10 ms·

Crony Beliefs

124 points by apsec112 6y ago

choonway 6y ago
the world needs useful idiots.
patchtopic 6y ago
is this stating the "meme complex" idea using a different analogy?
trabant00 6y ago
A good analyses, but it does miss mentioning 2 things I can think of: Philosophical beliefs in the realms of politics, social, religious, are long thought not to be a discovery of the truth but a creation of a system in which the believers want to live in. It is not true that "thou shalt not kill" in the sense that is is not a law of the universe, but it sure makes living together a lot more desirable. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem - discovering a cronyism might generate a knee jerk reaction to eliminate it without understanding the full consequences of doing that. The data involved in a problem is practically infinite. Better the devil you know might be exemplified like this: sure, Bob is kind of lazy and he costs you 5k$ to employ him at you textile factory, but outsourcing your production to Asia, even though 1/5th of the cost for same productivity, might introduce problems you are not aware of at the time like: child labor, local workers not affording to buy your products any more, the outsourcing company controlling or taking over your business, etc. So just discovering a belief isn't an universal truth or that it generates some problems does not necessarily justify destroying it.
- atoav 6y ago
  Additionally every change costs energy and (as you well mentioned) colours itself with a perception of potential/real/invented risk. This risk is the straw we all grab to excuse ourselves why we are not acting the way we know we should. If you look at the real world these risks get even invented on the fly (e.g. if we were to accept that immidiately $badthing would happen), so using the terms of the author: We can invent new crony believes with the purpose of protecting other (bigger) crony believes. If you think about conspiracy nuts, their drama lies exactly in the flexibility. Their core crony believe isn't e.g. that the earth is flat or that reptilians control politics, but a deeper underlying believe that something is wrong. Which is why they often switch out their myths like other people change their clothes.
- Veen 6y ago
  There’s also “beliefs” that aren’t true in a strict sense, but make the world easier to talk or think about and that make it easier to persuade people of a position. “Human rights” fall into that category. They aren’t true in any straightforward sense, but like you say they encode a system that people would like to live in and provide an easy to conceptualise cognitive and rhetorical shortcut for persuading other people to cooperate in bringing that world about.
  - afarrell 6y ago
    Some beliefs are facts. Some beliefs are a lens to focus on certain facts.
    - bluetomcat 6y ago
      There are facts, and then there are endless possible interpretations. A fact is an occurrence of something in space and time and can be verified through our 5 senses in an empirical manner, which is also the basis of modern science. For example, it is a fact that I'm currently sitting on my chair, writing this comment. However, answering the question "why am I writing this comment?" is deeply subjective even for me to answer. And yet, many people would consider it a "fact" that I want to sound smart, for example. The language that we use also affects our understanding and models our environment. The previous example can be a fact for all of us only because we have a shared view of "what a chair is" through culture and language.
  - mr_toad 6y ago
    We hold these truths to be self evident...
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  It's worth noting that proponents of moral naturalism, which is at least a position taken seriously in philosophy, do not find any problem with the is/ought problem. Furthermore, moral realism in general doesn't have a problem with it. The fact that they are "long thought" not to be a discovery of truth (by whom?) does not settle the question, but personally (as a moral anti-realist) I agree with you. See this section for responses to the objection: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#Nat...
schoen 6y ago
(2016) The same author later co-wrote a book, in 2018, called The Elephant in the Brain, which expands on some related ideas.
camillomiller 6y ago
I find this example interesting, but it falls a bit short of noticing what the segue to this situation would be today: >>Even mild incentives, however, can still exert pressure on our beliefs. Russ Roberts tells the story of a colleague who, at a picnic, started arguing for an unpopular political opinion — that minimum wage laws can cause harm — whereupon there was a "frost in the air" as his fellow picnickers "edged away from him on the blanket." If this happens once or twice, it's easy enough to shrug off. But when it happens again and again, especially among people whose opinions we care about, sooner or later we'll second-guess our beliefs and be tempted to revise them. It might have been true in a previous age, but in our Internet age, where there’s a big enough corpus of people somewhere that agrees and reinforces you, you won’t have this result. The guy in this example would just shrug off everyone at the picnic as hipster liberals and go back to the virtual place where everyone is agreeing with him. I think that’s exactly what Trump team understood. It’s not just about lying long enough to make a lie true, but more interestingly, to lie and create enough support for that lie for people to feel reinforced in their beliefs even if their closer friend and relatives try to convince them otherwise.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  Yeah. QAnon believers have destroyed important personal relationships while promoting their obviously-wrong belief. Some have continued believing even when absolutely and incontrovertibly proven wrong. Obviously they perceived the social cost of acknowledging that they were wrong as higher than the gain of getting their friends and family back. And obviously there's places they can go on the internet where this continued belief is socially rewarded. I see correlations here with "being weak", where "strength" is correlated with not giving in, not accepting that the other person was right, not changing your opinion in the light of better evidence, etc. For some people, the ego cost of being wrong is much higher than for others. Their self-esteem is somehow connected to this belief. It's less about social, and more about ego.
michaelmrose 6y ago
>What makes for a crony belief is how we're rewarded for it. And the problem with beliefs about climate change is that we have no way to act on them — by which I mean there are no actions we can take whose payoffs (for us as individuals) depend on whether our beliefs are true or false. Completely and totally wrong. We can vote for politicians who will implement policies, or even implement some changes via initiative that are liable to be disadvantageous to us personally in terms of higher taxes or a slower growing economy for a longer term payoff even if the perceived payoff is for our progeny. We can incur costs in exchange for benefits. It MAY be a crony belief but it isn't categorically so.
- GranularRecipe 6y ago
  I think "crony belief" is a negatively connotated misnomer. A better term would be "coordinated belief" which enables us to coordinate our actions in a very complex system. According to his logic, most of the scientific theories I hold to be true are "crony beliefs" in that -- in practical terms -- I can't/don't test them.
- duckerude 6y ago
  The expected personal payoff of voting is extremely small. One vote only makes a small difference. The probability of your vote tipping an election is on the order of winning the lottery. If you look at the payoff for society as a whole then voting is worth it, because it potentially affects an enormous number of people. But your individual payoff of your individual vote can easily be a million times smaller, practically irrelevant.
  - michaelmrose 6y ago
    The point is not the size of the effect it is there being an effect at all. The author declares that ones view on climate change is inherently a crony belief because there is no skin in the game not that there isn't enough skin in the game. In fact people's perceptions of the relative importance of their actions is generally bigger that it really is from a global view. Their natural scope is the tiny world they inhabit not a birds eye view of society.
  - 6y ago
FrozenVoid 6y ago
Beliefs based on truth don't need social reinforcement and don't need to be 'believed by others' due being self-evident. The rest(social beliefs) are based on shaky, vague evidence, pressuring one 'to believe' a certain position without providing justification, as its socially useful(group identity) to have even if false.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  But remember that the evidence you see is often a product of your viewpoint in the first place. People who watch/read right-wing media sources get an entirely different set of facts than people who watch/read left-wing media sources. Both are biased one way or the other. Both get confirmation from their social peers who share their beliefs. Religion, for example. If you live in a society that is mostly religious then you will encounter proof of god's existence every day. If you live in a society that is mostly atheist, you will never encounter any proof of god's existence, and you'll wonder how anyone believes that crap. Which is the belief based on truth?
  - FrozenVoid 6y ago
    religion and politics are obviously social beliefs, not individual beliefs. They require a group identity and social pressure to function.
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      Religious people argue that religion is an objective truth.
- tremon 6y ago
  Beliefs based on truth don't need social reinforcement and don't need to be 'believed by others' due being self-evident. Whose truth? Many people will tell their beliefs are based on truth, even people with conflicting beliefs will both defend their viewpoints by claiming "truth". Your assumption that all truths are self-evident (or that all instances of self-evidence are truths) seems invalid to me.
placebo 6y ago
I'd suggest the following method to those who have the courage to remove crony beliefs: First, ask yourself "Can I clearly articulate and convey my belief, both to myself and to others?" Continue to the next step only after you can answer the above with definite "Yes". Next, ask yourself: "What evidence would make me change my mind about this belief?" If the answer is "practically none" then you have discovered a crony belief. If the evidence shows up and as a result you just move the goalposts to keep the original belief, then you are still infected... We all need to model reality to survive. The problems begin when we worship the model instead of the reality it is meant to approximate. Any belief is a model that we are invested in and can have various levels of "staying power". A Zen (or other spiritual practitioner) would tell you that strongest of those and the one we usually are most invested in is the belief of a believer... The best antidote to crony or otherwise any false beliefs is deciding the benefit of uncovering of what is True is more important than any other benefit. All the above of course is a belief as well, which I will gladly change given a good counter argument/evidence :)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
  I don't think you're wrong, but my basic values, such as "all citizens should have human rights" would be discovered as "a crony belief". And are you suggesting that I therefor rid myself of it?
  - placebo 6y ago
    First, not all crony beliefs have to be necessarily false :) But seriously - if you are presented with evidence that when not all citizens have human rights then everyone is more well-off and happier than when all citizens have human rights, and after finding no errors in the data or logic, will you automatically dismiss it or reassess your belief? If you would reassess your belief then it's not a crony belief. Of course, you might never need to reassess it, but being open to the possibility that it might need rethinking is what keeps it from being a crony belief
eriktrautman 6y ago
An oldie but goodie. I suspect applying some modeling of traits would show people low on Agreeableness/people-pleasing would naturally harbor far fewer of these crony beliefs since it removes the reward mechanism for their cronyism.
bumbada 6y ago
I believe the mistake the author is doing is trying to simplify the world so much into a binary mindset, zeros and ones, all or nothing, pure qualitative. That mindset is wrong, because the world is much more complex than simple axioms, and there is a qualitative part on everything too. Plato's cave, you don't see the world but its distorted image. For example, the statement "vaccines cause autism"(pesticides create autism is a fact) can be real in some amount like one in a million and also the statement "if you don't vaccinate you have a significant probability of dying from a virus, bigger than 1%". Both statements could be true. It does not need to be pure true or pure false just because my thoughts are binary. If I go B.A.S.E jumping or diving or downhill skying or biking there is a probability of me dying. People just accept the risk and do it anyway because they weight the advantages against the risks. X-rays create cancer. But they are also very useful, so they are used anyway, trying to minimize the risk. If you believe the statements "x-rays are safe" or "skying is safe" as 100% true, you are wrong, but the belief will be more useful than the opposite belief, that is also wrong, "if you get x-rays, you will get cancer". You don't need to belief in bipolar beliefs.
- coding123 6y ago
  He's not really talking about specific binary beliefs, he's talking about how belief systems come about.
gavanwoolery 6y ago
In the absence of hard, irrefutable and all-encompassing proof, everything is just religion.
- mr_toad 6y ago
  To be perfectly honest, I have never done the experiments to prove that electricity works the way that scientists, engineers, or even bureaucrats claim it will. And yet, when I flick a switch, lo and behold, there is light That’s a pretty fucking good religion.
  - hansvs 6y ago
    I really like this analogy! :D
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    Hum... You summarized it very well, and I just can not agree with that idea. Flicking a switch is a very powerful and revealing experiment.
  - arpa 6y ago
    Haven't you gone to school? We had physics experiments in high school...
cryptica 6y ago
A major problem is that most people's knowledge is built almost entirely on social consensus and not on personal observation; yet, despite this fragile foundation, they feel extremely confident about the correctness of their knowledge. IMO most people who call flat-earthers 'stupid' are what I would call 'educated idiots'. Most people who call flat-earthers stupid do so based on a weak foundation of consensus knowledge that they pulled out of a few junior-school-level textbooks and space movies; they never actually read serious scientific research about the subject or did their own experiments. One's inability to distinguish which parts of one's own knowledge is built purely on social consensus from those parts that are built on first-hand observable evidence and critical experimentation is a sign of stupidity.
- coding123 6y ago
  In a sense a flat earther creating a rocket to test straight lines at 100000 feet are more interested in the truth than someone that just laughs at them. Also if the flat earther then decides the earth is round will have done more science and is more intelligent on the subject.
hoseja 6y ago
And now consider that the beliefs themselves may form agency and evolve to exploit those inherent brain incentives for their own survival and fitness, independent of the survival/fitness of the believer.
pjc50 6y ago
On the truth of beliefs: ""Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.” -- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather
- bartread 6y ago
  I like Terry Pratchett, and Hogfather, a lot, but it's worth remembering that it's entertainment, and not philosophy. For example, it's possible to construct the same reductionist argument about market economics (or any other conceptual discipline): the concepts have no physical existence beyond patterns of neurons and electrical signals in our minds, electrical patterns in our machines, and the ink on the pages of books we've created. Grind all of those down and there would be no trace of market economics. And yet, the effects of market economics are all around us. So is it real or not? If you did the grinding experiment you'd also find no trace of life left in the powder, especially not if you take it to its logical conclusion at the subatomic level. Does that mean there is no such thing as life?
  - pjc50 6y ago
    > worth remembering that it's entertainment, and not philosophy. It's absolutely both. I think a lot more people would cite Pratchett as a direct influence on their philosophy of life than you'd expect. > is it real or not? Yes, this is a convincing argument against both reductionism and the unqualified use of "real". Emergent and non-atomisable things have to be considered as "real" for reasoning purposes or you collapse in a pile of logic.
    - 6y ago
artem247 6y ago
Well, if I've understood correctly the author implies that if you don't really use your 'belief' in a practical sense, then it is crony. And the only benefit of irrational beliefs is to have a calculated social good impression. I think ethics do not need to be 'truthy'. Sometimes science is used for an ethical argument, but often it is just a weapon to make a certain impression. People care about other people not because they believe they we'll be rewarded for it. My great-grandmother was saved when Nazis occupied the city she lived in by her friend, who risked her life to do so. Was it because of "true" belief? Of course not. Or was it 'good impressions' - well nobody predicted at the time that the Nazis will lose. People have agency which stems from their life experience. For example author worked at Palantir for seven years. Was it 'rational' to do so? Probably, such companies may be a great place to work and compensation would be nice. Would it be 'irrational' to decline job offer from such company on ethical grounds? My point is that social reality is a fiction, point well-understood in certain traditions, but that fiction is what really our lives are, something as quite real as outcomes of scientific experiments. The absence of Truth as a bedrock of our experience may be problematic but it really opens up a horizon for change.
naringas 6y ago
I like the idea of judging our beliefs based on what they do for us, personally-individually, and collectively (which is very political and gets tricky very fast) also, I like exercising my freedom of belief (a personal individual freedom). I have a right to believe whatever crazy thing I want to; but I have no right to escape the consequences of any false beliefs I might hold.
kuroguro 6y ago
I wonder where on this scale would "having a soul" would land. The crony beliefs, as described, seem to be only socially based. I've been thinking about it for a while and I just can't crack it. Plenty of non-religious people in my friend and acquaintance circle believe that after they die their souls will leave this world and... well they won't actually die, I guess. I just don't see the social value in that. The subject comes up so rarely that it doesn't really matter. If I had to guess how it works, it looks more like some sort of self-defense mechanism than anything - avoiding thinking about (potentially) depressing things that aren't actionable. So I guess my problem is that I can't find a way to fit that in the proposed framework, unless I missed something? _edit_ If my assumption about how it works is correct (self-defense) than it would have near 0 social value, but a lot of practical value (not worrying about things beyond one's control). Yet it still sounds like a crony belief - it's most likely not how the universe works imo.
- OkayPhysicist 6y ago
  Soul in particular is pretty closely tied with other religious beliefs, in tandem with the concept of free will, which, imo, illustrates your practical false belief concept even better. In order for us to do pretty much anything, we need to choose to do it, and believing we can't choose to do something is a pretty big obstacle to actually doing it.
- technobabble 6y ago
  Have you ever heard of the term "christian atheist". Your post reminded me about a video by the Youtuber Innuendo Studios titled "I hate Mondays". (The following is my opinion taken from anecdotes about myself and reading about other philosophical works. I am not an expert on this subject). The idea of "having a soul" is a core belief that is needed to hold up ideas of morals and debt. It's an idea perpetuated because people want to be flattered and people in positions of power can use it to influence the masses. As an example, think about when a person refuses to vote "for the lesser of two evils" in the US presidential election. From a utilitarian perspective, voting for the lesser does have benefit: it mitigates damage. But to the voter, it doesn't feel that way. "Having a soul" Does provide social value. Not voting for the lesser of two evils preserves ones integrity. Granted I'm not saying people should transition to Realpolitik.
yellowapple 6y ago
I feel like the author started with a good analogy, but then missed an important angle that more readily explains the "crazy" part of crazy beliefs: In a sufficiently-large workplace, you'll start to encounter office politics and the office "culture", both of which end up influencing the makeup of the employees in that workplace - be it through hiring decisions, promotion/demotion decisions, and even terminations (voluntary or otherwise). Before you know it, the overall culture and political environment of that workplace becomes entrenched. It's a sort of internal cronyism - one which maintains consistency within the organization, rather than a pursuit of meritocracy or an attempt to appease an external force. Taking this metaphor to the brain, once a belief is "hired", there's a certain barrier to "firing" it; even assuming there are no labor laws in the State of Brainia, there's a bit of a sunk cost in each belief that makes it undesirable to "fire" that belief, and therefore each belief has some impact on the "workplace culture" and "office politics" of the mind: each belief will impart its pressure on other beliefs, forming cliques and pushing out beliefs that don't conform. Thus lies the path from reasonable things like "I believe pharmaceutical companies will do whatever they believe will maximize profit" to... less reasonable things like "I believe Bill Gates is using COVID vaccines to inject 5G tracking chips in the global population". And worse, that's what makes it so difficult to actually convince someone about the craziness of such beliefs: those beliefs are already entrenched. Instead of trying to un-entrench such beliefs, it's better to address the proliferation of misinformation at the source: by propagating "inoculation" beliefs that entrench themselves before the "crazier" beliefs can take hold.

Crony Beliefs

124 points by apsec112 6y ago

choonway 6y ago

the world needs useful idiots.

patchtopic 6y ago

is this stating the "meme complex" idea using a different analogy?

trabant00 6y ago

A good analyses, but it does miss mentioning 2 things I can think of: Philosophical beliefs in the realms of politics, social, religious, are long thought not to be a discovery of the truth but a creation of a system in which the believers want to live in. It is not true that "thou shalt not kill" in the sense that is is not a law of the universe, but it sure makes living together a lot more desirable. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem - discovering a cronyism might generate a knee jerk reaction to eliminate it without understanding the full consequences of doing that. The data involved in a problem is practically infinite. Better the devil you know might be exemplified like this: sure, Bob is kind of lazy and he costs you 5k$ to employ him at you textile factory, but outsourcing your production to Asia, even though 1/5th of the cost for same productivity, might introduce problems you are not aware of at the time like: child labor, local workers not affording to buy your products any more, the outsourcing company controlling or taking over your business, etc. So just discovering a belief isn't an universal truth or that it generates some problems does not necessarily justify destroying it.

atoav 6y ago
Additionally every change costs energy and (as you well mentioned) colours itself with a perception of potential/real/invented risk. This risk is the straw we all grab to excuse ourselves why we are not acting the way we know we should. If you look at the real world these risks get even invented on the fly (e.g. if we were to accept that immidiately $badthing would happen), so using the terms of the author: We can invent new crony believes with the purpose of protecting other (bigger) crony believes. If you think about conspiracy nuts, their drama lies exactly in the flexibility. Their core crony believe isn't e.g. that the earth is flat or that reptilians control politics, but a deeper underlying believe that something is wrong. Which is why they often switch out their myths like other people change their clothes.
Veen 6y ago
There’s also “beliefs” that aren’t true in a strict sense, but make the world easier to talk or think about and that make it easier to persuade people of a position. “Human rights” fall into that category. They aren’t true in any straightforward sense, but like you say they encode a system that people would like to live in and provide an easy to conceptualise cognitive and rhetorical shortcut for persuading other people to cooperate in bringing that world about.
- afarrell 6y ago
  Some beliefs are facts. Some beliefs are a lens to focus on certain facts.
  - bluetomcat 6y ago
    There are facts, and then there are endless possible interpretations. A fact is an occurrence of something in space and time and can be verified through our 5 senses in an empirical manner, which is also the basis of modern science. For example, it is a fact that I'm currently sitting on my chair, writing this comment. However, answering the question "why am I writing this comment?" is deeply subjective even for me to answer. And yet, many people would consider it a "fact" that I want to sound smart, for example. The language that we use also affects our understanding and models our environment. The previous example can be a fact for all of us only because we have a shared view of "what a chair is" through culture and language.
- mr_toad 6y ago
  We hold these truths to be self evident...
claudiawerner 6y ago
It's worth noting that proponents of moral naturalism, which is at least a position taken seriously in philosophy, do not find any problem with the is/ought problem. Furthermore, moral realism in general doesn't have a problem with it. The fact that they are "long thought" not to be a discovery of truth (by whom?) does not settle the question, but personally (as a moral anti-realist) I agree with you. See this section for responses to the objection: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#NatFal https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/#Nat...

schoen 6y ago

(2016) The same author later co-wrote a book, in 2018, called The Elephant in the Brain, which expands on some related ideas.

camillomiller 6y ago

I find this example interesting, but it falls a bit short of noticing what the segue to this situation would be today: >>Even mild incentives, however, can still exert pressure on our beliefs. Russ Roberts tells the story of a colleague who, at a picnic, started arguing for an unpopular political opinion — that minimum wage laws can cause harm — whereupon there was a "frost in the air" as his fellow picnickers "edged away from him on the blanket." If this happens once or twice, it's easy enough to shrug off. But when it happens again and again, especially among people whose opinions we care about, sooner or later we'll second-guess our beliefs and be tempted to revise them. It might have been true in a previous age, but in our Internet age, where there’s a big enough corpus of people somewhere that agrees and reinforces you, you won’t have this result. The guy in this example would just shrug off everyone at the picnic as hipster liberals and go back to the virtual place where everyone is agreeing with him. I think that’s exactly what Trump team understood. It’s not just about lying long enough to make a lie true, but more interestingly, to lie and create enough support for that lie for people to feel reinforced in their beliefs even if their closer friend and relatives try to convince them otherwise.

marcus_holmes 6y ago
Yeah. QAnon believers have destroyed important personal relationships while promoting their obviously-wrong belief. Some have continued believing even when absolutely and incontrovertibly proven wrong. Obviously they perceived the social cost of acknowledging that they were wrong as higher than the gain of getting their friends and family back. And obviously there's places they can go on the internet where this continued belief is socially rewarded. I see correlations here with "being weak", where "strength" is correlated with not giving in, not accepting that the other person was right, not changing your opinion in the light of better evidence, etc. For some people, the ego cost of being wrong is much higher than for others. Their self-esteem is somehow connected to this belief. It's less about social, and more about ego.

michaelmrose 6y ago

>What makes for a crony belief is how we're rewarded for it. And the problem with beliefs about climate change is that we have no way to act on them — by which I mean there are no actions we can take whose payoffs (for us as individuals) depend on whether our beliefs are true or false. Completely and totally wrong. We can vote for politicians who will implement policies, or even implement some changes via initiative that are liable to be disadvantageous to us personally in terms of higher taxes or a slower growing economy for a longer term payoff even if the perceived payoff is for our progeny. We can incur costs in exchange for benefits. It MAY be a crony belief but it isn't categorically so.

GranularRecipe 6y ago
I think "crony belief" is a negatively connotated misnomer. A better term would be "coordinated belief" which enables us to coordinate our actions in a very complex system. According to his logic, most of the scientific theories I hold to be true are "crony beliefs" in that -- in practical terms -- I can't/don't test them.
duckerude 6y ago
The expected personal payoff of voting is extremely small. One vote only makes a small difference. The probability of your vote tipping an election is on the order of winning the lottery. If you look at the payoff for society as a whole then voting is worth it, because it potentially affects an enormous number of people. But your individual payoff of your individual vote can easily be a million times smaller, practically irrelevant.
- michaelmrose 6y ago
  The point is not the size of the effect it is there being an effect at all. The author declares that ones view on climate change is inherently a crony belief because there is no skin in the game not that there isn't enough skin in the game. In fact people's perceptions of the relative importance of their actions is generally bigger that it really is from a global view. Their natural scope is the tiny world they inhabit not a birds eye view of society.
- 6y ago

FrozenVoid 6y ago

Beliefs based on truth don't need social reinforcement and don't need to be 'believed by others' due being self-evident. The rest(social beliefs) are based on shaky, vague evidence, pressuring one 'to believe' a certain position without providing justification, as its socially useful(group identity) to have even if false.

marcus_holmes 6y ago
But remember that the evidence you see is often a product of your viewpoint in the first place. People who watch/read right-wing media sources get an entirely different set of facts than people who watch/read left-wing media sources. Both are biased one way or the other. Both get confirmation from their social peers who share their beliefs. Religion, for example. If you live in a society that is mostly religious then you will encounter proof of god's existence every day. If you live in a society that is mostly atheist, you will never encounter any proof of god's existence, and you'll wonder how anyone believes that crap. Which is the belief based on truth?
- FrozenVoid 6y ago
  religion and politics are obviously social beliefs, not individual beliefs. They require a group identity and social pressure to function.
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    Religious people argue that religion is an objective truth.
tremon 6y ago
Beliefs based on truth don't need social reinforcement and don't need to be 'believed by others' due being self-evident. Whose truth? Many people will tell their beliefs are based on truth, even people with conflicting beliefs will both defend their viewpoints by claiming "truth". Your assumption that all truths are self-evident (or that all instances of self-evidence are truths) seems invalid to me.

placebo 6y ago

I'd suggest the following method to those who have the courage to remove crony beliefs: First, ask yourself "Can I clearly articulate and convey my belief, both to myself and to others?" Continue to the next step only after you can answer the above with definite "Yes". Next, ask yourself: "What evidence would make me change my mind about this belief?" If the answer is "practically none" then you have discovered a crony belief. If the evidence shows up and as a result you just move the goalposts to keep the original belief, then you are still infected... We all need to model reality to survive. The problems begin when we worship the model instead of the reality it is meant to approximate. Any belief is a model that we are invested in and can have various levels of "staying power". A Zen (or other spiritual practitioner) would tell you that strongest of those and the one we usually are most invested in is the belief of a believer... The best antidote to crony or otherwise any false beliefs is deciding the benefit of uncovering of what is True is more important than any other benefit. All the above of course is a belief as well, which I will gladly change given a good counter argument/evidence :)

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
I don't think you're wrong, but my basic values, such as "all citizens should have human rights" would be discovered as "a crony belief". And are you suggesting that I therefor rid myself of it?
- placebo 6y ago
  First, not all crony beliefs have to be necessarily false :) But seriously - if you are presented with evidence that when not all citizens have human rights then everyone is more well-off and happier than when all citizens have human rights, and after finding no errors in the data or logic, will you automatically dismiss it or reassess your belief? If you would reassess your belief then it's not a crony belief. Of course, you might never need to reassess it, but being open to the possibility that it might need rethinking is what keeps it from being a crony belief

eriktrautman 6y ago

An oldie but goodie. I suspect applying some modeling of traits would show people low on Agreeableness/people-pleasing would naturally harbor far fewer of these crony beliefs since it removes the reward mechanism for their cronyism.

bumbada 6y ago

I believe the mistake the author is doing is trying to simplify the world so much into a binary mindset, zeros and ones, all or nothing, pure qualitative. That mindset is wrong, because the world is much more complex than simple axioms, and there is a qualitative part on everything too. Plato's cave, you don't see the world but its distorted image. For example, the statement "vaccines cause autism"(pesticides create autism is a fact) can be real in some amount like one in a million and also the statement "if you don't vaccinate you have a significant probability of dying from a virus, bigger than 1%". Both statements could be true. It does not need to be pure true or pure false just because my thoughts are binary. If I go B.A.S.E jumping or diving or downhill skying or biking there is a probability of me dying. People just accept the risk and do it anyway because they weight the advantages against the risks. X-rays create cancer. But they are also very useful, so they are used anyway, trying to minimize the risk. If you believe the statements "x-rays are safe" or "skying is safe" as 100% true, you are wrong, but the belief will be more useful than the opposite belief, that is also wrong, "if you get x-rays, you will get cancer". You don't need to belief in bipolar beliefs.

coding123 6y ago
He's not really talking about specific binary beliefs, he's talking about how belief systems come about.

gavanwoolery 6y ago

In the absence of hard, irrefutable and all-encompassing proof, everything is just religion.

mr_toad 6y ago
To be perfectly honest, I have never done the experiments to prove that electricity works the way that scientists, engineers, or even bureaucrats claim it will. And yet, when I flick a switch, lo and behold, there is light That’s a pretty fucking good religion.
- hansvs 6y ago
  I really like this analogy! :D
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Hum... You summarized it very well, and I just can not agree with that idea. Flicking a switch is a very powerful and revealing experiment.
- arpa 6y ago
  Haven't you gone to school? We had physics experiments in high school...

cryptica 6y ago

A major problem is that most people's knowledge is built almost entirely on social consensus and not on personal observation; yet, despite this fragile foundation, they feel extremely confident about the correctness of their knowledge. IMO most people who call flat-earthers 'stupid' are what I would call 'educated idiots'. Most people who call flat-earthers stupid do so based on a weak foundation of consensus knowledge that they pulled out of a few junior-school-level textbooks and space movies; they never actually read serious scientific research about the subject or did their own experiments. One's inability to distinguish which parts of one's own knowledge is built purely on social consensus from those parts that are built on first-hand observable evidence and critical experimentation is a sign of stupidity.

coding123 6y ago
In a sense a flat earther creating a rocket to test straight lines at 100000 feet are more interested in the truth than someone that just laughs at them. Also if the flat earther then decides the earth is round will have done more science and is more intelligent on the subject.

hoseja 6y ago

And now consider that the beliefs themselves may form agency and evolve to exploit those inherent brain incentives for their own survival and fitness, independent of the survival/fitness of the believer.

pjc50 6y ago

On the truth of beliefs: ""Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—" YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. "So we can believe the big ones?" YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING. "They're not the same at all!" YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED. "Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—" MY POINT EXACTLY.” -- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather. https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/583655-hogfather

bartread 6y ago
I like Terry Pratchett, and Hogfather, a lot, but it's worth remembering that it's entertainment, and not philosophy. For example, it's possible to construct the same reductionist argument about market economics (or any other conceptual discipline): the concepts have no physical existence beyond patterns of neurons and electrical signals in our minds, electrical patterns in our machines, and the ink on the pages of books we've created. Grind all of those down and there would be no trace of market economics. And yet, the effects of market economics are all around us. So is it real or not? If you did the grinding experiment you'd also find no trace of life left in the powder, especially not if you take it to its logical conclusion at the subatomic level. Does that mean there is no such thing as life?
- pjc50 6y ago
  > worth remembering that it's entertainment, and not philosophy. It's absolutely both. I think a lot more people would cite Pratchett as a direct influence on their philosophy of life than you'd expect. > is it real or not? Yes, this is a convincing argument against both reductionism and the unqualified use of "real". Emergent and non-atomisable things have to be considered as "real" for reasoning purposes or you collapse in a pile of logic.
  - 6y ago

artem247 6y ago

Well, if I've understood correctly the author implies that if you don't really use your 'belief' in a practical sense, then it is crony. And the only benefit of irrational beliefs is to have a calculated social good impression. I think ethics do not need to be 'truthy'. Sometimes science is used for an ethical argument, but often it is just a weapon to make a certain impression. People care about other people not because they believe they we'll be rewarded for it. My great-grandmother was saved when Nazis occupied the city she lived in by her friend, who risked her life to do so. Was it because of "true" belief? Of course not. Or was it 'good impressions' - well nobody predicted at the time that the Nazis will lose. People have agency which stems from their life experience. For example author worked at Palantir for seven years. Was it 'rational' to do so? Probably, such companies may be a great place to work and compensation would be nice. Would it be 'irrational' to decline job offer from such company on ethical grounds? My point is that social reality is a fiction, point well-understood in certain traditions, but that fiction is what really our lives are, something as quite real as outcomes of scientific experiments. The absence of Truth as a bedrock of our experience may be problematic but it really opens up a horizon for change.

naringas 6y ago

I like the idea of judging our beliefs based on what they do for us, personally-individually, and collectively (which is very political and gets tricky very fast) also, I like exercising my freedom of belief (a personal individual freedom). I have a right to believe whatever crazy thing I want to; but I have no right to escape the consequences of any false beliefs I might hold.

kuroguro 6y ago

I wonder where on this scale would "having a soul" would land. The crony beliefs, as described, seem to be only socially based. I've been thinking about it for a while and I just can't crack it. Plenty of non-religious people in my friend and acquaintance circle believe that after they die their souls will leave this world and... well they won't actually die, I guess. I just don't see the social value in that. The subject comes up so rarely that it doesn't really matter. If I had to guess how it works, it looks more like some sort of self-defense mechanism than anything - avoiding thinking about (potentially) depressing things that aren't actionable. So I guess my problem is that I can't find a way to fit that in the proposed framework, unless I missed something? _edit_ If my assumption about how it works is correct (self-defense) than it would have near 0 social value, but a lot of practical value (not worrying about things beyond one's control). Yet it still sounds like a crony belief - it's most likely not how the universe works imo.

OkayPhysicist 6y ago
Soul in particular is pretty closely tied with other religious beliefs, in tandem with the concept of free will, which, imo, illustrates your practical false belief concept even better. In order for us to do pretty much anything, we need to choose to do it, and believing we can't choose to do something is a pretty big obstacle to actually doing it.
technobabble 6y ago
Have you ever heard of the term "christian atheist". Your post reminded me about a video by the Youtuber Innuendo Studios titled "I hate Mondays". (The following is my opinion taken from anecdotes about myself and reading about other philosophical works. I am not an expert on this subject). The idea of "having a soul" is a core belief that is needed to hold up ideas of morals and debt. It's an idea perpetuated because people want to be flattered and people in positions of power can use it to influence the masses. As an example, think about when a person refuses to vote "for the lesser of two evils" in the US presidential election. From a utilitarian perspective, voting for the lesser does have benefit: it mitigates damage. But to the voter, it doesn't feel that way. "Having a soul" Does provide social value. Not voting for the lesser of two evils preserves ones integrity. Granted I'm not saying people should transition to Realpolitik.

yellowapple 6y ago

I feel like the author started with a good analogy, but then missed an important angle that more readily explains the "crazy" part of crazy beliefs: In a sufficiently-large workplace, you'll start to encounter office politics and the office "culture", both of which end up influencing the makeup of the employees in that workplace - be it through hiring decisions, promotion/demotion decisions, and even terminations (voluntary or otherwise). Before you know it, the overall culture and political environment of that workplace becomes entrenched. It's a sort of internal cronyism - one which maintains consistency within the organization, rather than a pursuit of meritocracy or an attempt to appease an external force. Taking this metaphor to the brain, once a belief is "hired", there's a certain barrier to "firing" it; even assuming there are no labor laws in the State of Brainia, there's a bit of a sunk cost in each belief that makes it undesirable to "fire" that belief, and therefore each belief has some impact on the "workplace culture" and "office politics" of the mind: each belief will impart its pressure on other beliefs, forming cliques and pushing out beliefs that don't conform. Thus lies the path from reasonable things like "I believe pharmaceutical companies will do whatever they believe will maximize profit" to... less reasonable things like "I believe Bill Gates is using COVID vaccines to inject 5G tracking chips in the global population". And worse, that's what makes it so difficult to actually convince someone about the craziness of such beliefs: those beliefs are already entrenched. Instead of trying to un-entrench such beliefs, it's better to address the proliferation of misinformation at the source: by propagating "inoculation" beliefs that entrench themselves before the "crazier" beliefs can take hold.