Good vs. Evil

Tyler Cowen is too easy on the Good vs. Evil model

Good vs. evil thinking causes us to lower our value of a person’s opinion, or dismiss it altogether, if we find out that person has behaved badly.  We no longer wish to affiliate with those people and furthermore we feel epistemically justified in dismissing them.

Sometimes this tendency will lead us to intellectual mistakes.

Take Climategate.  One response is: 1. "These people behaved dishonorably.  I will lower my trust in their opinions."

Another response, not entirely out of the ballpark, is: 2. "These people behaved dishonorably.  They must have thought this issue was really important, worth risking their scientific reputations for.  I will revise upward my estimate of the seriousness of the problem."

I am not saying that #2 is correct, I am only saying that #2 deserves more than p = 0.  Yet I have not seen anyone raise the possibility of #2.  It very much goes against the grain of good vs. evil thinking:  Who thinks in terms of: "They are evil, therefore they are more likely to be right."

 

One of the more deleterious effects of the good vs. evil model is to lead us to underestimate our own potential for error and the potential for our allies errors. If bad things are caused by bad people and we know that we aren’t bad then surely we can’t be causing bad things. Right?

I am sure that Tyler’s #2 is at least partially correct, in that the climatologists behaved as they did because they believed so strongly in the truth of their arguments. However, its precisely this belief – that I know I am right and that the fate of the world depends on others hearing the truth of my words -  that leads to the most disastrous consequences.

We may be evolutionarily programmed to worry about people deceiving us, however, far more dangerous in the modern world is the possibility that people will be deceiving themselves.