Moderates, who are invested in the status quo, tend to simply not notice problems, and to dismiss radicals for not having well-thought-out solutions. But it’s better to know that a problem exists than to not know – regardless of whether you have a solution at the moment.
This is a bit of a caricature of moderates—moderates who care about the issues may also be more aware of the details of the system, and of how any quick fix somewhere may screw things up somewhere else.
In my eyes, the distinction between experts and non-experts of a particular system (law, the economy, diplomacy, science, education, culture …) is more important than the distinction between critics and those that accept the status quo. For pretty much any system, chances are there’ll be people who think it’s fine as it is, and people who think it should change. If all the experts are on one side, chances are it’s right. If there are experts on both sides, [i]then[/i] it’s them you should be listening to them.
Here I mean “experts” in a broad sense, of those who know about a system, about why it’s like it is, about what changes have been tried and which ones would have which consequences. A problem is that often some well-respected “experts” know little about the issue (I just read an article by a French journalist writing about the singularuty, and some people who do know a lot about the system may not be seen as experts by the public. I don’t think there’s a better word though :P
So, if a “moderate” dismisses a radical who’s just saying “something’s wrong”, it may not only be because he doesn’t notice problems—it may be because he considers that the current situation is a carefully balanced compromise, and a feature of most successful compromises is “everybody is unsatisfied, but by the same amount”. So someone merely saying he’s unsatisfied is normal and expected.
To take a simplified example, imagine a country where people are taxed X%, and the money is directly used for various government services—roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. X was decided by bureaucrats after making a lot of simulations and surveys about what would work best. Of course, there will be people saying the taxes are too high, and people complaining that there aren’t enough government services, but that is to be expected, and adds zero new information. What [i]does[/i] add information is understanding the simulations of the bureaucrats, and either finding improvements or finding that some bureaucrats falsified the calculations to get more services near where they lived.
You’re right—it was a caricature, and it wasn’t entirely fair.
I think your view of compromise is accurate. But I want to complicate it a little. It may be true that there’s a carefully balanced compromise, making everyone unhappy by the same amount, such that making a change really would make the system fall apart, with possibly disastrous results. The first thing I want to say is that someone who sees this “balance” may make a sort of mental shorthand and call it a good solution or a solved problem, and lose the acute awareness of grievance from the various unhappy parties. The moderate may eventually cease to recognize the grievances as even slightly legitimate. (I have seen this happen.) And this is a genuine fallacy.
The second thing I want to say is that the state of slavery in the 1850′s was also a delicately balanced compromise, and disturbing it did have disastrous results. I’m not saying this to discredit your argument with a smear. My point is this: it may add zero new information to know that some people are unhappy with the status quo, but it does add information to know what their reasoning is for being unhappy. The content of abolitionist propaganda, the strength of its arguments as compared to those of pro-slavery propaganda, would sway a Martian observer trying to decide what he thought about slavery. If the Martian had only been allowed to see election numbers, poll results, legislative deliberations, and so on, he might have had a different opinion than if he had also been shown a few issues of The Liberator. In other words: the structure of a compromise is not enough to know whether you support it or not.
The content of abolitionist propaganda, the strength of its arguments as compared to those of pro-slavery propaganda, would sway a Martian observer trying to decide what he thought about slavery.
This is so not a debate I’d want a Martian to adjudicate. How would a Martian evaluate questions like this:
Does the Bible support slavery or abolitionism?
Does slavery agree or disagree with the inherent rights of man?
I guess a Martian could try to evaluate some empirical questions that may be relevant:
Do the black people have a natural slave mentality? More generally: Are there any significant biological cognitive differences between blacks and whites?
Will abolition lead to a slippery slope ending in full equality and integration of black and white people, including intermarriage?
But I fear the Martians will bring their own criteria into play. Those might be anything. Say:
Since we Martians have a natural slave caste doesn’t it seem likely that the humans do too?
Would the abolition of slavery ultimately increase or decrease the number of paperclips?
The second thing I want to say is that the state of slavery in the 1850′s was also a delicately balanced compromise, and disturbing it did have disastrous results. I’m not saying this to discredit your argument with a smear.
Heh, I was actually considering that exact example while writing my post, but considered it was already getting too long—so I don’t see that as a smear :)
I’m not aiming for a Fully General Counterargument against disturbing the status quo, just presenting some more refined reasons moderates could have for supporting it. And slavery in the 19th century is a good example of a case where (as you say) those arguments did hold, but things were still worth changing.
This is a bit of a caricature of moderates—moderates who care about the issues may also be more aware of the details of the system, and of how any quick fix somewhere may screw things up somewhere else.
...So, if a “moderate” dismisses a radical who’s just saying “something’s wrong”, it may not only be because he doesn’t notice problems—it may be because he considers that the current situation is a carefully balanced compromise, and a feature of most successful compromises is “everybody is unsatisfied, but by the same amount”. So someone merely saying he’s unsatisfied is normal and expected.
And I think that’s giving moderates (even expert moderates) way too much credit—a kind of “anti-caricature”. In practice, what happens is that moderates are unable to articulate what that specific compromise of competing interests is. This leads the radical to conclude that moderates are just mindlessly rationalizing the status quo, refusing to put the thought into it that the radicals have.
Consider the example of gay rights discussed a while back. There were people that had debated the issue for years and years, and yet hadn’t seen any argument more convincing than “gays = evil” until I mentioned them—and that was after significant search on my part!
Or to use your example:
… imagine a country where people are taxed X%, and the money is directly used for various government services—roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. X was decided by bureaucrats after making a lot of simulations and surveys about what would work best …
Here’s what actually happens:
Radical: “Hey, why should government run schools? Why not lift the taxes for it and let parents buy this on a market or via some mutualist arrangement? That would make everyone better off. Anyone who couldn’t afford it could get state assistance like any other such program, but even then they’d be better off, for the same reason it makes more sense for the government to give out food stamps than run farms.”
What moderates would say if they acted like you suggest: “Oh no, see, the current system involves lots of parents who have spent a lot of money to get a home in a district that allows them to go to a school without the riff-raff, and decoupling the school from the home location would be hugely unfair to them [via destroying home value]. Plus, we have to recognize the voting rights of all adults, which include lots of well-organized government employees who are heavily invested in the current system. You could include a ‘buy-out’ for them, but this would look like extortion, and no one would go along with that.”
What moderates actually say: 1) “How dare you attack the public schools, terrorist! You hate teachers. Prove to me that markets don’t fail in this area.” Or, my favorite, 2) “When you’re a parent [who has blown a third of your future after-tax income on getting your children into a good school district], you’ll understand.”
Note that here I was talking about radicals “just saying something’s wrong”, and arguing that it didn’t really provide much useful information (unlike what SarahC seemed to imply).
So your counter-example of my imaginary country doesn’t really fall under the heading, it falls under the “finding improvements” section here:
What does add information is understanding the simulations of the bureaucrats, and either finding improvements or finding that some bureaucrats falsified the calculations to get more services near where they lived.
Are you arguing that most critics actually have useful improvements to propose (i.e. improvements that would actually make things better?). Considering the wide diversity of views among non-moderates, I’m pretty skeptical (it probably depends of the system considered).
I’m not saying that all moderates are experts, as you seem to be implying—I agree that most can’t articulate why exactly a suggested improvement would actually make things better, but that doesn’t make them automatically wrong.
Note that here we’ve shifted from “usefulness of saying something’s wrong” (which I argued is pretty low) to “usefulness of suggesting improvements” (which I agree is a bit better).
So your counter-example of my imaginary country doesn’t really fall under the heading, it falls under the “finding improvements” section here:...
And it’s also an example of moderates refusing to give the real reasons—the delicate balance you refer to—when responding to radicals. My point is that this is typical, and it’s not typical for proponents of the status quo—even the most expert—to know about that delicate balance.
I’m not saying that all moderates are experts, as you seem to be implying—I agree that most can’t articulate why exactly a suggested improvement would actually make things better, but that doesn’t make them automatically wrong.
But then it’s kind of logically rude to expect radicals to refute an argument that their opponents aren’t even aware of (as a good reason to support the status quo), isn’t it?
And it’s also an example of moderates refusing to give the real reasons—the delicate balance you refer to—when responding to radicals. My point is that this is typical, and it’s not typical for proponents of the status quo—even the most expert—to know about that delicate balance.
No disagreement here, but note that it’s also true of most people who don’t agree with the status quo.
(Also, by “expert”, I mean “someone who knows enough about the subject”, not “someone who speaks with authority about the subject and is widely listened-to and respected”, so I would expect that by definition, experts should know about the balance. However it is possible that those the public considers are experts are in fact a bunch of clowns.)
But then it’s kind of logically rude to expect radicals to refute an argument that their opponents aren’t even aware of (as a good reason to support the status quo), isn’t it?
(This is going a bit on a tangent) Well, if you’re arguing with someone who doesn’t know that much about an issue, I’m not sure what result you’re expecting to get. There are cases where he would be justified in not changing his mind much. Maybe he’ll tell you he trusts the opinion of person X or institution Y who is more knowledgeable (probably the position I’d take if you tried to convince me of some frine position in physics or mathematics), or that he’ll research the subject a bit more himself.
No disagreement here, but note that it’s also true of most people who don’t agree with the status quo.
I agree, but there’s also a critical asymmetry: In cases where a policy a) is a major, widely-discussed issue; b) conflicts strongly with another value the general public holds; and c) has been presented with a strong counterargument from radicals, then it’s the moderate’s obligation to identify the critical balance—yet this is clearly not what we see.
Those three criteria prevent moderates from having to justify every tiny aspect of life that someone, somewhere, doesn’t understand. If something has become a major issue, then by that point the best arguments for it should have been picked up by the widely-read commentators. Yet on issue after issue, no one seems to want to articulate this defense, which leaves radicals justifiably believing that moderates are being logically rude and selfish.
(Also, by “expert”, I mean “someone who knows enough about the subject”, not “someone who speaks with authority about the subject and is widely listened-to and respected”, so I would expect that by definition, experts should know about the balance.
Well, defining a set doesn’t mean anything must satisfy the definition. On many issues, such experts don’t seem to exist, and moderates too often don’t even act like they care about the existence of such experts or arguments—a change in policy would hurt their narrow, short-sighted interests, so they’ll vote against such changes, and no amount of argument can undo their naked grip on power.
However it is possible that those the public considers are experts are in fact a bunch of clowns.)
Like I said above in this comment, it’s hard to undersstand why those people would not reliably be aware of the best arguments.
moderates who care about the issues may also be more aware of the details of the system, and of how any quick fix somewhere may screw things up somewhere else.
This is true.
I took SarahC to be making a statistical statement about extremists being more likely to care about the issues than moderates. This is in agreement with my own experience. People who don’t care about the issues tend to be moderate by default and this leads to an overrepresentation of people who don’t care among the population of moderates.
People who don’t care about the issues tend to be moderate by default and this leads to an overrepresentation of people who don’t care among the population of moderates.
True, but this will hold whether the moderates are “right” or not—if 90% of people who care about the issues (and research them) stay moderates, and only 10% start complaining about it, you’ll still see an overrepresentation of people who don’t care among the moderates.
This is a bit of a caricature of moderates—moderates who care about the issues may also be more aware of the details of the system, and of how any quick fix somewhere may screw things up somewhere else.
In my eyes, the distinction between experts and non-experts of a particular system (law, the economy, diplomacy, science, education, culture …) is more important than the distinction between critics and those that accept the status quo. For pretty much any system, chances are there’ll be people who think it’s fine as it is, and people who think it should change. If all the experts are on one side, chances are it’s right. If there are experts on both sides, [i]then[/i] it’s them you should be listening to them.
Here I mean “experts” in a broad sense, of those who know about a system, about why it’s like it is, about what changes have been tried and which ones would have which consequences. A problem is that often some well-respected “experts” know little about the issue (I just read an article by a French journalist writing about the singularuty, and some people who do know a lot about the system may not be seen as experts by the public. I don’t think there’s a better word though :P
So, if a “moderate” dismisses a radical who’s just saying “something’s wrong”, it may not only be because he doesn’t notice problems—it may be because he considers that the current situation is a carefully balanced compromise, and a feature of most successful compromises is “everybody is unsatisfied, but by the same amount”. So someone merely saying he’s unsatisfied is normal and expected.
To take a simplified example, imagine a country where people are taxed X%, and the money is directly used for various government services—roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. X was decided by bureaucrats after making a lot of simulations and surveys about what would work best. Of course, there will be people saying the taxes are too high, and people complaining that there aren’t enough government services, but that is to be expected, and adds zero new information. What [i]does[/i] add information is understanding the simulations of the bureaucrats, and either finding improvements or finding that some bureaucrats falsified the calculations to get more services near where they lived.
You’re right—it was a caricature, and it wasn’t entirely fair.
I think your view of compromise is accurate.
But I want to complicate it a little. It may be true that there’s a carefully balanced compromise, making everyone unhappy by the same amount, such that making a change really would make the system fall apart, with possibly disastrous results. The first thing I want to say is that someone who sees this “balance” may make a sort of mental shorthand and call it a good solution or a solved problem, and lose the acute awareness of grievance from the various unhappy parties. The moderate may eventually cease to recognize the grievances as even slightly legitimate. (I have seen this happen.) And this is a genuine fallacy.
The second thing I want to say is that the state of slavery in the 1850′s was also a delicately balanced compromise, and disturbing it did have disastrous results. I’m not saying this to discredit your argument with a smear. My point is this: it may add zero new information to know that some people are unhappy with the status quo, but it does add information to know what their reasoning is for being unhappy. The content of abolitionist propaganda, the strength of its arguments as compared to those of pro-slavery propaganda, would sway a Martian observer trying to decide what he thought about slavery. If the Martian had only been allowed to see election numbers, poll results, legislative deliberations, and so on, he might have had a different opinion than if he had also been shown a few issues of The Liberator. In other words: the structure of a compromise is not enough to know whether you support it or not.
This is so not a debate I’d want a Martian to adjudicate. How would a Martian evaluate questions like this:
Does the Bible support slavery or abolitionism?
Does slavery agree or disagree with the inherent rights of man?
I guess a Martian could try to evaluate some empirical questions that may be relevant:
Do the black people have a natural slave mentality? More generally: Are there any significant biological cognitive differences between blacks and whites?
Will abolition lead to a slippery slope ending in full equality and integration of black and white people, including intermarriage?
But I fear the Martians will bring their own criteria into play. Those might be anything. Say:
Since we Martians have a natural slave caste doesn’t it seem likely that the humans do too?
Would the abolition of slavery ultimately increase or decrease the number of paperclips?
Heh, I was actually considering that exact example while writing my post, but considered it was already getting too long—so I don’t see that as a smear :)
I’m not aiming for a Fully General Counterargument against disturbing the status quo, just presenting some more refined reasons moderates could have for supporting it. And slavery in the 19th century is a good example of a case where (as you say) those arguments did hold, but things were still worth changing.
And I think that’s giving moderates (even expert moderates) way too much credit—a kind of “anti-caricature”. In practice, what happens is that moderates are unable to articulate what that specific compromise of competing interests is. This leads the radical to conclude that moderates are just mindlessly rationalizing the status quo, refusing to put the thought into it that the radicals have.
Consider the example of gay rights discussed a while back. There were people that had debated the issue for years and years, and yet hadn’t seen any argument more convincing than “gays = evil” until I mentioned them—and that was after significant search on my part!
Or to use your example:
Here’s what actually happens:
Radical: “Hey, why should government run schools? Why not lift the taxes for it and let parents buy this on a market or via some mutualist arrangement? That would make everyone better off. Anyone who couldn’t afford it could get state assistance like any other such program, but even then they’d be better off, for the same reason it makes more sense for the government to give out food stamps than run farms.”
What moderates would say if they acted like you suggest: “Oh no, see, the current system involves lots of parents who have spent a lot of money to get a home in a district that allows them to go to a school without the riff-raff, and decoupling the school from the home location would be hugely unfair to them [via destroying home value]. Plus, we have to recognize the voting rights of all adults, which include lots of well-organized government employees who are heavily invested in the current system. You could include a ‘buy-out’ for them, but this would look like extortion, and no one would go along with that.”
What moderates actually say: 1) “How dare you attack the public schools, terrorist! You hate teachers. Prove to me that markets don’t fail in this area.” Or, my favorite, 2) “When you’re a parent [who has blown a third of your future after-tax income on getting your children into a good school district], you’ll understand.”
Note that here I was talking about radicals “just saying something’s wrong”, and arguing that it didn’t really provide much useful information (unlike what SarahC seemed to imply).
So your counter-example of my imaginary country doesn’t really fall under the heading, it falls under the “finding improvements” section here:
Are you arguing that most critics actually have useful improvements to propose (i.e. improvements that would actually make things better?). Considering the wide diversity of views among non-moderates, I’m pretty skeptical (it probably depends of the system considered).
I’m not saying that all moderates are experts, as you seem to be implying—I agree that most can’t articulate why exactly a suggested improvement would actually make things better, but that doesn’t make them automatically wrong.
Note that here we’ve shifted from “usefulness of saying something’s wrong” (which I argued is pretty low) to “usefulness of suggesting improvements” (which I agree is a bit better).
And it’s also an example of moderates refusing to give the real reasons—the delicate balance you refer to—when responding to radicals. My point is that this is typical, and it’s not typical for proponents of the status quo—even the most expert—to know about that delicate balance.
But then it’s kind of logically rude to expect radicals to refute an argument that their opponents aren’t even aware of (as a good reason to support the status quo), isn’t it?
No disagreement here, but note that it’s also true of most people who don’t agree with the status quo.
(Also, by “expert”, I mean “someone who knows enough about the subject”, not “someone who speaks with authority about the subject and is widely listened-to and respected”, so I would expect that by definition, experts should know about the balance. However it is possible that those the public considers are experts are in fact a bunch of clowns.)
(This is going a bit on a tangent) Well, if you’re arguing with someone who doesn’t know that much about an issue, I’m not sure what result you’re expecting to get. There are cases where he would be justified in not changing his mind much. Maybe he’ll tell you he trusts the opinion of person X or institution Y who is more knowledgeable (probably the position I’d take if you tried to convince me of some frine position in physics or mathematics), or that he’ll research the subject a bit more himself.
Radicals / moderates mix-up has been fixed.
I agree, but there’s also a critical asymmetry: In cases where a policy a) is a major, widely-discussed issue; b) conflicts strongly with another value the general public holds; and c) has been presented with a strong counterargument from radicals, then it’s the moderate’s obligation to identify the critical balance—yet this is clearly not what we see.
Those three criteria prevent moderates from having to justify every tiny aspect of life that someone, somewhere, doesn’t understand. If something has become a major issue, then by that point the best arguments for it should have been picked up by the widely-read commentators. Yet on issue after issue, no one seems to want to articulate this defense, which leaves radicals justifiably believing that moderates are being logically rude and selfish.
Well, defining a set doesn’t mean anything must satisfy the definition. On many issues, such experts don’t seem to exist, and moderates too often don’t even act like they care about the existence of such experts or arguments—a change in policy would hurt their narrow, short-sighted interests, so they’ll vote against such changes, and no amount of argument can undo their naked grip on power.
Like I said above in this comment, it’s hard to undersstand why those people would not reliably be aware of the best arguments.
This is true.
I took SarahC to be making a statistical statement about extremists being more likely to care about the issues than moderates. This is in agreement with my own experience. People who don’t care about the issues tend to be moderate by default and this leads to an overrepresentation of people who don’t care among the population of moderates.
But certainly there are moderates who care.
True, but this will hold whether the moderates are “right” or not—if 90% of people who care about the issues (and research them) stay moderates, and only 10% start complaining about it, you’ll still see an overrepresentation of people who don’t care among the moderates.