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BGonline.org Forums
politics and valuing truth (with references to backgammon!)
Posted By: David Montgomery In Response To: the question is (Bill Riles)
Date: Monday, 6 October 2008, at 8:15 p.m.
During a discussion around the dinner table last night, I realized that I have a concern that is different, but in some ways analogous to Bill's fear about the effects on our country of an increasing number of people who do not pay taxes.
The fear that I have at times is that our country will suffer because of an increasing number of people who are acting on the basis of ignorance and misinformation, and who lack intellectual honesty or critical rigor or an attitude of putting an extremely high value on the truth.
I strongly believe that we Americans, we humans even, make better decisions when we are aware of the facts. When we really understand them. When we know what is going on. When we regard information both with a willingness to learn new things, but also with a critical eye to ensure that we are not going astray. To the degree this isn't so, we may make decisions and take actions based on emotions, beliefs, habits, and other human propensities ... all without being grounded in reality. The results, on average, are worse than if we instead acted based on a firm grounding in reality.
One of the things that I like about gambling and the financial markets is that there is a strong feedback loop that encourages participants to see reality as it is, rather than as they might like it to be. In these arenas, if you really know what is going on, and make your decisions based on this understanding, you will do better than those who do not. You will profit. Those who are not grounded in reality will lose. So there is a tremendous incentive to attempt to see things clearly, to see things as they are, whether those conditions are how you would like them to be or not. And the result of this is that better decisions are made, on average. This is a key idea behind free markets, and it is hugely valuable.
What happens when these kinds of decisions are decoupled from a grounding in reality? When, for example, thousands of borrowers don't consider whether their mortgages are genuinely affordable? Or credit rating agencies don't consider that the mortgages in some CDOs are of a completely different nature than those in their historical database of statistics on delinquencies and foreclosures?
What happens when a backgammon player's decisions become decoupled from reality? When he steams, and doubles early because he's angry that he lost the last game, and later snatches up the redouble that is a big drop, lost in a haze of confusion?
We know what happens. It's not good.
Science has similar feedback loops, and these are key to the success it has enjoyed, and to the success we humans have enjoyed from it. There are financial incentives in terms of research funding, opportunities for technological entrepreneurship, and job security. And then there are the social and cultural incentives in the scientific community. In science, it matters a great deal whether what you say and do is grounded in reality.
No doubt informed by my experiences with science and gambling and free markets, I value truth very highly. It's a value I try to take to other areas of my life. I am convinced that even moving far afield from these arenas, to personal relations, and religion, and politics (among others), making decisions and taking action based on truth, based on reality, based on facts, will lead to better results than not.
So my fear sometimes is that this attitude may be becoming less prevalent, and that this will lead to poorer political decisions. I don't have any real evidence -- not the kind of evidence that I would expect to persuade someone skeptical like myself. It's just that I hear of a significant number of people believing things that are just not true. Simple, factual matters, that could be investigated and understood unambiguously. And people being so certain in their misbelief that there's no way -- no way that is less than extremely difficult -- to help them to see the truth. And political campaigns and media coverage that contribute to ignorance and misinformation.
The thing is, in the political realm, the feedback loops that are so helpful in gambling and markets and science just aren't there. The effects are too often too indirect. Too far off in time. And too confounded with a multiplicity of other inputs. So it's all too easy for people to just go with their initial biases, and see everything that happens as confirmation of what they already "know."
And besides this inherent difficulty in teasing out the signal from noise here, politics is naturally accompanied by corruption (what we have here, after all, are self-interested humans making up the rules for themselves) and persuasion (where what matters is not the truth, but convincing people to act a certain way, regardless of the truth).
This situation is most unfortunate, because the effects of poor political decisions can be tremendously bad. So it's even more important that we try to seek out the truth here, try to see as clearly as possible the signal amidst the noise, so that better decisions can be made.
We need to listen to each other. And to examine both our own and others' opinions critically. And wherever possible to ground our discussions in facts. And not be dismissive of facts, and not get carried away with emotion to the point that we aren't able to look clearly and carefully at what is really happening. At least, this is what I think would be helpful.
To put it in backgammon parlance, we shouldn't steam. Not unless we want to drop 200 points, or $700 billion, or hundreds of thousands of lives, or a Great Depression, or future environmental destruction, and so forth.
And since we can't easily do rollouts, we should at least remember our reference positions, and ask our doubles partner if he remembers any that are relevant.
Relating this back to the current discussion, when I read Daniel's posts, I took them as pointers in this direction ... something like saying "Well, let's see how things actually are. Let's make sure our numbers are right before we get too carried away." To me, it's really like my doubles partner saying: "Hey, let's count the race first." And I find that helpful.
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