Jeff Wilder said:
While I understand your analogy ("Voodoo ... voodoo economics ... ") and the illustrations you used earlier from academia, I've simply never seen it work like that.
Oh, I have. I've both read about it and seen it personally.
By the way, dismissing the Laffer Curve as just "Voodoo Economics" hardly suggests an open mind and illustrates the attitude that I'm talking about. "Yeah, I read an article about the Laffer Curve. That's that Voodoo Economics thing, right? I already know all I need to know about that." Turn critical mind off. You may not be doing that but a lot of people do.
I've worked in tax enforcement and find that Ivory Tower economists, both on the left and right, tend to ignore the entire issue of compliance and how tax rates and collection methods affect compliance. Let's just say that my home state wound up with a tax that was actually costing the state money because they non-compliance was nearly universal, the way it was being collected could not be legally enforced, and the rebate mechanism for those who were due a refund on the tax was easily abused. In essence, the state was not only barely collecting taxes but it was refunding money it never collected.
My point here is that the importance of the compliance variable increases as tax rates increase (and the benefit of avoiding a tax instead of complying with it increases) such that it can eat up any benefit of increasing the tax rate producing, well, a Laffer Curve all by itself. Most economists seem to live in a perfect world where everyone dutifully pays their taxes no matter how high the rate goes or how it is collected and enforced. As a result, they rarely consider compliance and, even when they do, it seems like they live in a fantasy world. And in my experience, such experts are less likely to listen to what I have to say about compliance than people who are not experts because they don't want messy real world imperfections messing up their clean theories.
Jeff Wilder said:
Just to summarize, so that you understand that I understand, your argument is that at a certain point an individual's education ossifies his ability to absorb new information and use it to reevaluate his views.
To be more accurate, it doesn't ossify their ability to absorb information but it
can and
may ossify their interest and desire to absorb new information and reevaluate their views. I think part of the disagreement is that your focus is ability while my focus is use. I personally don't care if they have a better ability to evaluate other opinions if, in practice, they never really do.
Jeff Wilder said:
Rather than look at new information and wonder, "Now how might that change what I've always believed?" he instead looks at new information and either (1) dismisses the new information as "flukey" or otherwise invalid or (2) wonders, "Now how can I make this new information fit what I've always believed?"
Sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's simply a matter of thinking that they already understand the new information even when they might not ("That Laffer Curve is just a part of Voodoo Economics and we all know that supply side economics and been utterly disproven.") or filing new information into a category or pattern they already know rather than really looking at it to see if it's different.
(I'm not looking to debate supply side economics with you here. I'm simply pointing out that if a person decides that an issue like supply side economics has already been resolved and is no longer worthy of serious consideration, they'll often dismiss anything that looks or smells like a discussion of supply side economics as unworthy of their time to even consider.)
Jeff Wilder said:
I dunno. Maybe I'm simply lucky (or equipped with exceptional taste), in that the highly educated people I know do not do this, and maybe I'm giving the highly educated people on the "Other Side" way too much credit, but my experience (and belief) is that such individuals nearly always know when they're seeing information that doesn't jibe with the viewpoints they present to the world.
I've given you several published examples so far of highly educated people failing to question their own assumptions and even believing some pretty absurd things. I know anecdotal evidence is funny that way but perhaps I should point out that I'm offering specific examples (and could provide plenty more) and you don't seem to be offering any specific counter examples which, to me, looks an awful lot like what I'm talking about here. Have you read the articles and examples I offered? I ask because you also seem somewhat reluctant to question your own assumptions and conclusion.
Jeff Wilder said:
Understand, my definition of open-minded doesn't require that people express a change of opinion upon learning new and contradictory information ... it only requires that they be willing and able to evaluate the information. Whether or not they then openly express a change of opinion has more to do with ethics and honesty (and, frankly, self-esteem and other psychological factors) than it has to do with open-mindedness.
Oh, I get that and think I pretty much agree with you on that.
Jeff Wilder said:
Imagine a guy who, given all available information, is simply never wrong in the conclusions he draws from that information. (Yes, I know, such people don't really exist, although we think we do.) This guy may very well, and very validly, never change his opinion on a given subject, assuming that any new evidence continues to support his opinion. Yet although he never changes his opinion, he is nevertheless extraordinarily open-minded. He considers and evaluates all new information.
I've rarely seen such a person, which is why I think your idea is nice in theory but nearly non-existent in practice. What often seems to happen when people spend years being right (or having people tell them that they are right), they often forget how to know when they are wrong and start simply assuming that they aren't, even when the evidence suggests otherwise. In the example I provided from Lawrence Keeley, he had simply read so many books and talked to so many professors who were certain that prehistoric people were peaceful and never questioned that assumption that he considered it a settled issue and never questioned it himself, even when he was digging up large numbers of human remains that were clearly victims of homicide.
Frankly, I think that's human nature. Life is too short to constantly question everything we believe so people consider certain issues settled and go from there, never questioning them again.
Years ago, James Burke began one of the episodes of his first Connections series in front of a nuclear power plant to make a point. How does the average person know that a nuclear power plant is safe or not? It's likely that most of the people who built the plant don't even understand every system or structure in the building because it's simply too complex for one person to know everything that they would need to know to fully understand how everything in that plant works. So instead we rely on experts and a less-than-perfect understanding of the various components and make a more or less educated guess. The same is true of airplanes, etc. We live in a society where we simply can't know everything about everything so we have to choose when to investigate and when to trust. Even highly educated people. In fact, highly educated people know to much for it to be practical for them to constantly question what they already know.
But where their education becomes a liability is when they think they know more than they really do. That's why there is the saying, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." That's also why I said that knowing what you don't know is often more important than what you do know when it comes to being open minded.
Jeff Wilder said:
Now note that nowhere in the above paragraph does it state what viewpoints the guy expresses.
I don't think that really matters. And note that I'm not saying that such a person couldn't exist. I'm saying that becoming highly educated does not necessarily produce such a person and that there are aspects of becoming highly educated that can produce a very different sort of person. As a result, I simply don't think it's fair to say that more education always produces a more open-minded person, even if you or I think it should. And I can give you plenty more examples if you want but I'm trying not to make this any more political or personal than it needs to be.
