Many expect to see a correlation between cynicism, thinking that low motives drive behavior, and pessimism, thinking the future will be bleak. I defy this, being both cynical and optimistic. But I’m curious; is this correlation real, and if so why? If not, why expect it?
I am skeptical that most people have beliefs and, in particular, I’m skeptical that these terms are for describing beliefs.
Taking these definitions as given, what do they predict? An outside view extrapolation of the future from the present should not depend too much on understanding how the present works, only whether it works and how it has changed in the past. If we live in a time of progress, recognizing that should not depend on understanding what drives progress. Trying to call the peak may depend on details, but if people’s motives haven’t changed over the centuries, the mere opinion on motives should not single out the present day for a reversal of trends.
But people with specific different beliefs about how the world works should make different predictions about specific proposals and have different beliefs about their likelihood of success. Cynics should be pessimistic about idealistic proposals and idealists should be pessimistic about cynical proposals. This is symmetric, but if public speech is idealistic, proposals will be systematically idealistic and more convincing to idealists than to cynics.
If I’m reading it correctly, this argument seems to be saying that public speech is mostly idealistic, that idealistic speech is only produced by people with idealistic world models, and that cynics should evaluate such speech poorly because of the perceived inaccuracy of the speaker’s world model.
However, the proposition “idealistic speech is only produced by people with idealistic world models” is a claim about motives for behaviour. Therefore the cynical view is “idealistic speech is produced primarily for low motives rather than high ideals”. In particular, it is a cynical view that people making idealistic public speech are often themselves cynical, and that their speech may well be successful in its goal.
This can still lead to a cynic/pessimist correlation, though: succeeding at the true motive is not the same thing as the proposal succeeding at its stated aims.
Yes, I should have said that I’m assuming that public speech is idealistic. I guess “high motives” really means motives praised by public speech, not ones claimed to be common. And I think there have been societies that are cynical by that standard. So there is a factual question of whether there was an actual and/or perceived correlation in such societies.
Yes, deceit complicates things. My belief about current society is that optimism and idealism are socially accepted and pessimism and cynicism are correlated because they are signs of defiance of convention. This doesn’t depend on the words meaning anything at all, which is easier to analyze than deceit. But I guess it’s a cynical theory, in that I believe the statements of are signals of the low motive of conformity, rather than the high motive of truth. But once we’ve entered into the realm of deceit, who’s to say what motives are high or low?
Robin Hanson tweets:
I am skeptical that most people have beliefs and, in particular, I’m skeptical that these terms are for describing beliefs.
Taking these definitions as given, what do they predict? An outside view extrapolation of the future from the present should not depend too much on understanding how the present works, only whether it works and how it has changed in the past. If we live in a time of progress, recognizing that should not depend on understanding what drives progress. Trying to call the peak may depend on details, but if people’s motives haven’t changed over the centuries, the mere opinion on motives should not single out the present day for a reversal of trends.
But people with specific different beliefs about how the world works should make different predictions about specific proposals and have different beliefs about their likelihood of success. Cynics should be pessimistic about idealistic proposals and idealists should be pessimistic about cynical proposals. This is symmetric, but if public speech is idealistic, proposals will be systematically idealistic and more convincing to idealists than to cynics.
If I’m reading it correctly, this argument seems to be saying that public speech is mostly idealistic, that idealistic speech is only produced by people with idealistic world models, and that cynics should evaluate such speech poorly because of the perceived inaccuracy of the speaker’s world model.
However, the proposition “idealistic speech is only produced by people with idealistic world models” is a claim about motives for behaviour. Therefore the cynical view is “idealistic speech is produced primarily for low motives rather than high ideals”. In particular, it is a cynical view that people making idealistic public speech are often themselves cynical, and that their speech may well be successful in its goal.
This can still lead to a cynic/pessimist correlation, though: succeeding at the true motive is not the same thing as the proposal succeeding at its stated aims.
Yes, I should have said that I’m assuming that public speech is idealistic. I guess “high motives” really means motives praised by public speech, not ones claimed to be common. And I think there have been societies that are cynical by that standard. So there is a factual question of whether there was an actual and/or perceived correlation in such societies.
Yes, deceit complicates things. My belief about current society is that optimism and idealism are socially accepted and pessimism and cynicism are correlated because they are signs of defiance of convention. This doesn’t depend on the words meaning anything at all, which is easier to analyze than deceit. But I guess it’s a cynical theory, in that I believe the statements of are signals of the low motive of conformity, rather than the high motive of truth. But once we’ve entered into the realm of deceit, who’s to say what motives are high or low?