Minds Closed For Business

Tom Gilovich, a social psychologist, has made intriguing discoveries about human beliefs, which go some way to explaining why so many people believe absurd things that are just plain wrong, and are so hard to be convinced otherwise. His research shows a consistent tendency that when we desire to believe something, we internally pose the question, "Can I believe this?" – and then we actively seek out evidence that supports our desired belief, and convince ourself that it is sufficient.

However, when faced with a belief we find undesirable, our internal query shifts to "Must I believe this?" – and then we look for reasons to discredit the claim. If we come across even one piece of pseudo-evidence that casts doubt, we feel justified in rejecting the belief. We use that as a pretext for freeing ourselves from the obligation of belief.

This whole “When we want to believe something, we try our best to justify belief in it, and when we don’t, we try to justify non-belief” is probably the best insight we have in to why people have such strange beliefs, and associate themselves with such nutty groups. They simply want to believe these things – which also explains why it’s so hard to talk people out of wrong thinking, even when most of the rational world continues to show how incorrect they are.

We can, of course, relate this to most of the world’s current mainstream follies. Most people in climate hysteria groups don’t really believe in the doomsday scenarios about which they forewarn – you can see from their behaviour and body language that they don’t really. Being in a climate alarmist group satisfies their need for virtue signalling, it feeds their attention-seeking, it reflects their dislike of successful people, it makes them feel like they have a cause, and it gives them a sense of identity and a sense of moral superiority (similar motivations apply to most socialists, in my experience, as there is so much overlap). All this is easy to figure out once you look carefully enough, and the same applies to many other cults, conspiracy theorists and extremist groups.

Young earth creationism is that other bogey that falls in these same traps, and perhaps the one I’ve challenged most in recent decades. Because of the perceived moral duress in terms of Divine punishment, and a perceived Biblical injunction, young earth creationists are perhaps the most prone of all to seeking out pseudo-evidence that supports their desired belief (Biblical literalism, no transitional fossils, irreducible complexity, unreliability of radiometric data, micro not macro, etc) and convince themselves that it is sufficient. And because they have no desire to accept evolution, despite the overwhelming evidence supporting it, they take the "Must I believe this?" approach, and use their pseudo-science to justify discrediting the evidence, and free themselves from the obligation of the facts.

Because the psychological roots of these cognitive biases lie in the deep-seated need for reinforcement, in-group validation and social cohesion, experience shows that rational persuasion is very rarely effective against anyone who feels they must believe something, and actively seek out evidence that supports what they want to believe. Views that are so entrenched, forming the bedrock of an individual’s perceived moral duty, ego, group identity and social solidarity are not on the table to be corrected. They are minds closed for business. 

If Only Beliefs Were As Efficient As Markets

 

The essence of capitalism is that our market innovations have gone through selection pressure and benefited consumers by cumulative step by step improvements. Co-operation and competition are the main driving mechanisms for this success. Due to competition, and the market punishing inefficiency, bad service and poor quality products, the present day tends to produce the highest quality of goods available rather than any time in the past. It's not true in every sense, of course, but generally speaking, a laptop, mobile phone, washing machine, car, movie player, data storage device, and so on should be better now than previous versions 10, 20 or 50 years ago (perhaps notwithstanding planned obsolesence). Our products and technology get better, as does our knowledge and understanding of the world around us. No one sane would deny that we’ve never been better off materially and that we’ve never had more knowledge than we do right now.

Now, to a great extent, a similar mechanism also ought to exist in the evolution of the competency of the views we hold. And clearly, in many places it does. But….here’s the big but – we’ve also never had so many people alive with so many incorrect and absurd viewpoints. Now, you may say that’s simply because we’ve never had so many people alive - which is true to some degree – but it’s not quite enough.

The kind of selection process I described for goods, services and knowledge doesn't seem to happen with the same rigour in beliefs and viewpoints. In other words, we don’t seem to have refined the quality of our beliefs and viewpoints as successfully as we have in other areas that reflect the gradual slopes of improvement – especially in socio-cultural areas like politics, economics, social commentary and religion.

It's probably because of the vicissitudes of the human mind, or the complex nature of the social environment, or the lack of competing selection pressures on those beliefs, or the subjection to chaotic non-linear feedback effects - or more likely a combination of the four - but the present day state of affairs for political, economic, social and religious discourse doesn't seem to produce the modern day equivalent of the efficiency improvements seen in the free market.

But I think it's also because the stakes are different. In the market, we are heavily penalised if we don’t provide what people want and need – we could lose our job, our business, and even fail to feed our family. Capitalism has quality control that keeps us at the top of our game, otherwise we go bust. But there isn’t the same intense selection pressure on our socio-cultural views. What seems lacking there is the right amount of accountability. In market economics, providers and sellers are accountable to consumers who will shop elsewhere if something better or more desirable comes along. Accountability is a powerful mechanism in society because it acts as a modifying tool in response to performance. 

We shouldn't be surprised it is so effective - we see it happening all the time. The principal mechanism of biological evolution is that natural selection acts on phenotypes to confer survival advantage. In science, experimental testing is accountable to results, which forms a body of evidence for a particular theory. Each of these systems is subject to selection pressure that confers overall improvements. In market economics, unwanted goods or services don't stay around long. In biological evolution, it's rare for an organism that is prohibitively not adapted to its current environment to survive. In science, it's extremely rare for something counterfactual to be classified as a theory after much experimental testing.

There is some accountability in politics when it comes to who is in power. A democratically elected group of MPs are accountable to their constituents, and can be voted out if they perform poorly or behave immorally. In politics it's been historically rare (although sadly not rare enough, and getting less rare by the decade) for a hopelessly incompetent or scandalously unethical politician to last more than a few terms in office. The trouble is, the average member of the electorate isn’t very demanding when it comes to the purveying of good ideas and sound political and economic judgements. In fact, the incompetence of the majority of voters is even weightier than the incompetence of the people they are voting into power, which militates against proper accountability or adequate selection pressure on the statements and ideas of politicians. If only beliefs were as efficient as markets. 

Prohibiting Knowledge of Good Things

In my early days of being a Christian, I was puzzled by God’s instruction that Adam & Eve should not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because it seems like having knowledge of good and evil is a good thing. I was puzzled because it seemed like the only text I could find in scripture where God seems to prohibit something that is good and beneficial. Which brought me to the question; if that’s the case, on what grounds might a good and perfect God prohibit something that is good and beneficial to us? And I could think of only one reason why – it was prohibited because we weren’t yet ready for it, but one day might be. And what could that ‘it’ be? To become like God, of course. So that is how I interpret that part of the story in Genesis; the best thing we could possibly have cannot be given to us in one solitary grab – we have to work towards becoming Divine.

A correct interpretation of Genesis reveals it is richly layered with symbolic and archetypal meaning. Given the foregoing, I was pleased recently to hear a like-minded interpretation of Genesis 2:17 from Biblical scholar Jonathan Pageau – who shared his belief that when God says, “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” – Pageau contended that, actually, God would have given them permission to eat from it, because ultimately, it’s necessary knowledge, just not yet.

Most Genesis scholars see the tree as representing a kind of profound Divine wisdom over and above our current understanding – so the interpretation that humanity was not yet prepared to fully understand or handle being that much like God, but decided to take it anyway, seems to be a reasonable one. Because that really is what the primary sin is; our fallenness means missing the mark, where our very nature falls short of the glory of God, and the worst response to that is to put self ahead of God. It’s the fundamental error that bootstraps all other aspects of fallenness. And the primary sin has always been trying to put self ahead of God by attempting to become like God through pride and rebellion. When Satan (the serpent) tempts Eve to eat from the tree, claiming that they will not die but become like God, he’s cunningly revisiting his own fall for exactly the same sin, where he was cast out of Heaven for seeking to exalt himself above God.

So, when God said to Adam and Eve “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil”, perhaps this prohibition is God’s mandate for preserving the order of creation and humanity's place within it, which would be consistent with the framework and writing style of the verses that precede it. That is to say, maybe the allegory really means something like: we are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), and we will eventually be transformed to be like God (1 John 3:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18, Philippians 3:20-21), but our greatest falling is to try to make ourselves like God prematurely or with misguided self-centred motives. With this interpretation, the story of the fall is a deeper story than simple disobedience. It conveys a profound issue that the full suite of human growth and self-understanding is available through a relationship with God, but attempts at premature attainment bring about in self-induced curses rather than Divinely bestowed blessings.

 

On Attraction

 

Several studies have confirmed what we already know; that physical attractiveness plays a significant role in initial attraction and relationship formation, as it often serves as a gatekeeper to pursuing potential partners. But research* also shows that while men generally tend to consciously prioritise looks more, both sexes value attractiveness similarly in dating. 

However, over time, as partners get to know each other, positive personality traits like humour and kindness become more important, and the significance of physical appearance diminishes. 

So, the upshot is, some form of moderate attractiveness is jointly necessary and sufficient** to elicit positive evaluations, but in the long game, for both sexes, other qualities are more valuable on the whole. 

*Notably, Kniffin and Wilson, 2004; David Feingold, 1998; Fugère and colleagues, 2015; and Menelaos Apostolou, 2011,2015 

** In case you’re not familiar with necessary and sufficient conditions, it’s basically this: if X is a necessary condition for Y, then Y cannot happen without X. If X is a sufficient condition for Y, then whenever X happens, Y will definitely happen. So, X being both necessary and sufficient for Y means that Y will happen if and only if X happens. So, for example, having a ticket is a necessary condition to see a film at the cinema, because you can't get in without one. It's also a sufficient condition, because if you have a ticket, you're permitted entry. In the attractiveness case, then - moderate attractiveness is necessary because it is required to get you a date, where without meeting this minimum threshold, you are unlikely to be considered as a potential partner. And it’s also sufficient, because if they fancy you enough, it is enough to elicit positive interest, where further increases in attractiveness aren't required to make someone more desirable.

 

Spacetime As A Canvas For Divine Genius

 

Some Christians struggle with the concept of a universe that spans billions of years, as if it challenges God's sovereignty and precision. I don’t agree. Given time’s highly complex relationship with space (the four dimensions of space-time), I think it’s another opportunity for us created creatures to see God’s genius at work. When you think of how impressed we can be by what humans create - Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Escher’s staircase, Beethoven's 9th Symphony, Welles’ Citizen Kane, etc - I think not enough people are highly impressed with the intricacies of God’s spacetime. In fact, they probably just take it for granted - but it’s actually much more majestic than they are willing to consider.

Spacetime is rather like a canvas on which the process of God’s artistic critical path analysis goes to work: the splendour of the cosmos, atoms to molecules, molecules to cells, cells to communities, communities to multi-cellular differentiations, and so forth. If you think about the standard SI unit system, which measures all macroscopic activity (length, time, substances, electricity currents, temperature, mass, etc), it is built on the discrete, grainy substrate of spacetime, and resembles some kind of giant cosmic computational process, which can be measured in critical path operations within a search space in a finite execution time.

So when we get something like Psalm 33:9, which states that “He spoke, and it came to be”, and some Christians get tempted to say “Ah that fits in nicely with Genesis 1, and how God instantaneously brought these things into existence, not over billions of years” - I think, no, it just won’t do. Firstly, even computational commands are merely the apex of a whole host of complex background computations that require billions of critical pathways. And secondly, where in any other area of God’s created nature do we see such fait accompli results that require no prior work or effort? The answer is nowhere. Nothing exists in the whole of nature that provides a free lunch without someone having to plan, prepare and cook it - and that truth is instantiated in the cosmic process, from the macroscopic process of inorganic matter, right down to the discrete interstices of spacetime where the computations are underwritten.

In my submission, the prodigious amount of mathematical wash in the universe, far from exhibiting a God of profligacy, actually shows a Cosmic Genius able to undertake the most intricate sift and select computations, with an upper level of complexity beyond what the entire collaboration of human mathematicians could enumerate. Humans had to spend hundreds of years creating some of the most sophisticated computers in the world just to be able to get a slight handle on the topological mysteries behind God’s creative dispensations - and the vast stretches of time actually give glory to God and some of His creative genius.

Further reading: Why Did God Use So Much Space & Time?

Just Prices

 

Suppose you own a rare first edition book, and a dealer desperately wants to buy it from you. You would sell it for £250, but the dealer offers you £500, not knowing that you would have let it go for half the price. Have you acted immorally in accepting his offer? Most people would say no, and I think they’d probably be right. But what about in the case of Locke’s famous horse owner and traveller, where the horse owner would have sold his horse for £40 yesterday, but when meeting a breathless traveller the next day, uses the situation to his advantage and sells it for £50? Has the horse owner acted unjustly? What about if you encounter a man dying of thirst: is it unjust to sell him a bottle of water for £500? If he’s desperate and about to die, you can be pretty sure he values his life at more than £500, so in that context he’s probably getting a bargain, right? Yet understandably, almost no one thinks this is right. 

In economics, we believe the just price is the market price, based on the complex information signals generated by the busy marketplace of supply and demand. In other words, it is the actions of billons of local decisions across the world which determine the price of bananas, walking sticks, holidays and cars – there is no objective value in any good or service or job – the value is determined by billions of people's revealed preferences.

So how then do we square that with the notion of unjustly charging a desperately thirsty man £500 for a glass of water? Few would deny that’s wrong – we should be encouraged to give him some water for free. The upshot is, ethical judgements are not the same thing as just prices. Consequently, we are dealing with something rather like a sorites paradox-type of scale, where the nearer we remain at the individual consideration (like Locke’s horse owner and traveller), the more a price is subjected to strict ethical judgment, and the more we extend out to the wider economy in an information-generating nexus, the less a price is subjected to strict ethical judgment, because the more it has been shaped by lots of people through the mechanism of supply and demand. Excepting the terrible political policy of state price-fixing (rent controls, minimum wage laws, etc),the price of just about everything in a market economy is what it is because of the activities of billions of individuals over sustained periods of time - it resembles a democracy in that we've all voted for it to be that way.

This leads us to the labour theory of value. Adam Smith and David Ricardo posited views about the labour theory of value (LTV), which argues that the price of a good or service should be determined by the total amount of labour required to produce it. It’s a theory with little mileage, and whereas Smith and Ricardo never felt entirely comfortable with LTV as a broad-brush explanation for the price of labour, Karl Marx was fonder of it, using LVT (or variations of it) to bemoan what he saw as the powerful capitalist classes.

What gave LTV its redundancy notice was the more accurate notion of subjective theory of value, which states that the value of a good or service is not determined by the labour required to produce it, but by the value placed upon it by the consumer. A brick wall built around your garden is not valued by the labour required to build it - it’s the other way around - the labour required to build it is valuable precisely because the builder can produce something that the homeowner finds valuable.

If the anti-capitalist neo-Marxists were better informed, they would understand that far from being an exploitative force for bad, capitalism is a liberating and enriching way of enhancing people’s well-being and improving their standards of living. Labour and capital are what enable producers to provide things of value in society, and price them in line with supply and demand to allocate resources most efficiently. Prices of goods and services are information signals that convey subjective perceptions of value - and it is this information that tells us how much a thing is valued.

This is why we are always banging on about politicians’ inept and uneconomical interferences in the market - their activity so often impedes the highly complex process that most efficiently matches supply with demand at the optimal (or near optimal) prices. The optimal price of any good or service occurs when the most the consumer is willing to pay is equal to the least the supplier is willing to accept.