There are two powerful cognitive mechanisms that prevent us from envisioning and creating a better world:
The Need for Concepts to Understand Reality
Our minds rely on categories to understand reality. The most vivid demonstration of this is the Red Spade Experiment, demo below, original paper here.
Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions applies Bruner’s finding to the resistance to new scientific paradigms - the new paradigms are not even envisioned by those who have been habituated into the old paradigms.
I’m particularly fascinated by the introduction of new concepts in science: Joseph Black created the concept of specific heat, or Friedrich von Wieser’s development of the concept “opportunity cost.” These concepts added fundamental clarity to physics and economics, respectively. Without the appropriate conceptual tools, our minds are limited in what they can “see.”
No doubt there were earlier vague intimations of “opportunity cost” prior to Wieser’s concept of “alternative cost,” but clarifying the concept no doubt accelerated intellectual progress somewhat analogously to how the transition from Roman to Arabic numerals accelerated progress in arithmetic. The leap in intellectual rigor and analytical sophistication due to the invention of the concept of “specific heat” is an even more interesting case of conceptual creation; prior to the thermometer and Black’s experiments and analysis, a few people at best may have had only the vaguest notion that “sometimes it seems to take longer to heat some things up.”
What if we need new conceptual understandings and categories to improve the human condition, but our evolved cognitive structures kept us mostly stuck in obsolete coalitional holding patterns?
What if the old tropes of progressivism and conservatism have worn themselves out, but there are cognitive obstacles to perceiving new alternatives?
Motivated Reasoning on Behalf of Coalitional Alliances
Our minds are profoundly oriented towards tribal politics, or coalitional alliances. Three bits of evidence on this for those who don’t find it obvious:
An evolutionary psychology paper showing that an “alliance detection system” based on political allegiance is a more powerful influence than racial categorization; the brain automatically categorizes people based on patterns of cooperation and competition.
For those who find brain neuro-imaging especially compelling, the brains of partisan voters react differently than do the brains of non-partisan voters:
Experts found functional brain processing differences between partisans and nonpartisans in parts of the brain which help people to socialize and engage with others- the right medial temporal pole, orbitofrontal/medial prefrontal cortex, and right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. As people completed a simple risk-related decision-making task there were differences in the blood flow to these regions of the brain between the two groups.
Dan Kahan’s Cultural Cognition Project at Yale explores how issues that become political change how we process information, so much so that scientifically literate people often demonstrate even more motivated reasoning than do less scientifically literate people on topics that have become politically polarized. For one example:
We conducted an experiment to probe two alternative answers: the “Science Comprehension Thesis” (SCT), which identifies defects in the public’s knowledge and reasoning capacities as the source of such controversies; and the “Identity-protective Cognition Thesis” (ICT) which treats cultural conflict as disabling the faculties that members of the public use to make sense of decision-relevant science. In our experiment, we presented subjects with a difficult problem that turned on their ability to draw valid causal inferences from empirical data. As expected, subjects highest in Numeracy — a measure of the ability and disposition to make use of quantitative information — did substantially better than less numerate ones when the data were presented as results from a study of a new skin-rash treatment. Also as expected, subjects’ responses became politically polarized — and even less accurate — when the same data were presented as results from the study of a gun-control ban. But contrary to the prediction of SCT, such polarization did not abate among subjects highest in Numeracy; instead, it increased. This outcome supported ICT, which predicted that more Numerate subjects would use their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks.
Kahan and his team examine how some issues, such as gun control, have become politically charged issues such that political allegiance motivates reasoning whereas on other issues (here a skin rash treatment) they do not. Why did GMOs and water fluoridation become political issues at some point and so many other equally complex technical issues did not? Will “gain of function” research become a partisan issue?
Once a topic triggers our alliance detection system in our evolved minds, then the parts of the brain that are focused on engaging with others are activated and we become motivated reasoners on behalf of our tribal alliances.
Addressing the Challenge of Motivated Reasoning
With respect to issues where we do not need to create new concepts, categories (i.e. the Red Spade problem does not exist because existing categories are adequate) the best solutions to the challenge of motivated reasoning is a combination of pluralistic discourse with those with other perspectives and, more critically, prediction markets and/or reputational bets.
Robin Hanson’s work on prediction markets is essential reading here. His paper “Can Gambling Save Science,” published in 1990, summarized the weaknesses of peer review in science more than 30 years ago and advocated prediction markets as a way to aggregate expert information on possible outcomes. We’ve become so accustomed to the credibility of science we forget that science won its credibility by means of an astonishing series of predictive successes in astronomy, physics, and chemistry from Galileo through the 20th century. Microeconomics is remarkably successful at prediction: If the price of X goes up, it is usually a safe bet that the quantity demanded will go down (ceteris parabus). But most of social science and some aspects of biology, medicine, and meteorology/climate have less successful track records of predictive accuracy - even without motivated reasoning coming into play. With many complex systems, we have relatively little understanding at present. In such a situation, across academia the result in some fields may be mostly motivated reasoning most of the time.
At this point, I put little stock in peer review/academic reputation per se. Fields with longstanding track records of predictive success are credible. But in fields with less accurate track records, we need to move towards a more widespread recognition of the importance of predictive success. I trust public intellectuals who are willing to hold themselves accountable for their track record of predictions such as Bryan Caplan, Robin Hanson, Scott Alexander, Matt Yglesias, and Zvi Moshowitz to be more credible than those who do not. Forecasters with a winning track record at Metaculus, a leading forecasting platform, are more credible than those who fail at forecasting and/or who have no track record. Here is a recent article on prediction markets open to the public. Often when people make specific reputational bets with each other, the rhetoric scales down and the predictions are necessarily more specific (in order to establish common grounds on which to adjudicate the bet).
In the meantime, if a topic is not based on a field with a predictive track record, or if the individuals making claims do not have successful predictive track records, or if there is no forecasting platform or prediction market addressing the issue, I try to remain agnostic. As Paul Graham says, “Keep Your Identity Small.” Let go of your political FOMO.
That is the only way we can learn to perceive new categories and escape our evolved systems of coalitional alliances and identity protection.
Why We Need New Political Identities
Suppose we need a “Red Spade” political identity - a coalitional identity that does not correspond to the existing political identities. I expect most people who have gotten this far do not have a strong political identity as a Democrat or as a Republican.
In my first Substack post, I identified as a “voluntarist.” In my book, Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World’s Problems, John Mackey and I attempted to develop FLOW as an identity. After that failed, I tried to develop Radical Social Entrepreneurs as an identity. I’ve recorded a talk for “Anarchy in Austin” and have spoken and written for libertarian organizations and have written for “Bleeding Heart Libertarians” and attended a summit on the “Future Right.” I’ve described myself as a libertarian who half likes Scandinavian nations “if only they would get over their moral presumption and acknowledge that they are no more morally lofty than are gated communities.” I’ve also said that my political philosophy is “governance is a hard problem.”
We need more people to move towards meta political identities. The tribalisms of any nation state are inadequate to create a better future. Outside of small jurisdictions, the challenges of public choice and political ignorance ensure that simple majoritarian systems will be captured by special interests. Mancur Olson’s insight that concentrated interests overwhelm diffuse interests is one part of political science that is predictive (this book ostensibly arguing against Olson merely claims “regulatory capture is typically contested and incomplete”). Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance suggests that deliberative democracy is unrealistic beyond approximately 10,000 citizens - the overwhelming ignorance of voters has not changed much despite tremendous increases in education. Most people are just not motivated to know much about candidates or policies - and never will be.
Personally I’m expecting fiscal collapse in the US in the next decade or so. Depending on how rough the crisis is, we may have an opportunity to reboot the US into America 3.0, basically returning to constitutional principles and a Tocquevillian civil society. Or it could be much rougher. But I have no confidence in the current partisan debates to improve much of anything in a substantial manner.
The one bright spot is the educational choice movement which is spreading rapidly across red states in the US. It promises to create an American cultural Renaissance - which we will sorely need after the fiscal collapse.
The other bright spot globally is the rise of Startup Cities.
Both are relatively new, scalable initiatives that will allow new visions of a better world to be born - thousands of new visions, most of which will fail, as it should be. These various new jurisdictions, cultures, and communities may combine various aspects of what used to be progressive/conservative/libertarian you name it, with reality being as diverse as humanity is diverse. It is time to create a rich a diverse eco-system of better ways of living (as perceived by those who choose those ways of living).
But to create space to accelerate these and other win-win initiatives, we need for more people to let go of partisan conflict as a motivating factor. Let go of partisan rancor and control, and let a thousand, and then a million, options come into being.
I predict that once most people have access to systems that function, where men, women, and children are safe, people treat each other decently, kids flourish, and we can pick the cultural norms we please without endless political conflict, most people will choose such systems voluntarily. The age of endless political conflict and dysfunctional law and governance will be perceived as a dark ages from which we will be grateful to have been liberated.