"We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe." Arnold mentions the heuristics of expertise, success, and prestige for making this decision. In the case of the latter, "We copy someone because other people are copying them... " I don't think the term "prestige" fully covers this. Many people mindlessly emulate others' opinions to signal affiliation. They are people who think that if they know what is the accepted way to think about something, i.e., what opinion to have about it, they have somehow adequately dealt with it without the effort of learning about it and thinking it through. The NY Times and similar publications cater to such a readership, and indeed they have run advertisements promising that readers "will know how to think about issues." This is the essence of midwittery.
If the term "midwit" is uncharitable, perhaps that might be mitigated by assigning the blame to school. My husband often muses, no one has any idea why we send people to all those years of school, they couldn't answer the question if they tried. (This is a particular bitterness of his.)
Because it doesn't on the face of it, make any sense why people with a middlingly high IQ, should have a more detrimental effect on society than people with a lower IQ.
I think of a woman, of whom I am fond, but who does indeed exemplify the tendency to be spoonfed pablum, her mind suddenly a blank slate, by the NYT/NPR/WaPo. Let us even stipulate that it might all be "correct" - even then it is surely a little strange, because in general women are quite disputatious, or at least fond of gnawing away at a given topic when together.
And yet in any given real world situation (that is *not* a discussion of what she's imbibed above) she has good instincts. She's quick and smart, particularly adept with technology given her age. She's good-humored, she's inquisitive about the natural world.
The only other thing I can think of - she's widowed and mostly alone. I mean, not lonely in a sad way. I just mean, she spends most of her time alone (as I do as well - and I feel it as a danger). Maybe the general atomization of modern life for certain classes means that people don't have enough other people around to ground them, to talk with, to inject reality (even if inadvertently) into their thought processes.
Excellent observations. The reason that midwits might be more detrimental than those of lower cognitive ability is that the former are much more prone to accepting ideologically determined interpretive frameworks that may seem coherent but produce negative or even absurd results, whereas the more cognitively limited might judge matters by their obvious results rather than their purported good intentions.
"We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe."
Yes, but the river's source lies still higher up the mountains. It's downstream of a logically prior canon, which one can demonstrate by pointing out that it's only mostly true, but there are exceptions.
For an example of an exception, consider that people aren't blacklisted no matter what they say, and can be rehabilitated for a limited time and purpose if they say something useful. In legal evidence, consider the "admission against interest" of an indicia of reliability, even from someone who otherwise is not considered trustworthy, or as Tom Bethell (and independently, Joe Sobran) put it, the "strange new respect" the media gives any typical enemy the minute they say anything that supports The Cause. One hears this from pro-Hamas people anytime a Jew says anything anti-Israel, "If a Jew says it, you know it's true!" As if any member of Hamas cares at all about anything any Jew ever says.
On the flipside of that coin, consider how even elite figures belonging to certain causes can get the full cancelation treatment and get thrown under the bus the moment they go heretic on any big important topic. You aren't deciding "who to believe" when the "who" you believe can so easily and quickly be un-believed the moment they walk off the reservation.
So, Try this:
"We decide what to believe by its utility to the side we are on."
That is, just as one assesses people by making the Carl Schmitt fundamental political distinction between "friend and enemy", one assesses / "comes to believe in" ideas, based on whether those ideas are the equivalent of friends or enemies, that is, helpful or hurtful to one's side. That's basically a long-winded definition of Cowen's "Mood Affiliation", right?
So, because people tend to pick and be on "sides" and people in these teams or groups tend to believe the same things - naturally things that tend to raise the status of the group - then believing in what an elite leading figure of that same group says is not much distinguishable from believing things with utility to the group. And since elites / leaders serve as focal points that one knows everyone else in the group is paying attention to, followers parroting what they say and think is the shortcut to group convergence, consensus, and coordination.
But still, the "side we are on" is what comes first, the "who" comes later.
"We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe." Arnold mentions the heuristics of expertise, success, and prestige for making this decision. In the case of the latter, "We copy someone because other people are copying them... " I don't think the term "prestige" fully covers this. Many people mindlessly emulate others' opinions to signal affiliation. They are people who think that if they know what is the accepted way to think about something, i.e., what opinion to have about it, they have somehow adequately dealt with it without the effort of learning about it and thinking it through. The NY Times and similar publications cater to such a readership, and indeed they have run advertisements promising that readers "will know how to think about issues." This is the essence of midwittery.
If the term "midwit" is uncharitable, perhaps that might be mitigated by assigning the blame to school. My husband often muses, no one has any idea why we send people to all those years of school, they couldn't answer the question if they tried. (This is a particular bitterness of his.)
Because it doesn't on the face of it, make any sense why people with a middlingly high IQ, should have a more detrimental effect on society than people with a lower IQ.
I think of a woman, of whom I am fond, but who does indeed exemplify the tendency to be spoonfed pablum, her mind suddenly a blank slate, by the NYT/NPR/WaPo. Let us even stipulate that it might all be "correct" - even then it is surely a little strange, because in general women are quite disputatious, or at least fond of gnawing away at a given topic when together.
And yet in any given real world situation (that is *not* a discussion of what she's imbibed above) she has good instincts. She's quick and smart, particularly adept with technology given her age. She's good-humored, she's inquisitive about the natural world.
The only other thing I can think of - she's widowed and mostly alone. I mean, not lonely in a sad way. I just mean, she spends most of her time alone (as I do as well - and I feel it as a danger). Maybe the general atomization of modern life for certain classes means that people don't have enough other people around to ground them, to talk with, to inject reality (even if inadvertently) into their thought processes.
Excellent observations. The reason that midwits might be more detrimental than those of lower cognitive ability is that the former are much more prone to accepting ideologically determined interpretive frameworks that may seem coherent but produce negative or even absurd results, whereas the more cognitively limited might judge matters by their obvious results rather than their purported good intentions.
"We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe."
Yes, but the river's source lies still higher up the mountains. It's downstream of a logically prior canon, which one can demonstrate by pointing out that it's only mostly true, but there are exceptions.
For an example of an exception, consider that people aren't blacklisted no matter what they say, and can be rehabilitated for a limited time and purpose if they say something useful. In legal evidence, consider the "admission against interest" of an indicia of reliability, even from someone who otherwise is not considered trustworthy, or as Tom Bethell (and independently, Joe Sobran) put it, the "strange new respect" the media gives any typical enemy the minute they say anything that supports The Cause. One hears this from pro-Hamas people anytime a Jew says anything anti-Israel, "If a Jew says it, you know it's true!" As if any member of Hamas cares at all about anything any Jew ever says.
On the flipside of that coin, consider how even elite figures belonging to certain causes can get the full cancelation treatment and get thrown under the bus the moment they go heretic on any big important topic. You aren't deciding "who to believe" when the "who" you believe can so easily and quickly be un-believed the moment they walk off the reservation.
So, Try this:
"We decide what to believe by its utility to the side we are on."
That is, just as one assesses people by making the Carl Schmitt fundamental political distinction between "friend and enemy", one assesses / "comes to believe in" ideas, based on whether those ideas are the equivalent of friends or enemies, that is, helpful or hurtful to one's side. That's basically a long-winded definition of Cowen's "Mood Affiliation", right?
So, because people tend to pick and be on "sides" and people in these teams or groups tend to believe the same things - naturally things that tend to raise the status of the group - then believing in what an elite leading figure of that same group says is not much distinguishable from believing things with utility to the group. And since elites / leaders serve as focal points that one knows everyone else in the group is paying attention to, followers parroting what they say and think is the shortcut to group convergence, consensus, and coordination.
But still, the "side we are on" is what comes first, the "who" comes later.