More than 30 percent of my libertarian compatriots (and more than 40 percent of conservatives), for instance, disagreed with the statement “A dollar means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person”—c’mon, people!—versus just 4 percent among progressives. Seventy-eight percent of libertarians believed gun-control laws fail to reduce people’s access to guns.
I... I notice that I am confused. How could such a large percentage of people get these easy questions wrong? Are they interpreting it as a question of signalling without even reaching the point of evaluating it as an ontological statement?
(nods) I would expect so.
But also, even among people who do evaluate it, there are many who will answer strategically... that is, something like "Of course the answer is A. But I believe that if I say A, my answer will be used to defend conclusions I disapprove of, whereas if I say B, my answer will be used to defend conclusions I approve of. So I will say B."
Actually, I wonder now whether anyone has done studies of people's linguistic processing when reading sentences like this. It probably would not be too difficult to determine whether the sentence is being parsed differently in the first place or not, and if so to establish potentially interesting specifics about how the "default" parsing is being interfered with.
Are they interpreting it as a question of signalling without even reaching the point of evaluating it as [a propositional] statement?
That is more or less the human default. And of course you won't get them to admit it if you ask them "are you just signaling?", because that very question and its answer have signaling value themselves.
This isn't a deliberate deception; I'm convinced that most people's brains process language first and foremost as signaling-transactions and not as propositional content.
I'm confused too. Now I'm wondering if that figure seems so unrealistic because I don't expect blatantly obvious stupidity to come from libertarians.
Now I'm confused. I expect any significant political party (or similarly wide grouping of people) to produce blatantly obvious stupidity.
But you've been around here a while, you know all this stuff. So what am I missing? Why would you expect libertarianism to be an exception? (If there is a LW-appropriate answer.)
Anyone who knows enough economics to even bother identifying as a libertarian
I don't find that self identification as a libertarian demands any degree of economic fluency, any more than social conservatism demands familiarity with the contents of the Bible.
I Was Wrong, and So Are You
I think I'd feel a little more encouraged if the title was "I Am Wrong, and So Are You".
It seems to me that the main problem with that article is that the survey questions were badly designed. The writer claims that the questions “tested people’s real-world understanding of basic economic principles” – but in fact they merely tested people’s willingness to interpret vague or misleading questions (with nothing at stake...hardly “real-world”) as the experimenter intended.
Given that ambiguity it is hardly surprising that respondents chose to interpret the questions in a way that flatters their personal ideology. This does not demonstrate that the respondents are irrational in any way; if anyone is irrational it is the person who thinks that these surveys prove such a thing.
A few of the questions are listed with the "obviously false" answer in brackets:
a dollar means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person (disagree)
This doesn’t specify whether it is referring to an average rich/poor man, or as a general condition for all rich/poor men. If the former then it is obviously true, but if the latter then it is false. A highly motivated entrepreneur of a penny-pinching disposition might care more about a dollar than an ascetic monk, for example.
...when
I think and hope you could drastically reduce this effect by giving people an ADBOC box to check. It would promote the idea to the test-taker's attention, and it would be extra appealing since it's clearly the most sophisticated option and shows you're a nuanced thinker.
Unfortunately, real life discourse generally doesn't have a prominently displayed ADBOC checkbox. People have confidently informed me that gun control laws fail to reduce people's access to guns.
I don't remember where I saw it, but after the Gulf of Mexico spill last year there was a poll about offshore drilling asking if the spill had changed opinions on offshore drilling in general. People were asked if the incident made them less likely to support further drilling, more likely to support further drilling, or neither. A significant percentage selected the second, presumably responding as if the question asked if they favored offshore drilling in general.
It's logically possible the spill could have made someone more supportive of drilling. This w...
It seems to me that the main problem with that article is that the survey questions were badly designed. The writer claims that the questions “tested people’s real-world understanding of basic economic principles” – but in fact they merely tested people’s willingness to interpret vague or misleading questions (with nothing at stake...hardly “real-world”) as the experimenter intended.
Given that ambiguity it is hardly surprising that respondents chose to interpret the questions in a way that flatters their personal ideology. This does not demonstrate that the respondents are irrational in any way; if anyone is irrational it is the person who thinks that these surveys prove such a thing.
A few of the questions are listed with the "obviously false" answer in brackets:
a dollar means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person (disagree)
This doesn’t specify whether it is referring to an average rich/poor man, or as a general condition for all rich/poor men. If the former then it is obviously true, but if the latter then it is false. A highly motivated entrepreneur of a penny-pinching disposition might care more about a dollar than an ascetic monk, for example.
when two people complete a voluntary transaction, they both necessarily come away better off (agree)
when two people complete a voluntary transaction, it is necessarily the case that everyone else is unaffected by their transaction (agree)
The problem with these questions is that the possible responses were listed as “strongly agree”, “somewhat agree”, “somewhat disagree” etc. However, the only sensible answers to this question are obviously “yes” or “no” (or perhaps “unsure”). Since the list of possible responses suggest that in fact the answer is a matter of degree, it is easy for the respondent to believe that the question isn’t asking him a binary logical question but actually probing his degree of commitment to the idea of free markets or some such thing.
drug prohibition fails to reduce people’s access to drugs (agree)
gun-control laws fail to reduce people’s access to guns (agree)
The same applies to these question – why aren’t the possible answers just “yes”, “no” and “unsure”? Respondents will feel, given the graduated nature of the possible answers suggested, that what is really being probed is the question (which is after all far more interesting and salient) whether they feel that drug prohibition and gun-control laws are successful policies. Asking whether these policies reduce access to drugs and guns at all is so trivial that, given the graduated set of possible responses, it is almost sensible that respondents should answer as though the question was whether they feel that these policies are successful.
Furthermore there is some ambiguity is the sense in which “reduce access” is intended. In one sense gun-control laws reduce access, because they make it harder to get a gun. On the other hand it could be plausibly argued that they do not actually prevent a determined person from acquiring the guns he wants, therefore access to guns hasn’t been reduced per se but merely made more time-consuming or dangerous. It depends whether access refers to ease of getting a gun, or plain ability to get a gun (or drugs) given a high motivation.
overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago (disagree)
Is this really blatantly true? Here is an article that I do not necessarily endorse, but which demonstrates that it is rather presumptuous to pronounce that “disagree” is obviously wrong in this case. Here is Elizabeth Warren on the “two-income trap”. And of course there is the small matter of the financial crisis.
Also, the question fails to mention whether “overall” refers to America in general or to the world in general, which might have some bearing on the answer.
Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (agree)
This would seem to hinge on the definition of “exploited”. And the question doesn’t specify who is exploiting the Third Worlders: the companies in question, or the capitalist First World system in general. Perhaps a socialist might argue that they are being exploited because we haven’t compensated them properly for the sins of colonialism, therefore putting them in the position where they have to work in sweatshops to make ends meet. Again it is not inevitable that any intelligent individual would accept that this statement is blatantly false, even after having that “fact” pointed out to him.
...This would seem to hinge on the definition of “exploited”. And the question doesn’t specify who is exploiting the Third Worlders: the companies in question, or the capitalist First World system in general. Perhaps a socialist might argue that they are being exploited because we haven’t compensated them properly for the sins of colonialism, therefore putting them in the position where they have to work in sweatshops to make ends meet. Again it is not inevitable that any intelligent individual would accept that this statement is blatantly false, even after
A article in the Atlantic, linked to by someone on the unofficial LW IRC channel caught my eye. Nothing all that new for LessWrong readers, but still it is good to see any mention of such biases in mainstream media.
I break here to comment that I don't see why we would expect this to be so given the reality of academia.