[Clips] That's Your Cue

[R.A. Hettinga]

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  Delivered-To: rah at shipwright.com
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  Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:02:08 -0400
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  From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
  Subject: [Clips] That's Your Cue
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  <http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=062706C>

  TCS Daily -


  That's Your Cue


  By Arnold Kling : BIO| 27 Jun 2006

  "These sacred truths are unverifiable, and unfalsifiable, but the faithful
  nevertheless accept them to be unquestionable. In doing so, like assemblies
  of the faithful since the dawn of language, they bind themselves together
  for protection or common action against unbelievers and their lies."
  --Nicholas Wade, Before the Dawn, p. 165-166

  When people in business meet for the first time to discuss a transaction,
  they often exchange what I call "trust cues" in order to reduce mutual
  suspicion. For example, they may recite empty phrases from popular business
  books, such as "win-win," "synergy," "principles," "customer-driven," or
  "raising the bar."

  Nicholas Wade provides a readable, wide-ranging survey of the impact of
  recent advances in genetics on anthropology. In one chapter, he argues that
  the origins of what I observe in business behavior can be found in early
  religious rituals. Religions produce trust cues. Trust cues are necessary
  for large societies and trade among strangers to emerge. They serve to
  protect people from cheaters and liars.

  What I am going to suggest in this essay is that political beliefs can
  serve the function of trust cues. Political beliefs may have at best a
  tenuous empirical basis, but they function to demonstrate one's membership
  in a trusted group.

  Wade says that the evolutionary value of trust cues is that they facilitate
  peaceful interactions among strangers. When I offer a trust cue, I am
  saying that even though we do not know one another, I am a member of a
  trustworthy group. I value my membership in that group, and I know that
  lying to or cheating another member of that group could cause me to be
  excommunicated from the group. Since you are also a member of the group,
  you can trust me not to lie to you or to cheat you.

  The most trustworthy groups are groups where membership is valuable and
  excommunication is costly. They are groups that monitor the behavior of
  their members closely.

  The most trustworthy individuals are individuals who regularly show a
  willingness to sacrifice for the group. Attending religious worship every
  week, paying a tithe, and participating in ritual fasts are examples of
  demonstrating religious loyalty. These sorts of sacrifices are indicators
  that the individual values membership in the group, and they show that the
  individual would fear excommunication from the group.

  The best trust cues are those that can be presented at low cost by members
  of the group but would be costly to fake for non-members. Thus, odd
  dialects and unusual phrases can serve as trust cues.

  Empiricism

  Empiricism is a rigorous approach to the subject of truth. Frederick Crews,
  author of Follies of the Wise, a book that attacks Freudian psychology and
  other weak intellectual fads, describes empiricism as "the ethic of
  respecting what is known, acknowledging what is still unknown, and acting
  as if one cared about the difference."(p. 305)

  In modern philosophy, the empiricist tradition is often traced to John
  Locke and David Hume. Hume argued that truths are either matters of logic
  (such as mathematical theorems) or matters of observation (such as the law
  of gravity). Beliefs that cannot be verified by examining data or by
  reference to logic constitute dogma.

  Although empiricism has become a standard philosophy in the West, dogma
  persists. I believe that the main reason that non-verifiable ideas survive
  is that they serve as trust cues. People still need to demonstrate their
  commitment to membership in groups, and recitation of dogma is a low-cost
  method of doing so.

  Political Trust Cues

  Wade writes,

  "Modern states now accomplish by other means many of the early roles
  performed by religion, which is why religion has become of less relevance
  in some societies. But because the propensity for religious belief is still
  wired into the human mind, religion continues to be a potent force in
  societies that still struggle for cohesion." (p. 164)

  This raises the possibility that political beliefs serve primarily as trust
  cues. For example, those who favor an increase in the minimum wage are
  sending trust cues to people on the Left, and those who oppose an increase
  in the minimum wage are sending trust cues to people on the Right.

  The actual consequences of raising the minimum wage are rarely discussed.
  In other words, political debates often ignore what I call Type C arguments
  (from empiricism) and turn instead to type M arguments, which accuse one's
  opponent of belonging to an outcast group. The reason for this is that
  people are not trying to persuade each other rationally. Instead, they are
  using trust cues to indicate that failure to agree implies excommunication
  from the group.

  Academic Trust Cues

  An empirical argument attempts to convince you using logic and observation.
  A trust cue threatens you with loss of membership in a valuable group
  unless you take a given position. One might hope that colleges and
  universities might espouse empiricism rather than excommunicate those who
  question dogma. However, the Lawrence Summers case offers a dramatic
  counter-example. His discussion of women in tenured positions in science
  seems reasonable from an empiricist standpoint. However, from the
  standpoint of trust cues, it was out of bounds.

  Both Crews and Wade cite examples of widespread use of trust cues rather
  than empiricism in academia. Crews describes the failure of the American
  Psychological Association to hold to empirical standards the practice of
  psychoanalysis as well as such fads as "recovered memory." On another
  topic, describing trends in humanities departments, Crews mentions

  "Marxism and psychoanalysis that acquired survival value from the passions
  they aroused and from the pliability of their concepts and propositions.
  Each has constituted what Michael Polanyi once termed a dynamo-objective
  coupling -- that is, a doctrine whose normative claims can always be
  invoked when its scientific claims appear threatened, and vice versa." (p.
  300)

  Perhaps another example of dynamo-objective coupling is the statement "I
  believe that humans cause global warming." It serves both as an apparent
  empirical statement and a trust cue. The fact that opinions on global
  warming tend to align with political beliefs suggests that trust cues are
  playing a larger role than empirical research at this stage of the debate.

  Wade writes,

  "According to the American Sociological Association, race apparently does
  not even have a biological foundation, since it is a 'social construct.'
  The association's official statement on race warns that 'Although racial
  categories are legitimate subjects of empirical sociological investigation,
  it is important to recognize the danger of contributing to the popular
  conception of race as biological.'" (p. 191)

  "But," Wade continues, "people can now be objectively assigned to their
  continent of origin, in other words to their race, by genetic markers."
  However, because the scientific observation conflicts with an important
  trust cue, major academic disciplines choose to ignore the evidence.

  What is odd is that an association of academics should find it productive
  to take an "official position" on anything. I do not need an "official
  position" of physicists to convince me of the law of gravity. I do not
  believe in the laws of supply and demand because they are the "official
  position" of the American Economic Association (to my knowledge, the AEA
  has never stated an official position in favor of them). A book or article
  that reports observations and analysis is a scientific statement. An
  "official position" is a trust cue.

  In economics, the use of mathematical language has become a trust cue.
  Modern economists complain, rightly, that in the old days of "literary
  economics," a lot of muddled gibberish found its ways into economics
  journals. Today, journals publish muddled gibberish dressed up with
  mathematical symbols.

  I believe that societies need trust cues. I cannot imagine being able to
  get along without them. However, we also need empiricism. Progress comes
  from accepting empirical observations when they conflict with trust cues,
  while finding other ways to preserve social cohesion.

  Arnold Kling is a TCS contributing editor and adjunct scholar with the Cato
  Institute.

  --
  -----------------
  R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
  The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
  44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
  "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
  [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
  experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'