The Elephant In The Op-ed
Most writing and talking embraces our usual illusions on human motives. In our book The Elephant in the Brain (with Kevin Simler) we instead expose such illusions. Which many have told us feels depressing and demotivating; it’s not what they wanted to hear. It’s right there in the title, an analogy to “The Elephant in the Room”, which is a big topic which people in a room pointedly ignore.
Yet we’ve sold over 60K copies over 8 years, which is quite good for an academic book. We got some pretty high profile early reviews. And have even been on few class syllabi. So there is clearly an audience for our message. But why, if it tells things people don’t want to hear?
The most prestigious intellectuals in our world are writers of op-eds, and givers of TED and keynote talks. And such luminaries often offer policies and stances based on their claims that ordinary people are typically mistaken on key things. For example, this is the usual rationale for paternalism, which justifies over half of government intervention (as well as legal rules of evidence). So there is in fact a big audience for claims that most other people are wrong; that’s why you say the world should let your people take control. As another example, consider how popular was Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, another title that telegraphs such a message.
However, a different kind of deep illusion finds a far smaller audience. Our most prestigious intellectuals are cultural warriors, who to be popular and effective must project a graceful and compelling confidence in their moral stance, a stance that they convince readers is shared between them. Their key culture war stance is that we, our side, correctly feels a clear and compelling impulse to push hard to get our way. As we are obviously morally right, and they are wrong.
Alas, this is the sort of illusion that I must apparently try to expose in order to get people to see our key modern problem of cultural drift. I can explain the logic of this problem easily enough, if I can get people to stand outside of their particular culture, and see the cultural evolution process in the abstract. Yet, alas, from that vantage point, few feel much motivation to care. I haven’t succeeded at all at the key op-ed writer task of projecting a graceful confidence in a supporting moral stance, a stance I convince readers that they share with me, in opposition to an evil other side.