Clear ideas, obscure minds

Defining ideas, rules and judgments of universal applicability is very hard, as we have discussed in the past, by the sheer complexity of life. It is virtually impossible to cover all the nuances and corner cases a priori, so most of our codes of laws and even books on morality (whatever their flavor) are heavily annotated. Kant himself emphasizes in the enunciation of his "categorical imperative" that the maxim of your actions "were to become" universal, responding to two fundamental impossibilities: on the one hand it is very unlikely that everyone would accept your directives; on the other hand they will fail to have universal validity anyway.

Under these considerations, I have a hard time dealing with certain type of people who, by their own admission (should I say "boasting" instead?) have "very clear ideas", because they transpire a notorious lack of epistemic humility: they do not even consider that their "enlightened" ideas could be wrong in anyway, so they never give it another thought. In fact, they often stand proudly by decades-old ideas as if they were a new El Alamo for them to defend to the last drop of their blood. But, as we will see, this can be a very dangerous attitude.

Photo: Paula Bailey

The first misguided idea is that tastes respond to our own reasoning, when it is quite the opposite: the initial scouting of the available options can be driven by the arguments of how useful or profitable a certain product or service can be, but the search normally ends with us "falling in love" with one of the options and then scuttling to find reasons that support our selection. So while this make the choice understandable (there are reasons in its favor that outweigh the cons) it does not make it reasonable (other options could be better suited for us even if we do not like it that much). This also means that, while everyone is entitled to have an opinion, it does not follow that it is good enough to convince others. One major point of disagreement in this kind of discussions is the weight we assign to different factors. When discussing the purchase of a family car one parent might argue that the new one should be affordable but spacious, while the other one considers that it should be spacious but affordable. By assigning different weight to the size and the price of the car, the former will tend to push for a cheaper (and hence smaller) car, while the latter will defend a bigger (and more expensive) one. They both agree on the virtues of big and affordable cars, but assign different relevance to each factor.

This difference in the evaluation is particularly salient in the tradeoffs between personal and social well-being and links back to the Kant's idea. Some particularly entitled individuals feel that the benefit they receive from a given action is so big that it outweighs any amount of damage or discomfort that it might cause to others or to the society at large, in open contradiction with the categorical imperative. Particularly the argument of "it would not bother me" is often used as a ridiculous excuse, without understanding that it has to be translated to an action that would indeed bother them. Recently a friend of mine was lamenting that the hotel in which he will be spending a week at the beach will not have a child-free zone. While I understand his desire for calm, I think that banning kids for the sake of the adults is edge on Nazism: just because some kids can be bothersome at times that does not mean that we can close a space for all kids all the time. He excused himself saying that it would not bother him if his kid was banned, but the fact is that he is not even considering having a child, so this argument bears very little weight. I wonder what he would think if he found a section of the hotel labeled as "men-free"...

The second misconception is the intrinsic goodness of durable ideas. From a pure logical point of view the fact that an idea has survived for long only makes it hard to beat, not necessarily correct. It is like the 4-minute mile, which stood for many years but in the meantime has been beaten by numerous runners. In fact, many scientific paradigms stand way past its due time by the support of an entrenched community with invested interests in ensuring that the idea that feeds them does not find opposition. Instead, the longevity of the idea is often waved as an argument in its favor, in a proverbial example of argumentum ad verecundiam ("appeal to authority" fallacy).

In personal terms, some people choose to stand by ideas and opinions they forged many years ago precisely to be able to argue that they "have always served me well", even if the reason is that they never bothered to review them. And there is also a very high level of endogamy, where those who are unlikely to reevaluate their believe are likely to appreciate a similar attitude in others. If I were to guess, I would say that their minds are obscure places that they are not so fond of exploring, where many paths have dead ends and others run in endless loops. These people clad themselves in clear ideas just to avoid facing the obscurity in their minds. I, on the other hand, question my own thoughts time and time again, sometimes contradicting my own past conclusions, either thanks to better information or to changes in taste. My mind is intricate, but not obscure, so I do not need to set my ideas in stone to avoid getting lost. How about you? Have a nice weekend.