There’s a thought that’s been on my mind for a while now. post Scott Sumner’s article helped me focus. He argued that sometimes we can’t understand and appreciate the way people think in fundamentally different ways than you do, and how this can lead to political polarization. He said:
People who can’t accept that other people like modern art suffer from a lack of imagination, an inability to understand that other people process visual information differently than they do. People who see the opposition as evil often fail to understand that not everyone sees political issues the way they do.
This is similar to what Jeffrey Friedman calls “Conceptual heterogeneity” – the idea that different minds process information in different ways. As Friedman explains,
Because of the conceptual heterogeneity between my web of beliefs and yours, I cannot know how you will interpret the situation, and therefore how you will react to it. Even if I knew your situation – if you were anonymous to me, like most agents trying to predict the behavior of technocrats – I cannot know how you will subjectively interpret the situation, and therefore how you will react to it, if you and I are conceptually heterogeneous.
While Friedman said that differences in how we process information lead to differences in interpretation and action, a more common example in my mind, made clear in Scott Sumner’s post, is the subjective imperceptibility of others. experience, It’s not just their thought processes. If you look at modern art and find something valuable about the experience, but don’t consider that other people have subjective experiences that are fundamentally inaccessible to you, you might think that everyone who claims to enjoy the experience of looking at modern art is just role-playing. Call this phenomenon “experiential heterogeneity.” To paraphrase Friedman’s explanation, it could be explained as follows:
Because of the experiential heterogeneity between my subjective experience and yours, I cannot know how you experience the situation, and therefore how you react to it. Even if I knew your situation – if you were anonymous to me, like most agents trying to predict the behavior of technocrats – it’s a difficult problem – if you and I are experientially heterogeneous, I cannot know how you subjectively experience the situation, and therefore how you react to it.
Besides contemporary art, there are two other instances where experiential heterogeneity can come into play. The first comes from my own experience, the second from someone else.
I used to be a very heavy smoker. After I finished my service in the Marines, I worked at a range, and during my final year I was the range safety officer and the primary combat marksman trainer for the annual rifle qualification test and pre-deployment combat training. This job required me to be outdoors all day, and the reason for this was obvious: I didn’t have to go outside to smoke. I could smoke whenever I wanted, and back then I could easily finish 3 packs a day. Eventually, I decided to quit. I knew that my income would drop after I left the Marines and went to college, so I needed to cut back on my expenses. (Plus, there were a few other great reasons to quit. I’m sure you can think of some!) The difficulty of quitting is a well-known cultural meme, and I knew that after years of heavy smoking, I was going to have a tough time making the transition. Except, what I “knew” wasn’t true. I didn’t really have a hard time quitting. In fact, it was pretty easy for me. What’s the takeaway here? There are two possibilities.
- Quitting smoking is actually not that hard. All the smokers who complain about the difficulty of quitting are just big babies.
- In fact, quitting smoking is really hard, but I have tremendous willpower, so I can easily do things that are too difficult for the average person.
Both of these interpretations give me an opportunity to show off my superiority, but I don’t think that’s true. I know people who have had a tremendous amount of trouble quitting, and they weren’t just weak-willed babies. I couldn’t disparage them for lacking willpower or discipline because I knew too much about the many difficult things they had accomplished. To be honest, I can’t claim to have a uniquely strong will. I’ve had many things in my life that most other people would consider easy challenges.
So what is the third option? My subjective experience of quitting smoking was simply different from most other people’s. So it’s not that I had more willpower than my friends who had a hard time quitting. It’s just that I probably needed a lot less willpower than they did. It’s tempting to say, “Quitting smoking isn’t that hard. I know from personal experience! I’m just lazy!” But that’s not true. The truth is, I have no idea what the quitting process is like for other people. And neither do you.
The second case is that of Ben Carpenter, one of the many online fitness personalities on YouTube. If you don’t mind profanity, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch his videos. videoBut here’s the short version: Ben himself is very thin (he’s a fitness model and training coach), but his sister has struggled with weight her whole life. He talks about dieting to ridiculously low body fat levels for photo shoots and struggling with hunger like crazy while trying to maintain that level of leanness. His sister asked him how he was feeling, and he described how intense his hunger was, how nothing would stop him from eating, and how all he could think about after he ate was when he would eat again. Her response was, “You basically described how I feel every day.” Carpenter describes the epiphany this gave him:
Dieting to this level of leanness is the hardest fitness thing I’ve ever done. I don’t think I could have done it if you offered me $100,000 to maintain it for a year. And I’m not rich. Anyone who’s ever dieted to 6% body fat or less without drugs will tell you how incredibly insatiable their appetite is. But I only had to fight my appetite for a few weeks. She did it. age…Basically, my sister has to put in more effort and willpower than I do to fight hunger cues her entire life. always have.
Ben Carpenter describes his sister as “a very hard worker,” so he knows full well that her struggle with weight control isn’t just because she’s a lazy, weak-willed eater. But if you assume that other people’s subjective experiences are similar to yours, you might assume that people like Emily Carpenter are lazy and weak-willed, despite the incredible effort and commitment she shows in other aspects of her life. But you don’t know what someone else’s hunger feels like to them. You can’t know.
So where does all this leave us? Well, in cases like the one I described above, in terms of addiction or weight management, my view on the former and Ben Carpenter’s view on the latter are generally seen as the kinder and more sympathetic view, while the view that everything comes down to willpower and voluntary choice is seen as the more sober view. On the other hand, the view of libertarians and classical liberals that leave certain problems to the “market” is often seen as the sober view. To some, it sounds cold and indifferent. say “Having a safe job is good, but so is the money. In modern America, unusually dangerous jobs—fishing, logging, truck driving—pay more than other working-class jobs because people are reluctant to risk death or injury on the job. And in a free society, it’s a good thing that different people can make different choices along the risk-reward spectrum.” But I think that view is not callous or uncaring, but rather shows genuine respect and compassion for people.
Libertarians and classical liberals are much more likely to accept that “it’s a good thing that other people can make different choices on the risk-reward spectrum.” But modern liberals and progressives resist this. They see that kind of choice as suspect and feel obliged to overturn it through the state. It often expresses distrust that anyone can truly make such a choice. No one would. sincerely They believe that taking on higher risks for higher pay is a good deal. Such choices must necessarily be made under duress or perhaps out of ignorance, and their choices are vulnerable to external veto by third parties.
Scott Sumner concluded by saying, “Don’t assume you know what’s going on in other people’s minds. You don’t. Don’t you think your neighbor needs a painkiller? How would you? We need free markets because we don’t know what other people see, feel, and taste.” I completely agree. Modern liberals see other people making wrong or misguided choices and think that this shows that those choices aren’t real or worthy of respect, and therefore can be rejected. Classical liberals see the same thing and understand that those choices, while strange to us, are nonetheless worthy of respect and should not be subject to outside interference. Because we can’t truly know other people’s thoughts or subjective experiences, we can’t truly know what value such arrangements provide to them. If I see someone taking a higher risk and getting a higher paycheck and it seems crazy to me, that’s great evidence that those compromises aren’t valuable to me, but there’s no evidence that those compromises aren’t valuable to them. As is often the case, Adam Smith said it best:
If a statesman were to dictate to the people how they should employ their capital, he would not only be exercising unnecessary caution, but would be assuming a power which cannot be safely committed to any individual, to any house or senate, and nothing could be more dangerous than to place it in the hands of men who are foolish or presumptuous enough to think themselves qualified to exercise it.
