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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (59340)	4/15/2008 1:07:09 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 542149

Another snippet from that piece. I recommend reading it. An interesting implication emerges from the consideration of the mechanisms of belief fixation. Normally, intelligence and education are aides to acquiring true beliefs. But when an individual has non-epistemic belief preferences, this need not be the case; high intelligence and extensive knowledge of a subject may even worsen an individual’s prospects for obtaining a true belief (see chart below). Footnote The reason is that a biased person uses his intelligence and education as tools for rationalizing beliefs. Highly intelligent people can think of rationalizations for their beliefs in situations in which the less intelligent would be forced to give up and concede error, and highly educated people have larger stores of information from which to selectively search for information supporting a desired belief. Thus, it is nearly impossible to change an academic’s mind about anything important, particularly in his own field of study. This is particularly true of philosophers (my own occupation), who are experts at argumentation. Prospects for attaining truth with different intellectual traits Intelligence Bias 1.+ - (best) 2.- - 3.- + 4.+ + (worst) And another: Fourth: Should you accuse other people of irrationality, if you suspect them of it? There’s a dilemma here. On the one hand, recognizing one’s irrationality may be necessary to combat it. Merely presenting evidence about the issue in dispute may not be enough, as this evidence will continue to be evaluated irrationally. The victim of bias may need to make a deliberate effort to combat it. On the other hand, people accused of irrationality may take the accusation as a personal attack, rather than as a point relevant to the political debate, and respond defensively. If that occurs, it is virtually impossible that they will change their political position. I have witnessed few political conversions, so the most I can offer is speculation as to how one might occur. One point that is pretty clear is that, if a person is to be reasoned into a change of position, he must not see the argument as a personal contest. For this reason, we must avoid insulting remarks in the course of political discussions—whether directed at the individuals actually present or at others with whom they might identify. A second suggestion is that one should first attempt to move an interlocutor to suspense of judgement, rather than to the position opposite to his own. One might try to accomplish this by first identifying empirical claims that his position depends upon. After securing agreement on what the relevant empirical issues are, one might attempt to secure agreement on what sort of evidence would be needed to resolve those issues. In most cases, one could then point out that neither party to the discussion actually has that sort of evidence. The rationale behind this procedure is that the question, “What sort of evidence is relevant to X?” is usually easier to answer than the question “Is X true?” For example: suppose you are arguing with someone about why America has a high rate of violent crime. He proposes that it is because of violence on television and movies. This is an empirical claim. How would we find out if it was true? Here are some suggestions: time series data about the amount of violence (for instance, the number of murders per hour of entertainment) portrayed on television over a period of many years; violent crime rates over the same time period; similar data for other countries; psychological studies of actual violent criminals that drew some conclusions about why they committed their crimes; data on the statistical correlation between owning a television set and crime; data on the statistical correlation between number of hours of television individuals watch and their risk of committing crimes. These are just a few examples—other kinds of evidence may also be relevant. Nevertheless, the important point is that, in most cases, neither party to the debate has any data of this kind. Upon realizing this, both parties should agree to suspend judgement on whether and how much television violence contributes to crime. My third and final suggestion is to display fair-mindedness, which may induce an interlocutor to trust one and to attempt to display similar fair-mindedness. One displays fair-mindedness by (a) qualifying one’s claims appropriately, i.e., acknowledging possible limitations of one’s arguments and not making stronger claims than the evidence will warrant; (b) bringing forward evidence one knows of that goes against one’s favored position; (c) acknowledging correct points made by the interlocutor. Footnote I don’t know whether these suggestions would be successful. They seem to conflict with accepted practice among those whom we might consider the experts in political debate; on the other hand, accepted practice seems to be highly unsuccessful at producing agreement (though it does appear successful at producing polarization, i.e., increasing the confidence of those who already hold a particular position).