Couy Griffin, president of Cowboys for Trump, and one of the three commissioners of Otero County in New Mexico, voted against certifying the results of the 2022 elections (including party primaries). The Economist explains (“Trump Truthers Are Vying to Run America’s Local Elections,” June 28, 2022):
This was not a contentious election. The county clerk insisted there was no evidence of fraud, and no candidate questioned the results. Mr Griffin himself admitted his intransigence was not based on any facts. Echoing a favourite conspiracy theory of Donald Trump, the commissioner said he just had a “gut feeling” that something was amiss with the Dominion voting machines.
The County Commission was eventually ordered by the State Supreme Court to certify the results. On the same day that Mr. Griffin, contrary to the two other commissioners, defied the order, he was condemned to two weeks in jail following his previous trial for taking part in the 2021 Capitol riot.
I wish to be on record for having nothing against cowboys nor against American traditions, with some exceptions. But any exception someone sees about something does not justify accepting a big lie because of one’s “gut feeling.” Respect and search for the truth is a minimum condition for any rational human endeavor, an idea that any education worth its salt should instill in each individual. Otherwise, we are begging for government of the guts, by the guts, for the guts.
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jul 5 2022 at 11:21am
I’d go with my gut over the Democratic Party all day, every day, any day.
And if it costs us the Republic, that’s a sacrifice I’m not only willibg to male, its one I want to make.
John hare
Jul 5 2022 at 12:22pm
Go with your gut for things that affect you. Not for the things that affect me with facts I can see.
Craig
Jul 5 2022 at 12:44pm
My opinions carry NO agency. NONE
Jon Murphy
Jul 5 2022 at 1:41pm
Trusting one’s gut is important. I am a strong believer in the importance of gut feelings. I think they occupy part of what Don Lavoie called “inarticulate knowledge”: we don’t know why, but we just “know” something. We cannot explain why.
But a gut feeling, just like any signal, can be misread. Thus, to Pierre’s point, one should listen to a gut feeling, but also search out truth and hold in respect long established traditions and values.
Craig
Jul 5 2022 at 2:11pm
The problem with inquiries into the legitimacy of government, the government can’t NOT stain the inquiry so there is NO evidence that you can rely on that would have greater weight than my gut. You have to remember, I trust my gut, my gut’s good to me. I’m affluent and blessed with a healthy family. Me? I trust me, always will. The government? Not so much, Not only do I NOT trust them, I HAVEN’T trusted them.
Everything they do is riddled with fraud. They’re not entitled to a presunption of legitimacy.
#nationaldivorce
And if that actually were to come to pass, it won’t be Trump 2020, this isn’t about reinstalling Trump as President, it’ll be another chip to the foundation of the government’s legitimacy.
—or, more likely, the government will slowly recover its legitimacy.
So be it, but I’ll never concede the government’s legitimacy.
vince
Jul 6 2022 at 1:35am
You probably have your own favorite examples. Weapons of mass destruction maybe. Covid perhaps. The CIA offers so many more, and meddling in elections in particular.
BC
Jul 6 2022 at 9:48am
The rogue commissioner *is* the government, empowered to certify/oversee elections. He’s abusing his power in not certifying the election when, by his own admission, there is no evidence or legitimate reason arising from *due process* not to. If one is rightfully suspicious of government, then one should be most alarmed of all by government officials eschewing due process in favor of “their gut”. We should not trust the gut of government.
Attempts to recast government officials’ abuse of power for partisan ends as some sort of healthy skepticism of government is pure Orwellian doublespeak.
Jon Murphy
Jul 6 2022 at 10:06am
Amen!
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 6 2022 at 12:52pm
Double amen.
vince
Jul 6 2022 at 2:30pm
“If one is rightfully suspicious of government, then one should be most alarmed of all by government officials eschewing due process in favor of “their gut”. We should not trust the gut of government.”
And by corollary, alarmed by lack of transparency and accountability.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 5 2022 at 9:04pm
Jon: Your last feeling expresses an important idea. I thought I would also catch this sort of thing when I said qualified my reflections as applying to “any rational human endeavor.”
vince
Jul 6 2022 at 1:28am
Of course, everyone agrees on the definition of rational, right?
Jon Murphy
Jul 6 2022 at 7:23am
There is general agreement about what rational means.
What behavior is rational, however, is a different story. Lots of room for disagreement there given the subjectivity of choice. Indeed, one of the reasons I am a classical liberal is because liberalism allows for the greatest scope of finding and acting on rational choices.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 5 2022 at 9:17pm
Craig: There are good general arguments supporting the substance of what you say regarding the legitimacy of the state: see, for example, my review of de Jasay’s The State or Huemer’s The Problem of Political Authority. However, if one presents similar arguments and adds that, depending on the circumstances, it does not matter what is true and what is false (or it depends on his gut feelings), I will not believe him. Even less if, like Trump, he requires that, as a badge of loyalty, I profess to believe the egregious lies he tells. When some French communists defended the “mentir vrai” (“to lie truthfully”), they did not entice anybody rational to follow them.
Craig
Jul 7 2022 at 9:03am
But let’s not pretend that the government hasn’t made enemies here. Let’s remember that I have lived this. That’s what informs my gut.
Let’s say that you happened to be on trial for some felony and I was in the jury. Its very important that as a juror that I be impartial. I mean, if you came to my home, year after year after year and stole more than half my stuff (I dunno, maybe 56% of my income?), and maybe a relative of mine is dead because of perpetual armed conflict, and maybe you’ve mortgaged my children’s future while you’re at it. Well, I might not be a good juror since my previous experience with you might prejudice my judgement about whatever felony you were on trial for.
But with respect to legitimacy, the government doesn’t have a right to a trial by jury and those jurors in the court of public opinion don’t need to be impartial. Oh, no, no, they don’t. Their judgment can be guided by the previous experiences that they’ve had with the government. And they are free to employ whatever burden of proof that they want. Its completely up to me, or you, or Jon to come to that determination in accordance with their own conscience.
Unfortunately the previous conduct of the government is such that it finds itself in a position where it can’t bootstrap its own legitimacy with me. Even if you presented what you consider to be evidence ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ to me it wouldn’t be enough because the evidence itself is tainted. For me, you’d need God himself to come down from the heavens to tell me and that is a burden of proof I am confident no man can sustain.
Meanwhile, tune in, pretty sure Palpatine is going to gaslight us some more on inflation today. Or maybe it’ll be court packing….again.
If some free time allows read through Madison’s notes of the Philadelphia Convention and specifically note Madison’s view then of the Articles of Confederation. Madison views it as a dead letter, very dismissive towards it. Today I view the 1787 Constitution in the same way, we’re in a post-constitutional era, it is effectively a dead letter and it needs to go.
To me, honestly, the mode is irrelevant.
Jose Pablo
Jul 6 2022 at 2:06pm
Gut feelings are a good tool to stablish your null hypothesis.
But then you go on and test your theory.
It feels like part of this is missing in Griffin’s approach.
Jose Pablo
Jul 6 2022 at 2:09pm
“It feels like part of this is missing in Griffin’s approach.”
This is my gut feeling, obviously.
Jim Glass
Jul 6 2022 at 5:51pm
I’ve seen Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist with a Nobel in Econ, talk about this — the reliability of instinct, gut feelings, ‘knowing when you don’t know how you know’.
He says such feelings are reliable only about a subject one fully knows as an expert, and with which one has had much iterative practice that has provided feedback to correct errors.
Examples might be a chess master looking at a new position, an experienced therapist dealing with a new patient, a MLB batter anticipating the next pitch, a married person sensing one’s spouse is just pretending to be happy while actually about to clock him with a frying pan, etc.
Otherwise, he says, check your priors.
The logic is “gut feelings/instinct” come from his System 1 of the brain (the unconscious) which does 98% of the brain’s work reacting instantly but doing no critical, analytical thinking. It’s hard wired by evolution with all kinds of cognitive biases, and “learns” by conditioning – so random experiences at time 1 can produce aberrant conditioned automatic responses forever more. Thus filling therapists’ couches since the days of Freud, fueling business errors, and all kinds of other mistakes.
System 1 becomes really accurate as to making judgements only when System 2, which does all the conscious critical analytical thinking, has trained it to be.
He says.
john hare
Jul 6 2022 at 6:16pm
Makes sense to me. In my business that gut feeling is telling me to check the job, and ignoring it is sometimes quite expensive. 45 years of experience does create some degree of accuracy, though I never take action without finding whatever it is that triggers me.
In my hobbies and interests, my gut feelings are unreliable enough that I cross check to the extent reasonable. Reasonable going higher in proportion to the likelihood of getting directly involved. Quite a number of things I thought were good ideas failed when someone put them into practice.
Trusting the gut feeling of someone else is a whole different game. I want to know their background and track record before spending real effort. A very high percentage of the gut feelings that have been revealed to me by others are simply prejudices from their background. My experience has been that arguing with them is a normally a waste of time, and can trend towards creating enemies.
Jim Glass
Jul 6 2022 at 7:07pm
Aw, it’s better to let Kahneman talk for himself, so I went looking:
Here he speaks a two-minute animation on the basics…
The Ingredients for Expert Intuition
And here’s a full conversation with much more nuance and detail…
Daniel Kahneman Doesn’t Trust Your Intuition
… especially the last half, after minute 18.
I do like his answer to the question: “Why are people in general so enamored with intuition?”
Jose Pablo
Jul 7 2022 at 2:48pm
But this is not an “expert using his/her educated intuition” kind of problem.
As BC correctly points out, you don’t want a government official acting based on his/her intuitions (at least when acting against you).
A judge can be a great expert in criminal behavior and, yet you don’t want him sending you to prison based on his (very well educated) gut feelings. Actually, he is legally obliged (and rightly so) to clear the “clearly erroneous” bar, that goes beyond having “evidence” to the conclusions being supported by “substantial credible evidence”.
I don’t believe gut feelings or educated expert intuition can clear the bar
Although they are pretty good as starting points to guide the search for “substantial credible evidence”. Stopping (or pretending to stop) at the starting point can be anything from laziness to prevarication.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 7 2022 at 10:36pm
Good points, Jim.
nobody.really
Jul 12 2022 at 3:41pm
Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 3 (1979), “Epilogue: The Three Sources of Human Values,” at 528-29.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 13 2022 at 10:32pm
nobody.really: Thanks for reminding us of this Hayekian wisdom. (Without verifying, I assume that the emphases are yours.) Hayek continued to defend these appealing ideas in his posterior works. I often wonder why conservatives don’t like Hayek more! (Why did not Trump quote Hayek? Just joking.) However, Buchanan’s critique is also worthy of consideration. There may be a golden rule there…
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