I agree with the overall thrust of this, but I do have some specific reservations:
It’s tempting to cry out, “Sure, maybe ordinary men are such-and-this, and normal women are such-and-that, but not me; I’m different, I’m special, I’m an exception.
The temptation is real, and it’s a temptation we should be wary of. But it’s also important to realize that the more variation there is within the groups, the more reasonable it may be to suppose that we are special (of course, we should still have some evidence for this, but the point is that the more within-group variation there is, the weaker that evidence needs to be). It’s difficult to know what to do with information about average differences between groups unless one also knows something about within-group variation.
But for the individual aspiring rationalist, the correct course of action is unambiguous: it’s better to know, than to not know, it’s better to make decisions explicitly and with reason, then to let your subconscious decide for you and for things to take their natural course.
Again, I’m very sympathetic to this view, but I think you’re overselling the case. If (correctly) believing your group performs poorly causes you to perform worse then there’s a tradeoff between that and the benefits of accurate knowledge. Maybe accurate knowledge is still best, all things considered, but that’s not obvious to me.
Beyond the context of this specific debate, the theory of the second-best shows that incremental movements in the direction of perfect rationality will not always improve decision-making. And there’s a lot of evidence that “subconscious” decision-making outperforms more explicit reasoning in some situations. Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide, and pretty much all of Gerd Gigerenzer’s books make this argument (in addition to the more anecdotal account in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink). I tend to think they oversell the case for intuition somewhat, but it’s still pretty clear that blanket claims about the superiority of more information and conscious deliberation are false. The really important question is how we can best make use of the strengths of different decision-strategies.
I agree with the overall thrust of this, but I do have some specific reservations:
The temptation is real, and it’s a temptation we should be wary of. But it’s also important to realize that the more variation there is within the groups, the more reasonable it may be to suppose that we are special (of course, we should still have some evidence for this, but the point is that the more within-group variation there is, the weaker that evidence needs to be). It’s difficult to know what to do with information about average differences between groups unless one also knows something about within-group variation.
Again, I’m very sympathetic to this view, but I think you’re overselling the case. If (correctly) believing your group performs poorly causes you to perform worse then there’s a tradeoff between that and the benefits of accurate knowledge. Maybe accurate knowledge is still best, all things considered, but that’s not obvious to me.
Beyond the context of this specific debate, the theory of the second-best shows that incremental movements in the direction of perfect rationality will not always improve decision-making. And there’s a lot of evidence that “subconscious” decision-making outperforms more explicit reasoning in some situations. Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide, and pretty much all of Gerd Gigerenzer’s books make this argument (in addition to the more anecdotal account in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink). I tend to think they oversell the case for intuition somewhat, but it’s still pretty clear that blanket claims about the superiority of more information and conscious deliberation are false. The really important question is how we can best make use of the strengths of different decision-strategies.