Trust Your Intuition

I commented on Amartya Sen's book the Idea of Justice, which while I found it generally unpersuasive still had a few gems. For example, it is interesting that throughout history leaders unsure of the grounds of their actions have found reticence appealing. As Lord Mansfield, an 18th century English judge, advised a newly appointed colonial governor:

consider what you think justice requires and decide accordingly. But never given your reasons; for your judgement will probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong.

I find this a very wise course of action for leaders, because the last thing they want to do is get mired in a debate where their opinion is analyzed just like any other. Best to let the subordinates make their case, hope for the best, and move on. Groups need people in key positions to make final decisions, even if flawed, and while they should be held accountable, that should be done at a meta level, not at every step in a decision making process. Thus with hindsight I now appreciate the wisdom of some very wealthy leaders I have worked with who would say little, if only on this tactical point.

Another interesting point brought out by this line of reasoning is that judgement has a higher chance of being correct than the reasoning. I find this true too, as Hayek noted many traditions, ethics and mores come down to us proven by their fruitfulness to believers. So, the institutions of freedom were not established because lawmakers foresaw the benefits they would bring, that would come later, when Smith noted the nonintuitive connection between selfish and collective interest, and when Hayek outlined the importance of decentralized incentives. Hayek wrote a lot about how much of what we know that is useful is impossible to articulate. It's provisional knowledge to be sure, but proven via its pragmatic value as opposed to rhetoric. Indeed, rhetoricians are often quite good at debating any side of an issue, often choosing what is most likely to be favored, highlighting this skill is not so useful in finding the truth as it is in persuading others one should be a leader (at which point, one should then become reticent, see above).

The Gettier problem is an epistemological problem introduced in a three page paper by Edmund Gettier that now has a Wikipedia page longer than three pages (showing what philosophers love to do!). It's best given by an example:

Farmer Franco is concerned about his prize cow, Daisy. In fact, he is so concerned that when his dairyman tells him that Daisy is in the field, happily grazing, he says he needs to know for certain.

Farmer Franco goes out to the field and standing by the gate sees in the distance, behind some trees, a white and black shape that he recognizes as his favorite cow. He goes back to the dairy and tells his friend that he knows Daisy is in the field.

The dairyman goes to the field and finds Daisy having a nap in a hollow, behind a bush, well out of sight of the gate. He also spots a large piece of black and white paper that has got caught in a tree.

Daisy is in the field, as Farmer Franco thought, but Franco's reasoning was faulty.

In this case Farmer Franco was correct that the cow was safe and had evidence, it was a Justified True Belief in his mind. He knew the truth but did not have 'knowledge', rather, luck.

The problem is that the believer (Farmer Franco) was right for the wrong reason, but this turned out irrelevant. It's likely that in many such cases, his reasoning was only a confabulation for a deeper intuition about how Daisy behaves, and so, it was not pure luck. Epistemologically the problem is that often beliefs are not based on 'if and only if'--aka necessary and sufficient--conditions, so your beliefs are often right for wrong reasons, and so you don't really understand not only those beliefs you have that are wrong, but those that are right as well. As Keynes said, right policies are invariably chosen for the wrong reasons, so one can't too worked up about the fact that 'someone on the internet is wrong.' Given any big debate has two sides (eg, raise or lower taxes to increase welfare), you have only a 50% chance of being correct. As there are only a few out of many plausible reasons for having the right belief, odds are you are wrong about your reasoning more than your are wrong about what to do.

Reason is to man a great gift over and above the raw instinct and emotions we share with the great apes. It should help us find better solutions faster, which is best demonstrated by our technology and increased life spans. But we shouldn't trust reason and rhetoric too much, as traditions and instincts have wisdom too.