fling93 loves fishies

The Message, Not the Messenger

Update 7/23/04: I’ve significantly reworked this essay, specifically expanding the “Sometimes there is a wolf” and “Resist confirmation bias” sections.

As I mentioned earlier, I try to act like a sponge, absorbing as much information as possible so that my opinion will be as informed as possible. I think we should all try to act like sponges. Of course, we’re not sponges, we’re humans, and human tendency is actually to prematurely exclude and filter potentially useful information — for a variety of bad reasons. So it’s pretty valuable to stay aware of this tendency.

Unlikely sources of insight

The biggest reason is that we’re not looking when and where we should. We expect answers to come from specific places and often forget that we can gain valuable insights from the most unlikely of sources. For example, I’m sure you’ve all heard the story about a truck which got stuck beneath an overpass, snarling traffic for miles. Police and engineers came in, but nobody could figure out how to get it out without damaging the bridge — until finally a nearby eight-year-old girl said, “Why don’t we let the air out of the tires?”

It’s probably an urban myth, but it rings true. Children can often provide a fresh perspective on a problem they have absolutely no expertise on exactly because they are completely unencumbered with assumptions. Indeed, it’s sometimes the only way our society progresses, with each generation being able to grow and learn unhindered by some of the false assumptions, biases, and prejudices of the previous generation. Note that our generation is much less racist than the last, and that polls show that younger people tend to be more accepting of gays.1 And speaking of prejudices, we also often write off people merely due to their race or gender or hair color. Or occupation. Remember, some people don’t pick a line of work based on the money or their ability (or lack thereof), but on the fulfillment it gives them. People can and will surprise you.

Defer to experts (not!)

This whole line of thought occurred to me back during the pissing war between Brad DeLong and Dan Drezner. Mark Kleiman remarked on how amateurs ought to defer to experts (and the topic was economics, which was DeLong’s area of expertise). While I have no idea which one was in the right, I disagree with this approach. For the reasons above, I think it’s perfectly fine to blog on subjects outside your expertise, which is probably obvious given the wide range of topics I cover. If an expert challenges you, certainly be prepared to listen and to rethink what you said, but don’t automatically retreat unless you understand why you were wrong. The expert should be able to explain to you what you are doing wrong in terms that you can understand, and there’s nothing wrong with asking them to do so (and indeed, they’ll probably be more than happy to oblige).

And if you think you’re the expert, don’t be so quick to dismiss a layman’s point of view. All of the sciences (especially the social sciences) are way too complicated for even the experts to understand fully. And once in a while, the entire field gets turned on its head by findings that contradict everybody’s assumptions. The more points of view you listen to — expert or not — the better it is for the field and for everybody. Indeed, I sometimes have a software engineering problem I’m debugging at work where I get the idea for the solution after talking with my wife, who’s an anthropology major and doesn’t know any programming languages. Sometimes you don’t need another expert, but just a sounding board, and all that takes is a listening ear.

Besides, if you’re so hung up on behaving like an expert, you’re less likely to think you have anything to learn, and start filtering out everything. Better to understand the limits of your own knowledge, as I’ll get to again later.

Sometimes there is a wolf

Sometimes a person’s history leads you to dismiss them. We all know of the story of the boy who cried wolf. Eventually, everybody learned to ignore his pranks, and then nobody helped him when a wolf actually did appear. Well, the obvious moral is not to lie, because then people will stop believing you. But the other lesson is that past history does not guarantee future performance. Sometimes there really is a wolf. While it’s one thing to take something someone says with a grain of salt, it’s quite another to completely ignore them, and usually the latter is merely a form of laziness that benefits nobody.

Keep in mind that people change and grow all the time. It’s obviously silly and foolish to judge somebody based on what they did as a kid. Kids do stupid things cuz that’s part of what being a kid is — learning from the stupid things that you do. And although it doesn’t happen to the same extent, remember that adults can change and grow as well (especially if they listen to this blog post!).

What’s more, the human tendency is to read too much into a single event or action. Accidents, occasional slips, and bad days do happen, so you shouldn’t judge anybody from a single impression. You need a significant sample size to get any useful information, cuz even Barry Bonds has days where he goes 0 for 4. Besides, it’s practically impossible for anybody to lie about everything 100% of the time, even if they try. And hardly anybody has the incentive to try (unless they have a compulsion).

Certainly, when you have a limited amount of time to allocate, it makes sense to spend less time listening to people who have little credibility. But it’s important also to take into account what they are saying and whether it makes any sense. It’s also worth taking into account how important the ramifications would be if what they say was true, because then it might be worth doing some legwork to try and find outside confirmation or corroboration. And don’t forget to be fair. If you doubt someone’s credibility because of the opinion of another person, realize that this judgment itself might be due to an agenda or bias. And while it pays to be wary of those with vested interests, like car salesmen or politicians, it’s still usually possible to extract useful information from what they say.

Resist confirmation bias

Confirmation bias is something that’s taken me some time to see in myself. Basically, it’s the human tendency to notice information that confirms their existing point of view and filter out information that contradicts it. You are actually more prone to notice things that bolster your argument and gloss over everything else. I’m no more immune to this than anyone else. I’d often get into an online debate with somebody and find myself scouring the Internet, looking for something to prove me right and prove them wrong. It took me a long while to realize that this was not the most productive use of my time. The goal should not be to convince the other person or to win the argument.2 The goal should be deeper understanding of the truth so that you can learn and grow. And this can’t happen if you don’t even listen to the other person.

I don’t understand why this is a human tendency, as it doesn’t seem particularly useful to anybody (maybe I’ll learn more about it when I eventually get to my psychology course from The Teaching Company). Regardless of the cause, it’s something we’re stuck with, and the best we can do is remain aware of the tendency and catch ourselves when we notice it (and indeed, I still catch myself doing this today). This means constantly challenging our assumptions and listening to things we don’t want to hear. And realizing it’s too easy to dismiss something because it conflicts with something else that really isn’t any more valid, but is simply something we happened to hear earlier. A belief system is not something you should really leave up to chance.

Keep the goal in mind

So I think the best approach is to keep in mind what Socrates said: wisdom is knowing that you don’t know (i.e. don’t approach a question as if you already know the answer), and that truth is not something to be possessed, but something you should be constantly searching and striving for. So now, I make the effort to stay vigilant and catch myself before I succumb to these tendencies. And furthermore, I try to take the time to explore sources that conflict with my point of view, and, most importantly, try to remain open-minded and willing to amend my point of view in light of new information. After all, there is no shame in that.

So when you find yourself completely dismissing somebody, make sure it’s not because you don’t like what they have to say, or because you think you know more than them, or even because they’ve lied to you in the past. Hear the message and judge it on its own merits. Anything less, and you are simply cheating yourself.

¹ For example, The Hamilton College Gay Issues Poll found that “[t]wo-thirds of this year’s high school graduates favor legal recognition of gay marriages, a view shared by just one-third of the adult population.” The topic of generational changes in morality is an interesting one in and of itself. Personally, I’m still struggling to decide whether I believe in absolute morality or relative morality, but lately I’ve been starting to wonder if maybe there is an absolute code of morality — but that we simply don’t know what it is yet. It’s practically impossible for any person to know whether their gut feel of right and wrong is due to the actual rightness or wrongness of an act or due to the fact that they were socialized to feel that way (like our society’s silly and contradictory attitude towards the female breast). So perhaps the purpose of the human race’s existence is to discover what that absolute moral code is — a job that will require many, many generations to complete (if completion is even possible). Return

² Really, when you’re arguing on the Internet with people you’ll never meet and who have absolutely no power to affect your lifestyle one iota, who cares who wins the argument? I see so many people so worried about it because they’re hung up on their perceived “standing” on a message board, as if it were something of value. Indeed, I often run into people who act like they “own” the place merely due to how long they’ve been there (and I’m sure this applies to the blogosphere as well), and I’ve always found the behavior terribly irrational and elitist. Not to mention immature. Return