Human, all too human

I’ve just finished reading Michael Shermer’s illuminating book The Believing Brain (2011), where he shows that, contrary to the common assumption that people form beliefs after rationally thinking them through, the human brain is actually a “belief engine” that forms beliefs first, then tries to rationalise those beliefs second. This post hoc rationalising can be flawed, due to the brain’s tendency towards cognitive biases and faulty reasoning. No one is exempt from cognitive biases, not even those who consider themselves Spock-like in their (supposedly) cool rationality and logical, objective reasoning.

In chapter 12, ‘Confirmations of Belief’, Shermer describes cognitive biases in depth. Below is his alphabetically ordered summary of all the kinds of psychological blind spots that human beings are subject to. It’s enough to humble even the most obstinate Ayn Rand disciple.

Warren vs Rand

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren is the antithesis of Ayn Rand, the writer and founder of Objectivism. Two months ago Warren gave a speech that was essentially a rebuttal to Rand’s philosophical ideas concerning the rights of the individual versus the rights of the society in which an individual lives.

Rand notoriously rejected the idea that society, i.e. the state, had a rightful claim to a share of the fruits of an individual’s labour, i.e. taxes. Rand believed that taxation was a form of theft, since it involves the use of force or coercion by the state to take people’s money without requiring their consent. However, since governments require revenue in order to function, Rand conceded that taxes were necessary but insisted that they should be voluntary, and only collected to fund the most basic services that the state could rightfully be expected to provide: the police, the military, and the law courts.

Rand wrote the following in her book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), in the chapter titled ‘Government Financing in a Free Society’ (emphasis hers):

In a fully free society, taxation—or, to be exact, payment for governmental services—would be voluntary. Since the proper services of a government—the police, the armed forces, the law courts—are demonstrably needed by individual citizens and affect their interests directly, the citizens would (and should) be willing to pay for such services, as they pay for insurance. […]

The principle of voluntary government financing rests on the following premises: that the government is not the owner of the citizens’ income and, therefore, cannot hold a blank check on that income—that the nature of the proper governmental services must be constitutionally defined and delimited, leaving the government no power to enlarge the scope of its services at its own arbitrary discretion. Consequently, the principle of voluntary government financing regards the government as the servant, not the ruler, of the citizens—as an agent who must be paid for his services, not as a benefactor whose services are gratuitous, who dispenses something for nothing.

Randians abandon Sam Harris

Apparently there were quite a number of Ayn Rand devotees who, until recently, were fans of Sam Harris. But when Harris wrote a blog post in support of higher (i.e. fairer) taxes on the rich, the Randians were not impressed.

As a former Objectivist sympathiser, I can understand why Randians would see a kindred spirit in Harris. The guy’s an outspoken atheist, an advocate for science, reason and knowledge, and a proponent of objective morality. But when Harris made the (entirely rational) case for tax increases on America’s super-rich, boy, did he royally piss off the Cult of Virtuous Selfishness.

I stopped believing in many Objectivist ideas for several reasons, both intellectual and emotional. One such reason was my realisation that the Objectivist view of justice – that people got only what they deserved – was simply wrong. Harris explains why (emphasis his):

Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.

And that’s what Objectivists refuse to admit – their accomplishments are not entirely a result of their own awesomeness and hard graft. Other external factors contributed to their successes, whether they acknowledge this or not. Conversely, unsuccessful or poor people didn’t get that way simply because they were lazy and stupid. “But for Fortune there go I” is a phrase that is anathema to the Objectivist conception of self-betterment.

It’s a pity that the Randians have excommunicated Sam Harris from their intellectual life. He has so much to offer those who care about ideas. Well, it’s their loss. That the person the Objectivists denounce is actually more rational than them is an all too common irony.




28.8.11

The unreason of Objectivism

There’s a joke that goes like this:
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There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

I’ve read both books. While I may have exhibited a mild mania for both Middle-earth and Objectivism, fortunately I dodged the emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood. Many other young minds haven’t been so lucky. Some have grown up to become forty-year-old live action roleplayers.

My temporary affair with Ayn Rand’s philosophy has made me sympathetic to those who hold religious beliefs. Not because I think there is any compelling reason to cling to antiquated values derived from superstition and myth. Wishful thinking and factual error are no basis for values truly worth having. No, my sympathy comes from observing the parallels between Objectivism and religion. The moral absolutism. The ideological rigidity. The unerring spokespeople. The fantastic stories serving as allegories for ethical instruction. The contradictions. The hypocrisy.

To say that I renounced my Randian faith is an apt metaphor. For all its glorification of reason, Objectivism is ironically an unreasonable collection of beliefs with a pretense to rational certainty, more akin to the blind, unquestioning faith of God botherers than the rigorous yet humbly provisional ideas of ethical philosophers from Socrates through Spinoza to Singer.

But I’ll leave it to someone much more qualified than myself to dissect Rand’s comprehensive system of thought and put its flaws on display. Philosophy professor Massimo Pigliucci has written a four-part series of articles critiquing Objectivism on his blog ‘Rationally Speaking’. He has devoted each article to one aspect of Objectivism – its metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and politics. Even if you’re not familiar with Ayn Rand’s ideas, Pigliucci’s articles are still an education on how not to do philosophy.

As is generally the case with blogs, the comments from readers can be just as instructive as the post itself, often expanding and improving on the arguments made by the author. In this instance, it seems that a dyed-in-the-wool Objectivist (or at least a staunch Rand supporter) has taken it upon himself to refute – and rebuke – Pigliucci and other commenters who take a less approving stance on Objectivism. I remain unpersuaded by his verbose arguments, but I’ll leave it to you to decide if this fellow has successfully defended Rand from Pigliucci and co. Warning: not for the faint-of-heart or short-of-attention-span.




5.1.11

A collection of rants, being the Second of several

More ire and fire, this time dated to the day and month.




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To be authentic is to steadfastly hold on to one’s rational values regardless of their popularity or lack thereof. The intelligent person of integrity will not compromise his morality – that is, a code of ethics derived from objective reality through the use of his reason – for the crude purpose of obtaining approval or validation, even from those whom he holds in esteem and affection.

Indeed this kind of authenticity requires great moral and intellectual courage, and can at times reinforce the sense of loneliness often felt by the independent thinker.




1.7.07

"Hey, we're on the same side here."

Today I read these words by Ayn Rand and they struck me with a clarity forceful enough to disperse foggy ideology:

If [former US Republican senator] Barry Goldwater advocates the right principles for the wrong metaphysical reasons, the contradiction is his problem, not ours.

I now understand that it is overzealous and unfair of me to insist that those who share my acceptance of true and good principles should also support the philosophical foundations those principles were built on. While metaphysical and epistemological foundations remain important, the fact that an ally in principle does not embrace such foundations as enthusiastically as I do is poor grounds to accuse them of moral and intellectual evasion. As Rand put it, their contradictions are their own cross to carry and have no averse effect on my own convictions.

Interview with L C Land

Firstly, thank you for doing this interview at such short notice.

My pleasure. Thank you for taking an interest.

I know you’re on a tight schedule today, so I’ll make this as quick as I can. Your latest novel The Fantastilicious Episode of the Diminishing Error tackles the philosophical idea of mind-body dualism. Do you subscribe to dualism?

Absolutely not, and the novel is a sort of fiction-as-refutation of the idea largely attributed to the 17th century French philosopher Rene Descartes, although dualism's origins are much older. Without wading into a pool of metaphysical jargon, this story sets out to counter the rather persistent belief in a disembodied soul or self that is independent of, or only tenuously connected to, the body.

So what is the story about?

Without giving away too much, the heroes are a young brother and sister whose parents, a scientist and an engineer, are charged with treason and sentenced to hard labour for life by a repressive theocracy that preaches dualism as a means of controlling the populace. But our irrepressible heroes meet some unlikely allies in their quest to find and rescue their parents.

Capitalism: a convenient scapegoat

In his book Supercapitalism, a critique on the adverse effects of turbo-charged capitalism in tandem with a weakened democracy, economist Robert Reich writes:

Capitalism's role is to enlarge the economic pie. How the slices are divided and whether they are applied to private goods like personal computers or public goods like clean air is up to society to decide. This is the role we assign to democracy.

This is in response to the common accusation of capitalism being the fountainhead of all sorts of social and environmental ills, from widening inequalities of income and wealth to greater job insecurity to climate change. This simplistic view is inaccurate and lays far too many sins at the feet of what is essentially a neutral tool of material and social progress.