Links to Consider, 7/21
Dan Williams on flaws in social epistemology; Lorenzo Warby on how bureaucracies decay; Rob Henderson on college as a sorting mechanism; Timothy Sandefur on libertarians
This has an important implication: In ordinary social life (and in the small-scale societies that characterise almost all of human evolution), humans can typically check what people tell them against reality. That is, although our species has always depended on communication and social trust, we can often test people’s trustworthiness. If Harry tells me that Sally is dull, and I learn firsthand that she is exciting and interesting, I will decrease my trust in Harry.
Nothing like this is true in democratic politics. We can rarely directly verify the information we acquire from others. We can cross-check it against the competing testimony of others, but we cannot directly verify that testimony either.
His pessimistic conclusion:
Given the existence of complexity, invisibility, ignorance, and politically motivated cognition, it seems unlikely that citizens—the ultimate locus of decision-making within such societies—will form responsible, rational, accurate beliefs about reality. And without such beliefs—without informed public opinion—it is difficult to see how open societies can make good collective decisions.
I cannot summarize his post, which is itself a concise summary of a set of ideas. As usual, if a link I provide interests you, then I recommend that you click through.
Meritocratic selection-by-examination selects for capacity, not character. Over time, it selects more and more for manipulative personalities, who undermine the (prosocial) normative coherence of the organisation and shift it more towards serving the interests of such personalities.
People learn how to game the system. Then they freeze the system in place, because of how gaming it helps them get ahead. The only way to avoid that sort of decay is to keep tweaking the system whenever people start to figure out how to game it.
The market tends to weed out decadent systems.
Commerce tends to select against inefficiency, as releasing unused or under-used resources is a profit opportunity. The industrial revolution was not kicked off by academics, or even gentleman-scholars. It was kicked off by jobbing artisans trying to solve technical problems with commercial implications in an institutional environment that allowed that to happen in a cumulative and accelerating way.
A study from 2005 that tracked assortative mating in marriages found that if your highest level of education is a high school diploma, your probability of marrying a college graduate is only nine percent. In contrast, if you hold a college degree, your probability of marrying a fellow college graduate is sixty-five percent. This figure is probably higher today.
But he later writes,
A recent meta-analysis found that the average intelligence of university students and university graduates has dropped to the average of the general population. The college degree is losing its signaling power not only for the labor market, but for assortative mating, too.
If that analysis is correct, then most colleges are not selecting for intelligence. What are they selecting for? Conformity? Willingness to pay tuition?
Philosophers use the term “ideal theory” to describe an argument that posits an optimal society based on abstract, idealized assumptions about people’s behavior. Libertarianism is the opposite of this. It doesn’t assert that people are inherently good, or that they would accomplish great things if government merely got out of the way (although that’s often true). Instead, it recognizes that people are fallible—often ignorant, foolish and malevolent—and concludes that for this very reason, their ability to use government’s coercive powers should be minimized.
Libertarians try to rid people of the notion that someone suddenly becomes endowed with wisdom and benevolence when he moves into a position of power.
substacks referenced above:
@
@
@
@
Re: "The college degree is losing its signaling power not only for the labor market, but for assortative mating, too."
Indeed, the trend is that graduates of selective colleges increasingly delay marriage, partly because female graduates want to observe a clearer signal of a prospective spouse's future earnings. On average, it takes several years to clarify career trajectory, precisely because the college degree has become a noisier signal.
See Muhammed Alparslan Tuncay's dissertation, "Assortative Mating and Inequality":
https://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/1881?ln=en&v=pdf
Re: "If that analysis [cited by Rob Henderson] is correct, then most colleges are not selecting for intelligence. What are they selecting for? Conformity? Willingness to pay tuition?"
Most colleges aren't selective.
The student who applies to college ipso facto passes the conformity bar at non-selective colleges.
Re: revenues. In addition to willingness to pay tuition, colleges rely on *willingness to take out loans.* Remarkably, an offer of college admission goes a long way to qualify youths for large loans. The incentives are screwy. The college finance system is thoroughly gamed by all players. On the one hand, incentives in college finance are a prime example of what Arnold calls "decadent systems." On the other hand, markets and competition among colleges play a large role in college admissions.
Perhaps the Achilles heel is regulatory distortion: massive taxpayer subsidies, guaranteed student loans -- and now forgiveness of loans. College finance is exhibit no. 21,378 in the phenomenon, "baptists & bootleggers" coalition-formation. Ideals of "access" and education-worship play the baptist role.