I don't think this is accurate. I guess there are smart people who hold dumb views, but there are definitely views that are just dumb. Obviously there are intelligent people who believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories, but that doesn't change the fact that the conspiracy theory is dumb and the smart person's embrace of it is a sign of some character weakness or blind spot.
Yeah, but I think a big chunk of common views are in fact pretty dumb. Glance at Facebook comments on any local news posts and you’ll see tons of comments along of the lines of “I believe I heard somewhere that [some obviously incorrect fact that makes no sense and isn’t even possible]”.
“A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that involves a secret plot by powerful and often sinister individuals or groups, often when other, more conventional explanations are more likely”
Imagine a North Korean "conspiracy theorist" who believes that his government was lying when they said South Korea is a poverty-stricken land. What would you think of such a North Korean? Character weakness? Blind spot?
I think it comes down to your prior about how much to trust authorities. If your prior is that authorities are untrustworthy, no amount of "evidence presented by authorities" will shift that prior much. And arguably, this represents rational updating on evidence! Conspiracy theories are thus quite philosophically interesting, in my view.
Yes! This is the key to epistemic freedom. Took me way too long to learn.
I used to try to count the smart people I knew of on each side to see which had more, and I would come up with arbitrary reasons that certain smart people didn’t count toward the tally. It was pretty stupid. Seems that a lot of people still operate under this assumption though.
There may be intelligent people on both sides of some issues, but some issues there just isn’t. And these issues might have lots of people on the other side, but the issue is so heavily biased in terms of good faith arguments it doesn’t matter. Issues like creationism, climate change existing at all, astrology, and flat earth. It’s fun to try to prove the earth is round yourself, but you’re not going to become open minded the right way by treating it seriously.
I dislike people who say “that’s just your opinion” or “maybe that’s only your truth” or (this one was in response to me saying bona fide ghosts who haunt houses aren’t real) “people who don’t believe will always have their reasons.”
"If there are people smarter than you who disagree with you on some subject, what makes you so confident that you’re right and they’re wrong?"
Belief formation is not purely a function of intelligence. Kurt Gödel was smarter than me by a large margin. It is also the case that he believed, toward the end of his life, that someone was trying to poison him. (His wife was his food tester, and after she died he starved to death – it's a sad story). I don't think Gödel was correct about this, nor do I think that his general intelligence lends any credence to his view. All the examples you're giving – pro-life, biblical literalism, animal suffering – have a strong emotional component that could cause even a very smart person to form beliefs that fit a picture of the world that they are already invested in, rather than beliefs that fit the world they actually live in.
It's tricky though: I'm sure a really committed and well prepared Holocaust denier could destroy me in a debate. The same is probably true for Young Earth Creationism. But I still think I'm justified in refusing to consider like that seriously, irrespective of the fact (for instance) William Shockley is a whole lot smarter than me.
I once had an argument with a very intelligent guy who thought the moon landing was fake. He said, "How do you account for the fact that the astronauts would die from radiation without the protection of the Earth's atmosphere?" And my response was, "Uhhh...I've never thought about that particular aspect of space travel."
Of course, when I went home and looked up an answer, there was a very quotidian explanation about the length of time spent in space, why they chose to go when the moon was closest, the fact that they would have an increased chance of cancer, but it was small, etc.
debates aren't about what you think they're about. if you're, like, 3 times as hot as your opponent, you will win no matter what your opinion is. 5 times might make it harder, though.
But I’d add that smartness doesn’t have a monopoly on much of anything except…smartness. Smartness doesn’t monopolize morality or happiness or goodness or righteousness or whatever. It’s a resource, but it’s currently the most fetishized resource on earth—probably more overvalued than at any point in human history. Substack is particularly infatuated with it. If intelligence were a commodity in a current market of valuable qualities, I’d probably consider it a sell.
> This should be a cause for deep humility. If there are people smarter than you who disagree with you on some subject, what makes you so confident that you’re right and they’re wrong? While one can still hold views tentatively, this should, at the very least, make them no longer near-certain in the views they hold.
This is where I think that you, and a lot of philosophers, tend to go wrong. What does it matter if a smart person believes a dumb thing? That happens all the time. I don't think I'm immune to it. But whatever views I hold, I try to hold them for good reasons. "River is smart" is almost never a premise that appears in my reasoning for my beliefs. It's just not the point. I evaluate my beliefs, and my degree of confidence in them, based on the evidence I see around me and the rational arguments, not based on who is smart or what the smart people believe. So observing that a smart person disagrees with me generally shouldn't cause me to update much at all.
But you should think there's some sizeable chance that you are misevaluating arguments and the force of arguments on both sides if you find yourself at odds with loads of smart people.
Sadly, I think this is a reason to take (interesting) ideas less seriously. I think it calls for epistemological nihilism. Not on mundane questions where quite often smart people’s views do converge, but on controversial issues. I mean, come on, once you recognize the widespread disagreement amongst disinterested truth-seekers on a topic it’s way more reasonable to just say, “I don’t know (and you don’t either),” than “I’m right and you are all confused.” I mean, on what grounds are you to admit 1) my opponents are as competent at thinking as I am and 2) they are as informed on relevant factual matters as I am, but still hold that somehow the lot them are wrong and you are right? That seems totally ridiculous.
Eh, I think this is true if you use "smart" to mean literal IQ but I think if you combine high IQ and a few other things like "well-reasoned", "the belief in question is believed for well-founded reasons", "the well-founded reasons have any degree of similarity with commonly-cited reasons", etc, many common views probably have ~0 support among the smart++ crowd.
For example, I'm not aware of anyone smart++ believing we should have higher tariffs, if we are excluding galaxy-brained reasons*.
*I'm not using this as an intentional loophole. An example of a "galaxy-brained" reason is "we should increase tariffs because tariffs are worse for economic growth and economic growth increases climate change and climate change is bad for wild animal welfare because it increases primary biomass and wild animals have net negative lives." If the only smart people you know who supports tariffs do so because of reasons like that, I'm comfortable calling their beliefs substantively different from normal "support tariffs beliefs" in the usual sense.
All sides think they are “well-reasoned”. I like your tariff example. I can’t wrap my head around tariffs being good. But there are intelligent, thoughtful people who 100% are saying the same thing to their buddies about you and me. They’re like, “can’t they see how stupid they are to ignore the threats to US global supremacy from the skewed world trade environment? How can they be so gullible to believe this Econ 101 kid-theory about comparative advantage and gains from trade? That’s good as far as it goes, but there are other more important considerations! It’s just neoliberal Utopianism. They think everything is just about money and economics. It’s not.” I can’t make it sound convincing to you because (1) I’m not an expert on their views and (2) they can’t make it sound convincing to me. But we don’t really have excellent meta reasons (I don’t think) to say our brains are functioning well and they are the delusional ones. Again, from a detached perspective, their position and ours are symmetrical. We both think the other side is crazy and can’t fathom how they can be so wrongheaded.
Yeah I don't think those people are smart and well-reasoned in the other senses though. Like I expect saying that to be correlated with being unreasonable on a wide range of questions, them to do worse on objectively measurable questions of judgment like forecasting, avoiding cognitive biases, etc, etc.
Sure, if you choose those issues carefully where there are good arguments on both sides. But how many smart people claim climate change is a communist conspiracy?
Here is what I think. A lot of things can be treated as a political question, in which every citizen's vote is equal, or a professional question better left to the expert. The second is usually smarter. Imagine someone who does not believe children can be trans. OK, then what to do with the child psychologists doing research for decades showing they can? Are those bad studies? Wrong methodology? Fraud? But there is intense competition in academia, we know that? Claudine Gay's plagiarism accusations probably were coming from a place that a lot of people would like to be the President of Harvard. So anyone who actually is will find many competitors comb through all their work. Shouldn't we assume that such competitive systems work?
> Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the differences of opinions among the great sages, saints, and yogis? - Ashtavakra Gita
I am going to disagree, but it may be a quibble about “stupid” as a term.
It is possible for people who think deeply to reach radically different conclusions. One or both could be wrong, but then we are likely all wrong at some level due to imperfect information and a nagging difficulty with knowing the future.
But there are also stupid responses, which I will define for clarity’s sake as “shallow axioms.” These are cognitive cheats where a person relies on something as axiomatically true that is likely far more nuanced or even correct. For example “Unions are bad” or even “Unions are good.” Unions are unequivocally good and the best explanation of the American middle class of the 20th century, and they are enablers of poor productivity, bureaucracy, and even corruption. Both are true, but stupid people claim one or the other as a priori truth.
So smart people can disagree, but people who disagree aren’t perforce smart.
I don't think this is accurate. I guess there are smart people who hold dumb views, but there are definitely views that are just dumb. Obviously there are intelligent people who believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories, but that doesn't change the fact that the conspiracy theory is dumb and the smart person's embrace of it is a sign of some character weakness or blind spot.
The title wasn't hyper literal. I didn't mean this was true of literally 100% of views.
Yeah, but I think a big chunk of common views are in fact pretty dumb. Glance at Facebook comments on any local news posts and you’ll see tons of comments along of the lines of “I believe I heard somewhere that [some obviously incorrect fact that makes no sense and isn’t even possible]”.
“A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that involves a secret plot by powerful and often sinister individuals or groups, often when other, more conventional explanations are more likely”
Imagine a North Korean "conspiracy theorist" who believes that his government was lying when they said South Korea is a poverty-stricken land. What would you think of such a North Korean? Character weakness? Blind spot?
I think it comes down to your prior about how much to trust authorities. If your prior is that authorities are untrustworthy, no amount of "evidence presented by authorities" will shift that prior much. And arguably, this represents rational updating on evidence! Conspiracy theories are thus quite philosophically interesting, in my view.
That wouldn’t be a conspiracy theory though. Of course governments lie but conspiracy theories are different from acknowledging that.
What's the difference specifically?
Don't tell me that it's only consider a "conspiracy theory" if it's false...
some conspiracy theories are fun. if they make life more interesting, why are they dumb?
This Substack has given me more Substacks to subscribe to than the number of dead people’s ballots I filled out for Kamala. Thanks!
I just wish Aron Wall was on Substack (unless you count Amos Wollen, who is just the same person).
Yes! This is the key to epistemic freedom. Took me way too long to learn.
I used to try to count the smart people I knew of on each side to see which had more, and I would come up with arbitrary reasons that certain smart people didn’t count toward the tally. It was pretty stupid. Seems that a lot of people still operate under this assumption though.
There may be intelligent people on both sides of some issues, but some issues there just isn’t. And these issues might have lots of people on the other side, but the issue is so heavily biased in terms of good faith arguments it doesn’t matter. Issues like creationism, climate change existing at all, astrology, and flat earth. It’s fun to try to prove the earth is round yourself, but you’re not going to become open minded the right way by treating it seriously.
I dislike people who say “that’s just your opinion” or “maybe that’s only your truth” or (this one was in response to me saying bona fide ghosts who haunt houses aren’t real) “people who don’t believe will always have their reasons.”
"If there are people smarter than you who disagree with you on some subject, what makes you so confident that you’re right and they’re wrong?"
Belief formation is not purely a function of intelligence. Kurt Gödel was smarter than me by a large margin. It is also the case that he believed, toward the end of his life, that someone was trying to poison him. (His wife was his food tester, and after she died he starved to death – it's a sad story). I don't think Gödel was correct about this, nor do I think that his general intelligence lends any credence to his view. All the examples you're giving – pro-life, biblical literalism, animal suffering – have a strong emotional component that could cause even a very smart person to form beliefs that fit a picture of the world that they are already invested in, rather than beliefs that fit the world they actually live in.
Rule people in on the basis of how they think, rather than ruling people out on the basis of their views.
smart people have the worst opinions because they're really really good at convincing themselves of whatever they want to believe.
"dumb" people are:
- more fun
- people with better (and "smaller") opinions
- better looking
- more fun (2nd time)
- hotter
- more interesting
- not utilitarians (connected to "more interesting")
if i had to live in the bay area i would end myself.
i like how the greco pwnage is paywalled
It's tricky though: I'm sure a really committed and well prepared Holocaust denier could destroy me in a debate. The same is probably true for Young Earth Creationism. But I still think I'm justified in refusing to consider like that seriously, irrespective of the fact (for instance) William Shockley is a whole lot smarter than me.
Yes, I think this gets to the heart of it, which is why I like this post so much: https://benthams.substack.com/p/conspiracy-theorists-arent-ignorant
I once had an argument with a very intelligent guy who thought the moon landing was fake. He said, "How do you account for the fact that the astronauts would die from radiation without the protection of the Earth's atmosphere?" And my response was, "Uhhh...I've never thought about that particular aspect of space travel."
Of course, when I went home and looked up an answer, there was a very quotidian explanation about the length of time spent in space, why they chose to go when the moon was closest, the fact that they would have an increased chance of cancer, but it was small, etc.
debates aren't about what you think they're about. if you're, like, 3 times as hot as your opponent, you will win no matter what your opinion is. 5 times might make it harder, though.
“No Views Have A Monopoly on Smartness”
I agree in the sense you mean it.
But I’d add that smartness doesn’t have a monopoly on much of anything except…smartness. Smartness doesn’t monopolize morality or happiness or goodness or righteousness or whatever. It’s a resource, but it’s currently the most fetishized resource on earth—probably more overvalued than at any point in human history. Substack is particularly infatuated with it. If intelligence were a commodity in a current market of valuable qualities, I’d probably consider it a sell.
> This should be a cause for deep humility. If there are people smarter than you who disagree with you on some subject, what makes you so confident that you’re right and they’re wrong? While one can still hold views tentatively, this should, at the very least, make them no longer near-certain in the views they hold.
This is where I think that you, and a lot of philosophers, tend to go wrong. What does it matter if a smart person believes a dumb thing? That happens all the time. I don't think I'm immune to it. But whatever views I hold, I try to hold them for good reasons. "River is smart" is almost never a premise that appears in my reasoning for my beliefs. It's just not the point. I evaluate my beliefs, and my degree of confidence in them, based on the evidence I see around me and the rational arguments, not based on who is smart or what the smart people believe. So observing that a smart person disagrees with me generally shouldn't cause me to update much at all.
But you should think there's some sizeable chance that you are misevaluating arguments and the force of arguments on both sides if you find yourself at odds with loads of smart people.
Sadly, I think this is a reason to take (interesting) ideas less seriously. I think it calls for epistemological nihilism. Not on mundane questions where quite often smart people’s views do converge, but on controversial issues. I mean, come on, once you recognize the widespread disagreement amongst disinterested truth-seekers on a topic it’s way more reasonable to just say, “I don’t know (and you don’t either),” than “I’m right and you are all confused.” I mean, on what grounds are you to admit 1) my opponents are as competent at thinking as I am and 2) they are as informed on relevant factual matters as I am, but still hold that somehow the lot them are wrong and you are right? That seems totally ridiculous.
Eh, I think this is true if you use "smart" to mean literal IQ but I think if you combine high IQ and a few other things like "well-reasoned", "the belief in question is believed for well-founded reasons", "the well-founded reasons have any degree of similarity with commonly-cited reasons", etc, many common views probably have ~0 support among the smart++ crowd.
For example, I'm not aware of anyone smart++ believing we should have higher tariffs, if we are excluding galaxy-brained reasons*.
*I'm not using this as an intentional loophole. An example of a "galaxy-brained" reason is "we should increase tariffs because tariffs are worse for economic growth and economic growth increases climate change and climate change is bad for wild animal welfare because it increases primary biomass and wild animals have net negative lives." If the only smart people you know who supports tariffs do so because of reasons like that, I'm comfortable calling their beliefs substantively different from normal "support tariffs beliefs" in the usual sense.
All sides think they are “well-reasoned”. I like your tariff example. I can’t wrap my head around tariffs being good. But there are intelligent, thoughtful people who 100% are saying the same thing to their buddies about you and me. They’re like, “can’t they see how stupid they are to ignore the threats to US global supremacy from the skewed world trade environment? How can they be so gullible to believe this Econ 101 kid-theory about comparative advantage and gains from trade? That’s good as far as it goes, but there are other more important considerations! It’s just neoliberal Utopianism. They think everything is just about money and economics. It’s not.” I can’t make it sound convincing to you because (1) I’m not an expert on their views and (2) they can’t make it sound convincing to me. But we don’t really have excellent meta reasons (I don’t think) to say our brains are functioning well and they are the delusional ones. Again, from a detached perspective, their position and ours are symmetrical. We both think the other side is crazy and can’t fathom how they can be so wrongheaded.
Yeah I don't think those people are smart and well-reasoned in the other senses though. Like I expect saying that to be correlated with being unreasonable on a wide range of questions, them to do worse on objectively measurable questions of judgment like forecasting, avoiding cognitive biases, etc, etc.
Sure, if you choose those issues carefully where there are good arguments on both sides. But how many smart people claim climate change is a communist conspiracy?
Here is what I think. A lot of things can be treated as a political question, in which every citizen's vote is equal, or a professional question better left to the expert. The second is usually smarter. Imagine someone who does not believe children can be trans. OK, then what to do with the child psychologists doing research for decades showing they can? Are those bad studies? Wrong methodology? Fraud? But there is intense competition in academia, we know that? Claudine Gay's plagiarism accusations probably were coming from a place that a lot of people would like to be the President of Harvard. So anyone who actually is will find many competitors comb through all their work. Shouldn't we assume that such competitive systems work?
That Mark guy is in the right.
> Who does not end up with indifference to such things and attain peace when he has seen the differences of opinions among the great sages, saints, and yogis? - Ashtavakra Gita
I am going to disagree, but it may be a quibble about “stupid” as a term.
It is possible for people who think deeply to reach radically different conclusions. One or both could be wrong, but then we are likely all wrong at some level due to imperfect information and a nagging difficulty with knowing the future.
But there are also stupid responses, which I will define for clarity’s sake as “shallow axioms.” These are cognitive cheats where a person relies on something as axiomatically true that is likely far more nuanced or even correct. For example “Unions are bad” or even “Unions are good.” Unions are unequivocally good and the best explanation of the American middle class of the 20th century, and they are enablers of poor productivity, bureaucracy, and even corruption. Both are true, but stupid people claim one or the other as a priori truth.
So smart people can disagree, but people who disagree aren’t perforce smart.