I don’t think that factionalism is caused solely by mistrust. Mistrust is certainly a part of the picture, but I think that interest in different things is also a part. Consider the factions around two substantially different academic fields, like medival history and pure maths. The mathmaticians largely trust that the historians are usually right about history. The historians largely trust that the mathmaticians are usually right about maths. But each field is off pursuing its own questions with very little interest in the other.
What we want isn’t a lack of factionalism, it’s unity.
I am not sure we do want unity. Suppose we are trying to invent something. Once one person anywhere in the world gets all the pieces just right, then it will be obviously good and quickly spread. You want a semiconductor physics and a computer science faction somewhere in the world to produce smartphones. These factions can and do learn from the maths and chemistry factions, the factions they don’t interact with are either adversarial or irrelevant.
Once one person anywhere in the world gets all the pieces just right, then it will be obviously good and quickly spread.
My post is inspired by Zack M Davis’s comment that’s linked at the top. The point there was that when beliefs diverge so much that we start discounting valid evidence because we mistrust the source, then the truth will not be obvious and will not spread.
Smartphones are a great case in point. Although it’s obvious that they function mechanically as promised, it’s not at all clear that they’re a good thing for humanity. There’s plenty of research about whether they’re driving mental health issues, degrading our relationships, sucking up our time, and draining our income.
There is a truth of the matter, but some people find it hard to trust evidence one way or the other. They get suspicious of the evidence of the factions claiming that smartphones are or aren’t doing these things; suspicious of their incentives and intuitions that we believe drive their erroneous conclusions; and aren’t ready to believe even when the evidence is systematically weighted (GIGO).
The kind of unity I’m referring to here is widespread agreement on how to interpret the state of the evidence on any given proposition. It’s what Kuhn would call “normal science.” I think this is uncontroversially desirable. Unity on physics, chemistry, computer science, and so on is what produced the Smartphone.
But not only is the evidence in many other fields (and even within these fields, in some areas) incomplete, the experts are divided into long-standing, intractable factions that disagree about how to interpret it, won’t change their minds, and aren’t interested in trying.
The old cognitive bias frame suggests that we need to individually overcome our irrational biases in order to correct this problem.
The new trust-building frame suggests that instead, people are basically rational, but are failing to build sufficient trust between members of opposing factions to reconcile the evidence and produce a motion toward truth.
I agree that this is a real phenomena that can happen in domains where verifying a correct answer is not much easier than coming up with one.
However, epistemic norms regarding what counts as valid evidence are culturally transmitted. People using occams razor will come to different conclusions from the people using divine revelation. (Similar to how mathmeticians using different axioms will come to different conclusions.)
I suspect that the factions which can be reconciled are those that are operating in a shared epistemic paradigm. For example, two opposing scientific factions that agree on the basic principles of logic and evidence, but do not trust the research that the other side is producing—perhaps because they believe it’s sloppily done or even fraudulent. To be concrete, the debate on whether the minimum wage does or does not harm economic growth has voluminous evidence on each side, produced by serious researchers, but it apparently hasn’t caused either side to budge.
A second example is between religious believers. Two camps might accuse each other of a belief in God that isn’t based on genuine revelation. For example, Christians discount the Quran, while Muslims discount the claim that Jesus was the son of God. But neither side questions that the other is genuinely motivated by faith.
“You’re just pretending to care about our epistemic norms”
Less tractable is resolving a dispute between factions that agree on an epistemic paradigm in theory, but suspect that in practice, the other side is not actually using it. An example here is the disagreement between Western medicine and naturopathy. Naturopaths accuse Western doctors of pretending like their practice is more based on evidence than it really is (which is often a fair accusation). There are some naturopaths who claim that practices like homeopathy and acupuncture have an evidence base, and Western doctors accuse them not only of sloppy research, but of only using research as cover for a fundamentally non-evidence-based approach to medicine.
A religious example is between followers of the same religion who might accuse each other of faking faith to serve some worldly goal. This accusation gets leveled at prosperity gospel, fundamentalists, cults, and mainline religions.
“Our epistemic norms are incompatible.”
More intractable still is a dispute between factions that openly disagree on epistemic norms. Your example is between believers in divine revelation and adherents of Occam’s razor/logic/evidence.
I don’t think that factionalism is caused solely by mistrust. Mistrust is certainly a part of the picture, but I think that interest in different things is also a part. Consider the factions around two substantially different academic fields, like medival history and pure maths. The mathmaticians largely trust that the historians are usually right about history. The historians largely trust that the mathmaticians are usually right about maths. But each field is off pursuing its own questions with very little interest in the other.
I am not sure we do want unity. Suppose we are trying to invent something. Once one person anywhere in the world gets all the pieces just right, then it will be obviously good and quickly spread. You want a semiconductor physics and a computer science faction somewhere in the world to produce smartphones. These factions can and do learn from the maths and chemistry factions, the factions they don’t interact with are either adversarial or irrelevant.
Unless the innvention destroys everything when it quickly spreads. When we want to prevent X-risk from unfriendly AI we do need some unity.
My post is inspired by Zack M Davis’s comment that’s linked at the top. The point there was that when beliefs diverge so much that we start discounting valid evidence because we mistrust the source, then the truth will not be obvious and will not spread.
Smartphones are a great case in point. Although it’s obvious that they function mechanically as promised, it’s not at all clear that they’re a good thing for humanity. There’s plenty of research about whether they’re driving mental health issues, degrading our relationships, sucking up our time, and draining our income.
There is a truth of the matter, but some people find it hard to trust evidence one way or the other. They get suspicious of the evidence of the factions claiming that smartphones are or aren’t doing these things; suspicious of their incentives and intuitions that we believe drive their erroneous conclusions; and aren’t ready to believe even when the evidence is systematically weighted (GIGO).
The kind of unity I’m referring to here is widespread agreement on how to interpret the state of the evidence on any given proposition. It’s what Kuhn would call “normal science.” I think this is uncontroversially desirable. Unity on physics, chemistry, computer science, and so on is what produced the Smartphone.
But not only is the evidence in many other fields (and even within these fields, in some areas) incomplete, the experts are divided into long-standing, intractable factions that disagree about how to interpret it, won’t change their minds, and aren’t interested in trying.
The old cognitive bias frame suggests that we need to individually overcome our irrational biases in order to correct this problem.
The new trust-building frame suggests that instead, people are basically rational, but are failing to build sufficient trust between members of opposing factions to reconcile the evidence and produce a motion toward truth.
I agree that this is a real phenomena that can happen in domains where verifying a correct answer is not much easier than coming up with one.
However, epistemic norms regarding what counts as valid evidence are culturally transmitted. People using occams razor will come to different conclusions from the people using divine revelation. (Similar to how mathmeticians using different axioms will come to different conclusions.)
“I don’t trust your evidence.”
I suspect that the factions which can be reconciled are those that are operating in a shared epistemic paradigm. For example, two opposing scientific factions that agree on the basic principles of logic and evidence, but do not trust the research that the other side is producing—perhaps because they believe it’s sloppily done or even fraudulent. To be concrete, the debate on whether the minimum wage does or does not harm economic growth has voluminous evidence on each side, produced by serious researchers, but it apparently hasn’t caused either side to budge.
A second example is between religious believers. Two camps might accuse each other of a belief in God that isn’t based on genuine revelation. For example, Christians discount the Quran, while Muslims discount the claim that Jesus was the son of God. But neither side questions that the other is genuinely motivated by faith.
“You’re just pretending to care about our epistemic norms”
Less tractable is resolving a dispute between factions that agree on an epistemic paradigm in theory, but suspect that in practice, the other side is not actually using it. An example here is the disagreement between Western medicine and naturopathy. Naturopaths accuse Western doctors of pretending like their practice is more based on evidence than it really is (which is often a fair accusation). There are some naturopaths who claim that practices like homeopathy and acupuncture have an evidence base, and Western doctors accuse them not only of sloppy research, but of only using research as cover for a fundamentally non-evidence-based approach to medicine.
A religious example is between followers of the same religion who might accuse each other of faking faith to serve some worldly goal. This accusation gets leveled at prosperity gospel, fundamentalists, cults, and mainline religions.
“Our epistemic norms are incompatible.”
More intractable still is a dispute between factions that openly disagree on epistemic norms. Your example is between believers in divine revelation and adherents of Occam’s razor/logic/evidence.