There’s a stigma against simply taking the word of an authority, and rightly so; on the net, the world would be better if more people stopped to think for themselves (does anyone disagree?).
Yes, I disagree. Remember that if people “stop and think for themselves,” they have to stop what they were doing otherwise. If their comparative advantage is doing, rather than thinking, this may well be a poor choice.
It seems to me that there are good reasons to think for yourself:
The agency problems of trusting an expert
How can you choose the right expert to trust if you don’t understand the subject itself?
Versus equally good reasons to delegate thinking:
Division of labour
Error-checking
If your understanding is so poor that you can’t choose the right expert, how will you understand the subject?
Therefore, most people will do a mixture of thinking for themselves and trusting experts. In particular, people should most think for themselves when agency problems are most severe, when good experts are hard to identify, and where their own thinking will get rapid and plentiful feedback (classic example—household finances). People should defer to experts most readily when agency problems are small, when good experts are easy to identify, and where there own thinking will get very little feedback (classic example—history).
Unfortunately, claiming to think for yourself is also a brag—it is a way of signalling that you are an expert, or nearly an expert, or that you are capable of understanding a domain. So for these signalling reasons, people think for themselves more than is genuinely wise, and as a result we see many autodidacts with obviously wrong beliefs. Even more widespread, we see people who think that they have “thought for themselves” about a subject, but in fact have just read a small selection of popular books on the subject—in reality, this is just deference to an expert, but because they do not consider it as such, they have wasted their time by this study; even worse, because they believe they are thinking for themselves, they do not consider the degree to which they are trusting an expert, and so frequently choose their sources unwisely, based on e.g. literary qualities rather than accuracy.
I have heard plenty of claims that people defer to authority too much, but never one that had any weight behind it. Mostly, they are mere assertion/mood affiliation.
That being the case, it sounds like the problem is the particular “experts” to which one defers. From my perspective, many people deferring to the pope (or their local preacher) causes more harm than good (e.g. opposition to issues of importance, and encouraging intolerance). I look at that and think the cached thought, “If only those people would think for themselves, they would see how ridiculous many of of the religious claims are.”
If most people shouldn’t actually think for themselves, what is the alternative? If we have a choice between encouraging a culture that enshrines thinking for ones self, or one that values submission to experts and leaders, but we don’t get to choose who the leaders are going to be, which is preferable?
I’m more-or-less opposed to democracy, but I think it produces better outcomes than dictatorships (averaging across all the dictatorships that have existed, not just one’s that happened to be fairly good).
Yes, I disagree. Remember that if people “stop and think for themselves,” they have to stop what they were doing otherwise. If their comparative advantage is doing, rather than thinking, this may well be a poor choice.
It seems to me that there are good reasons to think for yourself:
The agency problems of trusting an expert
How can you choose the right expert to trust if you don’t understand the subject itself?
Versus equally good reasons to delegate thinking:
Division of labour
Error-checking
If your understanding is so poor that you can’t choose the right expert, how will you understand the subject?
Therefore, most people will do a mixture of thinking for themselves and trusting experts. In particular, people should most think for themselves when agency problems are most severe, when good experts are hard to identify, and where their own thinking will get rapid and plentiful feedback (classic example—household finances). People should defer to experts most readily when agency problems are small, when good experts are easy to identify, and where there own thinking will get very little feedback (classic example—history).
Unfortunately, claiming to think for yourself is also a brag—it is a way of signalling that you are an expert, or nearly an expert, or that you are capable of understanding a domain. So for these signalling reasons, people think for themselves more than is genuinely wise, and as a result we see many autodidacts with obviously wrong beliefs. Even more widespread, we see people who think that they have “thought for themselves” about a subject, but in fact have just read a small selection of popular books on the subject—in reality, this is just deference to an expert, but because they do not consider it as such, they have wasted their time by this study; even worse, because they believe they are thinking for themselves, they do not consider the degree to which they are trusting an expert, and so frequently choose their sources unwisely, based on e.g. literary qualities rather than accuracy.
I have heard plenty of claims that people defer to authority too much, but never one that had any weight behind it. Mostly, they are mere assertion/mood affiliation.
That being the case, it sounds like the problem is the particular “experts” to which one defers. From my perspective, many people deferring to the pope (or their local preacher) causes more harm than good (e.g. opposition to issues of importance, and encouraging intolerance). I look at that and think the cached thought, “If only those people would think for themselves, they would see how ridiculous many of of the religious claims are.”
If most people shouldn’t actually think for themselves, what is the alternative? If we have a choice between encouraging a culture that enshrines thinking for ones self, or one that values submission to experts and leaders, but we don’t get to choose who the leaders are going to be, which is preferable?
I’m more-or-less opposed to democracy, but I think it produces better outcomes than dictatorships (averaging across all the dictatorships that have existed, not just one’s that happened to be fairly good).