On Biased Research and Enlightenment

Last spring, researchers published the results of a study in which 5,000 Americans were asked to choose one of five responses—strongly agree, somewhat agree, strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, or not sure—to the following statements:

1. Restrictions on housing development make housing less affordable.
2. Mandatory licensing of professional services increases the prices of those services.
3. Overall, the standard of living is higher today than it was 30 years ago.
4. Rent control leads to housing shortages.
5. A company with the largest market share is a monopoly.
6. Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited.
7. Free trade leads to unemployment.
8. Minimum wage laws raise unemployment.

Every "correct" answer was taken as a sign of "economic enlightenment," which, I'm sorry, is a ludicrous term, and I'm going to insist on using scare quotes. Even if we go along with the premise that each of these statements is either undeniably true or undeniably false, there's nothing especially enlightened about acing a multiple-choice quiz where three of the five possibilities—including, in all cases, "not sure"—are considered correct.^[1]

The researchers were caught entirely by surprise, I'm sure, to find that respondents who claimed to be conservative or libertarian were more "enlightened" than those who claimed to be liberal or progressive, with moderates, as is their wont, landing somewhere in between. They also found no correlation between attending college and being "enlightened," for which four possible explanations are suggested:

1. The liberal-dominated academic environment makes students "not only unreceptive to economic enlightenment, but actually unfriendly to it."
2. The college experience generally shelters students from economic realities.
3. The college admissions process, with its emphasis on abominable Marxist concepts like community service, is inherently biased in favor of liberals.
4. The "enlightened" are less likely to go to college in the first place, possibly due to concerns about the factors above.

I have no major complaints with the theories (which isn't to say I agree or disagree, just that they do seem logically connected to the data). In fact, for a study clearly designed to reach a pre-determined, ideologically-driven outcome, the authors do a pretty good job of acknowledging the flaws. Among other caveats, right at the top they concede the "asymmetry in sometimes challenging leftist mentalities without ever specifically challenging conservative and libertarian mentalities."

Still, I'd like to posit a hypothesis of my own: People are disinclined to acknowledge the negative aspects of views they support, or the positive aspects of views they oppose.

I say this, in part, because if I had taken the quiz myself I would've gotten seven of eight "correct,"^[2] making me more economically "enlightened" than even the average conservative or libertarian, and more than twice as "enlightened" as the average liberal or progressive. So, great for me, except that I don't know anything about economics. On the comprehensive list of my areas of expertise, economics ranks somewhere above particle physics and below Australian rules football, which I believe is played on a field shaped like an oval.

On the "rent control leads to housing shortages" question, for example, my thought process went something like this: "Rent control restricts natural market forces; natural market forces are generally good—therefore, rent control is bad. Housing shortages are also bad. Is the latter causally related to the former? I don't know, probably." And with that, I patiently await my letter from the Nobel Committee.

———————

Everything above this line was written several months ago. The plan was to illustrate my point by creating a similar quiz where the "correct" answers favored liberal views, but I never got around to it. I should've known if I waited long enough someone would do it for me. Specifically, I'm thinking of that study I ranted about back in January—the one that found Fox News viewers to be "misinformed" by asking questions like this:

• Is it your impression that economists believe the economic stimulus (a) caused job losses, (b) saved or created a few jobs, or (c) saved or created several million jobs?
• Is it your impression that among economists who have estimated the effect of the health reform law on the federal budget deficit over the next ten years, (a) more think it will increase the deficit, (b) more think it will not increase the deficit, or (c) views are evenly divided?
• Do you think that most scientists believe that (a) climate change is occurring, (b) climate change is not occurring, or (c) views are evenly divided?

Asking for the opinions of experts, rather than the respondents themselves, allowed the researchers to plausibly (but not indisputably) say that the questions have objective answers, but this study has exactly the same problem as the other one, with the ideologies reversed.

For both questionnaires, there are two groups of people likely to give the "correct" answers—those who actually know the answers, and those whose thought processes haven't evolved past "MY SIDE RIGHT, OTHER SIDE WRONG." When no attempt is made to distinguish one group from the other, the data probably won't tell us anything we don't already know, and it certainly won't support a conclusion that conservatives are in some way superior to liberals, or vice versa.

Being enlightened, or well-informed, or whatever you want to call it, and being a close-minded ideologue aren't the same thing—in fact, they're diametrically opposed. It really seems like that should go without saying, but apparently it doesn't.

1. That's not to disparage those who answered "not sure." In fact, I'd argue "not sure" is the only truly enlightened answer. In the translated words of Socrates:

And how is not this the most reprehensible ignorance, to think that one knows what one does not know?

2. The exception? Number six: "Third-world workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited."
    Dictionary.com defines "exploit" as (1) to utilize, esp. for profit; (2) to use selfishly for one's own ends. How it can be said that overseas workers are not utilized as part of a larger scheme to generate profit, or that the managers of such a scheme are not motivated at least in part by their own selfish interests (providing for their family, buying a nicer car, funding an army to overthrow the local dictator, etc.), is beyond me. But I guess that's why I'm unenlightened.

A Rational Majority

This week has been downright lousy with conservatives crowing about the election, and there's no respite in sight. It was a rebuke of big government, a triumph of common sense, a return to reason, a resounding victory for the American people, and so on. The Democrats, after all, have spent nearly two whole years tinkering with the economy and most of us aren't self-employed millionaires yet, so out with them! And since we refuse, for whatever reason, to allow ourselves to be represented in Washington by a truckload of inanimate carbon rods, the duty falls to the Republicans.

But despite my sarcastic skepticism (not to mention my skeptical sarcasm), I can't help being cautiously optimistic (that is, when I'm not being aggressively pessimistic about the election's implications for immigration reform, gay rights, marijuana legalization, and other issues I won't get into here). I give conservatives a hard time, but, when it comes down to it, I do sincerely believe this country would benefit from a government with more of a laissez faire approach to the economy. In the two-year-old words of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist George Will:^[1]

Conservatives rightly think, or once did, that much, indeed most, government spreading of wealth is economically destructive and morally dubious—destructive because, by directing capital to suboptimum uses, it slows wealth creation; morally dubious because the wealth being spread belongs to those who created it, not government.

And yet, when it comes to the conservative movement itself—rather than the philosophy in the abstract—Will and I are no longer on the same page. A line in his most recent column nicely illustrates why (emphasis added):

This was the serious concern that percolated beneath the normal froth and nonsense of the elections: Is political power—are government commands and controls—superseding and suffocating the creativity of a market society's spontaneous order? On Tuesday, a rational and alarmed American majority said "yes."

So, if I've got this right, here's what George Will is saying:

1. A free market economy is the smoothest road to prosperity.
2. Therefore, it's rational to support free market economics.
3. In this week's election, a vote for Republicans was a vote in support of free market economics.
4. Therefore, Republican voters are rational.

Nope. Not how it works. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt on propositions 1, 2, and 3—as I'm inclined to do—there remains all kinds of room on the free market bandwagon for the least rational among us to jump aboard.^[2] I'd be a lot more comfortable with proposition 4 if it looked something like this:

4. Therefore, Republican voters may or may not be rational, because, while rational people support free market economics, irrational people support whatever the hell causes their semi-functional neurons to light up, including but not limited to Michael Bay movies, Scientology, bi-weekly Powerball drawings, the New York Mets, and, yes, free market economics.^[3]

But still, flawed logic aside, who am I to say that Will isn't (accidentally) right about Republican voters? Maybe they are, indeed, (by sheer coincidence) uniformly rational. If that's the case, then it must've been a bunch of deceitful liberals—as Will points out, they'll stop at nothing to portray conservatives as angry, uninformed morons—who adorned his column with the following comments (edited for brevity, but, obviously, not for content):^[4]

Leftist Lie: "Two never ending wars=republican"
Actual Truth: Iraq war is over.
*****
Leftist Lie: "hate Muslims=republican"
Actual Truth: Republicans hate terrorists, leftists want to give them a safe haven.
*****
Leftist Lie: "Hate gays=republican"
Actual Truth: Republicans value the tradition of marriage. Leftists want to destroy its meaning.

—————

[Obama] is a pseudo intellectual who has been programmed by a series of communist and revolutionary associations. Collective Salvation is a key incite to his programming and whence it came. A perversion of Christianity by communists. Traditional Christians like POPES consider collective salvation as a political teaching as DEMONIC. There is no telling where an Unstable Obama will take us or what he will do. After he scolded us for going to Los Vegas he is taking a 2 billion dollar trip to India. Is the man sane?

—————

We have a Communist sociopath as President.

—————

[Obama] surrounds himself with Tax Cheats, Chicago thugs, incompetents, radical loony perverted Czars and has Democrat accomplices in congress that can't even READ the trillion dollar pork packages and Obama/Pelosi Government Crap Care they put their X on and inflict on Americans…

—————

And now the investigations will begin. I can't wait for the one that Obama will try to explain how he is legally qualified to be president when he can't product a certified birth certificate and neither of his parent were qualifying US citizens.

Finally, my favorite (because really, you do need to be aware):

The intelligence of the Liberals is stunningly low.They lack the ability to see what Obama and the PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS are doing to this country…If you have money in the bank,you might want to pull it.Another piece of advice,watch GLENN BECK, THURSDAY,FRIDAY he has been warning for a year and a half about OBAMA ,everything he has said is happening.The man loves this country,he is warning us.The media,OBAMA,SOROS has been boycotting his show because he has been exposing them,WATCH,YOU NEED TO BE AWARE !!!!!

Alright, that's enough for now (check this article's comments for some more gems, if you're into that sort of thing). Internet commenters, as always, prove nothing, except that stupidity is ideologically-neutral.

So, are intelligent, thoughtful, and rational conservatives out there too? Sure—plenty of them. Is voting Republican, in and of itself, proof of intelligence, thoughtfulness, and rationality? No, of course not,^[5] and if conservatives like George Will are as smart as they seem to think they are, they should understand that.

1. Also from the 2008 column (but not relevant to my point, which is why it's stashed away down here in this footnote):

Hyperbole is not harmless; careless language bewitches the speaker's intelligence. And falsely shouting "socialism!" in a crowded theater such as Washington causes an epidemic of yawning.

Well said.

2. I assume the Free Market Bandwagon, for the sake of comfort, fuel efficiency, and durability, would be a foreign model. Or, for the sake of irony, a GM.

3. Does that sound mean-spirited? I feel like it sounds a little mean-spirited. Oh well, I'm just trying to be funny. I really don't mean to offend Transformers fans, Scientologists, lottery players, capitalists, or…yeah, that's all.

4. For what it's worth, I tried to avoid picking out comments that are simply poorly-written. My intent is not to mock those with a shaky grasp on the language (or, to put it in PC terms, those with a "unique voice"), but to mock those who have proudly and openly severed ties with reality—though the latter is hardly a stranger to the former. Anyway, in the interest of fairness, here’s one of the good ones:

George, with all due respect, a wave of rational and concerned voters did not really come into it. You and I and a fairly small minority live in an informed and rational world, but the vast majority of the voting population votes purely from the hip. Happy? Yes – vote for incumbent, no – vote for challenger.

And one more, just because I like it:

We demand to see Boehner's birth certificate! He's orange. No human is orange. Is he American or Alien? Release his college records now! We want proof he attended college. We want our country back!

5. Is engaging in a Q&A with myself a lazy, overused stylistic device? Absolutely, but screw you—I'm doing it anyway.

Pseudo-Intellectual Nonsense

Conservatives can’t stand the way liberals seem to think they can prove anything merely by spouting pseudo-intellectual nonsense. And maybe they (conservatives) are right. We (liberals) do, on occasion, obfuscate our arguments through superfluous verbiage, which sometimes leads to ill-supported conclusions.

The problem is, pseudo-intellectualism is difficult to criticize. There are basically two angles. Many conservatives take the classic “Hey, egghead! Yer not as smart as you think you are!” approach. Others, however, can’t seem to resist fighting fire with more of the same alluring, seductive fire. That is, armed only with an inability to understand irony and a dangerous lack of self-awareness, they attempt to expose and discredit liberal pseudo-intellectualism with equal and opposite pseudo-intellectual nonsense of their own.

And that brings me to the specific nonsense that inspired this post. It seems a handful of concerned citizens have decided that, as seen in his recent speech about the oil spill, Barack Obama uses lengthy, “professorial” sentences that most Americans apparently have trouble following.

Though the president used slightly less than four sentences per paragraph, his 19.8 words per sentence "added some difficulty for his target audience," [the Global Language Monitor's Paul J.J.] Payack said.

I won’t get into the absurdity of equating sentence length with semantic density, because Mark Liberman of the Language Log already did an excellent job of it:

I think we can all agree that those are shockingly long professor-style sentences for a president to be using, especially in addressing the nation after a disaster. Why, they were almost as long as the ones that President George W. Bush, that notorious pointy-headed intellectual, used in his 9/15/2005 speech to the nation about Hurricane Katrina, where I count 3283 words in 140 sentences, for an average of 23.45 words per sentence! And we all remember how upset the press corps got about the professorial character of that speech!

But this sort of “Obama uses lots o’ words; he must think he’s smarter’n me” crap is only moderately insane. What this story really needs is for some imaginative commentator to use the whole thing as an excuse to question Obama’s masculinity. Take it away, Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post:

Obama may prove to be our first male president who pays a political price for acting too much like a woman.

Her basis for this? That 13% of Obama’s speech was passive-voiced. The many linguistically-dubious aspects of this are addressed, once again, by Mark Liberman, but my focus is on the political rhetoric.

First of all, is this supposed to be an insult? I think it is—not so much because Parker has any objection to the idea of a female president, but because she sees something “wrong” with a male exhibiting (what she perceives to be) female characteristics. Conservatives become confused and defensive at any indication that gender is not as binary as they like to think it is.^[1]

Gender issues aside, I’m most alarmed by how eagerly conservatives embrace this kind of idiocy when it supports what they already believe. Liberals do the same thing, of course, but they’re the ones who make “unjustified claims of expertise, authority or knowledge” and “ignore any evidence that shows their position to be false.”^[2] Conservatives are supposed to be better than that, right?^[3]

1. How’s that for a wild generalization! Not to worry, I’ll write more on the issue in the future.

2. Have I mentioned how much I love Conservapedia as a source for hyperbolic and outlandish (and sometimes blatantly hypocritical) stereotypes?

3. Wow, is this an unfocused article. Oh well, it should be useful as a springboard for follow-up posts on a number of tangentially-related topics. By the way, this article (not counting the indented quotes) averages 17.6 words per sentence. I'm not especially good at identifying passive constructions, but I see at least three or four. I don't know what that says about my masculinity.