The Market and Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is one of those concepts that floats out there in the weird space where it is a) relatively simple. b) relatively well known and c) little understood. At least for that last one, in practice.
People understand evidence, what constitutes evidence. In my experience though, the instance of people that understand the scientific method, or null hypothesis, or open mindedness, or skepticism. etc. is pretty low.
Confirmation bias though is a seeking, a pulling, phenomena.
I don't want to beat the dead horse of confirmation bias. You may understand it, you may not. You can look it up. It's a quirk of human psychology that is fiendishly difficult to correct.
I want to focus on the satisfying, pushing phenomena we know as the market.
These ideas I've largely imported from Akerloff & Schiller's book 'Animal Spirits' which I can see from where I'm sitting but can't muster the motivation to get up, find the relevant passage, and quote it. So instead I'll just paraphrase as best I can recall:
The market is incredibly efficient at producing goods and services to satisfy demand. The caveat of this awesome phenomena though, is that if we demand snake-oil, the market will efficiently produce snake oil.
The question then becomes, should we allow the market to produce snake-oil?
For the most part, historically we eventually always say no. Consumer protection regulation comes in and we generally shift in terms of liability from caveat emptor to caveat vendor. (Buyer beware to seller beware).
Where I find it interesting to marry two concepts together, consider the market in conjunction with confirmation bias.
Go on.
Consider it.
I put to you, or anyone, that there will always be demand for one particular product that the market will always find ways to satisfy: permission to believe what I want to believe.
A way to put this technically, is that the market will always produce alternative-epistemology. And these alt-epistemology products will find motivated buyers.
The thing is, the only way to regulate human psychology, is probably through education. And education isn't very efficient. It's a big if to assume the highest performing students have actually absorbed and retained everything they were taught. The examination process is not exhaustive, they test for a representative sample of knowledge presented on the syllabus. A passing score is usually 50. Which when you think about it, is demonstrating you know half of the knowledge you are tested on (which is less than half of the knowledge of the subject).
If someone knows and understands roughly half of the fallacies out there, that person is going to be very prone to making fallacious arguments.
What we can do, is regulate markets. In some countries, people suffering either directly or indirectly from erectile dysfunction can get a Viagra pill after consulting a doctor, then a pharmacist. Pharmaceuticals is a heavily regulated market. In other, or possibly the same countries, people suffering either directly or indirectly from erectile dysfunction can go to different kind of shop and buy endangered animal penis, powdered narwhal horn, emu egg dust or yes... snake oil This happens in highly unregulated markets.
The internet is a highly unregulated market for ideas. I am persuaded by Timothy Snyder, historian, that what we are currently living through is not unprecedented and not unsolvable. Apparently when the Gutenberg printing press came along, before populating the worlds libraries with credible books written by credible authors it first created a torrent of misinformation based on nothing, written by nobody.
Eventually the printed word got it's shit sorted out and sufficiently regulated. The internet isn't there yet. Turns out, in the intervening centuries between scribes getting put out of work and the advent of the misinformation super highway, the demand for alt-knowledge, alt-facts and alt-reason didn't go away.
What is hard about regulating, is that people hate referees. Michael Lewis' podcast 'Against the Rules' is excellent on this very point. Most often what people object to, is not actually unfairness. But fairness.
In a court of law, counsel can object throughout a trial. There are agreements in place as to what constitutes fair conduct. You can't lead a witness, you can't speculate, questions have to be relevant, expert witnesses have to have expertise.
Imagine a psychic medium being bound by regulations that stipulated s/he was not permitted to be in the same room as the relative of the spirit contacted, was not permitted to ask questions of the relative and could only relay messages verbatim from the spirit... basically they were regulated out of cold reading techniques.
Or if theists and atheists sat down to a debate where participants could 'object' court style to any assertions made without sufficient evidence. This would be fair, but I would put cold hard money that the theists would complain the debate was 'rigged'.
In conclusion, the market for ideas needs regulating. In its current unregulated form it actually poses an existential threat. Most people will agree I feel, with this position, in some domain. What will be required though is that we will all have to probably sacrifice some comforting beliefs. We will all be detoured from the shortcuts in our mind and have to take the long way round to environmental sustainability, justice, equal opportunity, the pursuit of happiness, and longer lasting erections.
People understand evidence, what constitutes evidence. In my experience though, the instance of people that understand the scientific method, or null hypothesis, or open mindedness, or skepticism. etc. is pretty low.
Confirmation bias though is a seeking, a pulling, phenomena.
I don't want to beat the dead horse of confirmation bias. You may understand it, you may not. You can look it up. It's a quirk of human psychology that is fiendishly difficult to correct.
I want to focus on the satisfying, pushing phenomena we know as the market.
These ideas I've largely imported from Akerloff & Schiller's book 'Animal Spirits' which I can see from where I'm sitting but can't muster the motivation to get up, find the relevant passage, and quote it. So instead I'll just paraphrase as best I can recall:
The market is incredibly efficient at producing goods and services to satisfy demand. The caveat of this awesome phenomena though, is that if we demand snake-oil, the market will efficiently produce snake oil.
The question then becomes, should we allow the market to produce snake-oil?
For the most part, historically we eventually always say no. Consumer protection regulation comes in and we generally shift in terms of liability from caveat emptor to caveat vendor. (Buyer beware to seller beware).
Where I find it interesting to marry two concepts together, consider the market in conjunction with confirmation bias.
Go on.
Consider it.
I put to you, or anyone, that there will always be demand for one particular product that the market will always find ways to satisfy: permission to believe what I want to believe.
A way to put this technically, is that the market will always produce alternative-epistemology. And these alt-epistemology products will find motivated buyers.
The thing is, the only way to regulate human psychology, is probably through education. And education isn't very efficient. It's a big if to assume the highest performing students have actually absorbed and retained everything they were taught. The examination process is not exhaustive, they test for a representative sample of knowledge presented on the syllabus. A passing score is usually 50. Which when you think about it, is demonstrating you know half of the knowledge you are tested on (which is less than half of the knowledge of the subject).
If someone knows and understands roughly half of the fallacies out there, that person is going to be very prone to making fallacious arguments.
What we can do, is regulate markets. In some countries, people suffering either directly or indirectly from erectile dysfunction can get a Viagra pill after consulting a doctor, then a pharmacist. Pharmaceuticals is a heavily regulated market. In other, or possibly the same countries, people suffering either directly or indirectly from erectile dysfunction can go to different kind of shop and buy endangered animal penis, powdered narwhal horn, emu egg dust or yes... snake oil This happens in highly unregulated markets.
The internet is a highly unregulated market for ideas. I am persuaded by Timothy Snyder, historian, that what we are currently living through is not unprecedented and not unsolvable. Apparently when the Gutenberg printing press came along, before populating the worlds libraries with credible books written by credible authors it first created a torrent of misinformation based on nothing, written by nobody.
Eventually the printed word got it's shit sorted out and sufficiently regulated. The internet isn't there yet. Turns out, in the intervening centuries between scribes getting put out of work and the advent of the misinformation super highway, the demand for alt-knowledge, alt-facts and alt-reason didn't go away.
What is hard about regulating, is that people hate referees. Michael Lewis' podcast 'Against the Rules' is excellent on this very point. Most often what people object to, is not actually unfairness. But fairness.
In a court of law, counsel can object throughout a trial. There are agreements in place as to what constitutes fair conduct. You can't lead a witness, you can't speculate, questions have to be relevant, expert witnesses have to have expertise.
Imagine a psychic medium being bound by regulations that stipulated s/he was not permitted to be in the same room as the relative of the spirit contacted, was not permitted to ask questions of the relative and could only relay messages verbatim from the spirit... basically they were regulated out of cold reading techniques.
Or if theists and atheists sat down to a debate where participants could 'object' court style to any assertions made without sufficient evidence. This would be fair, but I would put cold hard money that the theists would complain the debate was 'rigged'.
In conclusion, the market for ideas needs regulating. In its current unregulated form it actually poses an existential threat. Most people will agree I feel, with this position, in some domain. What will be required though is that we will all have to probably sacrifice some comforting beliefs. We will all be detoured from the shortcuts in our mind and have to take the long way round to environmental sustainability, justice, equal opportunity, the pursuit of happiness, and longer lasting erections.
