A virtue is an admirable quality. Our society recognizes some big virtues, like tendencies to prevent death or rape, love nature and your family, and oppose racism and sexism, and also many small virtues, like tendencies to write thank you letters, wait patiently in line, and smile at friendly children. I have been pondering the sad fact that overcoming bias seems to rank rather low here, probably below smiling at kids.
I was quite astonished to see that not only the post, but also all comments, are agreeing on a single (very disputable) issue: "there is one truth only, and it is intelligible". It thought that this illuministic illusion had been overcome since years, but maybe I should not be surprised of finding such orientation in a website like this.
The fact (?) is that there is no such thing as "unbiased" understanding of reality, that's why our societies do not value this as a virtue. Modern physics were the first scientific field which had to acknowledge - almost one hundred years ago - that reality has as many different possibilities (all true in themselves) as the number of observers. So which one is the unbiased one?
If we are to accept this scientific evidence, the only way out is to appreciate "integrity", which is the correspondence between what one "sees" and what he/she claims he "sees". Nothing more than that. The reality will often follow. Terrible, terrific, but true.
Barkley, I tried to make this distinction clear in my post but let me emphasize again: a lie is a deviation between belief and words, which is very different from the issue of whether your belief is true.
Eric, yes we respect people who are effective at achieving their goals, but this is only incidentally about truth; we respect people just about as much when they achieve their goals even using beliefs at odds with the truth. The prudent salesman really believes in his crappy product, for example.
BTW, another aspect of the prohibition on bearing false witness involves the sacredelement in the oaths. When one swears to tell the truth, one usually does so in thename of the deity, espeically in a traditional society. So, this means that tellingtrue statements when one has sworm to a deity is a particular virtue.
I liked your response way at the top. I agree that there are probably evolutionary reasons for having biases and for society to value virtues not related to truth. There is obviously some value to being correct about issues such as "where is that dangerous cliff", and this is reflected in society when we ignore people who blatantly lie, exaggerate, or say they "literally" did something not literal. I hate that, I avoid those people like the plague, and most of the people I know feel the same way.
However, when the information is less important, or when the results of being correct are more ambiguous, I think people (as a result of evolution) tend to value traits that bind people together to work as a team. If we're a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers, and the place where we usually find lots of food in the winter suddenly has no food this year, it probably doesn't matter so much whether we go north, south, east, or west. What matters is that we stay together as a group. Virtues seem to be mostly related to group behavior. Even the act of smiling at children signals group cohesiveness.
The question is: where does overcoming bias fall onto the good/evil or group/individual continuum? I don't read this blog because I think it will somehow benefit society. I read it because I find it interesting and it might someday help me make better decisions. Imagine the situation early in human evolution where one small society was under attack from another small group. Lets also imagine that the chances of victory or defeat for the defending group are objectively 50/50. If they have some sort of bias that causes them to believe that their chances of winning are closer to 85%, chances are they will stay and fight. If Mr. Hanson (I'm not trying to imply here that Mr. Hanson is evil, immoral, or selfish... just a little comic relief) was a part of this society, and started voicing his opinion that the group's view was biased, and that the chances of winning were actually closer to 50%, and his truthful opinion was virtuous in that society, the group would logically split into two, some deciding to stay and fight and others deciding to leave. Half the group leaving would reduce the chances of the rest of the group winning, and so eventually this group would be forced to flee. In fact, if the chances were any thing less than 100% in favor of successful defense, and people choose to flee based on the percentage chances of loosing, no battle would ever be fought. Everyone would simply chase each other in circles.
Evolution might favor the group with unrealistic expectations.
Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues of antiquity and the Middle Ages, the others being courage, temperance, and justice. It's one of the Seven bourgeois virtues in Deirdre McCloskey's book, Bourgeois Virtues. It's listed fourth in Andre Compte-Sponville's A Small Treatise on Great Virtues. Prudence is efficiency, it is recognizing limits, constraints, laws of reality; it is knowing truth. Cicero said prudence for humans is what instinct is for animals, and what providence is for the Gods. How many great crimes have been imprudent, as well as violations of tolerance?
But it bears reminding. Great social figures of the past like Lincoln, Ghandi, MLK, are respected not merely for their courage, but for their prudence, in that the just world they sought is still considered feasible. That is why, people still disagree on whether communists in the 1950's were as morally repugnant as Nazis: people who think socialism is inherently flawed think the Commies were just as bad as the Nazis, while those who disagree think at the time it was reasonable to think communist was a prudent alternative to a mixed economy.
I disagree. Why is there not a Commandment that just says "do not hurt people"?I think the better response for you is to note its limitedness, not its generality.Thus, implicitly here I see a concern about the quality of law and courts and oaths.Simpler societies have traditionally taken oaths very seriously, which means keepingyour word when you state it in a very serious and formal way, although you are rightthat this is a particular kind of oath, one about not hurting people by lying aboutthem. But concern with truth and how society can be negatively affected if people donot respect truth when it really counts, as opposed to "white lie" situations, isvery much what is at issue here.
I think you overstate the degree to which society does not treat truth as a virtue, although I would say that the matter is contextualized a bit. Thus, one of the Ten Commandments is the one against bearing false witness, and I would note that perjury is one of only three of those Commandments that is widely incorporated into legal codes as well, the others being Thou Shalt not Kill (with obvious exceptions) and Thou Shalt not Steal (also some exceptions, arguably).
But, indeed this is context. I continue to have no problem telling certain kinds of social "white lies" in order to hurt somebody else's feelings. But then, maybe this is different from the issue of bias, as noted by other commentators.
But doesn't their propensity to work consciously at it also come from genetics and upbringing?
Yes indeedy. But that is admirable, whereas being born with an innately unbiased mind is not. It is like the way that working hard to excel at basketball is admirable, even though being born with genes for tallness is not. Or like how being born smart is not admirable, but becoming a scientist to help others is admirable.
Either way it's the product of nature+nurture, not some magical outside force that reaches in from beyond. (And if it was some perfectly uncaused force, it wouldn't be you, it would be a perfectly uncaused force).
But some nature+nurture traits are more admirable than others. You've got to start somewhere.
I think why it is not a highly held value is that it is very resourse intesive. The effort to overcome bias is great and would consume lot of time and energy. As a wealth society, we have the time to do this. But during the evolution of society we had to remain active to simply survive. Taking the time to think things through could cost you your life.
Perhaps that is why depression is tied to rational thought. The prospect that there is no god or that life is meaningless isn't of itself good or bad, yet this often leads to suicidal thoughts.
In my IOE courses in undergrad, when evaluating projects, due to the time value of money, it is often optimal to have a good solution fast than to take the time to calculate the best solution.
Also, even knowing the truth reality isn't very certain. Our biases push us to pursue diverse courses of action which improves the likelyhood that some of the courses of action will turn out to be net beneficial.
What if there was a highly unbiased person, but that he owed this quality entirely to lucky genetics and upbringing? He never consciously worked to attain or improve this quality, and he knows virtually nothing about statistics and rationality. His ability is wonderful and useful, but is it admirable?But doesn't their propensity to work consciously at it also come from genetics and upbringing? No one is then ultimately responsible for anything. There is just the state of the universe billions of years ago and a bunch of quantum coin-flips. You really should read "For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything" by Greene and Cohen.
Daublin, maybe a distinction should be drawn between valuing truth over falsehood (always or almost always good), and between valuing knowledge over ignorance (which may have more exceptions, like your situations).
<blockqoute>"Most people with a cause work a lot harder at promoting their cause than at getting better at accurately judging if their cause is as good as it seems. If, as a result, many are biased to mistakenly back poor causes, then shouldn't you actually work at overcoming your biases, instead of just assuming you have exceptionally low bias? "
Bjorn Lomborg has a new book coming out that seems to be in line with this thinking. Here' a recent interview. And the books amazon page.
One exception to your general rule is in business. If you pay someone to do a job for you, you often want them to do it in the way that is truthfully the best way, not in the way that feels the best. It is socially frowned upon if you are hired to do something but you bias how you do it, say by buying parts from a friend instead of from the cheapest and best supplier.
I would like to think this moral applied more broadly, but as others have commented it does not seem right if you think about realistic social contexts. There are lots of scenarios where it is more important to go along with a view than it is to find the truth. For example, if a family member is in trouble with the cops, do you really want to know what really happened? If a friend is breaking up with a lover, do you really want to know who did what?
I would like to see a society where truth and non-bias are widely considered virtuous, but to even imagine such a society you have to deal with realistic social situations like the above. Does anyone have any ideas?
I was quite astonished to see that not only the post, but also all comments, are agreeing on a single (very disputable) issue: "there is one truth only, and it is intelligible". It thought that this illuministic illusion had been overcome since years, but maybe I should not be surprised of finding such orientation in a website like this.
The fact (?) is that there is no such thing as "unbiased" understanding of reality, that's why our societies do not value this as a virtue. Modern physics were the first scientific field which had to acknowledge - almost one hundred years ago - that reality has as many different possibilities (all true in themselves) as the number of observers. So which one is the unbiased one?
If we are to accept this scientific evidence, the only way out is to appreciate "integrity", which is the correspondence between what one "sees" and what he/she claims he "sees". Nothing more than that. The reality will often follow. Terrible, terrific, but true.
Barkley, I tried to make this distinction clear in my post but let me emphasize again: a lie is a deviation between belief and words, which is very different from the issue of whether your belief is true.
Eric, yes we respect people who are effective at achieving their goals, but this is only incidentally about truth; we respect people just about as much when they achieve their goals even using beliefs at odds with the truth. The prudent salesman really believes in his crappy product, for example.
BTW, another aspect of the prohibition on bearing false witness involves the sacredelement in the oaths. When one swears to tell the truth, one usually does so in thename of the deity, espeically in a traditional society. So, this means that tellingtrue statements when one has sworm to a deity is a particular virtue.
Constant,
I liked your response way at the top. I agree that there are probably evolutionary reasons for having biases and for society to value virtues not related to truth. There is obviously some value to being correct about issues such as "where is that dangerous cliff", and this is reflected in society when we ignore people who blatantly lie, exaggerate, or say they "literally" did something not literal. I hate that, I avoid those people like the plague, and most of the people I know feel the same way.
However, when the information is less important, or when the results of being correct are more ambiguous, I think people (as a result of evolution) tend to value traits that bind people together to work as a team. If we're a group of nomadic hunter-gatherers, and the place where we usually find lots of food in the winter suddenly has no food this year, it probably doesn't matter so much whether we go north, south, east, or west. What matters is that we stay together as a group. Virtues seem to be mostly related to group behavior. Even the act of smiling at children signals group cohesiveness.
The question is: where does overcoming bias fall onto the good/evil or group/individual continuum? I don't read this blog because I think it will somehow benefit society. I read it because I find it interesting and it might someday help me make better decisions. Imagine the situation early in human evolution where one small society was under attack from another small group. Lets also imagine that the chances of victory or defeat for the defending group are objectively 50/50. If they have some sort of bias that causes them to believe that their chances of winning are closer to 85%, chances are they will stay and fight. If Mr. Hanson (I'm not trying to imply here that Mr. Hanson is evil, immoral, or selfish... just a little comic relief) was a part of this society, and started voicing his opinion that the group's view was biased, and that the chances of winning were actually closer to 50%, and his truthful opinion was virtuous in that society, the group would logically split into two, some deciding to stay and fight and others deciding to leave. Half the group leaving would reduce the chances of the rest of the group winning, and so eventually this group would be forced to flee. In fact, if the chances were any thing less than 100% in favor of successful defense, and people choose to flee based on the percentage chances of loosing, no battle would ever be fought. Everyone would simply chase each other in circles.
Evolution might favor the group with unrealistic expectations.
Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues of antiquity and the Middle Ages, the others being courage, temperance, and justice. It's one of the Seven bourgeois virtues in Deirdre McCloskey's book, Bourgeois Virtues. It's listed fourth in Andre Compte-Sponville's A Small Treatise on Great Virtues. Prudence is efficiency, it is recognizing limits, constraints, laws of reality; it is knowing truth. Cicero said prudence for humans is what instinct is for animals, and what providence is for the Gods. How many great crimes have been imprudent, as well as violations of tolerance?
But it bears reminding. Great social figures of the past like Lincoln, Ghandi, MLK, are respected not merely for their courage, but for their prudence, in that the just world they sought is still considered feasible. That is why, people still disagree on whether communists in the 1950's were as morally repugnant as Nazis: people who think socialism is inherently flawed think the Commies were just as bad as the Nazis, while those who disagree think at the time it was reasonable to think communist was a prudent alternative to a mixed economy.
Robin,
I disagree. Why is there not a Commandment that just says "do not hurt people"?I think the better response for you is to note its limitedness, not its generality.Thus, implicitly here I see a concern about the quality of law and courts and oaths.Simpler societies have traditionally taken oaths very seriously, which means keepingyour word when you state it in a very serious and formal way, although you are rightthat this is a particular kind of oath, one about not hurting people by lying aboutthem. But concern with truth and how society can be negatively affected if people donot respect truth when it really counts, as opposed to "white lie" situations, isvery much what is at issue here.
I'm sure glad I didn't end the post with an "can I can an 'amen' brothers?" as the silence would have been awkward.
pdf, thanks, fixed it.
Eliezer, moral philosophers don't consider all virtues to be social, but perhaps they are wrong.
Daublin, I think you have an idealized view of business.
Aaron, relative to the resources we put into other causes, I don't think overcoming bias is especially expensive.
Barkely, not "bearing false witness" is more about not hurting people, and only incidentally about truth.
Um, obviously I meant to say "in order not to hurt somebody else's feelings."
Robin,
I think you overstate the degree to which society does not treat truth as a virtue, although I would say that the matter is contextualized a bit. Thus, one of the Ten Commandments is the one against bearing false witness, and I would note that perjury is one of only three of those Commandments that is widely incorporated into legal codes as well, the others being Thou Shalt not Kill (with obvious exceptions) and Thou Shalt not Steal (also some exceptions, arguably).
But, indeed this is context. I continue to have no problem telling certain kinds of social "white lies" in order to hurt somebody else's feelings. But then, maybe this is different from the issue of bias, as noted by other commentators.
But doesn't their propensity to work consciously at it also come from genetics and upbringing?
Yes indeedy. But that is admirable, whereas being born with an innately unbiased mind is not. It is like the way that working hard to excel at basketball is admirable, even though being born with genes for tallness is not. Or like how being born smart is not admirable, but becoming a scientist to help others is admirable.
Either way it's the product of nature+nurture, not some magical outside force that reaches in from beyond. (And if it was some perfectly uncaused force, it wouldn't be you, it would be a perfectly uncaused force).
But some nature+nurture traits are more admirable than others. You've got to start somewhere.
Hmmm...
I think why it is not a highly held value is that it is very resourse intesive. The effort to overcome bias is great and would consume lot of time and energy. As a wealth society, we have the time to do this. But during the evolution of society we had to remain active to simply survive. Taking the time to think things through could cost you your life.
Perhaps that is why depression is tied to rational thought. The prospect that there is no god or that life is meaningless isn't of itself good or bad, yet this often leads to suicidal thoughts.
In my IOE courses in undergrad, when evaluating projects, due to the time value of money, it is often optimal to have a good solution fast than to take the time to calculate the best solution.
Also, even knowing the truth reality isn't very certain. Our biases push us to pursue diverse courses of action which improves the likelyhood that some of the courses of action will turn out to be net beneficial.
What if there was a highly unbiased person, but that he owed this quality entirely to lucky genetics and upbringing? He never consciously worked to attain or improve this quality, and he knows virtually nothing about statistics and rationality. His ability is wonderful and useful, but is it admirable?But doesn't their propensity to work consciously at it also come from genetics and upbringing? No one is then ultimately responsible for anything. There is just the state of the universe billions of years ago and a bunch of quantum coin-flips. You really should read "For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything" by Greene and Cohen.
Daublin, maybe a distinction should be drawn between valuing truth over falsehood (always or almost always good), and between valuing knowledge over ignorance (which may have more exceptions, like your situations).
<blockqoute>"Most people with a cause work a lot harder at promoting their cause than at getting better at accurately judging if their cause is as good as it seems. If, as a result, many are biased to mistakenly back poor causes, then shouldn't you actually work at overcoming your biases, instead of just assuming you have exceptionally low bias? "
Bjorn Lomborg has a new book coming out that seems to be in line with this thinking. Here' a recent interview. And the books amazon page.
I think you mean "plain-spoken", Robin.
One exception to your general rule is in business. If you pay someone to do a job for you, you often want them to do it in the way that is truthfully the best way, not in the way that feels the best. It is socially frowned upon if you are hired to do something but you bias how you do it, say by buying parts from a friend instead of from the cheapest and best supplier.
I would like to think this moral applied more broadly, but as others have commented it does not seem right if you think about realistic social contexts. There are lots of scenarios where it is more important to go along with a view than it is to find the truth. For example, if a family member is in trouble with the cops, do you really want to know what really happened? If a friend is breaking up with a lover, do you really want to know who did what?
I would like to see a society where truth and non-bias are widely considered virtuous, but to even imagine such a society you have to deal with realistic social situations like the above. Does anyone have any ideas?