I hereby respectfully draw Co-Conspirator Ilya’s attention to Alan Wolfe’s witty and insightful book review in today’s New York Times of Derek Bok’s The Politics of Happiness. In particular to the following two sentences; should we call this rational political ignorance or not?
Americans are most certainly misinformed. Dumb they are not.
CJColucci says:
I vote “not,” because misinformation is not the same as ignorance, and while there is an argument that one can rationally decide to be ignorant about something, I don’t know an argument that one can rationally decide to be wrong.
February 21, 2010, 2:34 pmA. Criminal says:
[Bok] also calls for the news media to balance their frequent stories of corruption and inefficiency “with accounts of success and accomplishment…
The chocolate ration is up to 25 grams per week!
Bok sounds like a pretty typical political utopian.
February 21, 2010, 2:59 pmA. Criminal says:
[Bok] he also calls for the news media to balance their frequent stories of corruption and inefficiency “with accounts of success and accomplishment…
The chocolate ration is up to 25 grams per week!
Bok sounds like a pretty typical political utopian.
February 21, 2010, 3:02 pmCornellian says:
It would be more precise to say that Americans aren’t any dumber than people in other countries, but that’s not a very high bar.
February 21, 2010, 3:10 pmAllan Walstad says:
I haven’t read Bok’s book, but I’ve had a look at some of this “happiness” literature and Wolfe’s skepticism is more than warranted. Psychologically, of course, people habituate to whatever condition they are in, particularly if they are not continually and personally confronted with a basis for comparison, which tends to equalize “happiness” levels for folks living in different conditions and at different times. So you can do studies showing that people in wealthier countries (or wealthier states within the US) are not much happier than those in the less-wealthy.
One problem with just looking at income and wealth levels is the flip side of habituation, namely, that people respond more to how things are changing than to the sustained absolute level. What happens if policies are implemented based on the idea that wealth isn’t so important, and the result is to stunt the overall growth rate?
A related problem is that happiness (or “life satisfaction, a parameter I’ve seen used) is not all that far from “complacency,” while ambitious people (until their ambitions are all fulfilled) are surely not complacent and not so likely to rate themselves happy or satisfied. But ambitious people in a market economy are the prime drivers of economic change. So again, I’d be extremely cautious about policies, based on “happiness” studies, that might blunt their incentives.
Finally, certain significant things cost more in wealthier countries and states: particularly land and homes. Thus, in important (though perhaps not all) ways, the same income doesn’t go as far toward acquiring desirable living conditions, and I’m not sure that sufficient allowance has been made for this. (Perhaps other commenters here are better acquainted with the literature.) If you don’t compare apples with apples, you can get spurious results.
February 21, 2010, 3:11 pmTRE says:
Indeed, A. Criminal. If governments want to maximize happiness, lobotomies and Soma would seem to be the order of the day.
February 21, 2010, 3:11 pmVernunft says:
A 98 mean IQ puts us below most of Asia and a good chunk of Europe.
February 21, 2010, 3:21 pmShelbyC says:
Disagree. misinformation is, of course, a form of ignorance. And people can rationally decide whether to accept misinformation or verify it. For example, if I see a TV ad by candidate X that says candidate Y is having an affair with a goat, I can decide whether or not to expend time and resources verifying that claim. And how much I spend depends on how big a stake I have in knowing whether or not candidate Y really is boinking said goat. If all I have to lose is a vote that won’t change the election anyway, I probably won’t spend much time.
February 21, 2010, 4:34 pmricky says:
That’s a real can of worms you’re opening up there, Vernunft.
February 21, 2010, 4:54 pmRandy says:
In a country of 300 million + people, anything you say about America and Americans will be both true (since some people fall into that category) and false (since some people are outside that category).
Therefore, broad pronouncements of this sort accomplish nothing and eventually become rather tiresome.
February 21, 2010, 6:31 pmVernunft says:
If we want to be “precise” about it, we might as well use the actual numbers. I agree, though, it could get ugly. For what it’s worth, I don’t see why it’s so important. The difference isn’t great. I think the strength of institutions and whatever else are going to be more important than a tiny difference in mean IQ, and that, at such a large size (300 million), we’ll continue to do fine.
What Randy said, basically.
February 21, 2010, 6:58 pmRational Ignorance Alert! Rational Ignorance Alert! | Liberal Whoppers says:
[...] here: Rational Ignorance Alert! Rational Ignorance Alert! [...]
February 21, 2010, 7:30 pmRational Ignorance Alert! Rational Ignorance Alert! | Liberal Whoppers says:
[...] this article: Rational Ignorance Alert! Rational Ignorance Alert! [...]
February 21, 2010, 7:31 pmDan Lavatan says:
There seem to be fundamental flaws in this sort of research.
While I don’t doubt that materialists may be less happy than non-materialists, individuals can’t rewire their brains to choose to value different things. Many people will be intrensically unhappy no matter what policy the government applies.
So basically, none of this information is actionable.
February 21, 2010, 7:48 pmJohn Moore says:
Probably of more significance is the width of the curve – the number of outliers on the high-IQ side.
But all the compute power in the world does you no good without adequate data. The history of the modern world is replete with high-IQ people adopting utopian ideologies and then really messing things up badly for everyone (and usually killing a lot of them, as the ideologies provide great rationales for the sociopaths draw to the movements).
One of the advantages of America is that lots of people feel free to hold opinions in contradiction to those of their “betters.” This tends to counter the ideological tendencies so often seen running away with other countries. For that matter, it is currently destroying the efforts the Obama Administration’s “best and brightest.”
Furthermore, while the American populace often seems fact deficient, it makes up for (at the tea-party level) with people who rightly believe that their life experience allows them to judge high-fallutin’ ideas better than many of the much better informed.
Americans aren’t highly educated, but relative to other countries, they are pretty wise.
February 21, 2010, 8:16 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Ignorance is Not Stupidity, Redux says:
[...] Ken Anderson draws my attention to Alan Wolfe’s statement that “Americans are most certainly misinformed. [...]
February 21, 2010, 8:46 pmaeolius says:
Dumbest? Probably not
February 21, 2010, 11:18 pmMost gullible? Well I haven’t visited all the nations in the world. But I have visited a fair sample, and of those I would say yes, Americans are the most gullible.
And its not only the blue-haired ladies in tennis shoes, as Madoff has proved.
Vlad Konings says:
[puts fingers in ears] “Ooooh, say can you seeeee…”
February 22, 2010, 1:44 pmAlanDownunder says:
Yes. A complex of mass delusions and myth acceptances is not stupidity. Exactly.
February 22, 2010, 8:14 pmVernunft says:
Anyone who believed in phlogiston was a total idiot!
Hit the bricks.
February 22, 2010, 8:34 pm