| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Jez" |
| Date: |
09 Sep 2004 08:06:05 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Get it right! |
Jamie Whyte describes himself as "Outraged of Highbury" - someone who
endlessly sends furious letters to newspapers complaining about sloppy
thinking, logical errors, fallacies and muddles. He does the same at
parties - and even on trains. Fortunately he's a professional
philosopher or he might have attracted the attention of the authorities
long ago. Liz Else and Alun Anderson asked what gets him steamed up and
what errors they could commit that would make him explode
http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opinterview.jsp?id=ns24631
How long have you been angry about bad thinking?
I've always been obsessed with truth. I did my PhD on truth. It has
always driven me mad to see people saying things that are well known to
be rubbish. And I've never understood how they can bear it. But at the
same time I can see that it doesn't affect their lives materially so
they can't understand why I get so hysterical.
But you are a philosopher who left academia to work in financial
markets, of all things. Isn't that an area where truth is seriously
lacking? Or should we trust your views on truth because you have
published a book?
There are indeed some very suspicious things that go on in the financial
markets. But you are already plunging straight into the authority
fallacy, which these days appears in a variety of perverse forms. One of
the worst is trusting someone simply because they have acquired a
measure of celebrity, which might include publishing a book.
What do you mean?
First, there is nothing wrong with deferring to genuine expertise. You
need to defer to some people because you simply can't do all the
research on everything yourself. But to whom should you defer? The basis
on which you defer to people should be that they are reliable, and by
reliable I don't mean nice or good or that they have their hearts in the
right places. I mean that if they say that P... it is very likely that
P... Now what makes somebody reliable is the way that they acquire their
beliefs - ultimately it all comes back to the correct methods for
acquiring beliefs. So you should identify people who are doing it the
right way and defer to them. In the end, it is just a division of labour.
But how does the authority thing work?
The really big mistake comes when you treat people as authority figures
when they are not expert but simply well known. There is a terrible
tendency to treat people as reliable sources of fact when in fact they
are simply "important" people or people who happen to be in the news. It
is doubly perverse when you consider who gets counted as "important".
For example, the victims of train accidents appear on television as
authorities on rail policy and celebrities endorse presidential
campaigns as though they are expert on politics. It's sheer insanity.
That sounds like good news for scientists. With their emphasis on
transparency and method, surely they'd be immune from the authority fallacy?
Not at all. Scientists are vulnerable to this kind of celebrity issue.
Some scientists have a certain amount of star quality that gives their
opinions more weight than they ought to have. Worse, scientists have a
terrible tendency to pronounce on issues where they don't recognise that
they are not expert.
Take the British Medical Association, which is always making policy
recommendations. A recent example was that the government should tax the
fat content of food. Why does the BMA think it knows anything about how
we should live? It may know that if I live a particular way I'll become
unhealthy, but why does it think that it can tell me that I should value
my health more than my chosen way of life? What makes its members think
that they are in any privileged position to answer questions like that?
Also, how do they know what the effects of a tax on fatty food would be?
They're not specialists in the way that prices affect consumption and
the way the economy will be affected by redistribution of spending from
one part to another. They can't even anticipate the health effects of
these things. They should shut up.
So should they express no opinion at all?
The BMA is one of these organisations that commits the authority
fallacy. It seems to think the fact that it may be an authority on
medical issues means that it is also an authority on the politics of
medical issues. There is almost no connection. The BMA's output should
be an input to the decision making of somebody else. I think you get a
lot of this false authority in science. Let the BMA commission a report
from somebody who knows what they're talking about. It has just got this
blind assumption that health is everything. Health seems to me to be
reasonably important, but we are all mortal and doctors often seem to
forget that.
It is fair to say that the BMA represents doctors and as such it is just
another pressure group acting for its own constituency, and its opinions
will be no better than anyone else's.
Oh dear. Now, you are drifting into the motive fallacy. Too many people
see truth as just a game between groups, as a kind of tribalism. That is
not rational. Far too many people are not prepared to say: "I don't
believe this and here's my argument why I don't." They don't feel they
need to. Instead, they will say something like: "Economists are just
part of the capitalist conspiracy so I don't have to listen to their
arguments about free trade." Thus they dismiss all economists' views on
the grounds that they are members of a particular group.
And scientists too...
Yes. These days, scientists are increasingly seen as part of various
tribal groups, so when you read about their views the newspapers will go
to great lengths to ask who they are working for, what their backgrounds
are, and what are their political views are, and so on. Someone's
motives may reasonably make you suspicious that that person has an
incentive to mislead you, but their arguments are no better or worse
than the evidence put forward to support them. So ultimately the
question of whether something is true or false can't be settled by a
question of motives. And just to dismiss somebody on the basis of "it
pays them to say that" isn't a good argument. They might be right anyway.
In your book you are quite harsh on religion. Aren't people entitled to
their faith?
This is one of my favourite errors. An interesting change has happened,
at least in the west. It used to be that people would argue for a
particular religious dogma or a clear religious doctrine. That is no
longer what happens. The world is increasingly dividing into those who
have "faith" and those who don't. It doesn't really matter what the
faith is. That is why you now get "faith groups" coming together from
all kinds of different religions. The weirdest manifestation of this new
tendency is when people say: "I'm not a Christian but I believe in
something." Then I say: "Of course, I believe in many things, like there
is a chair there and a table. What are you talking about?" And they
reply: "Well, you know, something more." But what "more"? What they mean
is something more than we have any good reason to believe in.
That really seems to get to you!
What amazes me is that they like to set themselves up as having a
slightly finer sensibility than you or me but in fact they are
completely intellectually irresponsible. They used to come up with very
bad arguments for their faiths but at least they felt that there was
something they should provide. Now mere wilfulness has triumphed. This
is what I describe as the egocentric approach to truth. You are no
longer interested in reality because to do that you have to be pretty
rigorous, you have to have evidence or do some experimentation. Rather,
beliefs are part of your wardrobe. You've got a style and how dare
anybody tell you that your style isn't right. Ideology is seen as simply
a matter of taste and as it's not right to tell people that they've got
bad taste, so it's not right to tell them that their opinions are false.
I'm afraid that the cast of mind of most people is the opposite of
scientific.
There's something close to that that you also hate. When people say
"there is an awful lot we don't understand" and use that as an argument
for believing in something...
The mystery fallacy: it's a mystery therefore I can think whatever I want.
Isn't there a reverse of that where scientists will ignore or deny the
existence of anything they don't understand?
Yes. Scientists have a strange tendency to be insufficiently empirical
sometimes. A good example is swing bowling in cricket. For a long time,
scientists found it impossible to explain how bowlers could deliver a
ball that swerved. So their first defence was to say that it's not
really swinging but only appears to be. Sometimes in science theory
pushes you ahead of observation - the theory will suggest some
observations that you previously wouldn't have made. But sometimes there
are things you can observe that you can't explain which should drive
theory. The way you learn physics these days is so lacking in
observation that it's got a lot of scientists out of the habit.
Physicists don't take observation as seriously as they should and
sometimes they get this arrogance that if the theory can't accommodate
it then it isn't there, instead of letting the observation push them.
Talking of cricket, you also use cricketing scores to show up some of
the ways people try to explain patterns that don't need an explanation
at all...
An example I use in Bad Thoughts is the explanation of why zero is the
most common score on which batsmen go out. Cricketers and sports
commentators will tell you that the batsman has just come on the field
and they are very nervous, or they don't really know the pitch, so they
are more likely to go out immediately. But that kind of explanation is
not needed at all. It's just that the way cricket is scored means zero
is the score on which batsmen face the most deliveries. Everyone starts
at zero but then scores increments of anything from zero to six, thereby
skipping many possible scores. Since zero is the score on which most
batsmen face the most deliveries, it is entirely unsurprising that it is
also the score on which they most often go out. People are looking for
an explanation that's just not required.
How widespread is this tendency to seek unnecessary explanations?
It is well known that when gamblers go wrong they find an excuse and as
soon things go right they immediately assign it to their own brilliance
and insight rather than finding an accidental reason. It's rather
similar in the financial industry. Even the bosses buy into this kind of
reasoning. They will say "of course I understand why that one went
wrong" when they lose millions, and then when it goes well they will say
"well done". Everybody systematically overestimates their skill in games
of chance. From what research I have seen, financial trading is not much
more than a game of chance. There are funds that simply track the market
according to a set of simple rules, and others that are very actively
managed. But the actively managed ones do not perform better on average.
Some will do well in any year but that's what you expect by chance.
But there are star fund managers who do well year after year. So is the
advice I read to follow the best managers right?
You have fallen into the error of reading meaning into data where it is
not required. Stock traders are quite young; normally you would be quite
an old trader at 35. You are probably in the spotlight for four or five
years, maximum. There are thousands of traders, so some of them are sure
to have five good years in a row. It is purely random. There is nothing
you would not expect if it were chance alone.
So if I'm a logical person I had better put my money in the bank?
Well, the best investment depends mainly on your risk appetite. However,
retail banks give a much better return to their shareholders than
investment banks, partly because their staff are paid less. For
investment bankers, the only trick is getting yourself a seat at the
table. Once you are there the money is yours. It really isn't that
skilful. But the people who work there will always believe their good
days are down to their own amazing skills.
--
Jez
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,
of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society
highly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselves
and to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed
perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."
R.D. Laing
Skype callto://hellward
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