Naive Realism and the Unconstrained Vision

explaining why people profess a belief that social problems have simple solutions

Dan Williams writes,

Many people never reflect on the fallibility of their political outlook in this way. Even when it comes to highly complex topics where well-informed experts disagree—economics, geopolitics, social justice, crime, gender, race, immigration, and so on—many treat their political beliefs and preferences as self-evidently correct. They are what psychologists call “naive realists”, embracing the view that

“I see entities and events as they are in objective reality… [M]y social attitudes, beliefs, preferences, priorities, and the like follow from a relatively dispassionate, unbiased, and essentially “unmediated” apprehension of the information or evidence at hand.”

The phrase naive realism is awkward, and I wish there were a different expression for it. In the realm of social policy, no matter how complex the problem, the naive realist says, “The solution is known.”

With ordinary naive realism, I claim that I know the solution. But I might make a different claim, which is that although I do not know the solution, there is an agent who does, such as an expert technocrat (Dr. Fauci), or a computer (AI can plan the economy!). The late Jeffrey Friedman called this third-person naive realism.

To me, naive realism concerning social problems is equivalent to what Thomas Sowell calls the unconstrained vision. Those of us who see social problems as complex have what Sowell calls the constrained vision, in which “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.” Moreover, even the trade-offs are not precisely spelled out for us. On the other hand, for people with the unconstrained vision, social problems have clear solutions, which are blocked by evil people.

The unconstrained vision is just wrong. Social problems really are complex. Why do some people have the unconstrained vision? One possibility is that this is the way the world presents itself to them.

The other possibility is that seeing social problems as having simple solutions is a psychological flaw. It is something people want to believe, even though it is false. Although Jeffrey Friedman opposed reducing other people’s beliefs to psychological flaws¹, I think that those of us with the constrained vision have little choice but to see the unconstrained vision as a psychological flaw. It is impossible for Dan Williams or me to believe that the unconstrained vision, in which social problems have clear and obvious solutions, is true. So we look for psychological roots for people having false beliefs.

This in turn leads Williams to

six possible explanations. Importantly, they are not exclusive. Multiple factors might be relevant, and different factors might be relevant in different cases. Moreover, perhaps there are others I do not list here, in which case I would love to hear about them.

1. Ignorance

2. Evolutionary mismatch

3. No skin in the game

4. Social benefits

5. Politics demands action

6. The problem of unilateral reasonableness

In evolutionary terms, how could a false belief survive? In particular, why would there be a persistent belief that social problems have simple solutions? How could such a belief find “hosts” (people who hold the belief), and how could the hosts in turn survive?

Williams is suggesting that the benefits of having a belief must exceed its costs. “No skin in the game” says that when you falsely believe that there are simple solutions to problems like homelessness or education or health care, being wrong costs you nothing. You personally do not suffer from this false belief. See Rob Henderson on luxury beliefs, which cost people nothing to espouse and instead mark them as elites.

If I do not profess a belief that social problems have a simple solution, then people will accuse me of not caring about the social problem. They can accuse me of wanting to let people suffer from homelessness or poor education or poor health or what have you.

Thus, we arrive at my explanation for naive realism, or as I prefer to describe it—the belief that social problems have simple solutions. People who espouse such a belief appear to care deeply about a social problem. Instead, if I recognize the complexity of the problem, then I appear not to care as much about it.

When people equate simplistic thinking with caring more about the problem, simplistic thinking is socially rewarded. And because you are not personally making life choices based on your beliefs about social problems, a simplistic view that is wrong does not cost you anything.

If you admit that social problems are complex, then you are penalized for doing so, even though you are correct. People will accuse you of not caring.

In fact, if you dare to disagree with a commonly-held simplistic belief about the solution (“go green”) to a complex social problem, you are in even more trouble. You will be regarded as evil.

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In politics, the truth is not self-evident. So why do we act as if it is?

1. On p. 41 of Power without Knowledge, Friedman writes, “The urge to demonize the opponent is, in Lippman’s view, grounded in a failure of epistemological imagination. If I fail to allow that there could be plausible interpretations of political affairs that are different from my own, a plausible explanation of my opponent will be that, seeing the same reality I see, she obtusely claims not to see this manifest reality—the better, presumably, to advance a nefarious agenda of some kind.

Closely related to this concern is David McRaney’s concept of asymmetric insight, in which you claim to know the opponent’s true motives to which the opponent himself is blind. In this essay, I am skating quite close to this line, and perhaps going over it. I am saying that those with a simplistic view of policy solutions are unconsciously motivated by a desire to seem to care more about the problem than those who view the problem as complicated.