I think many of these are less suspicious if you think of them being drawn from an n>2 or even just p>2 sample, where actual reality is optimizing for some things you aren't. For instance, with the coops example, I suspiciously think that coops are both more productive than capitalist firms (at least in a wide variety of circumstances) and more promoting of freedom and autonomy. But it's not like capitalist firms and worker coops are the only options - for instance, grabworld (https://mattbruenig.com/2014/06/22/pick-up-basketball-and-grab-what-you-can/) would be even more promoting of freedom and autonomy than coops, up until the point where everyone starved to death. And at least under certain conditions (plantation agriculture, possibly all work in a future where certain neurotech exists) slavery could be the most productive model, but it scores very bad on other criteria. So in this sense it seems like the coincidence (albeit a potentially explainable one) would be if the current model was the one that was best along both dimensions (the standard answer is that capitalist firms get outside funding more easily, for obvious reasons.)
If you think the rest of the world is really optimizing for stupid stuff, then "money on the ground" should be especially available. For instance, both libertarians and socialists generally think open borders would be excellent for both freedom and economic growth, which I think is non-suspicious insofar as immigration restrictions were put in place for nationalist reasons neither care about.. (An example that's so trivial it barely even qualifies as an opinion is "politicians should be less corrupt, it would be growth-enabling and morally better in other ways" - individual politicians have additional things they want to optimize for and can't be perfectly monitored, so corruption will always exceed almost everyone's ideal!) Actually, I think this explains *most* suspicious beliefs - part of the reason most e.g. Christian conservatives agree on a bunch of apparently unrelated issues is that they care less about some values (liberty, equality) and more about others (social cohesion, cultural continuity) than the surrounding culture. In a sense this is a form of "our guys are just smarter and better" but in a way that's selecting on the dependent variable (if someone highly valued liberty and equality and cared less about cultural continuity they probably wouldn't be a conservative Christian.) Feminism and income redistribution are two logically unrelated issues but an overall left-right orientation towards equality vs hierarchy is going to make opinions of them (rationally) highly correlated, with exceptions of course.
The most suspicious beliefs seem like those that are (as best I can tell?) really unrelated, like whether a particular politicians is smarter/less corrupt than her opponent, or is guilty of some particular scandal, or very particular event-related facts. This seems to take up a huge portion of day-to-day discourse, perhaps because of the human need for gossip, perhaps because the news is set up to say "here's what's been happening in the last day" (and most such developments are this stuff, not "here's an argument about abortion.") To go with the Christian conservative example I think they earned points on this, insofar as so much of their leadership said "yeah, Trump is dumb as rocks and would sell his own mother into slavery, but he'll appoint our judges so hold your nose and do the right thing."
I want to say a bit in defense of the Roderick Long line. There's a kind of "natural law theodicy" that I've seen in various places, and which seems to get further support from considerations of fine tuning. Basically, if you think it's a very high priority that the universe run according to regular natural laws (general ones, like laws of physics), *and* you think that very few settings for general natural laws lead to otherwise valuable universes (this is the fine-tuning idea: most settings for apparently free parameters in laws of physics lead to boring universes where no atoms heavier than hydrogen, let alone life, ever form) then you should think that even an omnipotent God is effectively pretty constrained in what macro-level facts can be actualized. The constraint that the macro-level facts have to be generated by microscopic laws is a binding constraint, we might say.
To start with a traditional theodicy problem, think of something like cancer. I think it's pretty plausible that occasional cancer is an inevitable consequence of facts about how cell division works, which are inevitable consequences of more basic chemical/physical laws, which themselves are finely tuned. So there might be no way to pick a different setting of basic physical laws that will still give you a universe with the building blocks for life (replicators that can evolve over time by natural selection) without also eventually giving you a universe with cancer.
But if that's plausible, it seems to me that the same kind of thing should hold for social scientific regularities. If you think of God's choice as picking some settings for human nature, then it's not so hard to imagine different settings where different systems of social/political organization will lead to the best consequences. But if you think of God's choice as picking some settings for the laws of physics, subject to the constraint that they make possible life, and eventually intelligent life, then it's less obvious (highly non-transparent!) whether even an omnipotent God would have any effective choice over the social/political facts.
Very interesting point, but this does once again bristle against the omnipotency of God.
I remember reading a passage from the Chronicles of Narnia as a child that mentions that Aslan himself is constrained by “deep magic.” This allows him to substitute himself as a sacrifice for one of the kid and beat the white witch at her own game — obviously an allegory for Jesus’ crucifixion.
However, it really struck me that Lewis was (perhaps unintentionally) saying that God was bound by ancient laws that preceded himself. Of course Christian Orthodoxy wouldn’t say this. Rather, Orthodoxy would maintain that Jesus is bound by the will of the Father — which is his own — and that the Word is self-same (in some sense.)
But it’s tempting to think that God must be able to limit his own omnipotence — otherwise the secondary, tertiary, and so on effects of whatever first principles he laid down would be impossible, as they must establish logical (and presumably physical) constraints as a consequence. And yet whence come these constraints? From some rational principles (which presumably come from God.) If we’re willing to concede that some rational principles are external to God, then the problem of evil dissolves.
In a sense, this is simply biting the bullet of the problem of evil by accepting a kind of logically-necessarily-limited version of omnipotence. And I think many Christians would not be satisfied with this. For instance, the austere Calvinist tradition I was raised in would reject this solution outright, since it diminishes God’s omnipotent glory or whatever.
Agreed. Here's another limitation of this sort of theodicy. It's an important part of plenty of religious traditions--certainly Christianity--that there will be a perfect afterlife (at least for some).
But if you think it's possible for there to be a state of being that's perfect, it's pretty difficult to use the above theodicy. At the very least, you have a lot of work to do. The above theodicy said there's some reason (unspecified) why it's extremely important that the universe run according to natural laws, and then argued that some evil is a necessary consequence of natural laws. You focused on the latter part, pointing out (rightly, I think) that this takes God to be bound by facts about what's a necessary consequence of what, and that this won't sit well with some versions of the idea that God is omnipotent. But even if we grant the latter part, the former part also raises difficulties. Because if there's eventually a perfect heaven, then if we grant the theodicy so far, heaven must not run according to natural laws (because if it did, it wouldn't be perfect).
But then it's natural to wonder how it can be so important after all that the material universe run according to natural laws. Basically, if the major promisory note in the theodicy as I presented it is "explain why it's so important for the universe to run according to natural laws" then it's a lot harder to fulfill that promisory note if you think that people will eventually enjoy a perfect state of existence in which they're not subject to natural laws.
Of course sometimes suspiciously convenient truths will exist even absent some external reason to raise their probability! Sometimes world do just be like that
I don't think that the vegan beliefs are thaat suspicious. It's better in four ways: health, for the animals, environmentally, and in terms of disease. It's worse in one way: for taste. If you flip a coin a bunch of times, it's not too uncommon that you'll get 4 out of 5 rolls turning out one way.
A stronger argument can be made against suspiciousness here. A diet of oreos, chips and soda is vegan but it's worse in health, environment, taste, than (say) the non-vegan diet of Mediterranean island small holders. It's not veganism or lower cruelty to animals per se that produces the health (etc) benefits, but (broadly) the preponderance of plants, which people eating small amounts of meat can get the same benefit from. The average vegan has a better diet mostly because the western pattern diet is so deleterious.
Aren't health and disease in your enumeration the same point? Also, I would list the animal aspect as fixed, since it's the central tenet basically by definition.
Lastly, healthwise, I only know of it being shown that a (de facto frequently occurring) overconsumption of (some types of?) meat is deletirious to health. I'm not even sure if (all?) other animal products have been shown to be harmful in moderate quantities. And there are definitely vegan ways to ruin your health, perhaps even plausible ones (some plant that's good/ok in moderation, but harmful when overconsumed?). So I don't think the connection between health and veganism is so strong as to strongly necessitate an explanation, especially if a vegetarian diet may not be less healthy per se than a vegan diet.
Overall, I find that veganism has relatively little explaining to do - perhaps a but on the health side, and then regarding the environment.
If you think a belief has both good and bad points, you are not you going to be very enthusiastic about it. So , if you are very enthusiastic about it, you will think it has multiple good points.
#6 halo effect.
System 1 evaluates things as good or bad across the board.
Or maybe it is a generalization of the god of Abraham item? It could be that both convenient beliefs involve a common cause, or that one causes the other. E.g. in the case of libertarian espousal of rights, it could be that societies thrive best when people don’t feel oppressed and are more able to apply their creativity and experiment with different ideas.
I think the veganism one is not like the others. I don't eat meat because I think it's the optimal choice for my health or the environment.
I eat meat because that's what I'm used to, and it's tasty.
So the vegans' claim is "people engage in consumption that is suboptimal for their health and the enviro out of habit and sensory gratification" which does not sound like some implausible, fat fetched claim. It sounds like an obviously true fact of human existence
There's a lot of good quality thinking going on in the comments.... But it strikes me that there is one issue missing: complexity.
A good reason for people to hold suspiciously convenient beliefs is because the world is simply too complex to rationalise your way through all of the various contradictions you're presented with.
Should people be more rigorous than they are currently are? Definitely. Is it possible to eliminate all of the suspiciously convenient beliefs in favour of a more 'objective' model. I doubt it.
Anytime I've drawn people attention to Berlin's two types of freedom I've watched their brains melt in real time. Suddenly realising that the freedom you sought was merely one side of a cultural coin left most quite perplexed about how to respond. The most common answer was: stick with what you know.
I'm not saying this is a good outcome or that id agree with convenient beliefs. Only that our world is too complex to process without individuals absorbing those contradictions. How society should or does handle that is a different question.
"Many libertarians think our rights are incompatible with taxation and that also—as it happens—a taxless society would promote utility best."
OK. But at least *some* libertarians think that our rights are incompatible with taxation precisely *because* a taxless society would promote utility best. David Friedman, for instance, has for years eschewed arguments for libertarianism based on the non-aggression principle in favor of arguments that libertarianism promotes utility.
1. I think to some extent, a person-based explanation could provide some explanation, but only for one side. Take political groups A and B in a mostly two party system, where the two groups agree on little. If people from group A tend to have a higher education, perhaps higher IQ scores, whatever, then you might be inclined to think that they will end up in the correct position more often than group B (all else being equal, which it of course is.)
2. You could also have a less "insane" explanation than the group of people being on average better in some way, or that a slight statistical advantage will produce a higher correctness on many issues. There might be a much more fundamental aspect about how people think about the world (e.g. individualism vs. collectivism, focus on rights vs. focus on flourishing/consequences, or something like that), and perhaps the two groups strongly cluster around one of these particular high order beliefs. In that case, if you can find a plausible explanation for the lower level beliefs being favored by a certain higher order belief, you would have explained a way most of the surprise.
Well, there’s no reason why they should, since they’re conceptually distinct; so if they line up to a suspiciously significant degree, that’s surprising, and calls out for explanation.
And so if they did line up not due to bias it’d suggest some external factor like theism? If so, that makes sense. It was my understanding of the term “suspicious” that tripped me up.
I think many of these are less suspicious if you think of them being drawn from an n>2 or even just p>2 sample, where actual reality is optimizing for some things you aren't. For instance, with the coops example, I suspiciously think that coops are both more productive than capitalist firms (at least in a wide variety of circumstances) and more promoting of freedom and autonomy. But it's not like capitalist firms and worker coops are the only options - for instance, grabworld (https://mattbruenig.com/2014/06/22/pick-up-basketball-and-grab-what-you-can/) would be even more promoting of freedom and autonomy than coops, up until the point where everyone starved to death. And at least under certain conditions (plantation agriculture, possibly all work in a future where certain neurotech exists) slavery could be the most productive model, but it scores very bad on other criteria. So in this sense it seems like the coincidence (albeit a potentially explainable one) would be if the current model was the one that was best along both dimensions (the standard answer is that capitalist firms get outside funding more easily, for obvious reasons.)
If you think the rest of the world is really optimizing for stupid stuff, then "money on the ground" should be especially available. For instance, both libertarians and socialists generally think open borders would be excellent for both freedom and economic growth, which I think is non-suspicious insofar as immigration restrictions were put in place for nationalist reasons neither care about.. (An example that's so trivial it barely even qualifies as an opinion is "politicians should be less corrupt, it would be growth-enabling and morally better in other ways" - individual politicians have additional things they want to optimize for and can't be perfectly monitored, so corruption will always exceed almost everyone's ideal!) Actually, I think this explains *most* suspicious beliefs - part of the reason most e.g. Christian conservatives agree on a bunch of apparently unrelated issues is that they care less about some values (liberty, equality) and more about others (social cohesion, cultural continuity) than the surrounding culture. In a sense this is a form of "our guys are just smarter and better" but in a way that's selecting on the dependent variable (if someone highly valued liberty and equality and cared less about cultural continuity they probably wouldn't be a conservative Christian.) Feminism and income redistribution are two logically unrelated issues but an overall left-right orientation towards equality vs hierarchy is going to make opinions of them (rationally) highly correlated, with exceptions of course.
The most suspicious beliefs seem like those that are (as best I can tell?) really unrelated, like whether a particular politicians is smarter/less corrupt than her opponent, or is guilty of some particular scandal, or very particular event-related facts. This seems to take up a huge portion of day-to-day discourse, perhaps because of the human need for gossip, perhaps because the news is set up to say "here's what's been happening in the last day" (and most such developments are this stuff, not "here's an argument about abortion.") To go with the Christian conservative example I think they earned points on this, insofar as so much of their leadership said "yeah, Trump is dumb as rocks and would sell his own mother into slavery, but he'll appoint our judges so hold your nose and do the right thing."
Really nice post!
I want to say a bit in defense of the Roderick Long line. There's a kind of "natural law theodicy" that I've seen in various places, and which seems to get further support from considerations of fine tuning. Basically, if you think it's a very high priority that the universe run according to regular natural laws (general ones, like laws of physics), *and* you think that very few settings for general natural laws lead to otherwise valuable universes (this is the fine-tuning idea: most settings for apparently free parameters in laws of physics lead to boring universes where no atoms heavier than hydrogen, let alone life, ever form) then you should think that even an omnipotent God is effectively pretty constrained in what macro-level facts can be actualized. The constraint that the macro-level facts have to be generated by microscopic laws is a binding constraint, we might say.
To start with a traditional theodicy problem, think of something like cancer. I think it's pretty plausible that occasional cancer is an inevitable consequence of facts about how cell division works, which are inevitable consequences of more basic chemical/physical laws, which themselves are finely tuned. So there might be no way to pick a different setting of basic physical laws that will still give you a universe with the building blocks for life (replicators that can evolve over time by natural selection) without also eventually giving you a universe with cancer.
But if that's plausible, it seems to me that the same kind of thing should hold for social scientific regularities. If you think of God's choice as picking some settings for human nature, then it's not so hard to imagine different settings where different systems of social/political organization will lead to the best consequences. But if you think of God's choice as picking some settings for the laws of physics, subject to the constraint that they make possible life, and eventually intelligent life, then it's less obvious (highly non-transparent!) whether even an omnipotent God would have any effective choice over the social/political facts.
Very interesting point, but this does once again bristle against the omnipotency of God.
I remember reading a passage from the Chronicles of Narnia as a child that mentions that Aslan himself is constrained by “deep magic.” This allows him to substitute himself as a sacrifice for one of the kid and beat the white witch at her own game — obviously an allegory for Jesus’ crucifixion.
However, it really struck me that Lewis was (perhaps unintentionally) saying that God was bound by ancient laws that preceded himself. Of course Christian Orthodoxy wouldn’t say this. Rather, Orthodoxy would maintain that Jesus is bound by the will of the Father — which is his own — and that the Word is self-same (in some sense.)
But it’s tempting to think that God must be able to limit his own omnipotence — otherwise the secondary, tertiary, and so on effects of whatever first principles he laid down would be impossible, as they must establish logical (and presumably physical) constraints as a consequence. And yet whence come these constraints? From some rational principles (which presumably come from God.) If we’re willing to concede that some rational principles are external to God, then the problem of evil dissolves.
In a sense, this is simply biting the bullet of the problem of evil by accepting a kind of logically-necessarily-limited version of omnipotence. And I think many Christians would not be satisfied with this. For instance, the austere Calvinist tradition I was raised in would reject this solution outright, since it diminishes God’s omnipotent glory or whatever.
Agreed. Here's another limitation of this sort of theodicy. It's an important part of plenty of religious traditions--certainly Christianity--that there will be a perfect afterlife (at least for some).
But if you think it's possible for there to be a state of being that's perfect, it's pretty difficult to use the above theodicy. At the very least, you have a lot of work to do. The above theodicy said there's some reason (unspecified) why it's extremely important that the universe run according to natural laws, and then argued that some evil is a necessary consequence of natural laws. You focused on the latter part, pointing out (rightly, I think) that this takes God to be bound by facts about what's a necessary consequence of what, and that this won't sit well with some versions of the idea that God is omnipotent. But even if we grant the latter part, the former part also raises difficulties. Because if there's eventually a perfect heaven, then if we grant the theodicy so far, heaven must not run according to natural laws (because if it did, it wouldn't be perfect).
But then it's natural to wonder how it can be so important after all that the material universe run according to natural laws. Basically, if the major promisory note in the theodicy as I presented it is "explain why it's so important for the universe to run according to natural laws" then it's a lot harder to fulfill that promisory note if you think that people will eventually enjoy a perfect state of existence in which they're not subject to natural laws.
Of course sometimes suspiciously convenient truths will exist even absent some external reason to raise their probability! Sometimes world do just be like that
Alex Pruss posted an argument along the lines of option #2 on his blog a few years back: https://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-needs-of-human-community.html
Thanks!
I don't think that the vegan beliefs are thaat suspicious. It's better in four ways: health, for the animals, environmentally, and in terms of disease. It's worse in one way: for taste. If you flip a coin a bunch of times, it's not too uncommon that you'll get 4 out of 5 rolls turning out one way.
I agree—and the socialism/worker co-op is probably less suspicious still
A stronger argument can be made against suspiciousness here. A diet of oreos, chips and soda is vegan but it's worse in health, environment, taste, than (say) the non-vegan diet of Mediterranean island small holders. It's not veganism or lower cruelty to animals per se that produces the health (etc) benefits, but (broadly) the preponderance of plants, which people eating small amounts of meat can get the same benefit from. The average vegan has a better diet mostly because the western pattern diet is so deleterious.
Aren't health and disease in your enumeration the same point? Also, I would list the animal aspect as fixed, since it's the central tenet basically by definition.
Lastly, healthwise, I only know of it being shown that a (de facto frequently occurring) overconsumption of (some types of?) meat is deletirious to health. I'm not even sure if (all?) other animal products have been shown to be harmful in moderate quantities. And there are definitely vegan ways to ruin your health, perhaps even plausible ones (some plant that's good/ok in moderation, but harmful when overconsumed?). So I don't think the connection between health and veganism is so strong as to strongly necessitate an explanation, especially if a vegetarian diet may not be less healthy per se than a vegan diet.
Overall, I find that veganism has relatively little explaining to do - perhaps a but on the health side, and then regarding the environment.
#5 something like survivor bias.
If you think a belief has both good and bad points, you are not you going to be very enthusiastic about it. So , if you are very enthusiastic about it, you will think it has multiple good points.
#6 halo effect.
System 1 evaluates things as good or bad across the board.
The list is missing a possibility.
Or maybe it is a generalization of the god of Abraham item? It could be that both convenient beliefs involve a common cause, or that one causes the other. E.g. in the case of libertarian espousal of rights, it could be that societies thrive best when people don’t feel oppressed and are more able to apply their creativity and experiment with different ideas.
Likewise, psycho physical harmony is not much of a puzzle given mind brain identity.
I do not understand.
I think the veganism one is not like the others. I don't eat meat because I think it's the optimal choice for my health or the environment.
I eat meat because that's what I'm used to, and it's tasty.
So the vegans' claim is "people engage in consumption that is suboptimal for their health and the enviro out of habit and sensory gratification" which does not sound like some implausible, fat fetched claim. It sounds like an obviously true fact of human existence
There's a lot of good quality thinking going on in the comments.... But it strikes me that there is one issue missing: complexity.
A good reason for people to hold suspiciously convenient beliefs is because the world is simply too complex to rationalise your way through all of the various contradictions you're presented with.
Should people be more rigorous than they are currently are? Definitely. Is it possible to eliminate all of the suspiciously convenient beliefs in favour of a more 'objective' model. I doubt it.
Anytime I've drawn people attention to Berlin's two types of freedom I've watched their brains melt in real time. Suddenly realising that the freedom you sought was merely one side of a cultural coin left most quite perplexed about how to respond. The most common answer was: stick with what you know.
I'm not saying this is a good outcome or that id agree with convenient beliefs. Only that our world is too complex to process without individuals absorbing those contradictions. How society should or does handle that is a different question.
"Many libertarians think our rights are incompatible with taxation and that also—as it happens—a taxless society would promote utility best."
OK. But at least *some* libertarians think that our rights are incompatible with taxation precisely *because* a taxless society would promote utility best. David Friedman, for instance, has for years eschewed arguments for libertarianism based on the non-aggression principle in favor of arguments that libertarianism promotes utility.
Re belief clusters:
1. I think to some extent, a person-based explanation could provide some explanation, but only for one side. Take political groups A and B in a mostly two party system, where the two groups agree on little. If people from group A tend to have a higher education, perhaps higher IQ scores, whatever, then you might be inclined to think that they will end up in the correct position more often than group B (all else being equal, which it of course is.)
2. You could also have a less "insane" explanation than the group of people being on average better in some way, or that a slight statistical advantage will produce a higher correctness on many issues. There might be a much more fundamental aspect about how people think about the world (e.g. individualism vs. collectivism, focus on rights vs. focus on flourishing/consequences, or something like that), and perhaps the two groups strongly cluster around one of these particular high order beliefs. In that case, if you can find a plausible explanation for the lower level beliefs being favored by a certain higher order belief, you would have explained a way most of the surprise.
Why would it be suspicious for deontic principles to live up with good consequences?
Well, there’s no reason why they should, since they’re conceptually distinct; so if they line up to a suspiciously significant degree, that’s surprising, and calls out for explanation.
And so if they did line up not due to bias it’d suggest some external factor like theism? If so, that makes sense. It was my understanding of the term “suspicious” that tripped me up.
Ya, that’s what I’m driving at
Rule consequentialism is a thing, and it's not the same as pure or act consequentialism..and it's not the same as pure deontology.