The Reality-Based Community

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

  • Home
  • About
  • BOTEC Analysis
You are here: Home / A foolish consistency

A foolish consistency

March 25, 2005 By Mark Kleiman @markarkleiman

Consider the following three pairs of alternatives:

1. If a person is in a persistent vegetative state, that person should (should not) be kept biologically alive for as long as possible.

2. Terri Schiavo is (is not) in a persistent vegetative state.

3. Public opinion favors (does not favor) removing Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube.

Logically, these are three independent questions. But in fact, if you know someone’s opinion on any one of them, you can make an excellent guess about his opinion on the other two. Thus Mickey Kaus finds it “bizarre” that I believe that Terri Schiavo is persistently vegetative and that keeping someone in that situation biologically “alive” is ghoulish, but doubt that the public agrees with me as strongly as the recent polls indicate.

It may not be bizarre, but it’s highly unusual; at least, so far I think my position is unique in Blogspace.

The mechanism of cognitive dissonance explains the correlations. Holding apparently dissonant beliefs is hard work. One definition of a liberal education is that it is the process of strengthening and disciplining the mind to make it better able and more willing to do that work.

In a situation of factional struggle, one’s loyalty to a side is judged in part by one’s consistency in holding all of the opinions that side professes. That’s the mechanism of “political correctness,” regardless of which party line determines what is “correct”: that’s the point of Glenn Loury’s classic paper on self-censorship. Living in a world in which you’re better off saying what everyone around you says makes it all the much more tempting to believe what everyone around you believes.

Still, intellectual and moral laziness are vices, and those of us who pride ourselves on being “reality-based” should cultivate the corresponding virtues, firming and toning the mental and spiritual muscles that make it possible to hold simultaneously in consciousness two (or more) apparently contradictory ideas. Yes, dumb single-mindedness sometimes has operational advantages in a political struggle, but just think how undignified it is.

The White Queen claimed that, with practice, it was possible to believe six impossible things before breakfast. (She is now, I am told, writing speeches for GWB.) Perhaps it is; practice does make perfect. But instead of practicing belief in the impossible, why not practice the opposite?

So here’s an exercise I commend to you, dear reader: once a day, try to believe something that you would prefer not to believe, and that will make the people you normally agree with doubt your loyalty to the cause.

As Socrates says, it’s better to disagree with your friends than to disagree with the universe.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Blogroll

  • Balloon Juice
  • The Belgravia Dispatch
  • Brad DeLong
  • Cop in the ‘hood
  • Crooked Timber
  • Crooks and Liars
  • Echidne of the Snakes
  • Firedoglake
  • A Fistful of Euros
  • Healthinsurance.org Blog
  • Horizons
  • How Appealing
  • The Incidental Economist
  • Informed Comment — Juan Cole
  • Jonathan Bernstein
  • Kevin Drum
  • Marginal Revolution — Tyler Cowen
  • Marijuana Monitor
  • The Moderate Voice
  • Obsidian Wings
  • Patheos
  • Philosoraptor
  • Plato o Plomo — Alejandro Hope
  • Political Animal
  • Politics Upside Down
  • Progressive Blog Digest
  • Progressive Blue
  • Slacktivist
  • Snopes
  • Strange Doctrines
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • The Volokh Conspiracy (Washington Post)
  • Vox Pop

Recent Posts

  • Weekend Film Recommendation: Act of Violence
  • Sex, the Secretary, and Starr
  • Cannabis News Round-Up
  • Percentages and the pastrami panic…
  • Do professors care whether college students are actually learning?

Archives

Topic Areas

Copyright © 2017 The Reality-Based Community  •  Designed & Developed by ReadyMadeWeb LLC