The Knowledge Illusion #6

Continuing about The Knowledge Illusion:

Chapter 9 is Thinking About Politics.

A community of knowledge can become dangerous. When a group of people don't know much but share a position, the members reinforce one another's sense of understanding, even when there is no real expertise to give it solid support. Group-think diminishes independent thinking and political opposition through propaganda and even terror.

The authors did experiments exploring people's understanding of specific political positions. With few exceptions, the subjects had little to say when asked to explain how a policy worked, its mechanics. Usually when people talk about political policies, they are not engaged in causal thinking. Causal explanations may be hard; they require people to go outside their belief systems. You can't consider the implications of a policy by ruminating on how you feel about it.

When subjects in experiments were asked about their feelings, they didn't change their positions. When the subjects were asked for causal explanations, they better appreciated the shallowness of their understanding.

Proponents of political positions often cast policies in value-based terms in order to hide their ignorance, prevent moderation of opinion, and block compromise. An example is health care. The debate shouldn't be about basic values, because to most people they aren't the issue. The issue is the best way to achieve the best outcomes.

Ballot measures voted on directly by citizens can bypass politicians in power, but neglect the knowledge illusion. Individual citizens rarely know enough to make an informed decision about complex social policy issues even when they think they do.