Why We Mix Fact & Value Talk

For a while now I’ve been tired of the US political drama, and I’ve been hoping that others would tire of it as well. Then maybe we could talk about something else, like say, my books. So I was thinking of writing a post reminding folks about futarchy, saying that politics doesn’t have to be this way. That is, we could largely (if not entirely) separate the political processes that deal with facts and values. In this case, even when there’s a big change in which values set policy, the fact estimates that set policy could remain the same, and be very expert.

In contrast, most of our current political processes mix up facts and values. The candidates we vote for, the bills they adopt, and the rulings that agencies make, all represent bundles of opinions on both facts and values. As a result, the fact estimates implicit in policy choices are less than fully expert, as such estimates must appeal to the citizens, politicians, administrators, etc. who we choose in part for their value positions. And so, to influence the values that our systems uses, we must each talk about facts as well, even when we aren’t personally very expert on those facts.

On reflection, however, I think I had it wrong. Most of those engaged by the current US political drama are enjoying it, even if they say otherwise. They get a rare chance to feel especially self-righteous, and to bond more strongly with political allies. And I think the usual mixing of facts and values actually helps them achieve these ends. Let me explain.

For the purpose of making effective decisions, on average the best mix of fact vs. value in analysis has over 90% of the attention go to facts. Yes, you need to pay some attention to values, but most of the devil is in the details, and most of the relevant details are on facts. This is true at all levels, including personal, family, firm, church, city, state, and national levels.

However, for the purpose of feeling self-righteous and bonding with allies, value talk is much more potent than fact talk. You need to believe that your values are superior to feel self-righteous, and shared values bond you with allies much more strongly than do shared facts. Yet even for this purpose, the ideal conversation isn’t more than 90% focused on values; something closer to a 50-50 mix works better.

The problem is that when we frame a debate as a pure value disagreement, we actually find it harder to feel enough obviously superior, and to dismiss the other side. We aren’t really as confident in our value positions as we pretend. We can see how observers might perceive a symmetry between us and our opponents, and label us unfair if we just try to crush the other side to achieve our values at the expense of their values.

However, by mixing enough facts into a value discussion, we can explain to ourselves and others why crushing them is really best for everyone. We can say that they just don’t understand that global warming is a real thing, or that kids really need two parents to grow up healthy. It is the other side’s failure to accept key facts that can justify to outsiders our uncompromising determination to crush them for a total win. Later on they may see we were right, and even thank us. But even if that doesn’t happen, right now we can feel justified in dismissing them.

I expect this dynamic plays out not only in national politics, but also in firm, church, and family politics. And it helps explain our widespread reluctance to adopt prediction markets, and other neutral fact estimation methods such as experiments, in relatively political contexts. We regularly want to support decisions that advance the values we share with our political allies, but we prefer the cover of seeming to be focused on estimating facts. To successfully use facts as a cover for values, we need to have enough fact issues mixed into our debates. And we need to avoid out-of-control fact estimation mechanisms that lack enough adjustment knobs to let us get the answers we want.