Counting Cancels

Based on the testimony of a relevant expert (FIRE's Greg Lukianoff) who documented a noticeable uptick in campus-related incidents related to free speech starting roughly 5 years ago, arguments that "cancel culture doesn't exist" are probably less plausible than I thought.

Guess Culturist

 I grew up in a Guess Culture, and am biased against members of Ask Culture.

Anti-Staff Bias

 As a faculty member, I have inherited an anti-staff bias.

Focus on Disconfirmation

The confirmation/disconfirmation bias asymmetry is such that our criticisms of opposing arguments are more epistemically valuable than our own arguments for our positions.

Discrimination & Discretion

Discrimination should be strongest within aspects of the criminal justice system in which cops, lawyers, & judges have the most leeway to push hard or let it slide.

My Language of Politics

I'm pretty dedicated to the progressive narrative of oppression. (Arnold Kling's Three Languages of Politics, via Russ Roberts on Amit Varma's podcast)

Keep It Simple: Blame Epistemic Vices

Epistemic vices may be more relevant to the spread of misinformation than politicization and polarization.

When Is It OK to Ignore Experts?

Here are two more possible responses to my argument for humility:

• Perhaps there is a set of widespread cognitive biases that leads to a bevy of experts willing to defend an obviously untenable theory. All the expert proponents are making the same logical mistake, which can be traced back to the same psychological impediment that many of us unfortunately share.

Bryan Caplan, in fact, seems to endorse something like this in his dismissal of utilitarianism. However, I worry about accusing others of bias on complicated matters. Bias blindspot is one big worry: we tend to see others as more biased than we are. Are we sure it's our opponents, and not ourselves, who are the biased ones, particularly when our opponents are experts and we are not?

And then there's the worry of straw-manning: how confident can you be that all utilitarians fail to realize this one mistake that you are accusing them of making? It's more reasonable to assume that sophisticated utilitarians recognize and (at least attempt to) avoid whatever mistake you think they're making. If a criticism is easy enough for a non-expert to see, it's probably easy enough for an expert to see (and deal with).

• Perhaps we can dismiss some experts because there are non-rational forces at work that explain their allegiance to a theory. Maybe there are practical reasons (books on theory x sell well; there's a lot of funding opportunities for advanced study in theory x), or cultural/institutional reasons (a society has a tradition of raising their children under theory x; a prestigious department has a long history of theory x training).
  

I'm sympathetic to this kind of reason to dismiss some experts. However, this is simply a separate--and more sophisticated--argument. It goes beyond the "look-at-how-wrong-the-theory-is!" style dismissals. (For instance, in the specific case of Caplan's rejection of utilitarianism, he doesn't offer any such non-rational reason.)

Furthermore, it's difficult to show that non-rational forces uniquely impact one theory regarding a given issue. If such non-rational forces apply equally to Kantians and virtue ethicists as they do to utilitarians, then we cannot dismiss utilitarianism in favor of these other theories. For instance, the objection, "They're getting paid to say it's more complicated than it really is! Their livelihood as a pro philosopher depends on desimplifying the obvious!" applies equally well to all ethicists.

Anyway, if someone were to offer this argument, she wouldn't be baffled as to why there were so many advocates of the crazy theory. She'd remain upset, of course, but would at least understand why this happened.

So here's an added moral: If you are baffled as to why a seemingly crazy theory is semi-popular among experts, you should look to blame yourself ("I don't know enough about it!") before you blame the experts ("They're all stupid!").

Ignoring Experts

Here's a common story: someone claims that a particular theory is wacky. "How could anyone be a fan of that theory?" the critic opines. "Look at all the devastating criticisms it has!" Building steam, the critic adds, "After all, these are simple objections, the kind discussed in an intro class! Hell, I'm no expert, and I'm fully aware of them! I've never heard a successful response to any of these objections. So why does the theory still persist?" (Of course, the only reason the critic would discuss such a theory is because there are experts who believe it.)

I think such critics are displaying hubris and shodding reasoning.

To explain why, I'll use a concrete example. In a blog post about utilitarianism, GMU economist Bryan Caplan recently wrote, "I am frankly mystified by the enduring popularity of a moral theory subject to so many simple but devastating counter-examples." He then offers a guess as to why utilitarians cling to their mistaken theory (they have a distorted view of alternative ethical theories). Silly utilitarians!

Now, I don't know whether utilitarianism is correct. That's not my beef here. I want to argue that Caplan needs to be a bit more humble.

Allow me to get all epistemic renegade on Caplan:

• Many ethicists are utilitarians. (It is not, as far as I can tell, a tiny minority among professional philosophers of ethics. Caplan himself concedes that utilitarianism is enduringly popular.)
• Surely, these ethicists are aware of these simple counter-examples.
• Yet these ethicists have not abandoned utilitarianism.
  
• So surely, these ethicists believe they have sophisticated responses to these simple counter-examples (along with positive evidence for utilitarianism).
  
• Caplan most likely is not aware of many of these sophisticated responses.
• Surely, the pro ethicists who aren't utilitarians are aware of the sophisticated responses to these simple counter-examples. After all, part of what it is to be a pro ethicist is to be up on the current debates, so they will have read the sophisticated responses from the utilitarians.
• The non-utilitarian pro ethicists would probably not accept these simple counter-examples alone as enough evidence to disprove utilitarianism. Even if they have super-sophisticated counter-responses to the utilitarians, they probably recognize the initial force of at least some of the utilitarians' responses.
  
• All these ethicists are more well-versed in the subject of ethics than Bryan Caplan. (They're experts on this issue, and Caplan, an economist, is probably not.)

Again, for all I know, these ethicists are completely wrong. Still, it seems clear that these philosophers are in a better epistemic position to judge the merits of utilitarianism than Bryan Caplan. And while the criticisms appear devastating to us non-experts, they clearly aren't viewed that way among the experts themselves--otherwise, most experts would agree that utilitarianism is wrong!

In other words, Caplan's evidence against utilitarianism most likely isn't good enough to show that the theory is wrong. The meta-evidence undercuts the simple evidence. Caplan should realize this. So why isn't Caplan deferring to their expertise?

Well, "defer" is probably the wrong word choice. I don't mean he should become a utilitarian. After all, there are a lot of non-utilitarian pro ethicists, too, so switching teams seems too drastic. But he should own his ignorance here, and lower his degree of credence (or perhaps suspend judgment altogether) that utilitarianism is the wrong theory of ethics.

Anyway, the moral: when there are "simple, devastating" criticisms of a theory, yet experts still believe that theory, then those simple criticisms are probably not as devastating as we non-experts think they are.

Counteracting Biases

While catching up on Overcoming Bias posts, I've been trying to figure out the best way to teach methods of counteracting biases. If I had to boil it down into one or two pieces of practical advice for students, what would I recommend?

One big point is to own our fallibility. Awareness of our limits and biases is a huge step in the right direction. Here are two other big, simple points I think are important:

1. Actively seek out sources that you disagree with. We tend to surround ourselves with like-minded people and consume like-minded media. When we do check out our opponents, it tends to be the obviously fallacious straw men rather than sophisticated sources that could legitimately challenge our beliefs.
   
2. Focus on the best points in the arguments against what you believe. Our opponents' good points are worth more attention than their obviously bad points. Yet we sometimes naturally focus on their mistakes rather than the reasons that hurt our case the most.
   

Point #1 in particular is tough for me: as you can see by my del.icio.us feed, I mostly read stuff from like-minded people: philosophers, psychologists, and economists working on decision making, heuristics, and biases. To this extent, I'm probably more likely to think that these issues are more important than they really are. What contrarian sources can I check to counteract this?