Robert A. Heinlein, the "Dean of Science Fiction Writers", said it best:
"Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal"
Ever since I read that as a boy in the 60's, its been one of the guideposts of my life. Mr Thaler has simply demonstrated this truth in one particular area.
47
Much like Jimmy Carter, President Obama was a political anomaly. A consequence of the usual conservative hubris gone astray whose results gave us our first African-American President. At least in my lifetime, I can appreciate an American President that read and understood Marilynne Robinson. T.S. Eliot and dare I say David Brooks. What a contrast then and what we have now...a president barely able to spell.
70
"But the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join. If you do that, they’ll bend their opinions to yours. If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
I haven't seen any evidence of that happening with Trump supporters. Have you?
39
I always find David Brooks' op eds stimulating, but when he said "Before Thaler, economists figured it was good enough to proceed as if people are rational, utility-maximizing creatures." I had to correct him. It was Herbert Simon who got a Nobel in Economics (before he went on to be one of the founders of the field of Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon) who introduced the notion of "satisficing" to economics and "sciences of the artificial" (a book he wrote on the topic).
16
David Brooks writes,
"Jacobs notices that when somebody uses 'in other words' to summarize another’s argument, what follows is almost invariably a ridiculous caricature of that argument, in order to win favor with the team. David Foster Wallace once called such people Snoots. Their motto is, 'We Are the Few, the Proud, the More or Less Constantly Appalled at Everyone Else.'"
No, Mr. Brooks.
In the essay "Authority and American Usage," Wallace glosses SNOOT (all caps) as his "nuclear family’s nickname for a really extreme usage fanatic." The acronym stands for "Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance" or "Syntax Nudniks Of Our Time." SNOOT has nothing to do with caricaturing other people’s arguments and winning favor with a team. The acronym applies to those who obsess over matters of grammar and usage, those who know how to hyphenate phrasal adjectives and who sneer at "10 ITEMS OR LESS." As Wallace points out in the essay, "the word may be slightly self-mocking." Wallace identified as a SNOOT, and his spoof of the USMC slogan ("the Few, the Proud, the More or Less Constantly Appalled at Everyone Else") is further evidence of self-mockery. He wasn't calling other people SNOOTs. He was writing about himself.
And as Wallace said in a radio interview, "to be a SNOOT is a lonely, stressful way to be."
38
Thaler didn't start the behavioral economics revolution as you state. Herbert Simon was awarded the Nobel prize in 1978 for his work on information constraints and bounded rationality in decision making, and there were others along the way, including Kahneman in 2002. Please don't oversimplify!
25
Vaccines, fluoride, sunscreen, smoking, gun control: facts have never been enough.
25
Can one fake "reasonableness"? If so, can the reasonable folks of the Inner Ring recognize it? If not, wouldn't that make the fake reasonables the coolest then? Isn't that a reasonable assumption?
Discuss.
8
Read Charlie Sykes' NYT article from Feb 4 (Why no one cares the President is lying). He points out, correctly, that the conservative media machine has so manipulated the minds of much of their audience that they cannot tell fact from fiction. Until this changes, it will be hard to make progress on any important topic in national politics. Too many conservatives cannot tell fact from fiction. Progressives face a headwind of 30% opposition in the form of those who cannot tell fact from fiction. All because a few nefarious billionaires dominate conservative news. The world suffers the consequences.
32
Frustrating to see Brooks buying into the trendy journalistic idea that universities stifle free speech. Brooks: "at the Yale Political Union members are admired if they can point to a time when a debate totally changed their mind on something. That means they take evidence seriously....How many public institutions celebrate these virtues? ...Even the universities?" When was the last time Brooks was on a campus? Despite a few highly publicized and misguided cancellations/protests against speakers, the vast majority of the over US 4000 institutions of higher education are still places where dissent is thoughtfully respected. Journalists need to take more seriously the fact that painting a huge number of institutions and the individuals in them with such a broad brush based on a few incidents is not much different from other sorts of stereotyping.
22
Overall I have pretty much the same attitude.
Changing one's mind in face of evidence and reason seems to be adaptive and a virtue. Yet in politics, if you changed your mind on something, it is inconsistency and attacked.
Joining a community that people want to join is good, but at the same time forming a gang held together by antagonism to a rival gang achieves this to.
Obama has been characterized as a weak leader by some because he can change his opinion by debate.( I am thinking about gay marriage)
I value this editorial and so very much want this kind of idea of informed discourse to prevail, yet the part of the brain of emotion is hard wired for fast action and before deliberation.
I worry, global warming, when we have a solution, nuclear bombs when we have treaties our president discards. population control we can do without suffering,
diseases to be treated if everyone shared resources so we all could be covered.
And just this sort of bad thinking seems to me to be underlying our failure.
9
Strong affects, especially, fear, anger and hatred, overcome rationality all the time. People with sufficient hatred of others and fear of the future will vote against their own and their children's interests. As a matter of fact, many just did. And so it goes.
14
Sincere congratulations to Professor Thaler for the Nobel Prize.
However, my soul is poisoned by Thomas Carlyle's words (1849) that economics is "a dismal science", now coupled to another not very serious discipline of psychology.
6
Most of us know we have reached adulthood when we realize that we are average. Not headliners, not celebrities, but hopefully part of a community. We average out to something greater than ourselves. We do behVe rationally and most pragmatically, Mr. Brooks.
6
the subject of thinking and how to think I think they are poorly conceptuados.No thought of way given because "someone agrees or not." a person, for example to Truml, is asked: In what looks like an orange and a banana, "what is likely to answer: in which they eat. The reason for his answer is that his intelligence determines that his observation is at the "functional" level. To someone more rustic than the (? ...) is asked the same question and maybe respond: In that they have peel. If Tillerson, for taking another example, is repeated the question is likely to answer, In what are fruits. The levels that go from the concrete to the abstract in the thought are not achieved in a manual of how to think. The same thing happens with the course of the study. to straight, curved, zigzagating, rapidi, slow, etc., are the product of our small gray cells and their interconnection.
4
Not to take away from the brilliance of Thaler, but he did not invent the idea of irrationality in decision-making and social judgment. It was Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman who pioneered the study of biases and heuristics in the field of psychology before turning to behavioral economics and eventually writing Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow. Ultimately recognizing evidence that people could think and act rationally under certain conditions.
10
David - while Thaler is a giant of behavioural economics, I suspect he would be uncomfortable with your assertion that "before Thaler, economists figured it was good enough to proceed as if people are rational, utility-maximizing creatures."
Thaler has frequently acknowledged that the field of behavioural economic greatly relies on the pioneering work done by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman between 1970 and 1979 (see, e.g. the 2016 New Yorker piece co-authored by Thaler and Cass Sunstein on Michael Lewis' book about Tversky and Kahneman's very complicated relationship).
This work resulted in a 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics for Kahneman; had Tversky still been alive, the prize would certainly have been jointly awarded.
10
Caitlin Flanagan, really?
But otherwise, it's hard to think in tweets.
Last week, at the university where I teach, six students said to me in office hours that they are having trouble concentrating. It's not--I'm afraid--that they are preoccupied with world events. It's that they spend all their time with ten windows open on a screen, and they're constantly checking their phones.
Thought needs concentration. It needs time. What I'm afraid of is that we are rewiring our brains and that thought--real contemplation--will become impossible.
23
Great arguments are much needed in tax reform, immigration, health care, etc. Religion, politics, philosophy and even science no longer persuade. Perhaps economics is the spin that will grab our attention and focus our common good. Congratulations Richard Thaler. (By the way, I've got this idea for the inverse taxation of wealth and income that will ...)
6
The work of Richard Thaler is brilliant and has great value. Thaler is not, however, extolling how we think and act about money and economic decisions. He is observing our irrationality, and his findings probably are valued by marketing and advertising firms – and by politicians.
Much the same can be said about Alan Jacobs. One assumes that Jacobs admires people who make up their minds because of logic and morality. The fact that many, perhaps most, people act out of an emotional need to feel popular and liked by their peers certainly does not make that the ideal.
David Brooks puts the work of both Thaler and Jacobs into perspective, and it is not good news. Our ancestors had the same weaknesses and foibles which we see in modern society.
This may put some additional urgency into getting artificial intelligence devices developed and onto the shelves of our neighborhood stores.
9
"If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
The intellectual poverty and envy driven self hate of the progressives fueled by The GOP, which are the hallmarks of the rampant populism manifested by trump and his acolytes; provide no space for reconciliation between the rural white christians and the rest of America.
NONE - and NONE forthcoming!
12
I’m a member of a group called Reveaing the Social Fabric. In fact it is cool to be reasonable.
2
You are on to something. Give it another think. Venice
Florida is a place full of the best and the worst or our system. I've been there 3/4 times.
2
So Spock is good and Kirk is bad. Pretty much. Our inner chimpanzees cause us lots of problems.
6
Very few people take the time to think; most REACT!
21
Joining a group where it is cool to be reasonable and actually being reasonable are two different things. Fakers can fake being rational if it will feed their need. Probably preferable to what we have now, but by how much? Such people being so persuaded, will be so again by someone else, by something else. Fah!
5
My X husband's Dad had a saying.
"You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar ".
Unfortunately his son, my X husband,
did not follow that advice.
5
So, it’s “Mean Girls”?
4
Perhaps because I am a mathematician by trade (or was), I was intrigued by the "inner ring" metaphor. I think Brooks likes these metaphors which do hard thinking for us. What if there is no ring, and coolness isn't the driving force? In mathematics, "graphs" are networks consisting of points and connecting lines. What if the collective population is a arranged as a grouping of disconnected "subgraphs" and the driving force is reciprocated valuing? I could write an essay favoring this geometry and rationalizing away anything that doesn't fit. The inner ring theory doesn't even fit middle school all that well. if the model is wrong the cure probably won't work either.
16
Mr. Swanson - Not sure what setting you wonked, er, worked as a mathematician, but every workplace I've ever been in - from part time high school, college jobs, to my pinstripe/briefcase days in Manhattan, there were at least a few Inner Rings. There was an Inner Ring among the various subsets (oh! Math) of staff, depending on their level of importance or paygrade. There was an Inner Ring among the Executive Assistants, the lesser "pool" assistants. Among the various consultants - boy was there an IR there. Accounting dept, etc. All the way down to the mail room.
And they all had their detractors, and/or admirers. Or some, like me, who didnt give a hamsters tail hair about any of it...as I floated in an among most.
Which is a category Mr. Brooks excludes. I hope his heroes do not. Those of us who have the ability to travel easily across these arbitray, and often ill defined and shifting borders, and get things done. I wouldnt call us persuaders, not sure what to call us...but we get conflicting parties to contribute and get things done.
Types that are seriously lacking in the US House, Senate, and WH.
Maybe call us Traders...making trades among the various tribes, serving all, aligned to none, focused only on the goal of getting things done.
3
I recommend The work of Harvard's Chris Argyris related to how our "thinking process" works. His half-century of research goes beyond Thaler's work on decision-making in an economic context. Argyris' "Ladder of Inference" framework describes the process of confirmation bias as well as other commonly misunderstood cognitive functions.
8
It was geometry class, and the art of writing formal proofs, that taught me how to start with assumptions you share with the other side and build a logical argument that brings them from there to you. Not that I'm always successful.
If you want to learn about your own resentment, read Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals. It is good to wrestle with your own morality which may indeed be born of resentment. But that doesn't mean we have to admire bullies.
The inner circle is essentially filled with bullies, like Trump, who are expert at making themselves seem important, often through acts of physical or mental violence (even if they have to pay others to do it), getting everyone else to attack each other instead of the inner circle, and playing victim as an excuse to victimize.
Society has no need for an inner circle, except to feed the wounded egos of those that can't feel whole if they are not controlling others.
I do not resent the mega rich and politically connected. I have enough. But I oppose what they are doing to my country and my planet, and the rest of the people that live here.
22
The formula for a Nobel winning career: find a group of social scientists scamming the academic world with a narrow, arbitrary idea -- such as profit-maximizing man -- and say common-sense things that bring them, and David Brooks, back to reality.
How many grandparents and elders could have told you "people act irrationally," before you enrolled in Economics 101?
3
We have a thinking problem, but more important and immediate we have a moral problem. Modern society creates not only greater income inequality, but also greater information inequality - which translates into greater power inequality.
As the saying goes, with more power comes more responsibility. Unfortunately, there will always be people who abuse their power, and will try to leverage the greater information inequality found in modern society to manipulate the public.
This is how you get fake news, squelching of scientific evidence, nonsense about "trickle down" economics, nonsense about the danger of vaccines, etc. This is how you get fake leaders who traffic in insults and lies and bullying. This is how you get pretend patriots who insist on public displays of loyalty to the flag. This is how you get people screaming that government can't be trusted, except for the police which should always be trusted.
Much larger than our thinking problem is our moral problem. It will take moral courage, the courage to call out the fake-news people, the pretend-patriot people, the junk-science people, and to hold them to account. Without moral courage, better thinking does nothing.
16
Pretty good article. The effect of sociality, of wanting to be liked by one's group, has been demonstrated in experiments repeatedly. Open deliberation about a subject is often warped by the effect of a strong speaker or an ugly one. The results, when pooled and averaged, tend to be off the mark. But when the ballots are written secretly and submitted without deliberation, the results are more accurate.
If you want the best estimate of, say, the weight of a horse -- or the guilt of a defendant -- keep the votes anonymous.
5
Thalen successfully modified one of the core assumptions of market theory, which is the idea that each of us tries to ", rationally" maximize our personal "utility," a measure of how useful we find a given thing.
Another assumption about utility, that seems to me has been used to justify insane inequality, often leading to brutal oppression, is that "you can't compare one person's utility to another person's utility," This means that one of the axioms (building blocks) of market theory is that some of us start out with more utility than others. In practice this means that some people have a billion times more utility than billions of other people. This leads to some people having gold toilets while millions starve to death, justified by market theory.
Please, any super genius that wants a Nobel Prize by talking inequality out of the dna of market theory, take my idea and ruin with it.
2
Alan Greenspan famously suffered the illusion that in the long term, people, as in, the financial services sector, are rational actors. Remember his Great Recession mea culpa in front of congress, "I was wrong". He supposed the notion that rating agencies would corrupt themselves for temporary gain, that mortgage bankers would buy worthless paper and then sell it off to unsuspecting pension funds or lure those same funds to invest in a product they were at the same time shorting (placing bets it will fail), the absurd fantasies of chronic whiners.
10
Agree with the previous commenter that it's too bad Mr. Brooks didn't give Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky their due in the origin of Thaler's thinking on this. Thaler's thinking wasn't completely derivative but he owes those two a large debt.
5
And, Herbert Simon, Jim March and Richard Cyert and others in the 1950s at Carnegie-Mellon.
1
Read Hayek's Noble acceptance speech "The Pretense of Knowlege".
Economics is not real discipline. The Noble in economics should have ended the following year.
2
I'm familiar with Hayek's piece and just to re-equate myself I just reviewed it.
He did not state anywhere that Economics wasn't a real discipline, but rather it was not similar to the physical sciences.
If you defince Science as replicatabily of model's predictions, similar to controlled experiments in your "real" disciplines, I've had a very successful and rewarding career over the past 40 years with the level of accuracy I provided to various businesses using economics and econometrics.
1
David, can you do an article that examine how online social networks are affecting offline communities? I think the concepts are very much related. Perhaps low friction to social interactions makes it easier to join groups, such that people can more easily eschew popular ideas. Lack of exclusion makes trolling easier, allows for caustic debates in which one needn't care for/respect one's interlocutor, and undermines cohesion by making it harder to establish true intimacy.
7
All these ideas, philosophies have bedeviled man from the beginning. And yet, it appears the rational and irrational mindset are both true and false. Perhaps the correct answer to the wrong question. In fact, ambiguity is the enemy of stability. As such, chaos and conflict is the natural order of existence. The ancient Greeks recognized this and developed systems and institutions to manage the natural tendency to chaos. The never ending process continues never ending..
4
My favorite response in an exchange of differing ideas is 'Yes, okay, I get that. I hadn't thought of that.' My second most favorite is 'Thank you for your gracious response.'
It is like a Jedi mind trick.
15
Yes I wish I had more discipline, when in conversation. It is so difficult to listen carefully, and acknowledge the speaker, but so effective.
For example the only people I have heard of that have actually changed white supremacists into accepting humanity is those that had the patience to listen to them without jumping down their throats. The natural reaction is to say, but you are a crazy hating lunatic, but it's totally ineffective.
Many people you disagree with are just confused and trying to fit in with the only people who have talked nicely to them. Give them an alternative.
7
I'm astonished that there is no mention, in Professor Thaler's award, of the work of Daniel Kahnemann, the first psychologist to win a Nobel Prize in Economics, and his prize winning thinking was similar. Mr. Brooks's column notes that, "Before Thaler, economists figured it was good enough to proceed as if people are rational.." But if economists paid attention to Kahnemann's work, very readably and popularly available in his book "Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow," they haven't waited for Mr. Thaler's confirmatory work in this area.
9
Mr. Brooks, A group of reasonable thinkers? It's called the PBS Newshour. But you already knew that, didn't you?
24
The axiomatic assumption that all rational actors will act reasonably is the foundation of principles like prices will fall where supply and demand curves intersect and will reflect the true value of the goods or services at that time, save for external factors like transportation costs, and assure that markets really are self regulating and thus any interference by government will cause distortions. This also lead to the conclusions that there is no such thing a market prices which differ from the true value of anything traded, that booms are just misunderstandings of uninformed observers. Thaler and Jacobs are blowing up the theories of free market economists.
9
Should be, "...that bubbles are just misunderstandings of uninformed observers..."
What was the quote by H.L. Menken ? "No politician ever went wrong underestimating the stupidity of the American voter".
15
When we are focused on our purpose in life -and are utilizing our God given bents and talents that we have honed well we will be within our circle. We will then touch the rest of creation. When we are genuine and hard working in that good endeavor we will attract the right attention and colleagues in serving others. When the only audience I am concerned with is my Creator then I will be on course and have a true moral compass.
6
For one thing, many writers don't have the luxury of making clear and reasoned arguments, because they aren't given much space to develop complex ideas in print. Some of my favorite columnists here at the NYTs have to be so concise they seem abrupt, like they didn't have time to warm up. I wish people had more elbow room in the newspaper world, including David Brooks. A few magazines make this available, mainly the New Yorker and the Atlantic monthly. Some of the "beacons of intellectual honesty" mentioned, George Packer and Caitlin Flanagan, have been afforded a great privilege, that of developing their intellectual powers of thought while writing long pieces and while under the guidance of great editors.
I almost always do appreciate David's columns, but I feel he is hampered by constraints: the length of his pieces are short, and he has to churn them out, so his mind has to leapfrog around a bit. Well, it is amazing to me that people think as well as they do, considering.
6
Read his books
Long form journalism has a hard time competing in our short attention span nation. When the POTUS speaks in 144 letter memos, and if honest, would admit he has not read a book in 50 years, our children may be brought up to think that "thinking" is just doing something and figuring it out later. They may not ever have the concept that a well researched and written book, that may take years to make and days to read, longer to understand sometimes, can give them knowledge not available through "media" or Wikipedia. There is often a deeper understanding attained by the reader when a good writer does his job well, but usually it takes more than a Haiku to "get it". It is so much easier to adopt your beliefs from people you like or are attracted to, from the emotional vibe, than to do the hard questioning yourself, or spend the time reading someone who has.
1
There are many Twitterers and Facebookers who speak with a "soft tongue." They may not get the retweets and shares some hard tongue folks get, but I much prefer the soft tongue's company on social media.
Could there be many thousands or dare I say millions of Americans on social media and not attracted to soft tongue conversations and social company? While hard tongue conversations are too often inflammatory, confrontational, attention-seeking, and divisive, perhaps too much media attention of such shout-outs and conversations aids and abets the wrong behavior.
Hey, all you media-land decision-makers: how about giving us soft tongued folks some air time? How about giving community-oriented, cooperation-minded, politically-aware, science-accepting, fact-based, and environmentally-concerned soft tonguers a piece of America's airwaves?
5
I would like to see equal attention applied to some of our beloved inner rings. I'm referring specifically to those ancient one's casting non-believers out. I see the in vs out group nature mirroring exactly what happens when having thoughts is confused with thinking. Applied to countries using a different name for the same suchness just might be overdue.
3
So if I’m looking at the balance in my checkbook between the calculator and the total prize of the pizza I’d like to order for dinner but realize I cannot afford it until next week, the steadfast “rub-my-tummy” economic guide I live by is irrational?
Pshaw!
4
Evolution has produced a human brain that lays over a brain that controlled behavior with powerful urges produced by chemicals in more primitive structures like the limbic system. That limbic system affect us the same way it does animals without our reasoning and compassionate abilities. We can understand a reasonable argument for doing one thing but be compelled by impulses from our limbic system to do another, and will do the bidding of the limbic system, usually. But with years of effort and practice we can learn to think things through and choose our course of behavior before the limbic system kicks in, but we have to know what we are doing and why. It's a kind of education which takes longer than we can offer people in K-12, but a good college education can get us most of the way there by our early twenties. Our world now provides more information to more people than at any previous time in human history and it can provide more of it every day. But what is lacking is the ability to think well, which requires not a lot of information but skills of reasoning and habits in decision making which can only be accomplished by study and practice.
9
This column overlooks Richard Thaler's key concept, in the very title of the book, about "nudging" people into a more logical path with an understanding of the illogic of appeals that offer very little.
In our neighborhood, a local grocery gets it shopping cart returned by customers with a device that offers return of their own quarter when they take it back. 25 cents is enough to nudge almost everyone to be helpful, and to nudge them to pick up the slack for those who don't.
We don't need to re-create some huge values machine, using Brooks' traditional values no doubt. We need to nudge people.
We also need to recognize when we've been nudging them away. How did Trump get elected? Hillary and her people nudged them there. Face up to what was done wrong, as a first step to avoid doing it again.
14
I would say that "Hillary and her people" didn't so much nudge people toward Trump as nudge people away from voting at all. The stay-aways threw their votes away.
3
Some of each, no doubt. The effect is similar, cause the same.
3
Economics. A pseudoscience. The markets reward brokers on the basis of trading activity, not value added. Stock or investment declines in value? - cha-ching! Stock or investment increases in value? - cha-ching! How on earth could anyone ever consider capitalist economics to be based on rational behavior? Most of those engaged in the market are mathematically (and ethically) challenged, "reasoning" ability limited by greed.
6
Social science, science applied to social behavior, is just not the same as science applied to nature. The problems we have had with science is when the studies presume that there is the same kind of consistency in social behavior as can be found in nature.
3
Trying to elaborate in my own way on Casual Observer's point:
45 years ago in physics class I learned how to straightforwardly calculate the resultant forces of a collision using the mathematics of vectors. In biology class I learned about these complicated double feedback mechanisms that we biological creatures have, mechanisms that are maybe a little more complicated than the way the old Bell Labs educational film about Gateways to the Mind had portrayed them.
So in life, if I'm concerned that your tribe might be advantaged at the expense of my tribe, I might try to straightforwardly take actions designed to advantage my tribe over yours with the expectation that, sort of like with force vectors in physics, the results of my efforts will bring our tribes to parity.
But we're social biological beings and it's not so simple. Maybe I should consider actions designed to take into account, but in part finesse, tribal behavior.
2
Too many independent variables
"If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
That's exactly what Obama has done.
Which made conservatives decide that as they have to distinguish themselves from Democrats, from now on they will explicitly and deliberately reject everything that is reasonable.
Institutions cannot create emotional groups, only individuals and social groups do.
So if certain conservatives now finally want to celebrate being reasonable again, they have to start creating attractive communities where being reasonable is being cool .. and conservative too (in other words, politically neutral, as being reasonable by definition is).
In the meanwhile, we should vote all those fools in the WH and DC who are making being irrational cool (again?) OUT, before they destroy the entire country/world ... !
9
Hope you get some traction with your statement that reasonableness is by definition politically neutral.
I'm wary of definitional thinking but think you usefully hit the nail on the head in this case.
4
I think our premise itself that Republicans are some different kinds of animals, is very flawed. I know plenty of friends, families who have voted republican since the 1960s, they are highly educated well placed well loved well respected individuals in their communities. Yes they voted for Trump and my neighbor even went all the way to DC to attend the inauguration with pride and holding her head up high.
1
And her thoughts now?
The fact that Trump was elected is a failure of our education systems in the US which do not teach critical thinking.
14
I wish you and others would quit saying that every time some example of human irrationality makes news. It never adds anything useful to any discussion. Most people are already capable of thinking better than they do, and giving them logic lessons is not going to make them any better. They can already do a pretty good job of refuting arguments they are opposed to, but are unable to find fault with their own arguments. The only teachable subject that has been shown to improve people's thinking is statistics.
Aristotle already stated that human beings are social and emotional beings. The Middle Ages took over that idea, and even Darwin, in his later writings, has shown the same idea, explaining that human beings are animals that vitally need being connected to others to survive.
So if what Mr. Brooks writes here is correct (which I doubt), now an economist would have received the Nobel prize for finally having taken that fact into account too, rather than continuing to base economic theories on the premise of a human being as an isolated atom, who constantly chooses on a purely individual basis what would be the most useful to him as a singleton ... ?
Even the idea that making decisions on the basis of our need for being and feeling connected to others would be "irrational", as Brooks clearly suggests here, is a merely theoretical consequence of the premise that doing so would NOT be useful for us, whereas in real life, as connection is essential to our survival, it's much MORE rational than taking decisions based on the premise that we're atomistic individuals who don't need others in order to thrive.
So the "art of thinking well" INCLUDES thinking based on our fundamental interconnectedness, as psychologists such as Daniel Goldman and Antonio Damasio have shown, rather than being opposed to it.
Time for conservatives to review their philosophy and start basing it on proven facts ... don't you think so, Mr. Brooks?
In other words, time to become reasonable ...
4
The unstated assumption is that the reasonable choice is what would be considered the one that serves one's enlightened self interest, not what simply satisfies the immediate cravings.
If everyone were to reasonably consider what is in their best interests as individuals, then the aggregate of their decisions in social settings would be a mean response that would most closely match the most rational choice for the concern being considered. It's the narrowing variation affect of polling a set of extremely well informed people about any specific concern. It's also the source of the fallacy that a bunch of people who are both well informed and completely ignorant concerning any issue will come up with the best result, better than the well informed individuals, because of the magical effect of crowds.
1
@ Casual Observer
There's a reason why that assumption is unstated: once you have to admit that connecting with other human beings is vital for our survival, it becomes part of what "serves one's enlightened self-interest", and as a consequence part of rational behavior.
How many of the policies the GOP and Mr. Brooks defend, take this enlightened self-interest into account ... ?
Not a lot, I'm afraid.
4
When ignorant people attain power and continue to say absurd things to remain in the Inner Group that gave them power, we can have nativism that serves only that group.
42
Even if it serves what the group wants, it might not serve the best interests of the group in the end.
3
Yup, getting people to join an "attractive community" is what Trump is all about!
3
"The Inner Ring" invokes images of the orbitals circling an atom's nucleus, and for it to be an inclusionary atom the outer shells must have room to join with other atoms.
If an atom lacks room in its outer shell to join with other atoms it is considered inert, which is a word that appropriately describes 21st Century America, and its vast number of "inner rings" who live in their own inert echo chambers, and no "others" are allowed to join.
It is this "inner ring" inertia developed over the past 37 years that has led to an America that is more comfortable living within a police state and never has to be bothered with the the art of thinking well.
2
In order to have an efficient culture, any culture, a certain degree of thinking must be smothered, lest too many encumbering questions be asked. We learn this at an early age and sometimes later celebrate those who never learned to stop asking "Why?". Usually however, we burn them at the stake.
1
Of course there is that pesky problem of inconvenient truths, magical thinking and "fake" news. Remember this is not a age of reason. This is the Age of the Anti-Enlightenment.
6
Oh goodness, Mr. Brooks! That piece was CROWDED with thought.
I well remember the setting for the C. S. Lewis quote. A man, by the way, obsessed with "inner rings"--"inner circles"--all that.
A young man--shy, insecure--walking into the library at N.I.C.E. headquarters (N.I.C.E.? Don't ask!) Early evening. After a long hard day. A dozen faces turn to him--welcoming smiles--"Well, here's the very man!"
And a glow "like physical warmth" passed over Mark's body. The very fire burned brighter, the drinks tasted better. . . . . .
. . .and do they want him to do something BAD? Break the LAW maybe?
Of course!
And does he do it?
Of course!
Marvelous writing!
What cures us--finally!--of wishful or arrogant or perverse thinking? Powerful arguments? Maybe. Sometimes. How about powerful rhetoric? "I have a DREAM! . . . . .' Maybe. Sometimes.
How about PAIN? That same C. S. Lewis observes (in another of his many marvelous books)--"God whispers to us in our pleasures. He shouts to us in our pains. It is His megaphone to rouse a slumbering world." Sobering words!
What "megaphone" does the Almighty have in store for these United States? What sins--errors--follies have we got that He means (one way or another) to correct? Obviate? Eradicate?
And how much will it hurt?
Ask me that in a year's time.
(If I'm still around.)
4
Excellent column. I've noticed over the years that many of the comments (mostly from my fellow Democrats) criticizing Mr. Brooks's columns tend to use the "in other words..." tactic to misrepresent or dumb down Brooks's argument before attacking. While I disagree with him about as often as I agree, I respect his intellect and good faith, and I think we ought to employ "a soft tongue" more often.
5
@Socrates
Not saying you're wrong, but your comment perfectly illustrates the thesis of Brooks' essay.
Awkward, uncomfortable, uncool communities who protest is what makes our world evolve. It does not come from cool thinkers dancing for the inner ring. It's the people who are jailed, assassinated, ridiculed for their courage who we look back on and thank. Those who think well get invited to the parties and make money selling books. Those with courage push back and get excluded, but are the impetus, the catalyst for more equity.
6
Sorry, most people don't think at all, so "well" is not in the realm of possibilities.
Thank you for this article. It was informative and useful to the goals I am pursuing in my life.
I am a moderate from a strongly conservative political socialization. I became a moderate when I came to the realization that right wing media like FNC and Limbaugh committed the same offenses of misrepresentation and neglect of the best liberal perspectives, as conservatives have correctly complained about for decades from the mainstream and left wing media, in their abuse and neglect of their own views.
People want to be seen as correct. But people hate being lied to and lied about more than anything.
It has been my goal to create an environment in the civil discourse where citizens can see past the lies being told all around, and reunite with their fellow citizens to see that our true differences aren't reflected by exaggerations and hypocrisies of partisan politics and the corporate media. The concepts introduced in this article look to be useful in my endeavors to that end.
1
obama had a soft tongue. that was a good part of his success, and also why so many other people never understood what he was trying to do.
4
The US has always prized itself on mobility--in other words, the ability to move into some favored inner ring, or whatever. But Brooks seems not to understand that the most closed group belong to his conservative idols, based on wealth and privilege and preexisting birth status, and he seems to mock the lowly striver who would want to get into the club himself. Golly, it's weird that they should set up their own club, right? More to the point, we suffer today not only from warring clubs, but because given reduction of choices so many more feel unattached to anything.
2
I'm not surprised to see Mr. Brooks cite Tyler Cowen, given Brooks' own predilections, but for a more insightful perspective on Cowen see Deirdre McCloskey (rhetoric of economics) and other heterodox economists. More broadly, and whether one looks at America or other representative states, can one really see the members of nativist or nationalist factions signing up with more reasoned groups because they're perceived as 'cool'? Not by the nativists, they're not. And more broadly yet, the passionate temperament that insists on simple and absolutist 'solutions' is far too invested in group solidarity, and the denial of climate change, evolution, etc., to shift his/her
whole sense of identity for membership in a 'cool' group composed of the hated elites: you know, the people who think, write newspaper columns, teach at university, etc.
1
If we are lucky, really smart, and really dedicated we might get to know one subject well enough to actually know something about it. Most of us know so little about everything we can't begin to even realize what we don't know and even what we might think we know is probably mostly false. Yet despite our limited knowledge and wrong knowledge we are all routinely tasked with making decisions based on knowing very little at all.
An attack on knowledge by the established order is nothing new. In the past it has often been associated with religion routinely willing to burn people at the stake - figuratively and literally - for undermining its doctrine. Because religion so often aligned itself with political power and vice-a-versa to preserve their status one need only look at which political movement most aligns itself with religion for the sake of power to know which political movement knows the least about anything.
6
If the rise of Trump reveals anything about our society, it's that people prefer to be entertained more than educated.
6
"...most of us are quite willing to think or say anything that will help us be liked by our group." Yes, but you omitted "write."
2
Our conscience = Our being
Our conscience = Our thoughts
Change your thoughts = Change your being (soul)
It may sound easy; it is very hard because our thoughts are deep rooted because of DNA, experiences, etc.
But if we are aware of it and strive for it---transforming our conscience. It can do wonder.
Our president is a vivid example. He doesn't have an inner life even his external life appears to be splendid. Thus he is shallow and doesn't inspire respect.
So don't work too hard to be a winner, but for your inner life. Just look around a lot winners look very ugly. It is deep than morality but to connect with Universal Good and Love.
1
No, Mr. Brooks, a soft tongue coupled with a petite physique and a female gender, mostly gets you preyed upon, overlooked, dismissed, or metaphorically run over.
The majority of humans in the U.S.A., I have discovered much to my dismay in my long 68 years, still worship physical size and aggressive, bullying, brutish behavior. Look at the President, for example.
8
When I was a child & adolescent, the girls most envied the littler among us. So I wanted to stop growing earlier rather than later. & I did - 12 years old, 5' 3". By then, all the girls wanted to be tall & skinny, like a model. Oh well. For boys, it was different. Tall was always in. When I was a kid, the muscular jock look was in. By the time, I got to college, it was the skinny types, who seemed sexiest. When I was a child, we had a Polish housekeeper, who had come from a society where poor people were thin & the wealthy were plump - visible proof of their wealth. In her first year here, she diligently gained 100 pounds. Then she began reading American fashion magazines & became aware that fat was not considered attractive here. She lost the hundred pound & soon was engaged to be married. Fashions in physique change.
A human may be the smartest creature on the planet, but in groups we are by far the most dangerous.
2
Mark Twain, Samuel Clemens, observed that while one may reason with an individual, people in crowds can be beyond an reasonable approach.
1
Many Americans do no choose to think more then they have to beyond the everyday survival things - if trump says it is so then it is so and they do not drill down to understand where their hate and anger, etc. is coming from or what their TRUE feelings are. They want someone to do their thinking for them and just get on with their lives and not think more then they need to.
Even if they do understand what Mr. Books is saying that doesn't make them "elite" or unAmerican.
Many Republicans are educated and mindful - does this make them elites?
Ignorance as a default virtue/ value will destroy this country and bring us closer to a slightly looser version of north korea - think about it!
3
Quote from article:
"A lot of our thinking is for bonding, not truth-seeking, so most of us are quite willing to think or say anything that will help us be liked by our group. We’re quite willing to disparage anyone when, as Marilynne Robinson once put it, “the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved.” "
I think this is the main reason that Seattle (where I live) is such a hotbed of racism (targeting European-Americans), to my perpetual frustration. Nobody is willing to take the big picture view that nobody should ever judge people, as individuals or as groups, by skin color (unless, as I like to say, you're a cosmetics salesperson). The groupthink is that racist victimhood is a good thing, and everybody with darker skin gets special consideration. Unfortunately, this groupthink helps the white supremacists and it helps Trump.
1
I'm in with the in crowd
I go where the in crowd goes
I'm in with the in crowd
And I know what the in crowd knows
1
Guess we know where Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller WEREN'T -- inside the 'cool kids' ring. These and so many of Trump's peeps are so clearly nursing some ancient juvenile grudges and humiliations.
It is so OBVIOUS they and so many -- especially on the right -- don't know that "the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join. If you do that, they’ll bend their opinions to yours. If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
It also comes down to a study I read in college:
What's your biggest fear? For males the overwhelming fear was: Humiliation. ( a tool that Trump, Bannon, Miller ET AL use regularly against others).
For women: violence and sexual assault, rape, murder.
Too many of those jerks who never made it into the popular kids' group want to 'bend others' to their will by force, intimidation, humiliation (Harvey Weinstein anyone? add him to that list above -- proving politics don't matter but character does when it comes to how we treat others.)
Again: the raging juvenile ID is on full display -- something they all have in common with the despots and dictators of history.
6
As residents of a “post truth” world, can we benefit from “thinking well”? I have my doubts.
It has long been apparent that human beings are supremely capable of believing what they want to believe, regardless of the facts. But that understanding was always tempered somewhat by the notion that facts actually exist, and that reality will eventually assert itself in a way that will be undeniable. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.
Facts no longer exist. Any assertion of any consequence, even those seemingly based in a perfectly objective assessment of observable reality, will be disputed. Do think Hillary Clinton won the popular vote? Well, there are people who believe she didn’t. Do you think the mass shooting at Sandy Hook was a hoax? Well, there are people who do. Whatever one believes, one can find countless information sources and discussion groups to reinforce that. Whether we're talking about climate change, the impact of raising or lowering taxes, immigration, anything, people on each side have completely conflicting views of what the reality is. And nowhere is there any authority to determine which side is in possession of the “facts.”
So what's the point of “thinking well” and reconsidering one's positions? As our current politics demonstrate, the winning side will not be those who have logic and facts on their side, but the most passionate—people who are so sure of what they seek to achieve that they will do anything to achieve it.
6
Engineering as a discipline extinguishes wishful thinking. If you violate the governing natural laws, your bridges will fall down.
3
Well, Joe, as a mathematician I have to disagree at least in part. 2 + 3 = 5, not 23, no matter what the other guy says. But you make a point. What do I say to the guy who maintains 2 + 3 = 23 in spite of all the axioms and proofs I can show him?
All I can say is that I am sure you know there are facts. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. The mass shooting at Sandy Hook was not a hoax. We can hope that more people agree on what reality is than those who do not care about reality. We can hope these people will vote in greater numbers. But if we live in an insane asylum, there is not much that is possible to hope for.
2
Steve, then Republicans will blame the Democratic workers on the bridge for shoddy workmanship.
Explains how a country with a pretty good Gini Coefficient and broad history of expanding economic achievement for middle- and lower-tier earners would create a tax system that piles more dough on to the Already Haves.....
6
Points for knowing and using Gini coefficient properly. But ours could be better. See France, Germany for instances of global trading democracies that do a better job than we do.
1
Thaler’s work almost sounds like the Nobel premise to “A Beautiful Mind”.
Congratulations to Dr. Thaler on a well-deserved honor.
Not so sure I buy the entirety of Jacobs’s conclusions, though. If my only remaining hobby, one which demands a fair amount of my attention and time, were geared to having me optimally accepted and “liked” by my chosen community, I would change my posting avatar to “gemli”, and every posting would read the same: “I despise anyone who disagrees with me, and am convinced that their minds are diseased”. What’s more, I’m fairly sure in my cynicism that the world’s heart and soul are twisted, but I can assure the readers that mine are pure and unimpeachable.
David doesn’t seem to entirely embrace Jacobs, either. Yet I’d take issue with both of them. While I buy David’s challenge regarding the non-celebration of laudable virtues by workaday institutions, I’m not convinced given my experience here that it’s possible to create an “attractive community that people want to join”. Sometimes, one should be satisfied with necessary counterpoint in order to avoid an insipid chorus and the dangers of too much destructive harmony.
"In other words", Richard...there are “some very fine people on both sides” of the story, as a Moron-In-Chief said recently.
5
Socrates, it is a fascinating study.
"if my hobby were geared to having me optimally accepted" - exactly!
only, "accepted" here means attended to.
Then, every posting makes sense. The more objections, the better.
Gemli, on the other hand, actually makes sense. Whether or not any one attends to him.
"If you post, and nobody reads it, is your post there?"
2
"the non-celebration of laudable virtues by workaday institutions" is the most elliptical euphemism for the rampant hypocrisy of the USA I've ever read, Richard.
2
Intriguingly apropos subject, "thinking". Thank you, Mr Brooks, for ringing it out as a deserved cause. From what you have shown us, Alan Jacobs' book is poised as the contemporary forerunner.
It occurs to me that in terms of "creating groups", "communities that people want to join", permanence is one important variable. One can work toward creating a group that's meant to last forever (the Democratic Party) or something on the fly, more like a pop-up. Like Occupy Wall Street.
OWS disappointed all the pundits and political science types because of the lack of leadership, the lack of an official spokesperson they could quote. Yet it's platform, "We are the 99%", not even a complete sentence, has had a profound influence on the political conversation in this country. That one little phrase will be the beginning of the end of "neo-liberal" economics, and a slow-acting catalyst for profound change in the Democratic Party.
Another good example is the Act-Up movement. Without them we might not have gay marriage. Their "platform" was "We're queer, we're here. Get used to it!". Which is exactly what's happening now.
1
It's amusing sometimes that academics and scientists, in their logical pursuits, so often overlook truths that aren't logical. Of course most people don't do the logical--wise, healthy, proper==thing every time they encounter a choice. I know I don't ("if I eat that, my jeans won't fit"--but I eat it anyway). If we were all good logical thoughtful economists, we'd have great retirement accounts stashed away, we'd probably be a lot healthier, and we wouldn't have the POTUS that's now in the White House.
4
The endowment effect--valuing what you own more? Mental accounting--the dollar in your pocket is more important? Endorsing views agreeing with socially acceptable positions to gain psychic plaudits?
Mr. Brooks, you endorsed and continue to endorse Republicans and their positions. You took some time to jump on the anti-Trump bandwagon. You continue an apologist for parts of the disastrous GoP healthcare, tax.
and other retrograde platforms.
Are you one of the "intellectually honest" Mr. Brooks? Or are you comfortable with the pecuniary and reputational advantages of being an editorial apologist for unpopular conservative positions at the NYT?
Thaler's work is relevant for all of us and certainly applies to the political environment as much as the economic one. So is there something at work that rewards you personally and psychically for eschewing rational responses to ethical issues, Mr. Brooks? A bit of honest introspection would make for a wonderful sequel to this editorial...
9
"If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
Don't marry for money. Go where money is, and marry for love.
2
Not sure that everyone would agree with you that the only reason to get married is for love.
Bit of a wistful ending. Hard for me to imagine a day when rational thinking prevails, if it ever did. The problem now is that the tail is wagging the dog. Our leaders don't provide rational, reasoned thinking, they choose instead to echo the paranoid, angry thinking of the minorities on both sides of the political spectrum. They need the emotional energy of the fringe to get elected. A sorry state for the Union.
3
Thinking well is only a fraction of the job.
If you start from the wrong assumptions or fact base, thinking well can allow you to reach very erroneous conclusions. North Korea's behavior, Pence's theocratic interpretation of patriotism, and Stephen Miller's world construct, are all examples of well-thought out strategies and apparently successful analyses of our present circumstances.
Given the right beliefs, "the Final Solution" and the KKK's credo are the correct answers.
A sociopathic individual can be a beacon on intellectual honesty, because the only thing of value is his own happiness - to be true to that he need only take advantage of everyone else.
Like many arguments, Brooks starts from his desired conclusion and miraculously reaches it.
Doing well for an entire group of people means finding a group of commonly shared assumptions or facts, then thinking well about that basis. This mechanism is the foundation of civil society and social democracy. We do not see much of this art these days.
7
This is a leadership lesson.
The idea here is the same one that inspired young King Arthur to create an order of chivalrous knights in T.H. White's "The Once & Future King". Needing to stabilize his lawless kingdom, Young Arthur's idea was to promote broad justice harnessing the power of the ruling class. Bestowing social prestige upon those who adopted his oath drove the desire to be included, and the code of behavior he required of members directed their activities away from baser ones (rape, pillage, torture) toward those that promoted the goal of a more stable, peaceful and equitable kingdom.
An idea worth dusting off as we consider how to improve our communities and society at large.
5
The question of what counts as evidence is too frequently answered by what can be used to support (or sustain) a particular hypothesis.
1
The “art” of thinking, and of conversation, are as elusive to people as they are important. The how-to-think books must number in the millions and people remain “systemically” irrational and no wonder. The erudition in this commentary, and the aforementioned book, overwhelm people’s daily operational take away limits so why not just give them the three “best” ideas as bullet points. We’ll be able to remember more of the article next week if they do. I recall Orwell’s “ four legs good, two, legs bad” better than the contents of “How to Read and Write like a College Graduate”
And if people’s thinking is awful, their resultant conversations are even worse: one sided, run-on drivel. The two most important sentences, now rarely heard in isolation, are “Yes.” and “No”.
What's disappointing is that you talk about disagreeing constructively, but also take the time to disparage democrats and liberals, poking fun at the slurs that they stereotypically use, while placing you and your fellow conservatives within the "Inner Circle". Don't think you are doing a good job of convincing anyone to change any of their behavior; if anything, you're simply fanning the flames of resentment between the opposing groups.
4
All this Ring stuff sounds like a Wagner opera and makes just about as much sense.
1
I used to sneer at my boss when he said that a sociologist is someone who'll borrow your watch to tell you what time it is. But with regard to this column he is spot on.
1
Let me suggest that many of those who voted for Trump and the Republican Congressional candidates were not expressing any opinion on public policies, whether immigration, racism, health care or anything else. They have no opinion because they distrust the available information, and don't believe they know enough to even form a view.
What they did know perfectly well was that they were furious with the people who have been running things and showing contempt for them and their values, and that Trump was a lying bully, and his Republicans were nothing more than snarling lapdogs for the rich. They were choosing, with no concern for the eventual practical consequences, to stick a big, fat blond thumb in the eyes of those who have run things and shown their contempt for those not in their ivy-tinted group.
8
Nihilism is the dumbest of all strains of politics. It only appeals to people who believe that any change whatsoever will make an improvement on their present status.
4
In other words, David Brooks is columnsplaining things to us good old fashioned true Americans.
Although a reminder has some minor value, most NYT readers know all of this material already, possibly minus a bit of new terminology for old phenomenon, such as the Ring and Repugnant Cultural Other (old term: the Other).
Can't you be a little more specific, a little more connected to the world, David? This is a serious time. It's not a time to lock yourself in an ivory tower and bemusedly marvel at humanity's little social foibles. It's a time to talk specifics, details, facts, and figure out how to make the world better.
7
Election of Donald Trump is a solid evidence of irrational
thinking.
4
Declaring someone the victor when they lost the popular vote by 3 million is solid evidence of an irrational system.
An irrational system is guaranteed to produce irrational people, and proliferate psychopathological public policy.
6
Spot on
1
Yes, but we are in a ridiculous situation right now, aren't we? Maybe we have to do more than patiently think well? There is a thin layer of complacency over every David Brooks' column. What would it take for him to awake in anger? That could make for an interesting article. Brooks is such a good man. Does this even matter?Just asking. It would be nice, I guess, to read pieces like this a couple of times a week on into eternity. is it possible? It looks like we will find out. Very thoughtful and well reasoned. What's Bob Corker's IQ anyway?
1
If you want an example of people not acting rationally or in their best interests, look no farther than November 2016. Tens of millions of Americans voted for a candidate and a party who would strip them of their health insurance, pollute their environment, degrade their children's educational opportunities, promise them a tax break they'd never get even if they were paying taxes, and perhaps bring them to the edge of nuclear holocaust. You didn't need a Nobel prize to see that coming. Yes, people do often act irrationally and against their own economic interests. That isn't news; that's human nature.
11
I notice even reading the comments, I am seeking out key phrases and words in order to know "which side" the writer is on.
2
I hope you are noticing which side of the debate people who mention the word "facts" are on.
1
I suppose..., -- may I start this way -- that the whole novel idea behind persuasion isn't really about the facts at all -- but rather about drawing meaning, for other people. In whatever brilliant -- or distorted -- way that serves a particular agenda. Hence -- it is indeed wise advice
to question these often very moving ideas. To see if they do -- in fact -- match-up, with what we think we actually know? To be a truly good idea? (You know... "will I get a good steak out of this?")
Since -- clearly -- there are so many other desperate people trying to do this task for us. My mother -- for one very good example -- tried to get me to eat liver! By telling me it was actually a steak. A great missed-steak on her part that she only came to realize when I blurted it out -- literally -- like a rocket -- and it came to land in her very own mouth!
Hence -- my point, dear folk -- (and possibly David's -- but I won't speak for him) -- is that one should really carefully consider what they willy-nilly think about any idea for themselves -- giving proper consideration to the outflow... As there is always, always -- as long as we liver -- a shocking feedback loop to consider! Lurking on the back of somebody's tongue. No gag -- that you might want to know!!!
What's with mothers? Mine tried to convince me that that it was a breaded veal cutlet.
Taste buds can't be fooled. Most people can be fooled, at least some of the time.
2
Notwithstanding a long list of artificial ingredients, I agree.
And your party along with Fox so called news (hold on Nixon supporters) has spread lies over and over and over again and made millions of people haters who believe the lies that they have been told 24/7 for 3 decades. They've made these people zealots/crazies who believe everything that spews out of DJT mouth believable when in fact most is fake/lies.
3
You lost me at Caitlin Flanagan.
1
Mr.Brooks,
it would be helpful if you as a NYTimes columnist were a little more accurate in describing the prize that Mr.Thaler just received.
Economics doesn't technically have a Nobel.
It's officially called a Nobel Memorial Prize which was set up instead by a Swedish bank, decades after the death of Alfred Nobel.
It's just the bankers wanting to give themselves yet another pat on the back.
So much for semantics and "The Art of Thinking Well"..
As to Alan Jacobs, while he is making the point that thinking well is fundamentally an issue of desire as least as much as it is an issue of having the right facts or properly functioning cognition and that we fail to think correctly, fairly, and helpfully because doing so may interfere with what we want—especially if, as Jacobs writes, what we want is to be fully accepted into a group that will keep out those we dislike, he misses the point by being overwhelmingly concerned with thinking as it relates to how we form opinions and then exchange ideas.
America's problem is worse because in America non-thinking is often regarded as something better than smart: it's righteous.
America's poor thinking is so powerful and dangerous because it reinforces your sense of moral superiority and helps you keep delineating between good people (you) and bad people (everyone else).
How else would you explain that the US is bombing eight countries (that we know of) right now and Americans, including self-proclaimed liberals, think that's righteous?
4
You're threading a needle here Chris. You are correct that Economic Sciences was not added to the prize list until 1969 based on a gift from the bank to the Foundation. Which the Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for awarding. The prize is included in the Nobel Foundation listing of awards, no differently than the Peace prize.
Prof Thaler and the Economics prize really isn't the target of your comment is it Chris.
1
@ Battlelion
If you want to be very precise, the prize Prof Thaler received is called in Swedish "Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne" or for those of you not versed in Swedish the "Swedish National Bank's Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel".
Has quite a different ring than Nobel Prize, doesn't it?
My only objection to the prize is the fact that it is implied that Economics is somehow a science.
Economics is not a "science" that can be studied dispassionately - but is a construct of the human mind.
So Thaler's melding of psychology and economics might be a massive breakthrough in trying to understand peoples' motivations and how the system works.
But only for those people who believe that economics is a valid field based on fact, that someone from within the field has finally gotten some publicity from introducing a little bit of reality, sense, and practical social-scientific experimentation into its imaginary world, but it's no "breakthrough" for the "real" social sciences, nor even for philosophy, religion, evolutionary biology, etc.
'The prize-givers said his work had shown how the limitations of an individual’s knowledge in the decision-making process, as well as the consequences of social preferences and a lack of self control, can affect people’s decisions as well as market outcomes.'
Well, I think most of us could have come up with that without the statistics.
Did that answer your question ?
2
Mr. Brooks' sociological essays are interesting enough, but isn't this a time for principled conservatives to be speaking relentlessly against a President who is -- no exaggeration -- badly damaging the country. The Republican Party nominated him and its members elected him. We stand no small risk of ending the world as we know it in a nuclear war started by an unhinged, narcissistic sociopath. Mr. Brooks should be following David Frum's lead holding the Republican Party to account.
7
If one watches what these folks do and ignore what they claim, one has to conclude that they are reactionaries, not conservatives. People who like Trump tend to be nihilists who believe that fire is cleansing and always gives birth to phoenixes, not vultures.
2
When a fairly large part of the population believes in things based on "faith" it is nearly impossible to rationally discuss, no matter how gently approached.
9
Good for Thaler, but the expression "A human being is an intelligent monkey riding an elephant" has been around a long time - the elephant being all the subconscious motivations that dictate our behavior without our conscious knowledge.
3
We can become conscious of them, or some at least, but it takes work.
True. Though people tend to resist the idea that they are controlled by factors other than their own conscious, willful intentions. Unless it's a god pulling the strings.
I will admit Mr. Brooks, that I have read some of your columns which did not put much into the "Art of Thinking Well."
Please if you and your ideas, which often lack evidence, can pay attention to more of the thoughts in this essay.
1
Please Mr. Brooks. The next time you create your list of people who you regard as "beacons of intellectual honesty" please be more creative.
I would have added Noam Chomsky, Sam Harris and Senator Corker.
3
A good article, irritatingly marred by misrepresenting the term "whitesplaining," an outgrowth of the term "mansplaining." The terms refer to very real, arrogant, and condescending ways of lecturing African-Americans by white people and women by men.
Out of interest, I looked for the definitions of both terms on the Urban Dictionary website and was fascinated and disturbed to find that the first 15 definitions of "mansplaining" were insulting, sexist, anti-feminist distortions of the meaning of the term. Definition 16 was the first to give its true meaning.
The true definition didn't even have enough "likes" to be in with the single digit definitions. (The true definition of "whitesplaining" was, at least, #1.)
I look forward to the day when sexism and racism aren't cool in so many of our social groups, and propagandists with an agenda don't work to warp words and concepts to fit their ugly, bigoted agendas.
Despite
GOP
politics,
a
few
more
gutsy
politicians
like
Corker ...
aw
only in myth.
1
"There are always going to be people who desperately want to get into the Inner Ring and will cut all sorts of intellectual corners to be accepted. As Lewis put it, “The passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”
So true about everyday people but the fact that our wanna be president has pushed into the "inner ring" thanks to hate from the white supremacists & middle class is somehow not astonishing - and with steve bannon pulling strings on the outside things will only get worse - but the GOP government values the inner ring more then the votes and rights of the American people so the hate & anger propaganda will continue.
1
Only utter fools seek power for its own sake, which is why they can only abuse it when they get it.
1
Or, Steve, they get the power and then can't wield it because the lies they told to get it are coming back to bite them in the behind.
Brooks writes these interesting philosophical columns. But I can't help feeling annoyed when he ignores the disaster of the Trump administration, and by the Republicans. Unbelievably, this man is still a Republican and bears a great deal of blame for his support of what amounts to a fanatical right wing.
5
I would argue that most (virtually all) Universities celebrate those virtues. Its easy to find examples of students behaving stupidly or protesting against some policy or situation, but the University itself celebrates the open mind in both classrooms and its culture. The myth that they are hotbeds of close-minded liberals who take young minds and mold them into more liberals is just that: a myth. As an educated man you should know that, Mr. Brooks.
5
All we are saying is give peace a chance.
1
David you might spend some time on trying to discriminate between data processing or not-thinking and thinking,
Of course in order to to do this you will have to think. As far as I can tell, Alan Jacobs book is more about different ways to process data than it is about thinking.
Data processing something that computers and the vast majority of "intellectuals" do very well, is not-thinking.
"But the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join. If you do that, they’ll bend their opinions to yours. If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
Trump and his mob belie that statement, that pretty thought, totally. They don't want to be cool. They don't even want to be mildly attractive, in their discourse or in their appearance. Trump desperately wants everything and he wants it immediately and simultaneously, so he can go and want something more else.
But his mob, the so-called base, now holding the rest of the country hostage, cares not one whit about being cool or reasonable or any other attractive thing. They haven't time for political correctness. They haven't time for civil discourse, if they even know what that is. Trump hasn't time to learn all the things he should have learned before age two.
But he and his mob are not entirely to blame if the 'establishment' GOP laid the groundwork and nurtured the base so the likes of Trump could slime the country. After all, the GOP has been railing against immigrants, women, civility, the press, and reason for decades.
4
A lot of this started with Vietnam, when we realized government lies and chooses sides in the cultural development of the nation.
When government stopped working for everybody and appealed only to its partisan base, we became tribal.
1
Who has time for "writing essays" that demonstrate clear, cogent thinking? I am grateful to have taken argumentation at my Jesuit university which allows me to smell an illogical syllogism a mile away, but I live in the REAL world where my inner rings are at the dog park, my art gallery and book club, and opportunities for substantive conversations are few.
What I hear and read on FB most is distilled down thinking--actually, more reactions--on the latest news, typically on Trump. Yesterday, at the dog park, we had one outlier on the whole kneel vs. stand controversy. Jerry, retired HS football coach, says he'd absolutely kick any player out of the game if he didn't stand. The reason? "I didn't fight for my flag so they could disrespect it!"
Bottom line, is that anyone's personal life experience will easily override any complicated, nuanced argument such as flag/anthem is a "symbol" of America, 1st amendment rights of peaceful protest, etc.
2
Sagan wrote this in the early 1980's. This man knew how to think, and write. Read the entire article.
https://www.csicop.org/si/show/burden_of_skepticism
The French scientist Henri Poincaré remarked on why credulity is rampant: “We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling.” That’s what I have tried to say with my examples. But I don’t think that’s the only reason credulity is rampant. Skepticism challenges established institutions. If we teach everybody, let’s say high school students, the habit of being skeptical, perhaps they will not restrict their skepticism to aspirin commercials and 35,000-year-old channelers (or channelees). Maybe they’ll start asking awkward questions about economic, or social, or political, or religious institutions. Then where will we be? Skepticism is dangerous. That’s exactly its function, in my view. It is the business of skepticism to be dangerous. And that’s why there is a great reluctance to teach it in the schools. That’s why you don’t find a general fluency in skepticism in the media. On the other hand, how will we negotiate a very perilous future if we don’t have the elementary intellectual tools to ask searching questions of those nominally in charge, especially in a democracy?
2
Every so often David Brooks writes a perceptive column. This is one of them. He says,
"A lot of our thinking is for bonding, not truth-seeking, so most of us are quite willing to think or say anything that will help us be liked by our group."
My parents were fundamentalist Christians who believed that the earth is only 6000 years old, and that Piltdown Man was the result of "amalgamation between man and beach."
My parents were heartbroken when I rejected some of the lessons from my youth when I entered the university. I was puzzled by how Noah's flood might have produced the Grand Canyon, for example.
But I also understood the reasons for their beliefs. They were not bigots.
They couldn't distinguish between levels of certainty provided by the physical sciences, the social sciences and religion.
Within religion, at one extreme, one reasons on the basis of authority. Ordinary folk don't understand the complicated reasoning that leads to a rather certain conclusion that the Milky Way Galaxy contains a huge black hole.
Religion is based upon authority, for fundamentalists, that the Holy Scriptures are revealed truth.
The social sciences, including economics, lies in a middle zone.
Make no mistake. Thaler deserves his Nobel Prize.
But as a group, economists are also subject to group think. Their subtle models leave out population growth, the most important variable in the long run.
As a group, the human race has done nothing to stop a coming Malthusian disaster.
2
Since the author discuss a scientific development I wish the author will be precise with his facts. The idea that we are systematically irrational was not created by Richard Thaler. He borrowed it from the body of work in cognitive psychology field and in particular from the work of the two Israelis Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. This body of work was applied to many aspects of human behavior in many fields like medicine, combat pilot training, and sport analytics, to name a few. Thaler contribution was to use this conceptual work to practical behavior in the economic arena and change human behavior like increasing worker participation in retirement saving plans.
3
The art of thinking well includes virtues not mentioned in this essay. Courage. Abraham Heschel told the story of 3 mountain climbers linked together by a rope looped around their waist ascending a steep mountain face. Suddenly the lead climber slips and they all fall onto a ledge that has a natural wall of loose rocks and stones. The ledge is also home to many venomous snakes. Two of the climbers immediately grab the snakes and throw them over the wall. The third climber throws rocks and stones over the ledge. Asked by the other two what he was doing, he said, "I am looking for a way out." Love is another virtue. Presidents Lincoln and Mandela come to my mind. Lincoln said "With malice toward none, with charity for all, ... let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds,... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and all nations." Mandela said, "For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in away that respects and enhances the freedom of others." The art of thinking well is not just the bio-chemical processes of brain functions synapsing in the right order, it is also psycho-social relationships and the embraced ethics that make for a healthy and nurturing community. For most of us the art of thinking well arises from a healthy life style; e.g. constructive thoughts most often come to us in sobriety and not in a drugged or drunken state. Fear and prejudice breed ill thinking.
1
"[Jacobs] argues that by diagnosing our own ills, we can begin to combat them."
"I was just having fun [throwing paper towels in Puerto Rico]."-Donald Trump
That's clearly accurate, and true. What is the "battle" he should instead be having if Jacobs fans object to that one?
The Jacobs formula appears to depend on "joining" a group that thinks it could do a better job of being you than you can.
How long has Humanity been waiting for this revelation to arrive?
Interesting read, but doesn't seem to address a crucial aspect of debate: some arguments are soundly built on facts, and others built on belief. How can we steer political debate back to a more objective assessment of facts?
1
Tribalism is hard-wired into the human operating system.
Much like the irrational thinking patterns described by Thayler, it is a trait that frequently served to improve our species' chances for survival in hostile environments with little to no understanding of why the environment was hostile in the first place.
It is relatively benign when we feel secure and comfortable but it comes on strong when we feel threatened, impoverished and insecure.
You are correct that in order to make rational and impactful decisions we need to establish ways to suppress these instincts. That becomes much easier to do when most of us feel secure. Unfortunately many Americans do not feel secure today and are reverting to their instinctive survival algorithm.
David there are more nice people in this world today than bad people. It is the grace of all the kindness, of all the invisible hands that make the world go around. Yes, we are living in dark times where what we think is right is not always so. Because we lack tolerance of others' views. You are so right, to be able to debate should be a learning exercise and not just as a means of victory. The worst people to behave were fellow democrats and so called liberals who were so intolerant of anyone who did not fawn over their candidate Hillary. It was an eye opening event of how far down we have fallen as a nation that welcomed diversity of views, tolerance, creating cool groups where it is a reasonable to be cool and cool to be reasonable.
3
I took Professor Thaler's class while at the University of Chicago. It absolutely changed the way I look at the world. It is one of those rare classes that you find yourself reflecting on in your own daily life many years after the class is over. I am very happy for Professor Thaler. What I find unique about Professor Thaler is that he was willing to put the investment ideas based on his research to the test in the stock market. Last I checked, they had performed very well. Professor Thaler along with his research partners, Kahneman and Tversky, are the original brain hackers.
I just want to add that Professor Thaler is a really nice guy. He is quick to laugh and very approachable. In short, the Nobel Committee made a fine selection. Congratulations, Professor Thaler!
3
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you-is a pretty good reasonable thought. Well worn, but reasonable...
1
To an economist like Thaler it is "irrational" to make decisions that are not based on maximization or satisficing. That presupposes that human nature somehow ought to conform to the precepts of modern economic theory - that all humans are self-interested utility maximizers at all times. When Thaler, to his credit, actually tested this as a hypothesis he found it to be false. But he compounds this error by calling this deviation from homo economicus "irrational behaviour". The way we perceive the world is always going to be biased in some way. Making decisions based on those biases is not irrational. It's a kind of short cut, a way of simplifying decision making. To be irrational means to act in a way that harms oneself or others for no good reason. We prioritize preventing this kind of behaviour. Modern economic theory and Utilitarian ethical theory both presuppose access to perfect information about the effects of our decisions. In fact, we often don't know what the consequences of our behaviour will be. Hence the need for short-cuts. To call this irrational is to stack the deck in favour of economic theory by arbitrarily ruling out deviations from perfect knowledge from being rational.
47
"The way we perceive the world is always going to be biased in some way."
So it that statement biased? If so, how much should we trust it? Are we thus condemned to be agnostic in all things? Do we just act and see what happens, and then do it again and again? Surely, truth and knowledge exist. (Sorry for calling you Shirley.) Even if the only truth is that there is no truth, then that piece of knowledge is true. But I don't think reality is that starkly absurd; however, I am biased. I just don't know how much or in which direction.
2
He's trying to create modern economic theory based on real behaviors, not make behaviors conform to existing economic theories that are based on assumed behaviors. In other words, he's one of the few economists interested in what people actually do rather than telling them what they should do then bemoaning the fact that they don't it.
He focuses on how people spend and save money. He looks at real data, then sees that people do certain things, like they spend more of their paychecks right after they are paid, and then have to scrimp come the end of the month. The "paycheck cycle" is what he calls it. Now, he does assert that it would make more sense to spread the spending out uniformly so you're not in a bind at the end. But he also understands that teaching people to do that is a waste of time, because apparently most of us are just not planners.
So, you see, his studies explain such things as why we need Social Security. We, as a species, will just spend it as fast we get it. That's a decision people make based on the bias that they want gratification now. It doesn't matter whether that bias is irrational or not. But understanding the bias is a good way for government to plan how much they have to take from you so that when you retire you have two nickels to rub together.
4
The American psychologist Gary Marcus' 2008 non-fiction book "Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind" argues that evolutionary psychology has generally favored genes that give "immediate advantages" over genes that provide long-term value, making our brains a patched-together solution for a problem, clumsily assembled from whatever materials are immediately available.
A truly excellent read!
4
The Nobel Prizes in economics for Richard Thaler and in 2002 for Daniel Kahneman primarily address behavioral economics, which is a rejection of conservative economics.
The key ideological commitment of today’s conservatives is to promote laissez-faire in politics and economics. Areas of laissez-faire are important in a stable society. But laissez-faire as a primary system is a disaster.
David Brooks is a moderate conservative, but he is still a conservative. He has spent his career promoting the conservative agenda, which is largely misguided.
We had stability, prosperity, and a growing middle class, including a growing black middle class, until the 1970s. It is normal for an economy to have ups and downs. The economy slowed in the 1970s, but that was not the problem. The problem then was runaway inflation (Volcker later ended it) fueled by Nixon’s policies. (In 1968 all the candidates promised to end the war, but then Nixon greatly expanded it.)
What ended our prosperity and growing middle class was Reaganomics. We call it that because Reagan greatly expanded the agenda, but the polices began with Nixon and the infamous Powell memo. (Nixon endorsed it and appointed Lewis Powell to SCOTUS.)
It was conservative policies in politics and economics that destroyed our prosperity. Kids today can’t find decent jobs, can’t pay off their education debts, and can’t afford to move out of their parents’ homes. David Brooks has spent his career promoting the conservative agenda.
1
Thank you David for an engaging and thought provoking read. It made me think and I learned something from reading it.
1
As others have wisely noted, education is key to “The Art of Thinking.” The ability to engage critical thinking, to separate fact from fiction, and superstition from reality, serves as a counterbalance to the human propensity to be tribal and driven by emotion rather than rationality. That propensity is precisely what Trump, the NRA, and the conservative movement in general have exploited with great success. A humanities based education allows a student to consider the Big Picture as opposed to being confined within the narrow focus of, say, a STEM curriculum, or a localized, emotion-driven education agenda that discourages multiple points of view. Critical thinking builds bridges rather than walls. If effectively executed, a good education nurtures the ability to question and test everything even whether economics is a true science.
Critical thinking allows one to observe that the Proverb praising the virtue of a “soft tongue” is in the same book that includes approval for sexism, genocide and slavery – a book of nebulous authorship, one full of textual contradictions, and one vulnerable to a myriad of interpretive contradictions. Therefore, what do we make of this text; how do we use it if at all?
Brooks is right about one thing: the need to band with like-minded individuals is a powerful force, one that drives people to act against their own best interests - even if it means poverty and poor health. But I’ll put my money on a good education over a proverb any day.
2
I was an MBA student in Prof. Thaler’s Management Decision Making class. What I learned there still guides me today, over 20 years later. It was the best thing of the whole program.
One anecdote that was both educational and amusing, then and now, was the time Thaler said during one of his lectures that attractive people have a significant advantage when it comes to achieving business success than their less attractive peers. This caused a stir amongst my younger and prettier classmates (I was a mature student, older than even some of the professors), as he pointed out that the attractive were much more likely to be assisted, mentored, and promoted because of their attractiveness and that their success wasn’t all due to their inherent intelligence or accomplishments. I had to bite down hard not to bust out laughing at the reaction of most of my classmates.
Thank you again Prof. Thaler!
MBA Student at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, Class of 1995
2
Has anyone pointed out that people don't think about tax cuts as if they are subsidies? The Republican idea that tax cuts, or especially credits, for health care and child care will be saved and budgeted throughout the year by poor people is simply wrong. If you give someone a cash infusion in the spring they replace their furnace, repair their car, or blow it on a vacation.
1
Actually, that is true for mortgage tax deductions and child deductions on our income taxes.
People don't think of them as subsidies but they are.
Which is to say a lot of people complaining about big government and the nanny state are recipients of government subsidized housing and child care.
1
"These days, a soft tongue doesn't get you very far."
A good point, Mr. Brooks. Though I'm not sure a soft tongue ever got anyone particularly far, it's certainly harder for it to happen now in this era of social media and tweets.
1
well, i've seen the Pascal quote in at least two books introducing a chapter and it goes..."all man's problems stem from his inability to stay quietly in his room"... i might amend that to...."and off the internet". I think that figures highly into this analysis. Though i have to say, reading the comments on youtube sometimes are the best entertainment ever. And, the one's perhaps that go without emotion but also without dogma.
1
Thaler deserves our thanks for helping pry economists out of their bemusement with rational behavior. Please note that one reason we have nuclear weapons in their ridiculous abundance and postures, is that economists (e.g., Tom Schelling, to name only one) applied rational behavior theory to foreign policy and war, two fields in which there is more distorted perception and irrationality than any except possibly picking a spouse.
Your presumption is there is a single "inner ring" of a set of concentric circles. Politics today plays more like a universe of many smaller circles and inner rings, with generalized overlaps which come and go based single issues.
Trump has demonstrated that in today's political landscape - a smaller core base (his inner ring) is sufficiently more powerful than a loose confederation called Democrat or Republican. I would suggest many of our politicians are trying to 'get out' of this association of the traditional inner ring (i.e. the traditional party values) with his inner ring.
To your point, it is fascinating that the ring-leader can claim the highest IQ with a zero EQ and those followers set their EQ right in line with his.
21
This reminds me of another very good piece on thinking, "Why Facts Don't Change our Minds" (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-..., in which the following is proposed: "If we—or our friends or the pundits on CNN—spent less time pontificating and more trying to work through the implications of policy proposals, we’d realize how clueless we are and moderate our views." Wouldn't that be the day?
Salesmenship; the essence of what we are, should be included in this scenario.
"But the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join. " I would think that, maybe, this is what Jim Jones had in mind. Guyana and the Peoples Temple did not work out very well.
2
I don't understand the point of citing T. S. Eliot in an article about "thinking well". Almost nothing Eliot wrote makes sense in the real world.
Similarly, what is the point of citing C. S. Lewis? He's hardly a model of clear thinking.
Similarly, if Mr. Brooks is going to recommend a book about thinking, how about one written by a scientist, rather than a professor humanities (Jacobs).
"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
--T.S. Eliot
2
Great piece, David Brooks!
Your summary is very "attractive":
"the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join. If you do that, they’ll bend their opinions to yours. If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
But what makes a community attractive to the most people?
And how does one use that knowledge to create attractive progressivism?
"Back when they wrote the book of Proverbs it was said, “By long forbearing is a prince persuaded, and a soft tongue breaketh the bone.” These days, a soft tongue doesn’t get you very far, but someday it might again."
Yes, indeed, a soft tongue might work miracles. When we can say, for example, and mean it:
You might be right.
You have a point.
I hadn't thought of that.
Thank you for your insights.
Let me rethink this given what you have just said.
Thank you. I didn't know.
...and most powerful of all...
I'm sorry.
2
I agree with the theory of the inner ring\tribes and how it colors our outlook and decision making process. A win is when our tribe is being catered to and a loss is when another tribe is being catered to. People are willing to be less tribal when they feel that their needs are being adequately addressed. They can afford to be generous if they feel they are relatively well off. Easier to change your mind when you are not bitter. The challenge then becomes - with our highly competitive nature, how we can make the majority of people feel good about their station in life?
1
We have more access to information and analysis than ever before. Are we better informed? David Brooks has had his head in the sand for years. Now that it is impossible to deny that right wing extremism is actually mainstream and is a pox on the country, he needs to pitch the idea that both "sides" really suffer from the same shortcomings. You can't fix a problem until you are willing to acknowledge it.
2
The "Inner Ring" idea isn't all that useful for analysis because there is a constellation of rings in each person's life. Like a crazy three-dimensional Venn diagram of Inner Rings. Brooks says people who talk about "whiteslpaining" are resentful snoots. But those same people are the cool kids of a different group and thus not snoots at all.
“Thanks to his [Thaler’s] work and others’, we know a lot more about the biases and anomalies that distort our perception and thinking[.]”
This statement should be: “Thanks to his [Thaler’s] work and others’, we know a lot more about the biases and anomalies that distort economists’ perception and thinking[.]
When we think someone is acting irrationally it’s either because we don’t know the reasons for her action or we disagree with them. In the statement above, Brooks allows economists to define rationality and then judge people as being irrational by that definition. But the error is with the economists, not with us.
I’ve listened to behavioral economists give examples of what they consider irrational economic behavior, and in almost each instance the behavior sounds rather rational to me. I know many people when taking Econ 101 who find themselves scratching their heads and wondering if real people actually act according to the textbook. And now we learn that they don’t. And what’s even more hilarious is that an economist gets a Nobel Prize for pointing this out.
And this is what it means to be educated? Or is it just that behavioral economists are now the Inner Ring and I’m a member of the Repugnant Cultural Other?
2
The key words in your article are these by T. S. Eliot: “when we don’t really know a subject well enough we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts.” I agree. But then you end his thought with your own: “and go with whatever idea makes us feel popular.” I disagree. We go, instead, with whatever propaganda justifies our feelings. Then we hang out with people who feel the same way, which might make us feel “popular,” but that’s secondary.
We are a nation running on emotion now, and this is a direct result of what has been called the ‘Newt Gingrich playbook.’ Google that for yourself. It started as, and continues to be, a deliberate attempt on the right to use language to denigrate the political opposition and create an emotional response that I can only describe as loathing. Not just to refute opponents, but to denigrate, and further, to incite fear. Here is one of the worst examples of this I’ve seen recently: “Leftists hate our rights because they hate us, and when we assert our rights it gets in the way of their malicious schemes to dominate and control us.” That tidbit is by a conservative pundit named Kurt Schlichter.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/10/05/nothing-makes-...
How is social life supposed to save us when hate mongering like this enjoys a significant web presence? I’m not going to waste precious hours of my life entering into that mind-set with people.
2
Perhaps artificial intelligence is the answer.
Interpersonal intelligence seems to be failing.
2
The media doesn't help, either. By rewarding the extremes with the loudest voices, it exacerbates the problem. How about the if New York Times talks to voters with nuanced opinions? Instead of going for the quick quote or headline, emphasize the fact that voters don't generally agree with the complete Democratic or GOP platform, but might agree with some issues on one side and some on the other. I think you'll find there are more of those out there than you account for in your article.
1
With your last sentence, you undermine your thesis that "the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join." In fact, in-your-face media and sensational fake media dominated by shouting talking heads and character assassination has persuaded a great many people to join what strikes me as a not very attractive community of people who, as you say, are constantly appalled at everyone else.
It seems that few people know how to think. People tend to rely more on beliefs to form their world view than an attempt to objectively evaluate information. Most such people would not be able to cite evidence contrary to their beliefs, that would cause them to change their beliefs. Hence, many people are just locked in and not even interested in considering other possibilities. Instead, we end up with people who contort logic into tortured messes in order to maintain their world views. The solution to the epidemic of gun violence is more people with more guns. The sequence of fossils in geologic strata is due to how quickly animals could run from Noah's flood. Climate change is an international conspiracy perpetuated by thousands of scientists.
Attractive communities of thinking people do already exist actually. They are called colleges, and they are open to anyone. Unfortunately, education is yet another aspect of American life that is under attack by right wing media.
3
The problem is that current conservative thought, in other words, denial of scientific facts and rampant racism, keeps me from giving them the satisfaction of agreeing with them on the shrinking subset where we intersect. So I guess that Princeton can wait. It is all well and good to agree that we want what is best for our children, but when an ideology includes climate change denial, racism and tax cuts for the rich, it is mere lip service.
1
It seems to me that Trumps most faithful followers are on a quest to destroy the fellowship of the inner ring. The results, thus far, do not appear superior to what the adepts of the inner ring paradigm have been doing. To quote an important contemporary thinker: “SAD”!
David just because YOU need to be in with the in crowd doesn't mean that such an adolescent characteristic is shared by the world's adults. Too bad the "cool" kids didn't sign your year book, but for goodness sake get over it. The teen years are a very small % of your life.
1
Wow! Individual beacons of honesty includes anti-feminist, Caitlin Flanagan. I read up on all four of these people and George Packer and Scott Alexander might be the only ones worthy of being named a beaconof honesty and I’m not completely sure of that. Anyone sho is anti anything can’t be considered a beacon of honesty. I consider beacons of honesty those who can examine both sides of an issue without bias. Brooks tries to do this but he fails in a big way.
1
Thank you for a very thoughtful and ultimately hopeful editorial.
1
People don't think rationally. This is a fact. Reason in the human mind has been subverted by all sorts of beliefs and fixed values that have little or nothing to do with reason. Richard Thaler and T.S. Elliot write at length about the symptoms of our problem, but they refuse to touch the third rail, the human belief system. This is because Thaler and Elliot have their own strongly held beliefs that can't be examined or touched. Until we are willing to take a close look at the real cause and effect of human beliefs we will continue to stumble along in all manner of irrational acts.
See:
RevolutionOfReason.com
TheRogueRevolutionist.com
1
David Brooks now writes about thinking well. That's rich. He was an apologist for all sorts of Republican nonsense for years. His was one of the public voices giving intellectual cover to the GOP, helping put us in this situation. Now he wants to ponder theory. Own your past, Mr. Brooks. Take on Trump and his administration, make it up to the readers, do your part to make it right.
5
More of David Brooks whimsical channeling of Ann Landers, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Oprah Winfrey. Thinking well requires the wisdom acquired from humble humane empathy. Being wise is far more moral and effective than being smart when it comes to human beings.
Economics is not a science. There are way too many variables and unknowns to utilize the controlled tests that provide predictable repeatable results that are the essence of science. Economics is arithmetic. It is not mathematics. There is no science in any of the so-called social "sciences" like political science for the same reason. Quantification does not make economics a science any more than it would history or law or accounting or finance or banking.
Richard Thaler did not win any Nobel Prize. Thaler won the Sveriges Riksbanka aka Swedish National Bank's Prize in Economics in Memory of Alfred Nobel aka the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics that was created in 1969. The Nobel Prize was created by the Swede Alfred Nobel in 1895. Nobel died in 1896.
Neither Alan Jacobs nor C.S. Lewis are scientists. J.R. Tolkien offered his own insight about a quest for "rings" that trumps any "Inner Ring". While James Blish was more than equal to the theological and philosophical implications of human nature and history of C.S. Lewis. Jacobs studies English literature.
Biology, chemistry and physics synthesized in neuroscience, genetics, physiology, ethology and psychiatry with respect to human beings is science.
4
"To thy own self be true." Keep Twitter in the headlines and 'dynamic scoring' out. Policy doesn't get more self-deluded than that. Make Finance Great Again.
If it's any consolation, the incomprehensible philosopher Jaques Derrida, if I understand him correctly, which I probably don't, theorized that the Inner Ring, which he referred to as the status quo, is doomed to suffer a natural deconstruction, and the Repugnant Cultural Other, which he referred to as the Other, will take its place in time and become the status quo...
This sort of explains why an irrational being, such as Trump, can still make billions of dollars in today's economy. Of course, being in the Inner Ring, or the WH helps. Especially when all your business partners or advisors are right there with you.
1
David inexplicably omits mentioning Kahneman and Tversky who "... challenge the assumption of human rationality prevailing in modern economic theory." (Wikipedia). Kahneman received the Nobel Prize in 2002, and Tversky would have too if he hadn't died at a relatively young age. Thaler also collaborated with Kahneman.
Where is it cool to be reasonable? Where can evidence change ones's mind? Among scientists. Too bad we are so devalued these days. M
I was hoping to read an article about the wonderful work of Richard Thaler, Daniel Kahneman and others, in celebration of Dr. Thaler's Nobel prize. Behavioral economics, though, is given short-thrift in this piece, as Mr. Brooks quickly alters the discussion to focus on political ingroup-outgroup fighting. There is already far too much media attention given to the partisan divide in this country. I'd like to just take a moment and learn more about Dr. Thaler's accomplishments. For instance, in Nudge, Thaler's influential book, he introduces the philosophy, Libertarian Paternalism. This philosophy aims to give people the freedom to choose as they wish while creating a situation that improves the chances they will choose the option that aligns with their preferences and best-practices evidence. Put a bowl of fruit at eye level, and the sugary food elsewhere, and kids will choose the fruit more often. Make organ donation the default and more people will be organ donors than if they have to opt-in. Behavioral economics affords us many opportunities to improve health and wellbeing in this country. For just a moment, let's focus our attention on doing better, rather than on being divided.
7
Will it be a surprise if Richard Thaler's irrational economic being theory is exploited to a great advantage by the authoritarian regimes while nudging the people to accept the policy prescriptions however disastrous these might turn out to be in the end.
5
This is an ongoing debate in the literature - is it moral to move groups towards what you have deemed good for them using "nudge" tools.
Ironically [or perhaps not] - it is the progressives who love these nanny strategies.
I recently had a wonderful conversation with a conservative who differs with me on the details of most political issues. But it only took a few minutes to agree, we all – Left, Right, whatever – want the same things – we want our children to be education, we want everyone to have good health care, enough to eat, a good job, and a roof over their heads. However much we disagree on the means, we can all agree on the ends.
When you are stable in this outlook – what we ultimately share in common – it’s MUCH easier to listen deeply and revise your views.
6
But the hole in this feel-good description of agreement on ends is that disagreement on the expected costs and likely outcomes of various approaches totally negates the points of agreements.
Sure, we all want good health and good healthcare, but the argument turns on "is it worth (better met by) single payer, government run organization or free market individual-conduct-will-make-everything-happy platitudes."
3
It all depends on whether one believes there is an invisible hand waving a magic wand, or not.
2
Hey Tom P:
I get that it sounds overly feel good. I'll tell you a story that deeply moved me, one I heard many years ago and still resonates.
The hide bound conservative William F. Buckley - one of the people responsible for the hideous deformation of conservatism we see all around us - had the Dalai Lama on his "Firing Line" show many years ago.
They were talking about Russia, and the DL was insisting it was essential to establish lines of communication with them. Buckley was horrified. He had initially tried to get the DL to say something bad about China (the DL knew many people, including his personal physician, who were tortured for months - years! - by the Chinese during and following the invasion of Tibet).
Failing at this, Buckley forged ahead in his efforts to "explain" why communication was impossible with people who were thoroughly evil. Finally, the DL responded, "Look. If I hate you and see you completely as the "other," you won't listen to me. But if you know - really know - I care about you, then no matter how much we differ, you'll listen."
Did you see the NY Times picks? the one by Cathy says, more clearly and simply, what I intended to get across. We want congressional representatives to simply shut up, sit down, and get to work on what we all want.
94% of Americans want universal background checks. The numbers in the majority for universal health care, climate change, etc.
Start there - with that agreement, then fight over differences.
2
Thinking well as Mr. Brooks puts it, requires an open mind. It also requires the realization that changing one's mind is not always a sign of weakness or immaturity. Those are qualities that many in the GOP lack along with too many Americans because one thing that is not revered or valued in America is using one's intelligence.
23
Those who are not at least open to suggestion are already mentally dead.
3
The rightfully famous quote from Upton Sinclair comes to mind - “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
If the donors require you to tow the line, you tow the line or they find someone else who will.
I found this piece to be an interesting slice of one or two aspects of culture in our current history. The author makes assumptions about a certain segment and class of society, but what does it really have to do with the actual world?
when I was young, I was incapable of persuading anybody because I didn't know myself. As I've become an older woman it isn't that important to me anymore yet I find that when there is a meeting of the minds and hearts, which requires openness to people from every kind of background, there is more likely to be agreement.
4
We all work within the same set of emotions.
David Brooks says that someone is to be "admired if they can point to a time when a debate totally changed their mind on something" and then asks "How many public institutions celebrate these virtues? The US Senate? ... Even the universities?"
For the Senate, see the celebrated change in position of Mr. Corker.
For the universities, see the Nobel Prize awarded this year to Kip Thorne, for accomplishing gravitational wave detection through a technique that his textbook said was not worth trying:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/03/opinion/gravitational-waves-ligo-fund...
For myself, I know that my thoughts on quantum mechanics "totally changed" when I learned Bell's Theorem. My thoughts on democracy "totally changed" when I learned Arrow's Theorem. My thoughts on evolution "totally changed" when I read "Chromosomes, Giant Molecules and Evolution" (thanks, Bruce Wallace!). My attitude toward exercise "totally changed" when I took up running.
In short, changing one's position on the basis of evidence is more common than Mr. Brooks seems to imagine. Perhaps he's merely saying that he, personally, finds it difficult to change his own personal opinion on the basis of evidence.
11
Thaler's theory that people makes irrational decisions or that markets are irrational is an argument for a regulated economy. The market is NOT efficient, which is why we need regulations to filter out the impact of these inner and outer rings so that the economy runs smoothly, and the costs and benefits are shared in a fair manner.
7
People tend to follow the herd. That's an economic good thing. By understanding the herd's behaviors we can better prepare to meets its needs. But, herds tend to follow a leader. Good leaders tend to help the herd meet its needs. Great leaders lead the herd to better places to meet their needs. Bad leaders disrupt the herd. Trump is a bad leader.
4
The dynamics Brooks points out are exacerbated by ignorance, belief in the fantastic and living in a bubble of the likeminded, all characteristics of current US culture.Other cultural elements that reinforce the behaviors he describes are the sycophancy one sees in the workplace, the overarching need to be popular/liked and the increasingly powerful role that "gut feelings" have in place of thoughts, let alone facts.The point is that while all mankind is prone to the phenomena he describes,US culture is increasingly an exceptionally good nourishing medium for them.
9
Your columns seem to have more and more of a disconnect, Mr. Brooks.
Yesterday President Trump had EPA head Pruitt announce, in front of coal miners, that they are dismantling President Obama's greenhouse regulations, the Clean Power Plan, a rule intended to curb carbon emissions that contribute to global warming.
Here in California we are experiencing devastating fires, up and down the state. People in Puerto Rico still don't have water and electricity three weeks after the devastation of Hurricane Maria.
The problem with the art of thinking well is that you need facts to think, not prayer, which is the opposite of facts, or alternative facts, to form opinions.
To quote Patrick Moynihan:
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
18
Many Republicans actually claim to give God's opinion by what they preach.
1
Thank you David for the timely reminder.
The truth is that our thoughts and motives are profoundly subject to the winds of social dynamics. To imagine otherwise is to make ourselves vulnerable.
10
There is a good side and a bad side to the software-driven human being: they can be taught, and they can be hacked.
2
In many ways we are not much above the chimpanzees. Having said that, we certainly know that history has taught us that so many human tragedies have occurred because certain leaders have thought wrongly about actions taken or not taken. Who is to judge at the time,or later, and truly know if their own thinking about a particular action taken or not taken is valid? Serendipity seems to rescue us from muddled thinking more than we think, thank goodness.
3
Please don't insult the chimpanzees.
1
US public policy has frequently been conceived and implemented with virtually no thought whatsoever given to its affects on public mental health.
To paraphrase Pascal, "the heart has its reason which Reason doesn't understand."
On one hand, the ability to reason, to defer immediate gratification and to seek higher ideals are some of the qualities that get us, human beings as a species, to where we are; on the other hand, the whole revolt of the tyranny of reason, be it Pascal's or Nietzsches's "human, all too human," addresses the need to be the "irrational man." That is what Socrates/Plato's "charioteer" is for.
When Hobbes said humans are wolf to each other, he actually meant we need laws governed by reason, and not a proposal for being Darwinian. In a way, American Pragmaticism is really one of the sublime philosophical doctrines.
It is ironic that America has given up her unique heritage while China has a Hu Shih* revival
* Hu Shih was a student of John Dewey, one of the pillars of American Pragmatism. The former not only took the idea back to China but also served as his teacher's translator when Dewey visited China
5
Donald Trump is also teaching us about the herd mentality, daily.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Republicans and Democrats, alike, are not thinking for themselves. But perhaps Trump, in his insanity is showing us our own insane rationalizations. Maybe that is why so many voted for him and support him. He is our mirror on sanity!
7
Thinking well is an art indeed, even though it is underutilized and misunderstood, given that most of our lives we spend doing things driven by emotions and feelings, and using introspection and rational thoughts only to justify what we did (or didn't). Further, we tend to do things tribally, on the basis of loyalty, 'all for us, nothing for them', to the point of self-sacrifice for our tribe, and the distinct intent to destroy 'the other' if need be. Confirmation bias is another impediment for clear thinking, as introspection is hard work and implies an open mind...to change our's if the evidence demands it. Rational thought may be the distinction between us and the rest of our cousin animals, but we rarely use it in our daily lives. We are social beings by definition and can do wonderful things when working in unison, but not infrequently we can become a crazy mob when stirred emotionally by a vulgar charlatan, exploiting hidden biases of fear, hate and division (instead of loving each other). Otherwise, how do you explain the ascension of a thoughtless brute to the presidency, and our abdication in thinking things through?
100
"Thinking well is an art....., even though it is underutilized......"
I believe somewhere in this discussion it should be mentioned in more dramatic terms the cost of being incurious, being downright intellectually lazy when it comes to the perception of how we live, think in 'the village', or as you say in "unison" with others.
1
"God created man in his own image. And man returned the favor" George B. Shaw
Thinking well like Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Mendel, Einstein, Bohr Heisenberg and Godel can get you and your society in lots of trouble.
We do not understand the nature of the 70% of the force that we call dark energy nor the 26% of mass that we call dark matter that makes our physical reality universe. Nor can we unite the quantum with the relative in the 4% that we "know".
1
From time immemorial the human problem has been the largeness--gigantic even--of our inner world and the inordinate and 'unnatural' effort it takes to get over ourselves and fully and truly imagine the 'other'. This does not take rationality so much as a kind and nonjudgmental heart. It is the ability to subordinate our rationality and our imagination to that heart that establishes the threshold of ethics. Our age, possibly more than others, gravitates the opposite direction, hence the popularity of Facebook and other social media where we are encouraged instead to imaginatively enlarge our inner life even further and project it on a largely imagined vast and admiring audience. No wonder our best teachers, e.g the Buddha and Jesus, ultimately walked alone. No one, and especially the politically inclined, wants to be reminded that love for others and for the world itself begins with the acknowledgement that one is, like everyone else, no more than a grain of sand on a beach that stretches to infinity. The swamp that needs draining is the swamp of 'me'. It's drowning our hearts.
16
Trumpism is "Me first!" in everything.
As a Jew, my best teachers are Abraham & Sarah. Isaac & Rebekah, Jacob and his wives, and Moses. All led families and the community attached to them. Moses led an entire nation. While all were supremely concerned with the will of G-d, they were not much interested in popularity.
This may help to explain anti-Semitism. If ones focus is on ones law and tradition, instead of the Inner Ring, it's likely to drive the Inner Ring nuts, and Inner Ring wannabes to bullying, exclusion and even murder.
David, your article today makes reference to 'systematically irrational' with your emphasis on systematically. Wished you had spent a little more time assessing the 'systematically' - like how systems can be exploited and/or hijacked especially new systems that aren't well understood and controlled. Con-men and evangelicals do it all the time with their confidence games. Look at the Great Recession. Look at the last election and the rise of white resentment and social resentment. Look at a nation that leads in gun deaths but can't pass reasonable gun control legislation. Look at who was elected President without the popular vote. Your article ends like a nice homily and with kudos to reasonable debate as an approach to thinking well but that seems to distract from what's at hand with the exploitations of Facebook, Twitter to undercut reasonable debate.
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THAYLER'S THEORIES ARE Correct according to brain science. The value of things varies according to our perception of our environment. When the brain perceives stress or imminent harm, information is routed through the amygdala where emotional, reflexive responses occur. This response has evolutionary value because it helps preserve the lives of the species. If the brain is calm and focused, information is processed through the prefrontal cortex where the executive functions of the brain occur. Such higher cognitive skills including coping, problem solving, judgment and insight, stress management, organization and planning. There is a close relationship between a person's emotional intelligence (EQ) and how things are valued. EQ can overrule IQ (intelligence quotient) when stress is present, as stress literally clouds judgment. When the amygdala is activated, information is blocked from being processed by the prefrontal cortex.
12
Desperation motivation is based on the theory that people will do nothing unless coerced.
1
Steve, Thanks for your contribution to the conversation. As a psychologist, I'd broaden the ideas of desperation motivation to put in a more functional context. Aaron Beck, father of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, identified automatic depressive thoughts, including finalizing, trivializing and catastrophizing. The closest of these three to desperation motivation is finalizing. Stated more directly, it's when people think, Nothing will ever change. Nothing can get better. I draw your attention to these distinctions and ideas with the intent to share with you the notion that psychology and economics have much to offer each other. Best wishes, JS
Thoroughly enjoyed this thought provoking well referenced column. Thank you.
5
Sure. At some point, those who survived by being flung from the wreckage will recount, reflect, and realize the folly. They'll diagnose their own ills, combat them and build a community of persuasive soft-tongue values.
But right now we're still barreling down a dark road without breaks or steering and everyone is giddy with excitement that the lights just went off.
You're whispering in a tornado.
14
and if your patient and listen carefully you'll hear the "whispering".
The best and most important article from D Brooks I've yet read. The psychology of advertising lurks just behind his words, and the unbending mindset of those who adopt extreme positions is explained.
7
Too often we have put our faith in the expression, 'common sense will prevail', something many Jews believed during the early 1930's and we all know what ultimately happened. That said, I believe the day when the expression 'a soft tongue will breaketh the bone' will be in evidence universally, continuously, and the law of the land is a long, long way off. Yes, we should alll aspire to the day when the sacred replaces the profane, but, if you plan on walking softly and hope to use a soft tongue when in contact with a 'bone', carrying a big stick around, just in case, is a pretty good strategy.
7
It's a stretch to call sense "common".
OInly in NYC I guess. Common sense is rooted in the social contract we all take for granted, even with the anomalies we run into.
“the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved.” - Isn't this the definition of political correctness?
Mr. Brooks is a smart guy. He Likes to explain his world views by quoting philosophers and social scientists and biologists etc ...
But he cannot except the fact that human beings are tribalistic by nature. This is how we are hardwired. The liberals like to say that that "Diversity is Strength"... But where is their evidence? Where is the extensive research and the peer revived papers supporting this theses?
If you look at the history of planet earth the evidence seems pretty clear that extreme diversity leads to social conflict. Diversity may be fine along the edges of a cohesive society but when there is no longer any basic foundation of shared culture and values then things start to break down.
Trump doesn't read books and you can bet most of his supporters don't read the New York Times so who is Mr. Brooks trying to influence with columns like this?
24
Diversity has been proven again and again in the Business world as what is needed for innovation. The more different opinions, experiences and knowledge you can get in a room the better the ideas will be for innovation. Conflict is a part of diversity and produces better result than sameness.
If you want to keep status quo, you do not want diversity. This is one of the problems we have today in America. We have a lot of people that want to stay in the town they were born in and not have to go to college to get a better job. They expect the job to be there for them because it was for their father and mother It is not that they do not want to make America great again, they want to make it like their father's America. When things don't work like it did, they look around to see who took it away, it has to have been someone outside of their group.
I agree this is not new, it has been happen through out the history of humans being on this earth.
61
That's an extremely fatalistic view about human beings and ostensibly an excuse for all kinds of bad behavior: men are "hard-wired" with testosterone, so why should we hold them accountable for rape? Humans are "hard-wired" for tribal bands and conquests, so why bother with the rule of law? This, of course, ignores that despite those conflicts, most of us manage to interact day-to-day with folks we disagree with without bludgeoning them to death or succumbing to our resentments. What some call political correctness, I grew up (in a very poor household, with parents with 8th grade educations) to see as kindness and civility and politeness. One did not air one's prejudices because one was aware from toddler age on that civilization was opposed to our desire to have what we wanted when we wanted and that we had to curb the instincts we were "hard-wired" to have. I observed a beautiful Sikh wedding last week and I thought of how in the world someone felt empowered to rip off another man's turban or (as liberals sometimes do) call a woman who is poor and uneducated a redneck. Praise heaven for an attempt to balance reason and tribalism. Perhaps if diversity strengthens, it is because it teaches us respect, and grace, and restrain?
86
"Trump doesn't read books and you can bet most of his supporters don't read the New York Times so who is Mr. Brooks trying to influence with columns like this?"
You.
Me.
That's enough.
9
I could and probably would accept the argument if most of us were not brainwashed by or at the least not purposely exposed to the mythology of religious belief as being the proper beating heart of our theocracy.
Why is the line between fact and fiction blurred? Will the creation of groups where reason prevails welcome the distortions of belief? Why do we hold belief, no matter how contrived, as sacred?
We know the origins and history of our own home grown religious belief systems and yet in the face of the truth accept and welcome them.
Where is the art of thinking, let alone well, found in them or any of their predecessors? If anything they are prime examples of a systematic irrationality in which we are immersed at or soon after birth and washed in throughout our lives.
Ours is not the only society warped by belief, but it is among the most mentally twisted.
5
This article presents a number of important challenges and considerations Pfor our daily living.It’s style is,however,inadvertently misleading;suggesting an either/or reality.When nuanced ranges and continua of dimensions exist.As well as contexts and various other influencing frameworks. Prior complex processes need consideration.Dynamic irrational-rational ranges of judgments,which effect decisions are multidimensional.Carried out, or not.Learned from, or not.Repeated, or changed, as realities change.Being aware.Or being willfully blind, deaf and ignorant happens all-too-often. Now! All around US.Fact and factless expectations of,and about…whatever their temporary or more permanent sources, can influence.Our interacting thinking and feelings; levels, qualities, processes, outcomes.Our roles,time,place and context, impact,bind, bias, color and influence in so many ways. Transmuting “raw” data, an event or experience, into helpful,not harmful, information; knowing, derived understanding,insights and even wisdom are complex. Not totally understood.Now. Perhaps never.Even as decisions need to be made NOW. Making sustainable impacts on our toxic, daily, violating, inequitable, WE-THEY culture.Locally, nationally and globally. Thaler’s “nudging” theory, as concept and process, can help.If and when, institutionalized, tradition-based barriers, and their stakeholders, are disempowered. Menschlichkeit, with its mutual caring, respect,trust and help when needed,is enabled. By US.
1
Postscript to Brooks on the importance of real debate in forming our judgments: ever notice how the U.S. Senate is virtually always otherwise empty when one or two members are speaking on some important issue? That the U.S. Senate is a forum for real debate has been a bad joke for decades!
7
The theory that economic behavior is rational in the aggregate simply ignores the fact that rationality itself is motivated by individual & irrational goals. Thought should ideally escape that trap by the ability to suspend judgment & question its own premises. Our peculiar situation is that our means of political community & information, the political parties & the media, pursue their own economic ends by dividing the public into mutually exclusive communities of premises & information. Because we learn & speak their language, we have difficulty accepting this. For example, anyone who observed the candidates in the last election would notice that these people were speaking from mutually exclusive premises. Their debates, & ours, were framed to prevent agreement. Trump voters could not have more effectively proved the point if they had elected an inanimate object as president. Yet we continue to speak as though the amassing of facts & examples will sway those who differ with us. Our political debates serve the ends of our political parties & our media, not our own ends. Myopia & division are the goals. The only thing we share is the delusion that there are 2 possible perspectives on the world. Unless we can separate the self-interested & largely economic motivations of our political & media leaders from the more communal rationality & goals of democracy, this is hopeless.
43
An astute, but depressing analysis.
The tacit endorsement given to projecting a human personality onto nature is the most prolific and pernicious irrationality-producer on Earth, David. You're on the wrong side of that issue.
2
On some level, pure THINKING requires pure LISTENING.
“The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress”
- Joseph Joubert
And even then, it requires intellectual effort.
"Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it." - Henry Ford
7
I’d Mr. Brooks could tie this essay into a broader theme of the psychology of television viewing, Dems would have a blueprint in how to win in 2018. Facts and opinion based in fact and rational thought have no place when entertaining an audience captivated by “must-see TV”.
1
"How many public institutions celebrate these virtues? The U.S. Senate? Most TV talk shows? Even the universities?"
Agree for the most part. Except for the shot at universities.
I think a more apt substitute would have been "your local Beef & Beer" have you ever been to one of those beauties? Not exactly bastions of progressive/inclusive thought with many adults in attendance.
The continual shots at universities is annoying but expected from you. Your own little dog whistle! Care to have your mind changed?
4
Fine essay, but this inner ring doesn't fit the Trump World. The Yale Political Union ideal has nothing to offer a man who claims he's very smart, has all the answers, lies a bunch, self promotes, and always looks to build a wall.
5
So much for "the invisible hand"
4
Mr. Brooks, Americans, by and large, are not a thinking people. We are a reactive, visceral people. "The Art of Thinking Well" is your column header. Then please explain why 63-millions voted for Donald Trump.
He more than "scratched the surface of our irrationality." What else is white nationalism in America today than your quote from C.S. Lewis: “The passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” If one breaks this down, one will find that those who voted for (and continue to support) the current "president" justified their ballot choice on the shaky platform of fear of "the other": Mexicans, blacks, immigrants. It worked very well for Trump as "they...cut all sorts of intellectual corners in order to show their resentment" at what they believed was a distant and elite status quo that (they think) cast them adrift on rafts of ignorance and exclusion, buoyed by currents of a racism they at first denied but then admitted were important (and inherited) cultural components that nailed down their angry existence.
Mr. Brooks, "the art of thinking well" should imply some level of tolerance, a willingness to see another's viewpoint. Your essay and the excerpts from the thoughtful explanation of authors and scholars only drives home the unassailable truth: Americans exist to "...identify and attack... the Repugnant Cultural Other."
Now, in America, who could this possibly be? Is this the fruit of "thinking well?"
93
Let me suggest that many of those who voted for Trump and the Republican Congressional candidates were not expressing any opinion on public policies, whether immigration, racism, or anything else. They knew perfectly well that Trump was a lying bully, and that the Republicans had no plans except to benefit the rich and punish the poor or helpless. What they were choosing, with no thought of the practical consequences, was to stick a big, fat blond thumb in the eyes of those who have run things and shown their contempt for those not in their ivy-tinted group.
I'm one of the 63 million. I'm also a social liberal, not a white supremacist or homophobic. I have sympathy for immigrants seeking a better life. I'm all about live and let live, a reasonably free thinker who strives to be rational in business and all aspects of my life. (Naturally I don't always succeed)
I voted for President Trump, and would probably do so again if Hillary Clinton was the alternative. Will my progressive friends ever acknowledge how poor a choice Ms. Clinton was? The worst candidate for President in my lifetime, by far, in my opinion.
As usual, Mr. Brooks is careful to weight his thesis in favor of the right: "These people will adopt shared vague slurs like 'cuckservative' or 'whitesplaining' that signal to the others in the outsider groups that they are attacking the ring, even though these slurs are usually impediments to thought."
6
"...a soft tongue doesn’t get you very far, but someday it might again." If the tough talker president doesn't end the world as we know it first.
4
The president has already ended the world I knew and cherished.
1
"But the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join. If you do that, they’ll bend their opinions to yours. If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable." --David Brooks
Belling the cat?
1
It is the sane, soft tongue that is responsible for much of our social evolution. The same tongue that defends empathy and reason. The battle never ends. In Ivolution theory it's the Ewarrior (young souls) against the Iwarrior (old souls).
It all makes sense when you look at the big picture.
2
Back in the (good?) old days, before liberal economics became the universal yardstick, rationality was by definition the ordering of means to ends in accordance with best belief. In other words, if you take the best path to achieve your goal in light of your strongest evidence, you're rational. Demonstrating which *ends* were intrinsically more desirable, and thus naturally rational goals, was considered a rather more difficult proposition. Of course, now we all agree that economic self-interest is the only proper goal, which simplifies everything and does away with a lot of unnecessary ratiocination that otherwise just gets in the way of sensible economic theory.
2
Tyler Cowen? Lordy. His intellectual honesty would be much improved by working for a decade as a home health care aide
2
"Jacobs nicely shows how our thinking processes emerge from emotional life and moral character. If your heart and soul are twisted, your response to the world will be, too."
This basic idea has been nicely shown in most ancient religions as well, particularly Christianity. The New Testament abounds with lessons that evil thoughts inevitably lead to evil actions. It explains why the cultural poison emanating from Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and Washington, DC, is so toxic to our souls and our society.
"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."
Philippians 4:8
2
Especially not the universities.
2
I think there is an excellent point here about thinking being for bonding and not truth seeking. It certainly feels today that we are dividing off into groups and quite content to feel happy if we are liked by our group for saying the right thing.
Whether ones stance is social justice or patriotism, gun or no gun, life or choice, there is a group for that. The trouble is that nowadays there is not much incentive for those groups to talk to each other and social media seals the deal.
The real downside is that too much time is spent talking back and forth. Volleying one viewpoint back against another. Nothing changes. Nothing is solved.
Maybe neuroscience can help us find a path back to doing something to help in the real community and spend less time reinforcing well worn positions.
6
I certainly hope the book (How To Think) is not just a compendium and display of how not to think, as is the case with this column.
Properly understood, effective thinking is a delicate balance between rationality and empirical evaluation. If you do not hold the mirror of reality up to your thoughts, you will only wind up contemplating the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, or some such.
It is possible to derive a system of thought based on false premises that is impeccably crafted, wholly rational, and completely wrong. Only the repeated practice of weighing thoughts against observations can produce useful 'thinking'. Thaler's achievement rests on the recognition that the economic model based on the rational actor paradigm did not reflect reality.
Proper thinking can only be found at the confluence of reason and observation. Reason without facts is fantasy; facts without reason are incoherent.
5
"These days, a soft tongue doesn’t get you very far, but someday it might again."
In other words, David, you're manifesting the art of thinking good, not the Art of Thinking Well."
3
Brooks targets liberals here, but small-town America is filled to the brim with Snoots. And they don't simply look down on those who are different, they fear and often hate anyone who is even slightly outside their mainstream. The rise of the Internet has slapped them in the face with awareness that not a few, but many, many Others exist in the world, and can't be forced into silent imitation of their traditional lifestyle. As a result, these rural Snoots cling to their guns, bibles (the outside only), and right-wing news as a way of burying their heads in the sand instead of facing the awful truth: they are not the "Inner Ring".
56
The rural, small-town Snoots fear that somebody is getting away with things that will make them (the Snoots) poorer or uneasy.
And somebody is indeed doing that--but not the "somebody" that their AM radio warns them of. It's somebody else, and they wear his name on their caps.
1
I don’t live in small town rural America. I can assure you there are many right-wing extremists and Trump apologists in my neighborhood. Many are supposedly well-educated and well off financially but they are stirred up emotionally about race, immigration, their “high”taxes, welfare recipients, and “liberals”in general. I can’t even discuss these issues with these people because they are so rabid in their hatred. There is no rational debate or discussion. It isn’t the community I grew up in and I am nostalgic for those days.
1
Bingo! A winner!
What fluff. A nut with the code to the bombs is sitting in the White House sending insulting tweets to another nut (whom he has since christened as "rocket man") who recently developed a way to put nuclear warheads on ICBMs. The government is dysfunctional, is canceling out on the climate accords from Paris, is trying to dismantle health care for all, and the New York Times' main conservative columnist is discussing the "inner ring" and how to get into it. There are bigger problems today that need attention.
44
I certainly share your concerns about Trump, but I reject the premise that Brooks or anyone else can only talk about what YOU think are today's bigger problems.
2
Mr. Brooks is surely the Don Quixote of politics, culture and the so-called "social sciences" at the NTY. Today we have another idealistic but incoherent attempt to make sense of the world. Mr. Brooks, if you desire understanding start with "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins and finish with "Fundamentals of Learning and Motivation" by Logan. For the scientific principles laid down by Darwin and Thorndike are, sadly, all you need to know to make sense of the behavior of living things. The rests is, to quote Pauli "not even wrong".
5
Beware greedy reductionism when all human endeavor, for weal or woe, is reduced and inevitably devalued as the blind movement of genes. Or if you really want to go that route, take no action to oppose the current madness of the inner circle in Washington and you yourself will be greedily reduced to a passive observer of the destruction of our country. After all whatever is, is right, as we float on the currents of chemicals. I just think atheistic materialists should accept the consequences of their position. But thank God, we have David to inspire us to our higher selves.
I think in the past couple of years David Brooks has established just the kind of reasonable Inner Ring that he mentions. What I like about him is that he's not doctrinaire. He's thoughtful...and occasionally Whitmanesque..."Do I contradict myself [or what I said last year]...very well, I contradict myself."
5
So David Brooks, has Senator Corker employed the characteristics you describe in his most recent statements about our President's fitness for the his office?
3
The Nobel prizes, from their bloody origins to their high-stakes, elitist committee (Swedish, no lees) has been a mix of a joke and horror, channeling the liberal biases and holier-then-thou attitudes. it is no secret that average Americans despise that institution wholeheartedly. Within the prizes, the peace and the economics ones (although the economics ones are not technically even "Nobel") are so politicized that the rest is paled in comparison. Thanler got the prize " in part, for realizing people are irrational"?! Really?! where s my prize - I knew it all along.
If thinking well is an art, then our president is artless.
10
“… like the endowment effect (once you own something you value it more than before you owned it), mental accounting (you think about a dollar in your pocket differently than you think about a dollar in the bank) …”
o Just for kicks, we could consider how this applies to Trump. Trump now “owns” Obamacare, but he doesn’t value it. He seems to think he owns the country, but he is not treating it as though it has much value. And it seems like the president pretty much equates a dollar in his pocket with one in the bank, and he wants as many of them as he can get. That’s what the newly proposed tax code is all about.
“The passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”
o Trump is already a very bad man and does very bad things. So no worries on this one.
“If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable.”
o Trump and his coterie and his Cabinet already think they’re “cool” and “reasonable.” Maybe we should send a copy of this op-ed to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue so “they’ll bend their opinions to yours?”
These days, a soft tongue doesn’t get you very far, but someday it might again.
o Perhaps after all our tongues have gone soft from radiation damage?
Talk about a load of irrational irrationality.
1
My history classroom is a place where discourse is preferences over debate and evidence is required. And this quote is on the wall at the front of the room:
“Where there is much desire to learn, there will of necessity be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good people is but knowledge in the making.”
John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)
132
CSK,
"It is better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven."
Satan, Paradise Lost (2016)
2
That's the most interesting character in the epic, of course!
1
Please send to Newt Gingrich and Frank Luntz and ask them if they are pleased with the results of their training tapes sent to Republican Candidates in the 1990's to teach them how to talk about their Democratic opponent in derogatory and demeaning terms.
9
Can't wait to see how NYTimes posters attack this essay, mostly likely (and ironically) by doing exactly what Brooks is describing.
1
David,
Methinks you are mistaken.
Most of the commenters are looking for permission to think for themselves.
2
Thank you, David Brooks. Keep thinking and writing. We need you now.
4
Would love it if you taught the Democratic party this theory. If they became the cool group, we'd have a chance at beating Republicans.
Trapped near the inner circle of thought, David.
2
These days In our sickening social media society, a soft tongue is never heard.
Wrath rules, slurs abound. Only discouraging words - like mean weapons - are the currency of social intercourse in America today.
2
I'd say that the left--to the extent that it has embraced tribalism--has banged its head against the wall of superstition, religious fanaticism, flag-shaming "patriotism", willfull pride of stupidity, and garden-variety racism for so long that many of us just don't have the energy or patience for anything but avoidance of those with whom we disagree and the vulgar shorthand shibboleths of those with whom we do.
I know the aggrieved victims of anti-white racism, voter fraud and immigrant criminals are just as exhausted by the fear of government limitation on the number of assault rifles and bump-stocks they may own. It's understandable that they too, are tribal.
But if stupidity and rationality have reached equivalence as drivers of tribalism--the victors are the Putins, Steve Brannons and every free-speech-hating thug autocrat from Kim Jong Un to Robert Mugabe to Duterte and the Saudi Royal Family.
4
Mr. Brooks what you fail to grasp is that today's America has no desire to read anything and just sits in front of Fox News or listens to Rush Limbaugh tell their audience that's it's ok not to critically examine anything. And your Republican Party has had about 30 years beginning with saint Reagan to accomplish this brain washing.
5
How in the world did Caitlin Flanagan get on a list of beacons of intellectual honesty? Do you actually read her "stuff"?
1
So, can we get this guy to spend a week in the White House and then come out and write about it?
1
Just for an aside: Brooks over-applies (and mis-applies) David Foster Wallace's SNOOTS. It has to do with grammar and syntax in language usage -- the acronym is for "Syntax Nudniks Of Our Times."
Being picky about language usage is not necessarily being a snob or a bigot more generally.
2
Mr. Brooks should pay attention to the fact that idea in Proverbs 25:15 is not positive. It is about breaking bones.
The same negative (!!) idea is found in Job 14:19: "The waters wear the stones; The overflowings thereof wash away the dust of the earth; So Thou destroyest the hope of man."
In any case, the essay was convincing until the misuse of Proverbs.
3
David,If you really want to learn about our current dismal state of affairs, read "Alice in Wonderland." I look forward to your book review.
Trump today challenged his Secretary of Defense to an IQ test to prove that he isn't the "moron."
Thus proving he is a moron.
4
Let's cut to the chase and blame Facebook, Youtube, Vine, LinkedIn and every other form of social media. All of them encourage and enable branding of the self. Some people even earn high incomes out of living their brand, sharing vapid thoughts and tweeting the minutiae of a narcissistic life. One of them became President.
Branding gives us bright colors and shiny objects. But it is a Dementor, sucking out the souls of us all.
4
So economists are now discovering that people aren't rational, that group allegiance and in group bonding, emotion, and character assessment are important in how we think and persuade. Students of rhetoric and its history going back to Aristotle, Plato, and the older sophists have been talking about these very qualities and persuasive techniques that draw upon them (and many others) for millennia. We rhetoricians roll our eyes and snigger in the direction of you economists.
10
Behavioral Economists have proven that people are rational in that they act in their own self interest. It is just that self interest encompasses a lot more than economic well being and profit maximizing.
The use of utility maximization works fairly well in markets that are huge and impersonal; e.g., commodity exchanges, stock exchanges, and perhaps even shopping in super markets. In these impersonal markets, no one is monitoring your behavior to see if you're cool or not cool. They're monitoring your behavior to market their products and services.
Who other than economists ever adopted the preposterous notion that "people are rational, utility-maximizing creatures"? Is it any wonder that their results, to put it gently, stink better than a transfer station? Now one of them has escaped a bubble that the rest of us never entered, and we should be on our feet cheering? Puh-leeze.
3
Economists never believed that their models of perfect rationality mirrored real life but the assumption led to predictions that were not that far off from reality. You should taken courses beyond Econ 1.
Excellent.
For some time I've marveled at how few of us use the tool of language to sincerely seek truth or reality and to then base our views on actions on what we have learned. It seems most of us use language only, first, to signal our wants and needs, and second, to make whatever noises are required to solidify and advance our tribal memberships, whether "inner ring," middle ring, or whatever.
The Trump phenomenon is just the most pathetic and dangerous manifestation of this emotional/intellectual shortcoming and laziness in the West, at least, since maybe 1930s Germany. Maybe we should call it Snootism.
2
"But the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join."
That, it seems to me is the job right now of the Democratic Party, to provide an alternative to Trumpism, to become the "Cool KIds" of American politics like they were in 2008 with Barak Obama leading the charge.
Sadly, I don't see it happening any time soon. The old guard is not going away and rank and file Democrats and left leaning independents are still hurling insults on Facebook at each other over the 2016 primaries while the party elites delude themselves with wishful thinking that somehow Trump will implode and they will not have to make the changes that are needed to regain the voters they so cavalierly shed in the course of becoming the party of globalism and transgender bathrooms.
It's going to be a long, long eight years--if we make it.
4
Are all Nobles equal?
I have the sense that the world population of practicing economists is relatively small.
There aren't as many of them as there are novelists and lyricists all of whom are (at least technically) eligible for a Nobel in literature.
Not long ago David Letterman had as a regular guest an economist with a Nobel whose specialty was reciting "Yo Mamma" jokes. Perhaps there are Nobel-physicists or Nobel-physicians with similar talents but none of them come to mind.
Perhaps someone should do the necessary nose-counting and tell us just how unusual (or common?) it is for an economist to win the big prize.
2
People who fund university endowments select economist faculties to justify themselves.
This is a little off-topic, but a lot of the biases that Thaler identified aren't actually irrational. They are just rational in the context of an individual human life, not from an abstract standpoint.
For example, if people did not "irrationally" value things they owned more highly than things the could own, then they would be stuck in a constant churn of divestment and acquisition, which would take up all their mental energy and prevent them from working on anything interesting, or relaxing.
Valuing things you already own at an "irrationally" high level prevents you from wasting all your time grinding for marginal benefits. Seems pretty rational to me.
The same goes for loss aversion. Since most people in wealthy societies don't actually need more than they have, it makes sense for them to value most highly NOT losing anything. Maximizing gain would provide "benefits" that are biologically irrelevant, while losing a little too much could result in death.
I bet in extremely poor societies, where the baseline is biologically dangerous poverty, the bias toward loss aversion is much smaller, and people really do try to maximize gain.
4
Friedman/Savage explanation of why gamblers also buy insurance.
As we all know now, rational thinking is too old fashioned. I give you our illustrious Republican Congress and Senate as proof, not to mention Trump and his Administration. Common sense went out the window when Trump entered the Primary and won it. Americans of all stripes stopped thinking and joined the "group think" crowd. This also includes the DNC. Our leaders reflect their donors thinking not necessarily anyone else's, But for some reason ordinary voters got in the same train. Until common sense is valued, we are going to go down the drain as a country.
I learned a lot of these things from my mother, which is where I supect Thaler did. Jewish mothers did exceptionally well in the Nobels this year. It's reassuring to know they are still on the case.
5
"But the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join."
This, unfortunately, defines the intellectual dishonesty of our media. It is the way the media work with politicians to proffer the "accepted narrative," whatever flavor that may be. This kind of newspeak has normalized our support of endless war, turning the automatic weapons fire we experienced in Vegas into a blessing for citizens of Syria or Yemen.
1
Another of Brooks' excellent essays, probably because some of it corresponds to my own observations during my life.
Especially in dealing with those in my family comfortably ensconced in a right wing Christian outlook, I've noted this clinging to the standpoints that bring social affirmation, and it's disappointing how often viewpoints had darkened suddenly to bring them into line. Though I perceive it to be of a lesser degree (my own bias?), there is a certain litmus-tested drive to consensus among my Indivisible resistance cohort as well.
David Brooks celebrates those who have changed their mind on something by understanding the other standpoint. But - how am I to do that, if it's mostly about what moves the him or her more into alignment with their social and emotional needs? Is that even to be admired? Especially, as it's so rarely reciprocated.
I too, am awaiting another day.
4
I used to re-read Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy every few years. Not that it is such a great space opera, but because I was always entranced by the central concept of Harry Selden's "Psychohistory" -- the study, quantification, and application of mathematics to the prediction of history as predicated on the gross behavior of masses of people. I'm no economist, and my math is terribly rusty, but it seems that Thaler has started to scratch the surface of Psychohistory. Think I'll have to look up a paper or two of his.
4
And you can do your psychohistorical calculations on an iPad that is eerily similar to Hari Seldon's touchscreen.
The best example of this desperation to get into the inner ring in politics today is the total silence of the GOP on their president's vengeful and inexperienced handling of everything he touches. They are so eager to get on the favorite list of the White House, they either support his bad agenda(i.e. taking insurance away from those who need it; backing out of an international treaty with Iran, and gut the clean air regulation) or remain silent even when they do not agree with Trump's action. But unlike the Yale Political Union members, nothing will change the minds of these politicians as long as they are running for offices. It's not about good thinking or bad thinking. It just about self interest. Perhaps Brooks can write on the subject of self-interst next time.
21
Minor quibble: I think the author is distorting David Foster Wallace's term to shoehorn SNOOT into his discussion of Thaler. David Foster Wallace's "SNOOTs" aren't really people who make caricatures of others' arguments. In Wallace's use--at least in the Harper's Magazine article "Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars Over Usage," Wallace uses a SNOOT to refer to a prescriptivist grammarian--a language pedant. Not necessarily the same thing as what Brooks is pointing out.
Aside from that distortion of Wallace's points, interesting summary of Thaler.
2
Kahneman is the elder among Behavioral Economists and his "Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow" addresses the fundamentals exploited in the current environment. I look forward to Thaler, but Brooks has done a grave injustice by continually ignoring the Republican Congressional bible: Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" because no Republican sites behavioral economics or Pinker or Thaler. Republicans prefer Rand's comic book because it romanticized predatory capitalism, places cash as the criteria of success, and Behavioral Economists laugh at it's flimsy veneer.
Now Americans are treated to the reflexive "fast thinking" tax cut proposal. The GOP claim that it's a middle class tax cut has already shed it's glitzy spin. Clearly, it's a final blow to our middle class and "thinking slow" our democracy.
Republicans are not trying Brookssuggestion: "the real way to persuade people is to create an attractive community that people want to join. If you do that, they’ll bend their opinions to yours. If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable." No Republicans are intent in concentrating wealth and gating communities as Ayn Rand outlined. Some Republican intellectual will address the fixation of "virtuizing" selfishness but the "base" will have to "age out" but young conservatives will be ill served if Rand continues to hobble them with adolescent fantasies.
7
Irrational behavior is a commonplace among humans, a comfort when reality is too much to bear, the facts not suit our biases, or a necessary bridge in decision-making when facts are not available. Irrational, in many cases, may not indicate anti-rational (as religion, I believe, often is not.) And - who can say? - irrationality may be a less-fragile human quality than rationality.
3
At the moment a little known author, Mavis Gallant, is my English teacher. She started her career as a journalist. When she was twenty-eight, she gave herself a two-year span to become a novelist. If she did not succeed by thirty, she was going to turn to another career.
Her short stories are deceptively mundane to this reader, some of her critics feel that her writing is stilted, and yet I have reached the age where phrase construction, grammar and vocabulary are of particular interest, but when it comes to thinking, one might also call it 'interpretation', everything is open to interpretation and 'what do you see'. Her 'In The Tunnel' was darker than usual, perhaps in conformity with my mood, with sinister tones deflected by a father figure in this long anecdote.
A house guest comes to stay. She is my physical senior, but past sixty, I decide that we are all in the same age group. We have a cup of coffee. The visitor looks at a small chest-of-drawers, and says 'Cheap'. Diplomacy and courtesy to the rescue, years of experience in keeping the peace and getting mangled in the process. 'It belonged to my grandmother who died two weeks before I was born, I tell her, and it is made of oak which makes it very heavy'. I have never put a financial value on this piece of history, and I am more interested in what this stranger is thinking.
Mr. Brooks, thank you for mentioning C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, I wonder what they would have thought of this shoddy Administration.
4
I am not sure when reasonableness will be cool. In American politics reasonable candidates are dismissed by voters as boring or ineffective technocrats. They want their candidates to rouse them and confirm their biases, not drone on about policy options.The electorate wants simple solutions to complex problems that don't involve any sacrifice for them i.e.: increased taxes/using less carbon. In short voters want Donald Trump.
9
'' After all, think of how you really persuade people. Do you do it by writing thoughtful essays that carefully marshal facts? That works some of the time.''
If you are a republican, then you continuously offer tax cuts ( or the perception there of ) and never offer to pay for them. ~ Sorry, I digress.
Interesting column. I am not sure what the point was, but interesting nonetheless. I am pretty sure Madison avenue figure out most of it about a half a century ago. ( sales figures for certain companies and people continuing to vote republican backs that up )
If people don't want to hear the truth, or even acknowledge that it exists, then there is going to be no real way to reach them in any situation.
7
This is the age old conflict between reason and ideology. Unfortunately, as the masses become ever more economically oppressed they revert to tribalism which gives ideology the upper hand.
6
Just to be able to think is a means to learn and know the truth. I can visualize the situation when you say that one's state of mind determines what you think. However, the country is now led by a tweeter culture where debate is not part of the equation. It is just snaping. We are far from that mindset that will "treat debate as a learning exercise and not just as a means to victory."
I wish. So how do we get there? I want one.
3
What good is a thinker/teacher when no one listens except the Nobel prize committee?
Thaler is right. So what?
A Trump voter is actually surprised to learn HIS health care is at risk. A coal miner is thrilled when HIS clean air is destroyed. A corporate manager votes for taxing HIS health benefits as income, an effective salary cut. A homeowner is surprised to find HIS tax deductions will be abolished.
Moreover, something is horribly wrong, speaking of irrationality, when David Brooks blames the rise of Donald Trump on Abbie Hoffman.
7
Right or left, we are group think. The limbic brain - our emotional core - determines our actions. Free will is a fantasy. Nothing shows how well this works more vividly than the way the Russians hijacked social media.
4
So your limbic brain composed your comment?
Research shows that our rational faculty can intercede to overrule impulse, appetite, and desire-sometimes.
As much is learned by what people say as what they don't say. I am also a fan of the softer tongue and a lot of listening. Eventually, if you wait long enough the truth gets spoken. Until that time, what you hear could be classified as free entertainment.
6
Yes humans are pack animals. They look for the Leader and follow the Leader, right over a Cliff if that is where the leader. Moving left or right the tribe follows its own standard bearer, good, bad or ugly. The tribe member who does not follow group think is considered not quite right, mentally ill or worse.
1
Republican ideology rests on the foundation of the belief that free markets are not only efficient, but the best way to order the economy is to rely on free markets. The fact that people aren't rational and typically don't have the information they need to make important decisions has been a flaw in this thinking from the beginning.
When you get into social relationships, it's even more "gnarly," so it's even more crazy to rely on the accumulations of individual decisions to make important decisions about politics or other social relationships
Our politics have come a long way from an ideal of presenting evidence and trying to see issues from all sides. It's what you can "sell," what you can convince people to believe. It's appealing to hate and fear and other primitive emotions.
Politics was always a hard-knuckle affair and maybe we imagine that we can make democracy work in this environment. I don't think "soft tongues" are going to do it.
1
I disagree that our thinking is irrational. We just don't know all the premises. For example, once I own something, it must have been attractive to me in order for me to have obtained it and, since it gives me pleasure in greater or lesser degree, why should I not value it more than, say, an alternative that I would have to go out and get. Plus again, by degrees, it is part of who I am. Think of buying a '55 Chevy or buying Brooks Brothers clothes. If you talk to our human for a while, you will get to know his premises, be able to predict his behavior better and see him as a rational being.
As someone who spent time both trying to get into an Inner Ring and then resenting that same Inner Ring, I now observe it and laugh, sometimes with frustration. The turning point came when I mentioned my interest in Behavioral Economics to a teacher(and member of the Inner Ring of the small town) several years ago. She asked me if I was certain that it was a real subject and doubted my knowledge of a nonexistent area of economics. Her irrational behavior of determining my intelligence by my job title(not a teacher) convinced me to dismiss any thought of being a part of that group and wasting any time resenting it.
2
To understand irrational behavior we don't have to look beyond the immediate past election in which the folks who voted for Trump did not recognize that they are voting against their won interests. A perfect example of how they got suckered into behaving in a manner that runs counter to themselves.
Coal miners were promised more jobs. Those on the periphery of the healthcare system were promised a cheaper and better system if only they'd support repealing Obamacare. Can anything be more irrational than that?
6
Tyler Cowen is a curious example. He features very prominently in Dark Money by Jane Meyer (on the first page, amongst others). I've often wondered is it possible to work for one of these entirely privately financed libertarian organisation such as the Mercatus Centre, and to retain any intellectual integrity? I've read some of Prof. Cowen's work, and he performs some remarkable intellectual gymnastics in promoting a "growth at all costs" agenda. He proposes a zero discount rate for future costs/benefits in order to justify his position that in the long run we will all be better off (no matter the short run consequences). Many problems exist with this argument. For example, while he alludes to the fact that zero discounting would have implications for costing climate impacts, he fails to realise (or address?) the fact that the social cost of carbon under this scenario would be 100s of dollars. This would result in the immediate disruption of his Koch benefactor's business model and a rapid end to their rent seeking behaviour. This seems apposite give today's attempt to crush the Clean Power Act, the latest example of the dereliction of US moral responsibility to the world. Cowen and his thousands of Koch-funded acolytes are the high priests of the movement that make this possible. I'm not questioning Cowen's integrity per se, but wonder if the money seeks the ideologue or the pliable intellectual seeks the money? (The author received no remuneration for this comment:).
3
"most of us are quite willing to think or say anything that will help us be liked by our group." Tribalism! Or in ancient Gaelic, translated: "I worship the god my people worship." Our problem with closed-minds is in at least two parts--one being the people who have the best equipment (education) to know that knowledge keeps changing and growing, but don't actually grasp that "fact;" the other side of the problem is the great mass of people who don't know what "global" means or what a "republic" means, and who interpret the big questions in personal and local terms.
Too often, people in the first group, the "elite," have led us astray. Boom and bust; 9/11; Vietnam; Afghanistan, Iraq. Their missing ingredient is self-criticism or simple humility.
4
Thinking well is when abstract concepts are derived from life. Thinking bad is forcing life to fit abstract concepts as a way of understanding. This is why the presumption of having all the answers is often problematic.
2
I would rather just express my opinion. Not all of us need to court the realm of public opinion. We need not all sell ourselves to the lowest common denominator. Some aspire to truth, which is not comforted by easy facts and nice opinions, but rather the opposite. The truth is hard, and almost always, unwelcome, which makes it that much more meaningful.
6
Yikes. I guess I am in the minority in finding Brooks' essay very weak. I suspect that while Jacobs is talking about how people think, I do not think he is offering a solution to this very normal human behavior. Brooks' seems to think that mostly bad people think this way that that merely thinking differently will save society. It won't. We are all in groups, tribes, and we protect those groups because we ultimately believe in them. The solution would be believing in nothing. All that will do is destroy civilization. But that might not be such a bad thing, I guess, considering all the harm the human race has done. But Mother Nature will have the last laugh anyway. So no worries.
2
At its root, behavioral economics is a metaphorical license to tell other people how to live.
You get it wrong, like so many. Economists have been making bad assumptions about how people act for so long it's depressing. Then, they do things like exhort people to save more for retirement! Save more for retirement! But people don't do that because....people aren't good at doing that.
Behavioral economics tries to figure out what people actually do, whether it's rational or not, and figure out economic policy to suit.
If the stock market is any measure, computers and algorithms can manipulate and control economic activities, ignoring what emotional, irrational men might think. Elections also, with the computer generated election districts currently in play, seem to have been taken over by computer modeling. It doesn't matter how you vote if your district has been manipulated to reflect the voting needs of the majority party in any given state. So I think that Alan Jacobs has done some wonderful research on an area of behavior that is no longer a factor in our societies. Emotion has become replaced by rational, controlled computer language. Whomever owns the newest, fastest algorithm will make our economic and political decisions for us. Emotion will only come into play pre-picking the "winner".
1
".....if social life can get us into trouble, social life can get us out."
No, economic life will get us out, i.e. a financially equitable society with a decent environment. Then we can start thinking about a social life. I daresay it will even facilitate a social life.
1
J.D, Maybe your mesmerized by the focus on GDP. "Equitable" and "decent" are not matters of economics.
1
Telling Trump & his GOP congress trying to take health care away from the little people while rewarding their rich friends that they are morally wrong is an intimidating experience for the ordinary citizen; BUT there is a point when we the people have to Speak Up, no matter how much power the bully president and the GOP have. We must speak truth to power. It can be done with respect; but it must be done for intellectual honesty.
3
David's goal should appeal to anyone who yearns for a less polarized society. The patterns of thinking and behavior he describes, however, qualify as both cause and symptom of our current malaise. A candid discussion between people with different ideas requires mutual respect and trust.
Our culturally and ethnically diverse society has contributed to a reputation for relative openness to different ideas and ways of looking at the world. In times of stress, however, that same diversity tends to foster a sense of paranoia that divides Americans into hostile tribes. Currently, a great gulf fixed separates Trump supporters from his critics. While public opinion polls suggest that many of his less committed followers have at least questioned their own vote in the last election, a solid base of more than 30% discount the evidence of the president's incompetence and viciousness. Could the strategy suggested by Brooks pry them away from the pied piper?
By the same token, many of Trump's opponents, including columnists and readers of the Times, reject the idea that the president's supporters could have any legitimate reason to endorse him. (I am not innocent of this attitude.) Given the character and behavior of Trump, who deserves every brickbat tossed at him, his critics find it difficult to distinguish between the politician and his supporters. Will critics who label 63 million voters as racists and troglodytes treat them with respect in a debate?
1
Our patriarchal culture has long valued "rational" over "intuitive," translated into "male way" (deemed superior) and "female way" (inferior). Yet intuition has proved to be more efficient and valid than rationality; trust your gut instinct.
2
Gut instincts are good, but only a start when thinking about any problem or question. I've seen too many engineers do bad analyses based on "gut instinct." Gut instinct often results in bad assumptions. That's when rational thought and analysis come into play.
As a simple example, was it reasonable at one time to think the sun revolves around the earth? Sure, when we assumed that we are the center of the universe. When physical observations and measurements made that belief invalid, people were unhappily forced to face the truth.
Of course, hard science is different from social science. With social science, it's necessary to add a little golden rule, or the idea that we should walk in someone else's shoes for a while to understand the bigger picture. Those two thoughts open our minds a little. When we see a homeless person, are we thinking they are solely responsible for their plight, or is also likely that external circumstances were factors?
None of this is strictly male or female thinking. I"m a woman engineer--I think both ways. My "gut" was formed by years of studying the rational, but it's not always right. It's not wise to dismiss either.
1
Intuition is certainly fundamental. It can reflect instinct, evolve with experience and be informed by analysis and logic.
Exactly as I said.
Thinking well doesn't necessarily help. It may not lead to the foolishness of kindness, forgiveness, love of enemies, and the other insane decencies that might help.
1
Tyler Cowen on healthcare: "We need to accept the principle that sometimes poor people will die just because they are poor. Some of you don’t like the sound of that, but we already let the wealthy enjoy all sorts of other goods — most importantly status — which lengthen their lives and which the poor enjoy to a much lesser degree."
Now, *perhaps* it's "intellectual honesty" to argue that we can't set an aspirational goal to do what every other western society attempts to do, and generally does better than we do. *Perhaps* it's intellectual honesty to argue that there is an inevitable zero-sum tradeoff between saving poor peoples' lives and maintaining or improving the healthcare system.
I don't think so, myself. But there's one thing I know for sure: if *that's* intellectual honesty, Mr. Cowen has completely severed intellectual honesty from morality.
1
Ta-Nehisi Coates has mastered the "Art of Thinking Well" and is a premier "beacon of truth". His newest book "We Were Eight Years In Power" points out the "systemic irrationality", referenced by David Brooks, that elected Donald Trump, "our first white president". Trump carried EVERY conceivable white demographic, and it was "whiteness" that was ultimately dispositive in his election. He points out that the foundation of Trump's presidency is the total negation of Barack Obama's eight years in office. Coates slams Liberal pundits who disingenuously maintain that white working class voters aren't bigots or racists, just victims of economic circumstances and alienation from the "elites", by presciently pointing out that the pundits can't correctly analyze the essential nature of Trump's "white presidency", because they are implicated in the "whiteness".
3
"A lot of our thinking is for bonding, not truth-seeking, so most of us are quite willing to think or say anything that will help us be liked by our group. We’re quite willing to disparage anyone when, as Marilynne Robinson once put it, 'the reward is the pleasure of sharing an attitude one knows is socially approved.'”
You have just defined social media, which takes our worst human tendencies and validates them 24/7.
3
The media follows the money like any good capitalist. In the end capitalism will trump democracy.
Read enough of Brooks's columns in this vein, and you'll realize
that in all their meanderings, the flow averages out to say
that individualism is OK, but union with others -- whether in
marriage, fraternity, or church -- is vastly better. In today's
version, he uses a book about thinking -- a fundamentally
individual activity -- to reach the conclusion that to persuade
people, "create a community that people want to join." I haven't
the slightest idea what he means.
3
My grandmother, a woman that escaped Moscow hiding in the back of a hay cart, between 1900 and 1910 taught me at an early age that you can catch more flies with honey, than you can with vinegar.
Raised in Brooklyn NY, I encountered too, many groups to mention from childhood to my mid-twenties when I relocated. Out here in Texas, I was affected by "The good ole boys" on one job. I could have avoided it by listening to my grandmother's voice deeply engrained in my psyche by not being such a good engineer. From West Side Story, 'When you're a threat. You're a threat all the way!'
Back to the facts. In my own novel, which I wrote to show how easy it is to create a scapegoat. Also, to show how splaying, collective reasoning,(but using false facts Instead of real ones) and establishing a confirmation bias work well, even for the most heinous individuals.
In my book one older psychologist stops his younger employee in passing and tells him that, "People lie all the time!" The younger man is a little befuddled, then his Supervisor continues. "No. They don't do it intentionally. They do it because they don't know what the truth really is. They only think they do!"
2
The economy is the science of wealth creation. So long all efforts of wealth creation was focused on material wealth and human interaction was measured in that context. Thus from simple model of rational individual to current behavioral model are focused on interaction for material goods and services. In reality, human being always trying to acquire two types of wealth - material wealth and soft wealth. Soft wealth are two types - divine wealth and demonic wealth and these two are orthogonal - one increase means the other automatically deminishes. And human interactions in the market is guided by the demand for these wealth. As long as human beings were trying to get wealth only for survival, the market dynamics was mostly captured by the demand for material wealth. Technology has brought so much wealth to human civilization, the demand of soft wealth now effects the market dynamics and new companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google are influencing the market place. Economist are falling behind the societal changes.
Personally I think most of us don't give a flying fig about the Inner Ring or the Royal Opposition. Most of us want to be sure our kids grow up, healthy, educated, not drowned in debt, and with an opportunity for a happy life.
Most of us find the middle among the ideology and slurs lobbed like rockets back and forth. We are fine with guns, but want regulations; we are OK with abortion, but within strict limitations; we don't like paying taxes, but don't want to break an axle on poor roads, or watch our parents starve.
When it comes down to it, most of us want people who shut up, sit down and do their jobs. We'd be happier if we could get the mud and idiocy out of politics and practical enough to know we will never get rid of the graft.
Underneath the toxicity of the idiocracy that gives us Pence leaving a football game in the name of jingoistic Patriotism; people making statues more of an issue than real change; people marching with menacing torches that turn out to be lawn ornaments; people defending gun rights to the point that they'd argue we can all own a bazooka; underneath it all is a large, huge, enormous, humongous group of people who'd just like politicians to sit down, shut up, and do something useful.
773
Thank you Cathy, for so eloquently stating the perspective of (I would suggest) the majority of American's.
1
Don't these comments presuppose that the world changes at a reasonable clip that half-way diligent people can follow?
We are flying in an unerving world that is being buffeted much more than normal. This is probably due to the fact that many things have to be revisited from religion to health care, hypercapitalism to social equality, etc.
It is a lot like a human body aiming for survival facing a bout of cancer ominous enough that arranging the chairs on a sinking ship is not the solution anymore.
In the past, honoring the common good was what calmed the headwinds. But today too many people are unaware of history, ethics and the respect of others with money and death being the only trees seen in the forest.
Hopefully, interconnectivity will in the end bring us back to common sense and the virtues of honoring common good (once the noise from the "incults" and the "fearfuls" is ridiculed and extinguished)
1
Just always keep in mind that them, the politicians, is us.
1
You're right that these days a soft tongue doesn't get you far, so I find myself holding my tongue at times. It used to be that when I heard someone say something outrageous, I would automatically challenge the speaker. No more.
Just this past week I received an email of what I'll call a political photo with a caption that I found offensive beyond belief. It was being circulated by someone I consider a good person. I was sick to my stomach and had no idea what to do. We don't have the sort of relationship where we take the time to discuss things over lunch, but we do work together from time to time. If I'd been asked straight out what I thought of the email, I would have responded truthfully, but since I wasn't, I simply ignored it. I wanted to write the individual off for good, but what I did instead was offer my praise for something worthwhile that person was doing.
Not calling out hate speech may seem just as bad as engaging in it yourself. But if a soft tongue won't get you very far these days and fighting fire with fire ensures everyone will be burned, what are we to do? I know my words would have been driven by anger, hatred, and even the sort of despair that seeks companionship and would lead to gossip and further division involving more and more people. So for now there are times when I will hold my tongue, in hopes that someday soon soft tongues can once again be effective.
32
Elizabeth, I recently received a similar email. At first I was going to just ignore it, but couldn't live with that decision. So I emailed her that I didn't agree with that at all, thought it demeaning and crude, and "shame on the person who sent it to you."
(Notice that did not directly implicate HER.)
Received email: My bad. Apologies.
End of story. The air was cleared, and I felt INFINITELY better for having spoken up.
5
Yet Elizabeth, the adage, "First they came for a minority and I was not a minority so I said/did nothing. Next they came for .... and then they came for me & there was no one left to speak for me."
Holding your tongue , waiting for a better time/era, may be your/our downfall. Working to remove the GOP from every office in the land should be the objective of a Critical Thinker that has the courage of a just person.
3
While I can imagine how difficult it must have been to see an email that offended you from someone you thought you knew well, I assume (from my own similar experience) that you learned something new about the person sending it. Perhaps you didn't want to address the offense because you suspected it would change their view of you. I would urge you to find a comfortable way to share your opinion, because our voices can't be effective if they aren't used. How else will "soft tongues" once again be effective?
Actually a lot of economists never bought into the notion of perfect markets unencumbered by human irrationality. And for anyone with an ounce of commonsense the entire Efficient Market Hypothesis was off the wall. These ideas were largely embraced by the right rather like supply side economics and promoted by people like Greenspan and journalists like David Brooks. If anyone had the time and inclination to trawl back through 30 years of Brooks' opinionating they would find no shortage of encomiums to the infallibility of markets. Of course they work reasonably well much of the time but are alas encumbered not only by human irrationality but incentives that encourage misbehavior of one sort and another but cannot be eliminated because they are the same incentives that encourage innovation, risk taking and other positive outcomes. Hence the need for oversight and regulation.
42
Agreed, and well said. The degree of oversight and regulation is the issue. In general, in my opinion, progressives believe that business executives are borderline crooks, greedy and amoral, and require smothering oversight and regulation. I disagree. Many of us strive to create improved businesses that better serve our customers, employees, and the communities where we are located ... and yes, to build wealth for our shareholders and ourselves. In general, the results are favorable for our constituencies and America. Excessive regulation weakens America's competitive position in a highly competitive world.
@Stew R
Springfield, MA
Since I spent my entire professional life in business I wouldn't want to call my self a borderline crook. LOL. Where you draw the line on regulation and oversight is of course the 64,000 dollar question. The problem is that there IS a lot of greed and amorality in the economic process (Countrywide Mortgage, Lehmann Brothers, VW emissions, Kobe Steel today!) so the process cannot proceed without some regulation which is essentially management of risk. This has long been recognized as the tension at the center of capitalism which is the only economic system capable of providing at reasonable cost the huge range of goods and services that society needs and desires.
1
Last year Mr. Brooks called attention to another Nobel prize-winner's work, Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman, a psychologist who worked with Thaler (and Amos Tversky) in the past, won the prize in 2002 for his work on "prospect theory," and a number of awards for his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow."
The problems of "group-think" have been a subject of discussion for some time: https://hbr.org/2014/12/making-dumb-groups-smarter . We can be led astray in so many ways, no matter our tribal affiliations, no matter our advanced degrees. It has been argued that stories often are more effective at influencing decisions than are facts: https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/01/when-narrative-mat... .
From the conclusion of that last link:
"..a good storyteller should plant minor obstacles in the beginning of the story that will indicate what the climax will be. So, as critics of stories, students might have noticed, as I did, that Donald Trump planted seeds of a treacherous media and rigged elections early on as minor obstacles in his story, so that as his story progressed those conflicts and the people who enacted them became more and more like the villains, while he became more and more the hero. Because I am a storyteller, I could see the plot unfolding. I want the same skills for my students because facts aren’t enough when it is time to understand the difference between a hero and a villain."
63
The irrationality of crowds was known a long time ago. One example, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is an early study of crowd psychology" by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841
And there are many others that discuss and describe how groups magnify the irrationality of an individual and lead to some very bad outcomes.
Such crowds are subject to the manipulation of psychopathic narcissistic personalities.
1
I can’t accept that Donald Trump is capable of building this long arch narrative. He probably actually believes that the press is not to be trusted and mentions it when the situation arises. But to believe that he dropped some seeds early so that he could return to them later is how a writer would see things. Writers plot, Donald Trump reacts.
A cloud may look like a butterfly or a map of New Jersey, but it’s still just a cloud.
Thanks. Your Atlantic link is the best thing on politics I've read in a spell.
"Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess." -- Rene Descartes, Introduction, "Discourse on the Method"
Frankly, I am not convinced that anyone can tell another person how to think, especially not these days. I assume Mr. Brooks thinks that he knows the proper and correct way to think. Perhaps he could explain the train of thought that has led him to support the Republican Party all these years.
For me, I never had a genuine idea in my head until I went to Vietnam in 1967 at the age of 19. And then there was further years of living overseas and traveling. Still, I don't think I can tell people "how" to think. Or what to think.
9
I was in high school during the Vietnam war when every kid was questioning the reason for the war because they could be drafted so it directly affected them. But I had a great education that included humanities and sociology and earlier, civics classes. And with the war as a back drop we were taught how to think, to discern. Today We have become obsessed with churning out employees instead of thinking human beings. And it is about culture. Who are we when we value capitalism over a healthy society. Healthcare only if you can afford to pay for it? The military needs at the expense of civil society? Technology has sped things up to a point where contemplation fights for time. If we don't teach our new generations how take the time to think and ponder who will we be? Who are now?
73
I so agree with this assessment of what is happening now in education and culture. Few are taught critical thinking, humanities, or contemplating the world around us beyond job training and one-up-ship as the ultimate goal. Human beings have so much capacity for thinking and behaving ethically. As an "educated society" I have always thought we could move forward. But with the election of this person as President I wonder.
6
Wow, sec, did you go to my high school and attend the same humanities classes I did? I, too, was in high school during the Vietnam war. You describe my high school education experience in great detail. I loved the civilized give and take with my teachers. I learned the importance of critical thinking, not only from my excellent teachers, but also from my fellow students. We questioned everything. The Pentagon Papers certainly contributed to questioning motives and asking questions.
The problem is that a certain major political party made thinking unfashionable 35 years ago when they made ketchup a vegetable and informed us that tax cuts increases tax revenues while referring all of us to the Lord for daily provisions.
"In other words (wink), God Bless America's collapsed IQ !"
America just had its second Presidential election hoax in the last 16 years, evidencing the national aversion and perversion to both thinking and democracy, whereby the national village idiot was anointed because America's heartland and Bible Belt can't stand thinking and their preferred political party can't stand democracy.
The latest Idiot-In-Chief, who quotes daily from the Book of Profanities, where it says, “By cursing in front of your countrymen, a filthy tongue and a filthy brain are the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.”
You can't expect a nation to 'think' much when a Guns-God-Gays blood-drenched American flag and a giant burning white cross are proudly planted on the Republican front lawn while it organ-harvests the national IQ for billionaire profit.
If America could think, our healthcare problem would have been solved, our elections would be democratic, we would have a 'well regulated militia' instead of a well regulated gun dementia, and millions of cultured ignoramuses wouldn't be voting for a 'Chinese hoax' while China pioneers the alternative energy revolution.
You can't be serious about thinking until The Party of Stupid stops draining the American brain.
481
It's increasingly difficult for Brooks to spin a narrative sufficient to paste a silver lining on the Republican cloud of offal. The GOP is collapsing but for the lunatics and the funders of the comic book Ayn Rand who have deified "market forces".Racisists among GOP survivalists are fighting the losing battle of demographics, and misogynist, patriarchal, pedophilic, avaricious Christianity are painted into a corner with little room for growth. All that's left for the Republican Party are the 7 deadly sins Envy = the desire to have an item or experience that someone else possesses
Gluttony = excessive ongoing consumption of food or drink
Greed or Avarice = an excessive pursuit of material possessions
Lust = an uncontrollable passion or longing, especially for sexual desires
Pride = excessive view of one's self without regard to others.
Sloth = excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one’s talents
Wrath = uncontrollable feelings of anger and hate towards another person
They have nothing to offer.
2
The repubs learned long ago to play hardball. Thanks to snakes like Lee Atwater, Tom Delay (The Hammer), Newton Leroy Gingrich, Roger Stone plus their psychology/marketing friends the GOP have pushed the dems into a corner. The weak democratic leadership whose allegiance is controlled by big money won't be helping that party's constituents any time soon. Most of the republicans are people that are afraid to live and are afraid to die which is why they stick to their guns and Bibles. Until more dems decide to vote and become engaged nothing will change. Right now fear is in charge.
2
Well said!
1
I admire the work of behavioral economists. The emotional basis for reasoning undermines the classical liberal assumption that markets function well because individuals act according to rational self-interest. Economic theory that relies on this vision of humans (invisible hand) therefore needs revision or rejection.
That is a dramatic upheaval of economic thought! But I feel the work of these scholars has deeper implications. Brooks has taken one step away from mere economics: irrational thinking influences our political and social "reasoning" as well.
OK. But there is a more fundamental consequence. This flawed view of the individual in liberalism also informs our vision of the citizen. The rule of the people relies on rational thought of individuals to suss out truth from fiction and right from wrong. What happens when we realize happy ideas like "the power the people," grassroots activism and the role of the public in governance may be infected by the same theoretical flaws? What happens when the basis of democracy, the rational citizen, is itself realized a fiction?
The findings in behavioral economics might provide a rational excuse to narrow those participating in governance. Why let those who demonstrably don't "think well" influence our system of government? Why expand public participation when that means introducing more irrational thinking into politics already shaped by reality tv?
10
Yikes, scary thought Ian. But our Republic was designed to deal with your concern. The collective voice of the people, at the local level, is all we have. And all we need if we put our efforts into encouraging good citizenship starting at the earliest ages.
2
I admire your faith, Jerrold. It is in short supply for me these days. But I would challenge you a bit. Our Republic "was designed" by a group who thought disenfranchising most of the population was a good idea. I think Jefferson might agree with me, though not for the same reasons.
1
We live in a nation politically dominated by a religion that preaches that a lifetime of believing and preaching the irrational will gain a person eternal bliss after death.
2
Thank you for writing on this topic and also for the list of those who are "individual beacons of intellectual honesty today." I intend to look them up and read what they have to say. Perhaps this is way the community that values reason and truth is sustained, and entices others to the discipline and the reward it offers.
6
"we tend always to substitute emotions for thoughts" by Eliot was never more true than today. Too many, when faced with facts that contradict their opinion, are unwilling to change their position and fall back on belief (or in the case of voters, vote against their own self interest).
7
They have been taught since birth that God admits to Heaven only those people who can take the most ludicrous nonsense of all on faith: the notion that one can evade death by idolizing a dead man.
1
Lovely piece. You wouldn't think in the 21st Century that forming opinions based on thoughtful reasoning would need to be encouraged. But we still are working our way past centuries of dogma-influenced opinions. Much progress -indeed very encouraging progress - but much work left to be done. Hopefully our children, and theirs, will be better than we are at this.
7
"There are always going to be people who desperately want to get into the Inner Ring and will cut all sorts of intellectual corners to be accepted. As Lewis put it, “The passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”
Just ponder how many bad compromises we see in a compliant Congress getting restive but still deciding to protect the status quo, the "inner ring," even it's leader is bigoted and bat-crazy.
David Brooks, I agree with your most salient point here--"But If your heart and soul are twisted, your response to the world will be, too." To simplify even more as many pop-psyche types love to do, "hurt people hurt people."
Richard Thaler's great discovery that rational behavior isn't always practiced, clouded as it is by our personal biases and emotional needs, explains how people can make a run on an ephemeral product if it's "cool" enough.
But I like the natural conclusion you end up with, David: that people CAN change their minds if they simply examine, and accept, the truth of the evidence.
13
Trump created an attractive community that people wanted to join. Racism creates an attractive community that people want to join because it lets them feel superior without having to prove their superiority. National Socialism was an attractive community even for somebody as deep-seeing as Heidegger. Choosing which attractive community to join precedes joining that community, and if the choice is based on the attractiveness of the community it is circular and based on nothing .
We need to talk about what changed or blew our minds and got us to change our thinking and perceptions. We need to talk more about what ideas we gave up than what new ideas we found. Otherwise we remain safe in the clouds of abstraction and theory, soaring above our personal history rather than grappling with it.
48
In our current climate it seems harder than ever to separate passion and reason sufficiently to truly, honestly assess the points of an argument. It is next to impossible to find a group of 'like minded' persons especially if one's own opinions cross the lines of division, i.e., are not strongly "for" or "against" an issue or position. So, for example, being pro-choice, but uncomfortable with abortion and willing to accept some restrictions makes no one happy. The right will still, in a heartbeat, call you a baby killer; the left will sneer that if you don't support a woman's right to an abortion for any reason at any time, no rules or restrictions, you are not "pro-choice" and/or are being "judgmental."
There must be many folks in this country who are not hard right or hard left, but right now the extremes with their requirements that one tow the ideological line in all things hold the microphones. If I can be persuaded to rethink a position, I will be dismissed as not sufficiently true (unless it is their view to which I am persuaded). To vote for a candidate not of their choosing makes me either ignorant or a traitor to the cause. Thoughtfulness is not really valued, even by the "liberals" who pride themselves on being the sophisticated, educated, thoughtful people (in contrast to those on the right whom they see as ignorant, ill-informed, and acting out of herd mentality). Often I hold my tongue.
78
This is something I can use to help guide my children. I need to figure out how to say/demonstrate it in ways relevant to each of them. Its a long labor worth doing.
1
I agree 100%!! Well... 99%.
Please don't hold your tongue! Please understand how important is your view, and the possibility that you can make a difference through persuasion, in large measure by virtue of your reasoning ability and your communication skills, but also because you are not seen as an automaton by either side.
I take comfort in hearing of reading words of "traitorous" conservatives or liberals. David Frum, e.g.
2
Well written, and timely. I'm immediately reminded of politics, and that GOP Senate healthcare bills took place in secretive process. There was no open debate. Republicans had criticized closed door negotiations in 2009, yet fully and repeatedly met in secret this year.
A Republican partisan Senate completely skipped committee process nor held committee hearings. No stakeholders were consulted. Nor the public.
But Democrats held many Senate hearings and public hearings in 2009-10 during the development of The Affordable Care Act.
It bears repeating, and this article reminded me:
Republicans wanted to steal away health benefits from 24 million Americans by means of a secret cabal to obtain tax cuts for billionaires and themselves.
109
Build an attractive community where thoughtful people speak mildly to each other, and someone will burn it down. For the entire existence of humanity, there has not been an attractive community of thoughtful thinkers that hasn’t ultimately met that fate.
We had been making progress for the last century or so. But none of the most important freedoms and kindnesses that we gave ourselves happened by the graces of attractive communities of thoughtful people. Women marched for the vote, amid slurs and outrage. Strikers were beaten and killed for demanding fair wages and non-lethal working conditions. The National Guard escorted a lone black student into a segregated classroom, blocked by a governor. Gay people were ridiculed, beaten and shamed for eons, and earned the tenuous right to love each other in the 21st century by a single vote.
At heart, we’re all a bunch of slightly more evolved apes, some of which want all the bananas. We still revere and fear the alpha male, either electing him to office, or projecting him into the sky, a celestial bully to back us when we want to take away someone else’s bananas.
Trying to convince others with mild words is no way to achieve a free and fair civilization. It’s a way to get beaten to a pulp. We were building a pretty decent civilization until we crossed some invisible line of resentment and sneering anger, and now we’re living through the consequences.
588
Convincing others with mild words IS the way to a free and fair civilization.
Women's suffrage, civil rights, gay rights all came as the result, not of violence, but of speech--convincing the great mass of people in the middle of the rightness and justice of their cause.
13
Well, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) has been thriving for over 350 years on that principle, and whilst both UK and colonial authorities, as they then were, very much tried to "burn it down" at its beginnings, they did not succeed after all. So even today it is an attractive community (to its members and friends at least), where "thoughtful people speak mildly to each other".
1
Martin Luther King and Gandhi changed minds specifically because they eschewed violence. And since they weren't screaming back, the angry mob had enough silence to ponder the inhumanity of their own violence. If everyone's voice is raging there is no opportunity for empathy.
1
"If you want people to be reasonable, create groups where it’s cool to be reasonable."
There was a column in this paper recently explaining the persuasive power of the NRA in recruiting followers. and it primarily came down to its strongly social aspect and the many small gun and ammo shops where people can come to be part of something that feels important to them because it is important to their group.
Where and how would communities interested in rational discussion of the political world and political issues occur? It is an interesting idea, but in order for such social interaction to be truly emotionally rewarding it requires eye to eye communication which triggers serotonin through empathy.
David Brooks ideas of using social reward to inspire more reasonable discourse can't succeed without public meeting houses where this could occur and a public with the incentive to attend. This seems like an extremely tall order in the modern world.
At least such group interaction is theoretically possible in the halls of Congress, but not when politicians have to spend so much time raising money and so much energy twisting their thinking to please their donors.
103
With everyone and everything being pushed online, one would think that social media could be a place for group interaction and reasonable discourse. Unfortunately, it just becomes a tool for advertisers to sell stuff and bullies to reach a bigger audience. That is human nature and it's why there are Rules of Order for our deliberative bodies, so that there is respect (do unto others) and each viewpoint may be given its due. But now with Citizens United, money is protected speech, such that the Golden Rule has been overwhelmed by the older golden rule, namely, whoever has the gold makes the rule.
3
EXNY, On-line interaction is not fully nourishing, it is junk food with a sugar rush (getting my sugar high as I type). The reward is mostly dopamine fueled narcissism.
For a truly culture altering movement by way of logical, reasonable discussion of politics between people with different structures of belief, face to face communication is probably necessary.
5
Bring back the coffee houses.
2
The art of learning to think well?
I don't think there is any such art, meaning I have my doubts about education and I agree with Wilde that anything really worth learning can't be taught. Thinking is individual and only like recognizes like. The similar overlap, the progressively distant from each other become incomprehensible. Take the well known modern observation concerning art, philosophy, literature, that they are subjective for all high beauty, etc. which is possible and to be distinguished from science which is objective and therefore arguably better and certainly of proof and capable of being communicated to most any person.
My personal experience is that I have about as clear an understanding of Feynman or Godel or Turing or Shannon as I do of Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk or the classical composers or writers such as Shakespeare or the great philosophers and religious figures such as Siddhartha. In other words, for all subjectivity of the one and great objective accomplishment of the other they are all rare human subjects and what they have accomplished is difficult to understand whether backed by proof or not, whether "mere" aesthetics or statement with tangible result in the world.
How many people can explain what Charlie Parker accomplished or work out for themselves the fact the world is round and circles the sun? Very few. All worthwhile begins with a rare person and is really understood only by a like rare person. And even hard proof can die on the vine.
3
Points taken, although, pretty much every jazz musician that I know can tell you not only what Charlie Parker accomplished, but how the language changed with him, Dizzy, Monk, Charlie Christian, etc. Bird Lives!
1
It would seem the difference between now and when the book of Proverbs was written is that back then, if the Inner Ring had installed a deficient leader, that leader's mistakes couldn't waste the planet's ability to support life - nowadays, when the Inner Ring malfunctions, the tools that are accessible by an idiot leader who has no checks on his destructive powers are far more cataclysmic.
For some years now - over a decade - we've shouted in these spaces that the chaos being promoted/tolerated in the GOP'er ether was shortsighted in the extreme, from the Roberts Court's enabling decisions of rich crackpots in Citizens United and McCutcheon, through to the fake Hastert Rule cudgel that's wielded in the House, and the seditious GOP'er Senators that pretended a POTUS from the other party has no SCOTUS appointment powers in the last year of his 8-year Executive Branch leader.
Welcome to the party Mr. Brooks - have you brought any friends, or are you solo ?
193
So literate, learned and yet
Why is Mr B so all wet,
Apologist for
All the Repubs of yore
Why is his thinking so ill met?
161
Mr. Eisenberg, thank you for all your poems and limericks. And I remember from the NY Times profile, you're in your 90's. And it looks like you posted this before 6 a.m. And I thought I got up early.
On the one hand, we have Donald Trump, up early every day, sending out nasty, insulting, childish tweets that are bringing the country down. On the other hand, we have you, also up early, answering the latest Trump horror story by sending out witty, pithy limericks that make everybody smile (even when the subject is not funny) and always make me wish I could write like that. Too bad you two can't change places. But keep them coming.
15
This is why we need to bring the humanities back as a requirement for higher education. They teach us to step outside of our boxes and think. My Dad and his son both got economic degrees from the same ivy league college but his son was only required to take classes that were intended for his major while my dad had to take 12 credits of humanities to get his degree. My dad has often lamented the fact that we don't value a well rounded education anymore. Sounds like he's on to something.
367
Yes, Yes, Yes. It is not for nothing that a liberal arts education is called a liberal arts education. It is the first step in liberating us from our own ignorance -- of which we are always the last to be aware.
12
Silly Ami - Dont you know that College is designed as job training schools and not a place of higher education? http://www.people-press.org/2017/07/10/sharp-partisan-divisions-in-views... - a view held primarily by republicans by the way, though the cost does have something to do with it.
In all seriousness, you are of course correct - my own experience is similar to your Dad's - but one thing also aided my ability to study the humanities - in NYC in the 70's ( when I went to college) any school within the CUNY ( City University of NY) was FREE to any resident of the five boroughs.
You dad is indeed onto something! Something good
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You mention higher education....but when most Americans do not move on to higher education, only having a high school degree, what do we do for them?
I am in one Inner Ring, and observing a conflicting one. Both rings tweet and comment to shore up their own side, and mock and deride the other. Sometimes people venture into the other's territory to attack them. The rings are becoming steadily more polarised, as members who suggest the other side might have some right on its side are corrected, and members who create a purer, clearer and more extreme summary of the ring's position are lauded. The tragedy is that the two rings have a lot in common, and might achieve our aims if we could work together.
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Power drives "purification" (for lacking a proper word) and then feeds on it. Freedom of individuals does not guarantee freedom of thinking, but is necessary.
Persist with the soft tongue. It will go far among the sane.
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Unfortunately, it appears the sane are in the minority presently.
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"Persist with the soft tongue. It will go far among the sane."
Hmmm?
But how far with the insane, ...at what point between the two does one distinguish the difference, ...how far with Mr. Trump?
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