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September 4, 2004 |
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Interview
Get it right! Jamie Whyte describes himself as "Outraged
of Highbury" – someone who endlessly sends furious letters
to newspapers complaining about sloppy thinking, logical errors,
fallacies and muddles. He does the same at parties – and even
on trains. Fortunately he's a professional philosopher or he might
have attracted the attention of the authorities long ago. Liz Else
and Alun Anderson asked what gets him steamed up and what errors
they could commit that would make him explode.
Liz Else, Alun Anderson
4 September 2004
New Scientist 40 volume 183; issue 2463 English
(c) 2004, New Scientist, Reed Business Information UK, a division
of Reed Elsevier, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Jamie Whyte left his native New Zealand to read
philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and went on to work there
as a philosophy lecturer. After three years, he left academia to
join the world of high finance as a management consultant. He is
now a professional writer, dividing his time between New Zealand
and north London. His passion for straight thinking prompted him
to write Bad Thoughts: A guide to clear thinking , published in
the UK by Corvo (2003) and in the US as Crimes Against Logic (McGraw-Hill,
2004)
How long have you been angry about bad thinking?
I've always been obsessed with truth. I did my PhD on truth. It
has always driven me mad to see people saying things that are well
known to be rubbish. And I've never understood how they can bear
it. But at the same time I can see that it doesn't affect their
lives materially so they can't understand why I get so hysterical.
But you are a philosopher who left academia to work in financial
markets, of all things. Isn't that an area where truth is seriously
lacking? Or should we trust your views on truth because you have
published a book?
There are indeed some very suspicious things that go on in the
financial markets. But you are already plunging straight into the
authority fallacy, which these days appears in a variety of perverse
forms. One of the worst is trusting someone simply because they
have acquired a measure of celebrity, which might include publishing
a book.
What do you mean?
First, there is nothing wrong with deferring to genuine expertise.
You need to defer to some people because you simply can't do all
the research on everything yourself. But to whom should you defer?
The basis on which you defer to people should be that they are reliable,
and by reliable I don't mean nice or good or that they have their
hearts in the right places. I mean that if they say that P…
it is very likely that P… Now what makes somebody reliable
is the way that they acquire their beliefs – ultimately it
all comes back to the correct methods for acquiring beliefs. So
you should identify people who are doing it the right way and defer
to them. In the end, it is just a division of labour.
But how does the authority thing work?
The really big mistake comes when you treat people as authority
figures when they are not expert but simply well known. There is
a terrible tendency to treat people as reliable sources of fact
when in fact they are simply "important" people or people
who happen to be in the news. It is doubly perverse when you consider
who gets counted as "important". For example, the victims
of train accidents appear on television as authorities on rail policy
and celebrities endorse presidential campaigns as though they are
expert on politics. It's sheer insanity.
That sounds like good news for scientists. With their emphasis
on transparency and method, surely they'd be immune from the authority
fallacy?
Not at all. Scientists are vulnerable to this kind of celebrity
issue. Some scientists have a certain amount of star quality that
gives their opinions more weight than they ought to have. Worse,
scientists have a terrible tendency to pronounce on issues where
they don't recognise that they are not expert.
Take the British Medical Association, which is always making policy
recommendations. A recent example was that the government should
tax the fat content of food. Why does the BMA think it knows anything
about how we should live? It may know that if I live a particular
way I'll become unhealthy, but why does it think that it can tell
me that I should value my health more than my chosen way of life?
What makes its members think that they are in any privileged position
to answer questions like that?
Also, how do they know what the effects of a tax on fatty food would
be? They're not specialists in the way that prices affect consumption
and the way the economy will be affected by redistribution of spending
from one part to another. They can't even anticipate the health
effects of these things. They should shut up.
So should they express no opinion at all?
The BMA is one of these organisations that commits the authority
fallacy. It seems to think the fact that it may be an authority
on medical issues means that it is also an authority on the politics
of medical issues. There is almost no connection. The BMA's output
should be an input to the decision making of somebody else. I think
you get a lot of this false authority in science. Let the BMA commission
a report from somebody who knows what they're talking about. It
has just got this blind assumption that health is everything. Health
seems to me to be reasonably important, but we are all mortal and
doctors often seem to forget that.
It is fair to say that the BMA represents doctors and as such
it is just another pressure group acting for its own constituency,
and its opinions will be no better than anyone else's.
Oh dear. Now, you are drifting into the motive fallacy. Too many
people see truth as just a game between groups, as a kind of tribalism.
That is not rational. Far too many people are not prepared to say:
"I don't believe this and here's my argument why I don't."
They don't feel they need to. Instead, they will say something like:
"Economists are just part of the capitalist conspiracy so I
don't have to listen to their arguments about free trade."
Thus they dismiss all economists' views on the grounds that they
are members of a particular group.
And scientists too…
Yes. These days, scientists are increasingly seen as part of various
tribal groups, so when you read about their views the newspapers
will go to great lengths to ask who they are working for, what their
backgrounds are, and what are their political views are, and so
on. Someone's motives may reasonably make you suspicious that that
person has an incentive to mislead you, but their arguments are
no better or worse than the evidence put forward to support them.
So ultimately the question of whether something is true or false
can't be settled by a question of motives. And just to dismiss somebody
on the basis of "it pays them to say that" isn't a good
argument. They might be right anyway.
In your book you are quite harsh on religion. Aren't people
entitled to their faith?
This is one of my favourite errors. An interesting change has happened,
at least in the west. It used to be that people would argue for
a particular religious dogma or a clear religious doctrine. That
is no longer what happens. The world is increasingly dividing into
those who have "faith" and those who don't. It doesn't
really matter what the faith is. That is why you now get "faith
groups" coming together from all kinds of different religions.
The weirdest manifestation of this new tendency is when people say:
"I'm not a Christian but I believe in something." Then
I say: "Of course, I believe in many things, like there is
a chair there and a table. What are you talking about?" And
they reply: "Well, you know, something more." But what
"more"? What they mean is something more than we have
any good reason to believe in.
That really seems to get to you!
What amazes me is that they like to set themselves up as having
a slightly finer sensibility than you or me but in fact they are
completely intellectually irresponsible. They used to come up with
very bad arguments for their faiths but at least they felt that
there was something they should provide. Now mere wilfulness has
triumphed. This is what I describe as the egocentric approach to
truth. You are no longer interested in reality because to do that
you have to be pretty rigorous, you have to have evidence or do
some experimentation. Rather, beliefs are part of your wardrobe.
You've got a style and how dare anybody tell you that your style
isn't right. Ideology is seen as simply a matter of taste and as
it's not right to tell people that they've got bad taste, so it's
not right to tell them that their opinions are false. I'm afraid
that the cast of mind of most people is the opposite of scientific.
There's something close to that that you also hate. When people
say "there is an awful lot we don't understand" and use
that as an argument for believing in something…
The mystery fallacy: it's a mystery therefore I can think whatever
I want.
Isn't there a reverse of that where scientists will ignore or deny
the existence of anything they don't understand?
Yes. Scientists have a strange tendency to be insufficiently empirical
sometimes. A good example is swing bowling in cricket. For a long
time, scientists found it impossible to explain how bowlers could
deliver a ball that swerved. So their first defence was to say that
it's not really swinging but only appears to be. Sometimes in science
theory pushes you ahead of observation – the theory will suggest
some observations that you previously wouldn't have made. But sometimes
there are things you can observe that you can't explain which should
drive theory. The way you learn physics these days is so lacking
in observation that it's got a lot of scientists out of the habit.
Physicists don't take observation as seriously as they should and
sometimes they get this arrogance that if the theory can't accommodate
it then it isn't there, instead of letting the observation push
them.
Talking of cricket, you also use cricketing scores to show up
some of the ways people try to explain patterns that don't need
an explanation at all…
An example I use in Bad Thoughts is the explanation of why zero
is the most common score on which batsmen go out. Cricketers and
sports commentators will tell you that the batsman has just come
on the field and they are very nervous, or they don't really know
the pitch, so they are more likely to go out immediately. But that
kind of explanation is not needed at all. It's just that the way
cricket is scored means zero is the score on which batsmen face
the most deliveries. Everyone starts at zero but then scores increments
of anything from zero to six, thereby skipping many possible scores.
Since zero is the score on which most batsmen face the most deliveries,
it is entirely unsurprising that it is also the score on which they
most often go out. People are looking for an explanation that's
just not required.
How widespread is this tendency to seek unnecessary explanations?
It is well known that when gamblers go wrong they find an excuse
and as soon things go right they immediately assign it to their
own brilliance and insight rather than finding an accidental reason.
It's rather similar in the financial industry. Even the bosses buy
into this kind of reasoning. They will say "of course I understand
why that one went wrong" when they lose millions, and then
when it goes well they will say "well done". Everybody
systematically overestimates their skill in games of chance. From
what research I have seen, financial trading is not much more than
a game of chance. There are funds that simply track the market according
to a set of simple rules, and others that are very actively managed.
But the actively managed ones do not perform better on average.
Some will do well in any year but that's what you expect by chance.
But there are star fund managers who do well year after year.
So is the advice I read to follow the best managers right?
You have fallen into the error of reading meaning into data where
it is not required. Stock traders are quite young; normally you
would be quite an old trader at 35. You are probably in the spotlight
for four or five years, maximum. There are thousands of traders,
so some of them are sure to have five good years in a row. It is
purely random. There is nothing you would not expect if it were
chance alone.
So if I'm a logical person I had better put my money in the bank?
Well, the best investment depends mainly on your risk appetite.
However, retail banks give a much better return to their shareholders
than investment banks, partly because their staff are paid less.
For investment bankers, the only trick is getting yourself a seat
at the table. Once you are there the money is yours. It really isn't
that skilful. But the people who work there will always believe
their good days are down to their own amazing skills.
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