
In Praise of Passivity (2012) [pdf] - Tomte
http://studiahumana.com/pliki/wydania/In%20Praise%20of%20Passivity.pdf
======
schoen
Trying to identify a few of the most ethically controversial premises:

* Government is ethically responsible for adverse results of acting to change society (or of limiting people's choices), but not for those of failing to do so.

* People's strongly-held hypothesis and intuitions about what might make society better are so unreliable that they're typically at least as likely to make society worse. True or reliable ideas of this kind are exceptionally rare and take a long time to develop.

* It isn't especially important for government to do what people in general think or say they want, because beliefs are so tenuous or unreliable or have so many unintended consequences.

Some ideas that might still be useful to people who reject some or all of
those premises:

* Almost everyone believes that they are right and that their values will make things better, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

* Almost everyone believes that their own values and beliefs are well-supported or obvious, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

* Apparently well-thought-out political programs and proposals often fail or backfire in some way.

* (Not so explicit here, but sort of alluded to in passing, and found in similar writers) The ability to diagnose or describe a problem well isn't necessarily the same thing as the ability to propose a workable or effective solution to that problem.

Edit: compare David Simon's view at

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-
ca...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-
marx-two-americas-wire)

> I'm not a Marxist in the sense that I don't think Marxism has a very
> specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a
> much better diagnostician than he was a clinician. He was good at figuring
> out what was wrong or what could be wrong with capitalism if it wasn't
> attended to and much less credible when it comes to how you might solve
> that.

* Some problems could be extremely intractable or only solvable at very high cost. Some changes that lots of people agree are desirable might still be out of reach in some sense; some outcomes that lots of people agree are bad may be beyond those people's power to avert or mitigate very substantially, even if they passionately agree that those things are bad.

~~~
blackkettle
I think these two are the 'real' crux of the matter:

* Almost everyone believes that they are right and that their values will make things better, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

* Almost everyone believes that their own values and beliefs are well-supported or obvious, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

These two things are incredibly difficult for people to come to terms with.
The corollary to these, which in fact leads to the real problems is:

* Almost everyone finds it extremely difficult to believe that those who hold beliefs or a belief system fundamentally at odds with their own could mean just as well, or even more challenging, be equally 'right' in the context of that system. That is, "there's more than one way to skin a cat".

~~~
omegant
I've been thinking about this lately, and one of the problems is that most
politics and government can be boiled down to tribalist behaviour and gross
generalization. Us vs. Them. I defend this solutions because they work and are
the ones I've always have believed with my pears. The guy in front of me is
wrong because (cherrypick some obvious and probably true examples) and doesn't
have a clue. Government could better be performed if done similary to a doctor
prescribing to a patient, today you need this treatment, but maybe in a year
you have improved enough and you need a touch of the opposite one, and then we
have to try something new with this other problem.

But current believes don't let politicians try this (I don't think they even
believe it's possible), and even if they tried we voters wouldn't trust this
kind of "changing sides".

If X policy worked so well till now, why I'm not going to apply it to every
problem we have or imagine we have?

Of course it's more complex than this (as it's just a generalization) but I
have not seen this said in too many places.

~~~
CaptSpify
> I've been thinking about this lately, and one of the problems is that most
> politics and government can be boiled down to tribalist behaviour and gross
> generalization. Us vs. Them.

The more I learn about history, and see how things like tribalism were the
driving factor in many decisions, the more I see the same in our current
world. I'm not going to get into politics, but: We have a tendency to look
into the past and think "How did those crazy people ever behave that way?!?"
and then turn around and do the same exact thing "But our world is different!
Our enemies really are the bad guys this time!"

We really are just a group of big, technologically advanced tribes, fighting
for perceived scarcity of resources. The scariest thing about learning history
just how much nothing changes.

~~~
ktRolster
_The scariest thing about learning history just how much nothing changes._

It's changed a _lot._ Several thousand years ago, we realized that having a
king solves a lot of problems, such as tribal warfare, and squabbles between
small groups of people. Pax Romana it might be called, although it was found
on a smaller scale before that.

The Greeks appreciated the power of a monarch, but didn't like to be told what
to do, and their emphasis on individual freedom eventually led to democracy
like the Roman senate. Unfortunately, the roman senate couldn't handle
changing demographics very well, and became indolent, corrupt, and useless, so
a dictator was an improvement.

Throughout the middle ages, philosophers put a lot of thought into the idea
of, "How to find the best monarch?"

Eventually the United States came up with an idea of how to balance the power
of state with individual freedom, and put some procedures in place to handle
demographic changes, learning from the Roman's failures.

Learning takes centuries, but it definitely happens. The improvements to the
legal system since Sumerian times is notable as well.

~~~
CaptSpify
I didn't mean to sound so pessimistic there, and I could have worded it
better. I agree we have learned a lot. I think things have gotten _much_
better. My day-to-day life is amazing compared to most of history.

But I stand by the statement in the area of: In many ways, we are just large
tribes, fighting each other for stupid, selfish reasons. If you abstract
things away enough, we may be different, but we still act the same.

~~~
ktRolster
That's kind of the essence of political science though, right? You have
different people, with different desires....how can their differences be
reconciled? There is no right or wrong here, just different preferences.

~~~
CaptSpify
In theory yes. But the implementation of reconciling those differences a lot
of right or wrong can happen. That's how wars, institutionalized bigotry, etc
can happen.

------
sevenless
The examples around terrorism undermine the article. Anyone paying attention,
presumably including politicians, knows why Islamic terrorists want to attack
the US; the problem is the political difficulty of clearly stating the facts
in public without being accused of being unpatriotic or of attacking America's
allies.

Likewise, the article glibly states all experts oppose protectionism, but in
the words of Ha-Joon Chang, "Almost all of today's rich countries used tariff
protection and subsidies to develop their industries. Interestingly, Britain
and the USA, the two countries that are supposed to have reached the summit of
the world economy through their free-market, free-trade policy, are actually
the ones that had most aggressively used protection and subsidies."
([http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm](http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm))
Appeals to authority don't work; economists cannot be expected to be
systematically unbiased, if their funding tends to depend on particular
economic theories having political currency.

The problem isn't that expertise is impossible, it's political structures
which push objective inquiry aside. "It is very difficult to get a man to
understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it."

The global warming "debate" also backs this point up. There is no doubt the
experts are reliable, that global warming exists and is a serious threat. But
we are unable to come up with an effective policy response, because fossil
fuel companies can buy an opposition.

> If we want to test whether fiscal stimulus cures recessions, we cannot
> prepare two identical societies, with identical recessions, and then apply
> fiscal stimulus in on e society but not the other. Nor can we take a large
> collection of societies with recessions and randomly assign half to receive
> fiscal stimulus and half to receive no fiscal stimulus.

There is no reason that randomized controlled trials of economic policy could
not be done on particular regions, and this is occasionally done already
([http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/12/randomis...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/12/randomised-
control-trials)). It's really a bit outrageous that we'd introduce far-
reaching economic changes with less evidential support than for a new brand of
athlete's foot cream.

~~~
alexandercrohde
>> Anyone paying attention, presumably including politicians, knows why
Islamic terrorists want to attack the US; the problem is the political
difficulty of clearly stating the facts in public without being accused of
being unpatriotic or of attacking America's allies.

Source?

~~~
Chris2048
>> the problem is the political difficulty of clearly stating the facts

> Source?

Gitmo, The iraq war, backing of Israel,

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War_documents_leak)

------
razdaz77
I wholeheartedly agree with much of what is written, but in the spirit of the
text here is a counter argument that I considered. I would be happy to hear
others' opinion on it.

Perhaps a good reason for people to form and voice opinions (like voting for
example) even when they generally don't know what they're talking about is
what's dubbed "crowd wisdom": the idea that a group of almost clueless laymen
can somehow miraculously come to a very good decision when grouped and
averaged out outperforming experts. At least for some problems.

Perhaps the OP's suggestion that only well educated "experts" should voice
there opinions robs society of this slow but powerful driving force?

------
emmab
Related: [http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-
calle...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-called-
legibility/)

------
jpfed
>These campaigns are a terrible idea. Most voters have no idea what is going
on–they may not even know who their leaders are, and certainly do not know who
is the best candidate. Imagine that someone asks you for directions to a local
restaurant. If you have no idea where the restaurant is, you should not make
it up. You should not tell the person some guess that seems sort of plausible
to you. You should tell them you don’t know and let them get directions from
someone more knowledgeable.

The next step from here is delegative democracy.

------
d0mine
I don't understand how doing something that you believe is right is worse than
doing nothing to prevent ongoing harm.

If you may fail; it doesn't mean you should stop trying.

The opposite is more likely: the more you try the more you know the better the
chances.

~~~
ktRolster
In many cases, "what you believe is right" is worse than doing nothing. For
example, injecting massive amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere to stop
global warming could be worse than doing nothing.

In fact, if you make large changes to a system without deep understanding, it
is likely you will cause problems. There is a software analogy here. An
incremental approach, taking small steps at a time, is usually better.

------
marcosvpj
> Political leaders, voters, and activists are well-advised to follow the
> dictum, often applied to medicine, to “first, do no harm.” A plausible rule
> of sthumb, to guard us against doing harm as a result of overconfident
> ideological beliefs, is that one should not forcibly impose requirements or
> restrictions on others unless the value of those requirements or
> restrictions is essentially uncontroversial among the community of experts
> in conditions of free and open debate. Of course, even an expert consensus
> may be wrong, but this rule of thumb may be the best that such fallible
> beings as ourselves can devise.

We would have great beneficies if all religious politicians would think about
this before acting.

~~~
marcosvpj
Why the downvote? I am from Brazil and here we have many politicians who think
that we need law to prohibit this because their religion its against it, and
by the news I see the same things happening in the USA with the same-sex
marriage.

You don't like, don't do. No need to make illegal to others do.

