I raised before the question of the limits of civil conversation, the point at which it is legitimate to just laugh at a stupid idea that lacks any serious rational support or is backed by no argument at all, a point at which perhaps even the ad hominem temptation is not totally forbidden. Call a crank a crank. This is a difficult question but we can at least recognize the frequent benefits of free speech from those who step outside those limits while, of course, accepting the right of others to do likewise. Castigat ridendo mores—Correcting mores with laughter—says the motto of the Comédie-Française, an old theatre and theater company.
For the purpose of this post, let me define a moron as an individual who satisfies one of the two following conditions: he thinks that A and non-A can both be true (the anti-logic condition); he prefers X to Y, Y to Z, and Z to X (the intransitive-preferences condition).
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was an elitist libertarian (which, by itself, raises iconoclastic questions) and one of those free speakers who did not always, in his writings, engage in civil conversation. One hundred years ago, in the Baltimore Evening Sun of July 26, 1920, Mencken made a striking prediction, which, barring improbable events, is certain to be realized in less than three months, and for the second time in four years:
As democracy is perfected, the office [of president] represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people … On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
READER COMMENTS
robc
Aug 19 2020 at 7:13am
I have only been alive for 51 years, but by your standard, I think it has happened 12 times in my lifetime.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2020 at 9:58am
But it has not improved with time!
William Connolley
Aug 19 2020 at 7:37am
For intellectual rigour, it would be appropriate to include the A and non-A; or X, Y, Z; that you believe satisfies your conditions. With, of course, reference to the relevant person saying the same.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2020 at 10:18am
@William Connolley: Either I don’t understand what you are saying (which is not impossible) or I have to add some intellectual rigor to your logic. A, X, Y, and Z are variables, so the question of what to “include” in them that “satisfies [my] conditions” is non-sensical. Do you want to run as my vice-president?
Dylan
Aug 19 2020 at 3:24pm
I believe William is looking for what we, colloquially, call an example.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2020 at 9:15pm
It is easy to find statements (when he does not just baby-talks) or actions (revealed preference) by Trump that he later contradicted without explaining why (theory or circumstances) he had changed his mind. A few examples:
March 17: “I’ve always known this is a real—this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic … I’ve always viewed it as very serious.” (The Atlantic) He reverted to non-A and A again later.
The Chinese government is transparent. The Chinese government is not transparent. (The Atlantic)
Xi Jinping is a great leader. He is not a great leader.
Obama wasn’t born in the United States. Obama was born in the United States.
Low interest rates are good in a recovery. Low interest rates are bad in a recovery.
Foreign companies must invest more here. We must reduce the trade deficit.
My colleage X is great. My former colleague X was a loser. X={x1, x2, …., xn}.
Socialism is bad. Telling private companies what to do is good.
Flag burners should go to jail or lose their citizensip. He is told it would be unconstitutional because the Supreme Court ruled that they are protected by the 2nd Amendment. OK then, the essentially replied later, they should go to jail for 10 years.
Face masks are useless. Face masks are patriotic.
Budget deficits are bad. On January 17, 2020: “Who the hell cares about the budget? We’re going to have a country.”
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 21 2020 at 11:27am
I forgot one of the best ones (among the large number that exist): (A) American tariffs are paid by foreigners; (non-A) as a gift to American consumers for the Christmas season, I postpone new tariffs.
Dylan
Aug 19 2020 at 8:02am
By this definition, I think you’ll have trouble finding many non-morons. Even Bertrand Russell was on shaky footing.
robc
Aug 19 2020 at 9:51am
Goedel too.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2020 at 10:11am
@Dylan and @robc: I must say I disagree. Neither Russell nor Gödel negated the law of non-contradiction. On the contrary, they used it to demonstrate, by reductio ad absurdum, that some statements cannot be true–that all the barber, as defined, shaves or does not shave himself (Russell) or that every truth is knowable (Gödel). Arrow did something similar with the social choice function.
robc
Aug 19 2020 at 10:45am
Goedel showed that any formal mathematical/logical system must be either incomplete or contain contradictions.
I have a preference for completeness, so have to accept the odd contradiction.
The absurd (but still valid!) example being able to have this statement:
That requires both A and ~A to be true. You could respond that only a moron would require completeness, which I would be fine with, I would just disagree.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2020 at 9:21pm
@robc: That’s an arguable point. I might have to qualify my first sufficient condition for being a moron as follows: believing that A and non-A are generally both true irrespective of completeness. (Let’s ask Trump or Biden what they think about that.)
Lenny
Aug 20 2020 at 3:48pm
I’m not an expert philosopher, but wouldn’t “This statement is False” be considered an example of an irrational or nonsense statement.
i.e. the fact that the rules of language allow us to construct a contradictory statement does not mean that a contradiction exists. The statement is neither true nor false but rather it has no rational meaning and is not necessarily an exception to the law of non-contradiction.
Mark Z
Aug 19 2020 at 11:56pm
I think Russell’s paradox can be satisfactorily resolves. I don’t think most cases of people believing both A and not-A in practice are due to Russel’s paradox.
Capt. J Parker
Aug 19 2020 at 10:23am
I think Mencken’s statement was more of a satirical indictment of our perception of the presidency as some exalted throne for the good and great person we will choose to sit upon it. It’s rather similar to his other great political statement:
Even if there was a fool in the White House, that would not excuse making ad hominem against his policies. The worlds biggest fool could propose that the sun will rise tomorrow and that should not alter our faith celestial mechanics.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2020 at 10:44am
You are probably right, but isn’t that (part of) the issue? Suppose that X says that the sun will not rise tomorrow. My reaction (including plans for breakfast ) will be different if X is the greatest fool in the world than if he is Carl Sagan. If I want to economize on information (a scarce resource), I will not spend much time investigating the claims of the greatest fool in the world; I will treat Carl Sagan’s claim differently. Moroever, if one sees lots of people preparing for the apocalypse by maxing up their credit cards after the greatest fool in the world’s pronouncement, he may, especially if he is a philanthrope, write a Mencken sort of article. But as I said, the issue is complicated; hence the benefits of free speech against this sort of uncertainty.
Jon Murphy
Aug 19 2020 at 12:46pm
Pierre-
Your point about Sagan and decision-making reminds me of a great scene in the old TV show Hogan’s Heroes.
The show (a comedy) follows Allied POWs in a German camp during World War 2. The camp is lead by a bumbling Kommandant, Col. Klink. The whole premise is how Hogan constantly outsmarts Klink to help Allied prisoners escape and transmit valuable intelligence to Allied command in London.
There is one episode where a live bomb falls in camp. For reasons involving plot, Klink, Hogan, and the Sargent of the Guard, Schultz, try to defuse the bomb. It comes down to cutting a single wire. Cutting the wrong wire will lead to detonation. Hogan (who is cutting) asks Klink which of the two wires he should cut. Klink nervously (since he knows nothing about bombs) picks one. Hogan immediately cuts the other wire. The bomb is defused.
Col. Klink, angry, says: “Hogan! Why did you have me choose the wire if you knew what one to cut?!”
Hogan responds: “I didn’t know which wire. But I knew for sure you’d pick the wrong one.”
No one, especially those of us who operate in the realm of ideas, can read and critically consider every idea out there. Some get dismissed out of hand because they prima facie make no sense. Some get dismissed because of the person making them. It is true that such strategies are not acceptable in formal debates or reasoning, but that is wholly irrelevant. You need to decide what material you’re going to engage in before you decide to engage with it.
Craig
Aug 19 2020 at 1:02pm
I find meTV to be very comforting in these troubling times. Great background noise for remote work because it ISN’T particularly engaging.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 19 2020 at 8:55pm
Good points, Jon.
Capt. J Parker
Aug 20 2020 at 12:45pm
Yes, defining the limits of civil converation is complicated. And absolutly, free speech must be defended. Deciding which ideas to engage with and which one’s don’t merit one’s attention is important too, and difficult.
But, I still say that ad hominem arguments or reasonings are insidious and must be avoided at all costs. Not simply because they are logically incorrect. The worst part of ad hominems, for those who traffic in ideas, is that ad hominems are intellectually lazy. If we accept an idea from Ms Sage but reject the same from Mr. Dense then we are allowing others to think for us. And worse, if I may paraphrase a great argument from Steven Horwitz I just read: it becomes a way to believe that the ideas are wrong without ever having to confront them directly.
Jon Murphy
Aug 20 2020 at 12:52pm
How do you decide whose advice you will follow when you ask a question about medical care?
Capt. J Parker
Aug 20 2020 at 10:58pm
@Jon Murphy,
Jon, I wish for you to live long enough to have received as much bad medical advice from physicians as I have.
Jon Murphy
Aug 21 2020 at 12:12am
Do you go to every physician you can? Just one? A selection?
And why physicians? Why not just solicit opinions from any individual who has one?
Robert EV
Aug 19 2020 at 11:58am
As long as a moron knows they are a moron, and acts accordingly, it is no biggie. This is what the other people in government are for.
Warren Platts
Aug 19 2020 at 12:01pm
A ^ ~A right there! BAM!
Craig
Aug 19 2020 at 12:14pm
Fresh out of school and working in Midtown, I would occasionally get suggestions dismissed. Disheartening for sure, but of course why should anybody have listened to me about anything, I was young, naive, foolish! Of course those being dismissive had earned their stripes, right? Of course, I’m guilty of this behavior now, but I did learn that its altogether too easy to dismiss people as foolish or stupid, many times even when they might be doing or saying something that is actually stupid or foolish. Indeed I would even suggest one of the better insights on yourself is not to underestimate your own capacity to act foolishly (my will assuredly attest). Yet altogether too many times I have seen very clever people sit on the hubris of their own intelligence. Some make the error of thinking that being smart is ‘enough’ (its not).
Everybody is dumb, stupid is a crutch and leads to a situation where you can wind up seriously underestimating people.
Sure, he’s dumb, he’s stupid, but the overall results are inconsistent with chronic stupidity.
Jon Murphy
Aug 19 2020 at 1:40pm
I get your point, and it is correct, but allow me to add a little nuance.
I think a certain level of deference for established ideas is justified. These ideas (and, at a broader level, institutions) exist for a reason. They’ve emerged and persisted. So, I think a little bit of conservatism (as opposed to “change for the sake of change” or some faux-conservative idea of “things were better before, let’s upend the current system”) and skepticism of new ideas is warranted.
Of course, this presumption of the status quo can be overcome. But the burden of proof is high. The young hotshot with the head full of new ideas needs to show those ideas are more than just the musings of a college kid. They need to exist beyond the blackboard and in reality. And that takes a lot of evidence.
When Adam Smith sought to overturn the popular narrative of the wealth of nations (mercantilism) in his book of the same name, he had a long task ahead of him. The Wealth of Nations ends up being nearly 1,000 pages long. The book where he most directly challenges mercantilism and agrarianism (Book IV) is the second- longest in the book (261 pages in the LF/Glasgow edition), second only to Book I where he lays the theoretical foundation he uses in Book IV to eviscerate mercantilism. Subsequent writing on freedom of trade versus mercantilism are much smaller in length as the idea took hold in the 1800s and never really let go.
Smith laid the groundwork and overturned the status quo. Given the institutions of free trade have generally (though now exclusively) been around for about 300 years now and precised over the largest increase in human wealth and well-being in human history bar none, anyone arguing against these ideas and institutions needs evidence comparable to what Smith levied back in 1776.
TL;DR: I agree 100% that sometimes experts can rely too much on their own intelligence. This can, in turn, lead to siloing and what Roger Koppl calls “expert failure” (Roger and I and some co-authors have a forthcoming paper on this exact issue in regards to the current pandemic). But we must also be careful about simply accepting any new idea as being equal on merit.
Phil H
Aug 20 2020 at 5:52am
Which is why I’m interested in institutions, and in particular in the apparent recent failure of the Republican party to function as it’s supposed to at the national level. Though I do admit, as several people here suggested to me a while ago, that it might be chance and not in fact a sign that the party is significantly more messed up than its rival.
But this is precisely what things like political parties and the press are supposed to weed out. Parties should only let competent politicians come to the fore; the press should kick effectively against charlatans. Neither seems to be happening at the moment.
And one of the possible explanations – though I know you hate to hear it – is extreme wealth. Perhaps it’s better not to have many people in society with unimaginable wealth. So they can’t game the institutions. This is the Piketty argument as I understand it, and in the US and UK it seems to have force.
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 20 2020 at 10:29am
@Phil H: You are right that institutions are useful (and economics has recognized this over the past few decades). However, they cannot do what is impossible to do given the mathematical structure of the universe, that is, defining a social welfare function the way old political liberals à la Dahl believed. What we are seeing now (and it probably goes back to the Progressive Era) is populism of the left and the right claiming they are the embodiment of Rousseau’s “general will,” while economists and political scientists have, during the past 75 years, scientifically buried the idea that voting can deliver the “will of the people.” If that is true, giving more power to the state (to equalize others, for example) and to the necessarily tyrannical or incoherent “people” will just continue to make things worse. Much more can be said, of course. A book that partly goes in your direction but points out to the grave dangers involved (in a way different than what I just adumbrated) is Bertrand de Jouvenel’s On Power.
Jon Murphy
Aug 20 2020 at 10:43am
Given the intransivity of preferences in the general will, it would suggest, according to your definition, that the People, as represented by the voting will, are morons 😛
Pierre Lemieux
Aug 21 2020 at 11:24am
@Jon: Indeed, “the people” as a Hobbesian or Roussauist anthropomorphized being is a moron. But not the people plural, all individually. As you know, it is the central demonstration of social choice theory that every individual can have transitive preferences and that their aggregation through voting (or any other social choice function) may show intransitivity. For our other readers: https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2014/Lemieuxwe.html.
Greg G
Aug 20 2020 at 11:03am
Mencken was not any kind of libertarian in my book. He was hoping for a German victory in WWII. Just to be clear, he was not a Nazi. He despised all governments and the German Nazi government was no exception. But he always reserved by far his greatest contempt for democratic governments. For him a Nazi government was bad, but not as bad as a democratic government.
He despised democracy for the same reason he despised Christianity. He found the idea that people had equal worth in any sense, spiritual or otherwise, to be repugnant.
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