Your asterisk condition is likely more important than it might appear at first. Overall views may be dominated by one issue of strong emotional value where compromise is impossible or extremely difficult. Abortion as an issue comes to mind. Or calls to the centre are extremely difficult to achieve in what are seen as binary decisions. Don’t recall where I read this example but in asking people whether they want pizza or a hamburger, very few would see the ideal result as a pizzaburger. So, if being on Team Pizza correlates with a set of beliefs and that this represents a crucial issue for me, I will not easily compromise on other issues, even if ultimately there should be no linkage.
Also, it is probably true that most of us overestimate our knowledge and understanding of issues. I seem to recall experiments showing that our estimates of our knowledge levels on an issue fall once we are asked to explain a process or an issue. Reflective as well, I suppose, of how few of us have an actively-open mind.
Linked to that is the probability that we close our minds once we have analyzed an issue with complexity because we don’t want to go through that process again. I remember being frustrated years ago trying to decide what TV cable/internet package to buy. None of the offerings ever allowed me to purchase the perfect mix that suited my needs. To get that mix cost became exorbitant and the default options always required purchasing things that were totally unnecessary. However, once the decision was made no amount of argument seemed likely to shift me off that position because I did not want to go through that process again and had no confidence that a better option was really available.
Personally, I don't find the Paris Nazi story at all extraordinary. Nazis were ordinary people in every respect, except for their hatred of Jews. You see the same thing in human nature the world over, throughout history. People who got along perfectly well and even intermarried in the former Yugoslavia suddenly turned on each other with an unimaginable ferocity and barbarism. Queers for Palestine defend atrocities against innocent Israelis that would have had themselves as targets had they been at that time and place. Civilization is a thin veneer over humanity's darker side, always ready to bust out - usually in very limited, focused directions (because it is too hard to hate everyone everywhere and live a normal life).
The mistake people make is to think that all bad things cluster together, and all good things cluster together, creating a binary. Good and bad impulses intertwine in human nature seemlessly.
A lot of people end up in the middle simply because the endpoints have moved. Disliking whoever has lied to you most recently, or most egregiously surely has a large effect, too.
Oh, boy. If you think the "science was settled in 1967," you really do know almost nothing about what the current debates are about. Even the IPCC admits that they can't model clouds - a pretty major problem. The current debates are largely about conjectured "feedbacks" in the system, and whether they are positive (tending to a tipping point) or negative (tending to mitigate the effects of increased CO2). These debates are not at all "settled." Nor are the effects of ocean currents well understood. Among scores of other climate-related phenomena. The devil is in the details. C-mon, Mike, you haven't learned the lesson our author has been trying to instill here.
For the record, I don't claim to know whether or not human activity is warming the planet, or by how much. Except locally: the growth of cities surely do create urban heat islands, for example. All of the evidence I have seen is at best ambiguous, consistent with human and natural causes. History at every time scale tends to indicate that CO2 is NOT a powerful driver of global mean temperature, if it is significant at all. Nor is there any solid evidence that warming is bad for human or other life; on the contrary. Before I'm willing to pay good money that has - as Lomborg has spent a career showing - many many more beneficial uses.
I just watched an animated piece by Gurwinder (who is on Substack) who says that curiosity and humility are the necessary components for combatting confirmation bias, which every human has. Aspects of your excellent piece echo this idea--I have to be CURIOUS to face and absorb counter-narratives to ones I have come to feel most comfortable with. And HUMILITY about my own certainty of being right is obviously required as well. My problem in trying to sort out "the narratives" out there is that I get overwhelmed. I have stopped trusting any media the way that I used to. But without that trust, it's even harder to sort. So for the sake of my mental health and attempt to not waste my one precious life, I end up withdrawing. I make a political decision, like who will get my vote for president, based on the best knowledge I can absorb, then pull away and make music, find joy in nature, just be the animal that I am muddling through and doing the best I can. I've also come to the conclusion that no human being is really all that smart. We are each SO very far from understanding the complexity of the universe let alone our place in it. That was my main takeaway from Oppenheimer, which I felt was over-rated but that message is the one that stood out. Ultimately, this genius guy was only so smart.
1. The adversarial legal system is often touted as a model for discovering the truth. You have two (teams of) advocates for diametrically opposite positions - extremists for their client - battling it out in front of an impartial judge, who is in the best position to discern the truth from the best arguments the lawyers can muster. To generalize: while extremism may be dysfunctional to the individual extremist, is it highly functional for society, which gets the benefit of the best arguments based on the most knowledge from both (or all) sides. You try to be the impartial judge; but don't begrudge the extremists who put in the time and effort to give you what you need to make a reasonable decision.
2. People who believe a counter-narrative - climate deniers, covid skeptics, free marketers in Canada will serve as example - tend to be better informed than people who go along with what is popular. This is because hearing the other side is inescapable for those defending a counter-narrative; most of what the counter-narrative folks do is rebut the narrative, for which task they must know and understand it. So when world-renowned experts in a field defend a counter-narrative, they deserve the utmost respect; they are much more likely to be right, or closer to the truth, than those who go with what is popular and career-enhancing.
Great post, but I think the vast majority of political scientists would have similarly rejected the proposition that knowledge and extremism are correlated.
I'm sorry, but putting “complex” in the title, but then “complicated” in the subheading makes my inner sociologist scream (I apologize, he can be very mean). Which one is it?
I imagine I'm preaching to the choir, and please don't take this as a dismissal of the overall excellent article, but a few comments....
> Donald Trump has repeatedly said the war in Ukraine is so simple and clear he could settle it “in a day” and a large portion of the American population does not take that statement to be the grotesque hubris of a delusional narcissistic conman. They hear confidence and they find it reassuring. Because they are not fascinated by complexity. They are frightened by it. And they want someone to sweep it away — which Trump does at every rally.
I smell irony.
> You will also continue to seek out new political information, but having drawn a conclusion about which side is more correct
What if one draws the conclusion that both sides are hilariously incorrect, and in easily predictable ways (if one has been at it for a while)?
> My synthesizing thousands of these unique perspectives, the dragonfly’s brain creates an astonishingly broad and accurate picture of reality
Picture of *the world* seems more appropriate - reality is very similar, but also very different.
> Humans can do something similar.
As a binary, sure, but how many can do it, and to what degree (with what level of skill, *on an absolute scale*)?
> An actively open-minded thinker is likely to be a well-informed thinker.
Don't forget you're measuring on a relative scale, and also that you aren't measuring (not really, and not the thing itself).
> What happens when we synthesize all those different views pointing in different directions? It’s likely — not certain, not universal, but likely — that we will land somewhere closer to the middle of the range of views than the extremes.
Or: somewhere that isn't even on the map, because the map is relative, and based on belief rather than knowledge, and people don't realize they're dealing with a map in the first place (perhaps because this fundamentally important matter is not included in Western school curriculum?).
> But I think this argument makes sense.
Could it be any other way?
> And that’s the best I can do.
I bet it isn't!
> Caveats aside, I do believe strongly — as in, willing to die on this hill — that there is at least some scrap of value in almost every perspective.
Me too. A way to approach it for those who do not: what if your guess (experienced as a fact) is wrong? (I don't expect this to work out of the box, but with some training I think it would, to some degree).
> People who dismiss whole political movements, or concepts, or thinkers on the assumption that literally everything within them is utterly and completely valueless are deeply misguided.
Alo, deeply guided ("trained", in LLM lingo) - this is largely how we are taught to think by media and often academics/experts.
> Or they’re the sort of people who are enraged when The New York Times interviews and tries to understand Trump voters.
Or accidentally believe that Trump supporters are as they are usually described, by people who are literally hallucinting (hallucination begets hallucination, welcome to Planet Earth, 2024).
Some skkeptics assert that temperature is not going up. Others acknowlege temperature is rising but that CO2 has nothing to do with it. Even informed skeptics like Nur Shaviv acknowledge the green house effect of CO2.
Skeptics are asserting many things with no evidence. Pointing to historical temperatures is just hand waving. Asserting that the data is fake is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. You have none.
Interesting post. What I found surprising is that the level of political knowledge does not vary much over the whole political orientation spectrum. Whatever is the theory are we not here in the world of details instead of the general?
Recently read a course outline on ‘Thinking’ by Hanna Arendt that went into another orbit. This made me think more about my thinking, especially politically.
Your thoughtful and clear article needs to be a conversation starter in our tense times.
An historian once said to me, the best writing is making the most complex communicated simply ( not simplistic).
Your asterisk condition is likely more important than it might appear at first. Overall views may be dominated by one issue of strong emotional value where compromise is impossible or extremely difficult. Abortion as an issue comes to mind. Or calls to the centre are extremely difficult to achieve in what are seen as binary decisions. Don’t recall where I read this example but in asking people whether they want pizza or a hamburger, very few would see the ideal result as a pizzaburger. So, if being on Team Pizza correlates with a set of beliefs and that this represents a crucial issue for me, I will not easily compromise on other issues, even if ultimately there should be no linkage.
Also, it is probably true that most of us overestimate our knowledge and understanding of issues. I seem to recall experiments showing that our estimates of our knowledge levels on an issue fall once we are asked to explain a process or an issue. Reflective as well, I suppose, of how few of us have an actively-open mind.
Linked to that is the probability that we close our minds once we have analyzed an issue with complexity because we don’t want to go through that process again. I remember being frustrated years ago trying to decide what TV cable/internet package to buy. None of the offerings ever allowed me to purchase the perfect mix that suited my needs. To get that mix cost became exorbitant and the default options always required purchasing things that were totally unnecessary. However, once the decision was made no amount of argument seemed likely to shift me off that position because I did not want to go through that process again and had no confidence that a better option was really available.
Personally, I don't find the Paris Nazi story at all extraordinary. Nazis were ordinary people in every respect, except for their hatred of Jews. You see the same thing in human nature the world over, throughout history. People who got along perfectly well and even intermarried in the former Yugoslavia suddenly turned on each other with an unimaginable ferocity and barbarism. Queers for Palestine defend atrocities against innocent Israelis that would have had themselves as targets had they been at that time and place. Civilization is a thin veneer over humanity's darker side, always ready to bust out - usually in very limited, focused directions (because it is too hard to hate everyone everywhere and live a normal life).
The mistake people make is to think that all bad things cluster together, and all good things cluster together, creating a binary. Good and bad impulses intertwine in human nature seemlessly.
I am sure you have seen this cartoon: https://images.wsj.net/im-535576/social
A lot of people end up in the middle simply because the endpoints have moved. Disliking whoever has lied to you most recently, or most egregiously surely has a large effect, too.
Oh, boy. If you think the "science was settled in 1967," you really do know almost nothing about what the current debates are about. Even the IPCC admits that they can't model clouds - a pretty major problem. The current debates are largely about conjectured "feedbacks" in the system, and whether they are positive (tending to a tipping point) or negative (tending to mitigate the effects of increased CO2). These debates are not at all "settled." Nor are the effects of ocean currents well understood. Among scores of other climate-related phenomena. The devil is in the details. C-mon, Mike, you haven't learned the lesson our author has been trying to instill here.
For the record, I don't claim to know whether or not human activity is warming the planet, or by how much. Except locally: the growth of cities surely do create urban heat islands, for example. All of the evidence I have seen is at best ambiguous, consistent with human and natural causes. History at every time scale tends to indicate that CO2 is NOT a powerful driver of global mean temperature, if it is significant at all. Nor is there any solid evidence that warming is bad for human or other life; on the contrary. Before I'm willing to pay good money that has - as Lomborg has spent a career showing - many many more beneficial uses.
I just watched an animated piece by Gurwinder (who is on Substack) who says that curiosity and humility are the necessary components for combatting confirmation bias, which every human has. Aspects of your excellent piece echo this idea--I have to be CURIOUS to face and absorb counter-narratives to ones I have come to feel most comfortable with. And HUMILITY about my own certainty of being right is obviously required as well. My problem in trying to sort out "the narratives" out there is that I get overwhelmed. I have stopped trusting any media the way that I used to. But without that trust, it's even harder to sort. So for the sake of my mental health and attempt to not waste my one precious life, I end up withdrawing. I make a political decision, like who will get my vote for president, based on the best knowledge I can absorb, then pull away and make music, find joy in nature, just be the animal that I am muddling through and doing the best I can. I've also come to the conclusion that no human being is really all that smart. We are each SO very far from understanding the complexity of the universe let alone our place in it. That was my main takeaway from Oppenheimer, which I felt was over-rated but that message is the one that stood out. Ultimately, this genius guy was only so smart.
1. The adversarial legal system is often touted as a model for discovering the truth. You have two (teams of) advocates for diametrically opposite positions - extremists for their client - battling it out in front of an impartial judge, who is in the best position to discern the truth from the best arguments the lawyers can muster. To generalize: while extremism may be dysfunctional to the individual extremist, is it highly functional for society, which gets the benefit of the best arguments based on the most knowledge from both (or all) sides. You try to be the impartial judge; but don't begrudge the extremists who put in the time and effort to give you what you need to make a reasonable decision.
2. People who believe a counter-narrative - climate deniers, covid skeptics, free marketers in Canada will serve as example - tend to be better informed than people who go along with what is popular. This is because hearing the other side is inescapable for those defending a counter-narrative; most of what the counter-narrative folks do is rebut the narrative, for which task they must know and understand it. So when world-renowned experts in a field defend a counter-narrative, they deserve the utmost respect; they are much more likely to be right, or closer to the truth, than those who go with what is popular and career-enhancing.
Lesson in there.
Great post, but I think the vast majority of political scientists would have similarly rejected the proposition that knowledge and extremism are correlated.
I'm sorry, but putting “complex” in the title, but then “complicated” in the subheading makes my inner sociologist scream (I apologize, he can be very mean). Which one is it?
I imagine I'm preaching to the choir, and please don't take this as a dismissal of the overall excellent article, but a few comments....
> Donald Trump has repeatedly said the war in Ukraine is so simple and clear he could settle it “in a day” and a large portion of the American population does not take that statement to be the grotesque hubris of a delusional narcissistic conman. They hear confidence and they find it reassuring. Because they are not fascinated by complexity. They are frightened by it. And they want someone to sweep it away — which Trump does at every rally.
I smell irony.
> You will also continue to seek out new political information, but having drawn a conclusion about which side is more correct
What if one draws the conclusion that both sides are hilariously incorrect, and in easily predictable ways (if one has been at it for a while)?
> My synthesizing thousands of these unique perspectives, the dragonfly’s brain creates an astonishingly broad and accurate picture of reality
Picture of *the world* seems more appropriate - reality is very similar, but also very different.
> Humans can do something similar.
As a binary, sure, but how many can do it, and to what degree (with what level of skill, *on an absolute scale*)?
> An actively open-minded thinker is likely to be a well-informed thinker.
Don't forget you're measuring on a relative scale, and also that you aren't measuring (not really, and not the thing itself).
> What happens when we synthesize all those different views pointing in different directions? It’s likely — not certain, not universal, but likely — that we will land somewhere closer to the middle of the range of views than the extremes.
Or: somewhere that isn't even on the map, because the map is relative, and based on belief rather than knowledge, and people don't realize they're dealing with a map in the first place (perhaps because this fundamentally important matter is not included in Western school curriculum?).
> But I think this argument makes sense.
Could it be any other way?
> And that’s the best I can do.
I bet it isn't!
> Caveats aside, I do believe strongly — as in, willing to die on this hill — that there is at least some scrap of value in almost every perspective.
Me too. A way to approach it for those who do not: what if your guess (experienced as a fact) is wrong? (I don't expect this to work out of the box, but with some training I think it would, to some degree).
> People who dismiss whole political movements, or concepts, or thinkers on the assumption that literally everything within them is utterly and completely valueless are deeply misguided.
Alo, deeply guided ("trained", in LLM lingo) - this is largely how we are taught to think by media and often academics/experts.
> Or they’re the sort of people who are enraged when The New York Times interviews and tries to understand Trump voters.
Or accidentally believe that Trump supporters are as they are usually described, by people who are literally hallucinting (hallucination begets hallucination, welcome to Planet Earth, 2024).
Loved the article, and subscribed!!
Some skkeptics assert that temperature is not going up. Others acknowlege temperature is rising but that CO2 has nothing to do with it. Even informed skeptics like Nur Shaviv acknowledge the green house effect of CO2.
Skeptics are asserting many things with no evidence. Pointing to historical temperatures is just hand waving. Asserting that the data is fake is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence. You have none.
Interesting post. What I found surprising is that the level of political knowledge does not vary much over the whole political orientation spectrum. Whatever is the theory are we not here in the world of details instead of the general?
Recently read a course outline on ‘Thinking’ by Hanna Arendt that went into another orbit. This made me think more about my thinking, especially politically.
Your thoughtful and clear article needs to be a conversation starter in our tense times.
An historian once said to me, the best writing is making the most complex communicated simply ( not simplistic).
Very good piece.
Behold! A well-written essay, with excellent explanatory power