Hamstringing your own IQ

Thoughts about reality testing, or what I would call the ostensible crime of "sowing seeds of doubt," from Jonathan Haidt at Persuasion:
In 1859, John Stuart Mill laid out the case that we need critics to make us smarter, and that we should have no confidence in our beliefs until we have exposed them to intense challenge and have considered alternative views:
[T]he only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it.
* * * 
By abolishing the right to question, a monomaniacal group condemns itself to holding beliefs that are never tested, verified, or improved. We might even say that monomaniacal groups are likely to be wrong on most of their factual beliefs and their diagnoses of the problems that concern them. And if they are wrong on basic facts and diagnoses, then whatever reforms they propose to an institution are more likely to backfire than to achieve the goals of the reformers.

Maintaining a healthy skepticism is not the same as nihilism.  We can remain open to information and ideas even while adopting temporary, tentative conclusions that aid whatever decisions cannot rightfully be postponed.  There will even be times when a potentially temporary conclusion seems so obvious that we feel entitled, not only to adopt it for our own behavior, but to impose it on others by force.  On those occasions, however, our willingness to tolerate seeds of doubt in ourselves and others is heightened, not relieved.  As compelling as is our duty to use discernment and judgment in reaching conclusions that guide our own behavior, we'd better be all that much more rigorous in our discernment and judgment about people to whom we delegate power, or whose crusades we enlist in, because when we act in concert, we multiply both our power and our blameworthiness if we get it wrong.

We should be fastidious in action and the use of force, but generous in entertaining new data and counterintuitive notions.  What I'm seeing increasingly in my country's culture is the opposite:  careless abandon in imposing wild new schemes of mandatory behavior or commandeering of resources, combined with rigid control over the discussion and dissemination of contrarian ideas and puzzling information.

4 comments:

J Melcher said...

To some extent, the question of who's right (or wrong) is less important than the question of whether or not "wrong" actions and thoughts are permitted.

Should farmers sow seeds in the dark of the moon, the first quarter, the full ...? If dispute is permitted and some fields are planted earlier than others, some will be more successful than others. In times of extreme freeze or drought or flood, some will be more able to escape the catastrophe than others. Freedom helps avert famine.

Should, however, the tyrant be convinced that ALL the farmer should sow at the same time... and should Stalin (or whoever) forcibly insist on "the one true and right answer", well, sometimes even a wise and well-advised tyrant will be mistaken. And all the crops will fail together. And famine will afflict the entire empire.



Texan99 said...

Lysenkoism can thrive only with suppression of debate and experiment.

J Melcher said...

True. Having authorities shut down the farms experimenting with Lysenkoism is also bad public policy.

There is modern work being done in Russia on foxes. Not quite Lysenkoism, but -- the gentle foxes that tolerate human handling are allowed to breed, and the vicious foxes are culled. Behavior in foxes, it turns out, is at least partly heritable. Also it turns out that over generations "gentle" foxes exhibit easily distinguishable physical phenotypes, more typical of dogs or juvenile foxes. Genetic technologies and brain chemistry tools not available to Lysenko, or Stalin, identify what's going on.

https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2019/foxy-behavior-russian-fox-farm-uncovered-basis-canine-domestication/

As far as I know nobody is cutting off the fox's tails hoping later generations of puppies will be born tail-less.

The danger is not that a bad theory exists or is researched; the danger is that governments (and religions, and businesses) can run amok in promoting one theory over all others.





Texan99 said...

That fox/epigenetic research has fascinated me ever since I first read it. Every time you think an area of science has settled down, some bright soul sees a new wrinkle.