I’m guessing he’ll post more later, but by his reports the conference went well, his comments were well received, and he got to talk to interesting people. His plane got in fairly late last night, so we went to early classes this morning and then came home to sleep. Ithaca had a dark and stormy night, so nobody in town seems to have slept terribly well–particularly those who lost power.
Erin
I would have Mondays be an easier day than they tend to be. Although our schedules change each semester, one thing that never seems to change is that Monday is a long, full, hit-the-ground-running kind of day. Sydney should get in late tonight from his conference; a slight flight delay will have me picking him up shortly after 11pm. And he has to teach section at 9:00 tomorrow morning. We’ll be leaving the house just over eight hours after we enter it. And the last class on our schedule runs until 6:30 tomorrow (this being an odd week in which I don’t have commitments until 9pm).
Why does the Monday heftiness matter? I have been trying to enjoy some quiet Sabbath time on Sundays. I can’t simply shift it to other days, because I want that time to include church time (so I’m not in the middle of service thinking, “Can’t you talk a bit faster?”). But then there’s the need to prepare for the week ahead. Sabbath time, it appears, is something I’ll have to fight for.
Erin
The New York Times reports an increase in lottery ticket sales as of late, due in part to the economic downturn. Some states are seeing record years.
I can’t help but think that those who shrug it off as “discretionary spending” aren’t facing up to the fact that many of those who pay for those lottery pots are those who don’t have discretionary income. I bet you can tell how thrilled I am that our states are in on the rip-off.
Erin
Since Sydney ventured an anecdote, I thought I might as well. I’ve noticed that I tend to bop through life without noticing which college campus I’m on. If I pass a jogger here who is wearing a Yale sweatshirt, it takes me a good long while to realize that he’s not wearing a shirt with the name of the school I’m currently attending. Same thing with Iowa or Iowa State t-shirts. They’re all so familiar to me that I don’t really question their existence here. And, after being best friends with Heidi for so much of my childhood, it appears that even ugly blue-and-orange Illinois t-shirts are business-as-usual with me. 🙂
I also frequently see someone who looks just like someone I know from another college campus. I tend to do it a lot if I’m visiting a new campus–in July I’d swear the entire population of my college past had moved to Ole Miss!
As of late, though, I seem to have some validation in my hallucination. My favorite TA from Yale has taken up a post-doc here, and so she and I met in the department hallway recently and tried to fit a three-year catch-up session into twenty minutes. I was gratified that she remembered me and had asked about me here, and I am glad to have her here: nice to know someone who’s a bit further along with whom to chat about the profession and life in general. And after seeing a familiar face in a campus cafe at least half-a-dozen times, I finally approached him, tentatively asked “Eric?” and learned that the trumpet player I knew from Yale was indeed recently transplanted to Cornell for graduate work. Though he was understandably relieved to see a familiar face in his new surroundings, my enthusiasm was prompted by my relief at the proof that I wasn’t, for once, hallucinating!
Erin
I’m currently in Ontario for a conference on Francisco Suarez (http://publish.uwo.ca/~bhill28/suarez/). I thought this would mean that I would get to have other things on my mind than dismal discussions about politics, but I’ve already had to suffer through three extended ones, one on the trip up and two here at the conference today. All three were depressing. Perhaps this is the best anecdote: I heard an American professor informing a Canadian in all seriousness that there are no women in the U.S. who share Palin’s values, and so he found it quite astounding that some women would vote for McCain/Palin because that clearly meant they were voting for that ticket solely because it had a woman on it. I found myself wondering if perhaps Palin shared Palin’s values.
Suppose you’re studying the nutritional content of, say, parsnips. You test a hundred samples of parsnips and all the samples have relatively high amounts of calcium. So you conclude that parsnips are a good source of calcium. Concluding this makes good sense. Of course, there are thousands of other potential parsnip samples around and it is possible that all the other ones are actually low in calcium. So you can be a sceptic if you like, but most of us ordinarily are happy to accept claims on even less evidence than would be provided by these hundred samples. Remember the claim from the earlier post about not needing to survey all the possible evidence in order to form a rational belief. This is just another example of that.
But now suppose that another researcher happened to be also studying the nutritional value of parsnips. But her hundred samples turned out to not have much calcium at all. There could be all sorts of explanations for this. Maybe you’re in different areas and parsnips respond differently to different soil types. But never mind possible explanations for the discrepancy in research findings. The point I’m interested in is that when you hear about this other researcher’s study, it calls into question the conclusion that you drew from your own findings. You should no longer be sure that parsnips generally are a good source of calcium. In fact, you might well think that you should withhold judgement on the question altogether, on grounds that there is equal evidence pro and con.
This case — and I can easily come up with countless other cases in which we would have a similar reaction — might suggest a general principle that says that when two people (or two groups of people) of roughly equal intelligence and experience disagree about something, both groups should recognize the opposing evidence and withhold judgement at least until some further evidence becomes available. That’s a rather rough and ready formulation, but I don’t think we need to worry about the details at the moment.
There are lots of cases where that principle seems to get things exactly right. Some people think it is always right. But others think that it might not quite get things right in all cases. Political, moral, and religious disagreements might be thought to be exceptions, for example. Suppose half of the population thinks that it is wrong to kill dogs for food and the other half thinks it is fine. And suppose further that there is no obvious indication that one side happens to have far more vicious people on it or something like that. You might think you’re entitled to keep holding your moral view even though half the population disagrees with you.
I’m inclined to think that. But I do think that the fact that half the population disagrees with you is reason to be cautious about your belief and perhaps to spend some time thinking about whether you might have gotten it wrong. In other words, disagreement with peers may not mean that you need to drop your belief but surely it calls for some humility. Ridiculing the other side for being stupid is surely, well, stupid. Think about the researchers again. Most of us aren’t going to think much of you if you decide the other researcher is stupid merely because she came to a different conclusion than you did.
So where am I going with this? Recall yesterday’s post, in which I argued that you were rational in deciding to support your party. In case you didn’t notice it on first reading, the argument applies equally well whichever party you support. But once you notice this, you have reason to hold your own view with more humility and with more caution (this has got to be the least-followed advice ever given). Being a Democrat doesn’t mean that you’re stupid. Being a Republican doesn’t mean that you’re stupid. But maybe thinking that someone is stupid because they belong to the other party is stupid.
Sydney
Two preliminary points to keep in mind:
Rational belief and true belief can come apart. In fact, sometimes it is irrational to believe what is true. For example, if ten people lie to you and say that they saw Peter at a party on Saturday night and you have no other evidence, then it is rational for you to have the false belief that Peter was at the party and it is irrational for you to have the true belief that he was not at the party. This isn’t controversial, but it’s worth keeping it in mind explicitly.
One doesn’t need to survey all the relevant evidence about something in order to form a rational belief. For example, if I’ve seen a hundred crows and they’ve all been black, then it is perfectly rational for me to come to believe that crows are usually black even though there are millions of other crows that I could have examined.
Okay, so here is why you were rational in choosing the political party that you endorse/plan to vote for. Suppose you have two choices: A and B. You’re trying to figure out which choice is the better one. You might learn about some benefits that A would provide. Those benefits would be reasons to choose A. Perhaps not conclusive reasons, but reasons nonetheless. You might also learn about some terrible features of B. Those would also be reasons to choose A. In short, reasons not to choose one thing are reasons to choose another.
So suppose our two choices are the Democrats and the Republicans. You might think this is simplistic, but I think it fairly represents American politics and, besides, I’m sure you’re clever enough to extend the story to a more complicated case. Nothing important in the case above hinged on there being only two choices.
So here are some good reasons to go for your favoured party:
Some of their policies are pretty sensible.
The other party has some really horrid policies. In fact, some of them seem not just ill-advised but downright morally dubious. That’s at best. So that’s really good reason not to vote for them. This, of course, is good reason to vote for your party.
It gets even worse. Members of the other party routinely say extraordinarily stupid things. Also, a lot of really nasty, vicious things. In fact, it’s become quite clear to you that at least some members of the other party are simply wicked, depraved individuals. You suspect that even some of the more innocent-appearing members must be guilty at least of failing to adequately disassociate themselves from the really depraved members. In all of this you are right. In other words, more good reason to stick with your party.
There is one sort of thing the other party says that particularly gets under your skin. They frequently say things that imply that anyone who believes the sort of thing you believe is stupid, immoral, or worse. Sometimes they don’t bother just implying it but say it quite explicitly. But you know that you’re neither stupid nor immoral. At least not unusually so. Clearly, the other party isn’t very good at getting things right, given that they’ve gotten you and those like you so completely wrong. So more great reason to reject them and stick with your party.
So there you have it: four excellent reasons to vote for your favoured party rather than for the other one. Actually, the case is remarkably strong, since note that these were actually categories of reasons. For example, cataloguing all the instances of stupid and nasty behaviour exemplified by the other side would be a practically endless task. Even the internet might not be up to the task of holding such a catalogue. (Actually, come to think of it, maybe the internet already is largely such a catalogue, albeit still incomplete …) So, really, these aren’t just three reasons. You have here practically innumerable reasons to choose the party you chose. What could possibly be more rational than choosing on the basis of such an impressive catalogue of reasons?
Sydney
I was switched to a different section of French this week, so our schedule is shaken up once again. This bothers Sydney not one iota, but I nearly cried with frustration when the internet repair guy asked when we’d be home tomorrow. I just managed to keep back an “I don’t KNOW!” and be civil. Part of my frustration has to do with the fact that it’s impossible to be efficient with one’s time when a new schedule has to be learned, and we go through this each semester. This semester I have been trying to work on a writing project that keeps getting pushed back because of the running-around we’re doing at the beginning of the semester, so my impatience with delay is mounting. The shaking up is getting a bit old, but I suppose it’s a small price to pay for a good job.
So I was running to French today at its new time, which meant launching myself up several flights of very steep, narrow steps to what I think must be the former attic of one of the oldest buildings on campus. This, immediately following a wearing-out session at the gym, was just too much for my energy levels. Arriving in time but exhausted, I plopped myself in a chair and found myself facing one of my former students. Ah. Lovely. Stripped of all authority, equipped with my still-very-bad French accent, I found myself living Example #798 of how teaching offers great opportunity for embarrassment even when you’re not actually teaching. I guess this is good motivation to put even more time into that French homework each day, so that I can keep embarrassment to a minimum. And I’ll enjoy watching my former freshman developing into a mature sophomore.
Erin
Okay, I can’t hold off any longer. The appallingly inane drivel I’ve been hearing from all sides — from mainline news sources and blogs, from friends and from colleagues, from school dropouts and from Ivy League professors, from Democrats and from Republicans — compels me to vent a bit.
The idiocy comes in a variety of forms. Sometimes it comes as breathtakingly crazy value judgements provoked by an opponent who doesn’t belong to your tribe. Read any random three op-ed columns and I guarantee that at least one of them will exemplify this so I won’t bother showing you examples. Sometimes it comes as gullible repetition of some nonsense that makes your opponent look like a monster, nonsense that you could have dismissed had you bothered to spend five minutes fact-checking. Maybe some of us are too busy to spend those five minutes (though I’m inclined to think that maybe you should then refrain from repeating vicious hearsay). But I’m pretty sure that The New York Times ought to be able to spare five minutes for that sort of thing. What sort of falsehoods do I have in mind? The claim that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party or that her youngest child is actually not her own, for example. Or that Barack Obama is secretly Muslim. All three, and many more, have been widely repeated.
So that’s the sort of thing that has gotten my ire up. What is my stake in the debate? I loathe both the Republican Party and the Democrat Party. This isn’t because I’m a moderate trying to find space between them. It’s because I’m way to the right of the Republicans on some issues and way to the left of the Democrats on others. Not that I’m pretending that this gives me an unbiased perspective on the debates; but those are my cards. As you’ll soon see, bias actually won’t much matter for the kinds of things I’ll say anyway.
To finish out this introductory post, let me point out that recent research in psychology pretty much confirms what has been obvious to many of us for a long time: partisans become irrational with respect to the topic of their partisanship. This is what happens when, say, a really smart philosophy professor who can spot a fallacy from a mile a way suddenly starts spouting nothing but fallacies when talking about the political party he opposes (don’t even ask how often I get to witness this). It’s because the part of his brain that handles logical reasoning got turned off. And, of course, he is entirely unaware that it got turned off and so he undoubtedly thinks that he is making all sorts of brilliant points. But those of us not in the sway of his partisanship are embarrassed at the sad spectacle. I won’t bore you with all the details, but you can see a popular introduction to some of the research here. If you find the stuff interesting, you should hunt down the researchers’ papers. It’s fascinating material. Drew Westen’s research is particularly interesting.
The moral of the research is that if you are an enthusiastic advocate of some person or cause or an adamant opponent, chances are you say lots of stuff that sounds really stupid to the rest of us. And remember that you can’t tell if that is so if you are caught in the grip of partisanship. So if you find yourself feeling zealous about something, it’s probably best to assume that you’re liable to say crazy things if you open your mouth. At the very least, it behooves you to make an extra effort to sit back and cooly think about what you want to say before saying it. Also remember that we’re much better at spotting flaws in our opponents’ arguments than at constructing good arguments ourselves. So if your opponents tell you that what you said sounded stupid, it probably did so you might not want to repeat it, lest you merely provide further fodder for your opponents.
Remember that you are under no obligation to read this or any future rants of mine.
Sydney
Alan Schmierer
