I didn't list specific examples of commenters who are "dead wrong"; such people would then feel obligated to defend themselves at length, and this would turn into a post about them.
Readers, please feel free to substitute people you think are dead wrong and ask if the pattern still seems to hold. Or let the claimed pattern be about those who see themselves as making a locally contrarian claim.
I think I should make another post someday about what we economists are looking for in an explanation of a social pattern.
I was actually joking, mtraven, because you offered the exact same thing as a counter-example. As I explained in the thread, I am not in favor of torture replacing imprisonment because it does not incapacitate. It was funny to see someone argue against it with "NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!" though.
So the only example of Robin's original claim that Reading through the comments lately a correlation stands out: those who are dead wrong are on average more passionate than those who are more nearly right is my own writings? Not much of a sample, and by offering it you are implying that my opposition to torture is not just passionate (which is true), but "dead wrong", ie, that it is quite obviously the case that we should punish crime with torture?
Mtraven,
Read the article I mentioned (and to which Zubon linked) several comments back:
http://www.apa.org/journals...
I was being sardonic; unfortunately, there's no smiley for that.
But it's not useful for mtraven, who is unlikely to see himself as someone passionate but wrong.
Au contraire, Caledonian: having been back and read mtraven's comments on that thread (assuming I've got the right torture thread) i'd say it's a very useful example.
For one thing, it highlights that at least one person here is labelling as 'dead wrong' someone who was basically arguing for a moral commitment (rejection of torture) over an ideological commitment (utilitarianism); this in turn suggests that the criterion for rightness really is 'disagrees with me' rather than any kind of demonstrable failure of rationality.
That may be a correct example, TGGP, but it's clearly not useful.
Okay, here's an example, mtraven: you in the torture thread.
Hm, this topic seems to have died down without a single example being offered to support the thesis. Not what I'd expect from this evidence-based community.
I'd imagine it's a simple filter effect. If something is obviously wrong, then the only advocates left are going to be those with personality traits that make them less amenable to reasoned argument. Those personality traits probably correlate highly with being loud, belligerent, dogmatic, contrarian, etc. For this reason they're rarely worth arguing with.