Hood: It was Philip Tetlock, who is an economic psychologist, who first pointed that out. The fact that you might deliberate over it, the fact that you might even have to apply some kind of cost benefit analysis is in itself abhorrent. Because it's a violation of what should be an instantaneous assumption, something that the group should automatically feel. Leon Kass called that the gut reaction, the politics of decision making, that you should just feel the answer to be correct. These are all driven by intuitions. The moral disgust that we feel is again something that you shouldn't have to think about. But that's really quite arbitrary, because in many ways—I think the hospital administrator example is perfect for that—in terms of what's best for the group, it's clear that these are tough decisions. In fact, it's clearly a decision that people do agonize about. But if you put them into the open domain they'd be very reluctant to say that or to admit that publicly. But that's in fact exactly what does have to go when you're in a position to hold the purse strings.
Reason: How does this play out in health care policy?
Hood: I would suspect that there are decisions made behind closed doors that are generally not discussed in the open domain because they would evoke so many problems. Genetic modification being one of those. We can quite easily talk about inserting various genes, but when people learn they come from jellyfish, for example, then an intuition kicks in that there's some violation of God's law or there's some sort of Frankensteinian type of science going on. You almost have to cover it up with an anonymity of jargon. I think the people who are making the decisions are always quite aware that there's always a sensitive set of issues, which are sensitive because they violate the sacred values.
Reason: So people have strong views about which kind of thinking they prefer—intuitive over rational, in this case—even if they can't articulate it. When we choose our leaders, we want the guy with the right guts and then we'll accept whatever other decisions he makes.
Hood: That's right. The fact that people can't articulate it, that they feel these responses before they've had a chance to actually reason them out, is part of the problem. And of course, not everyone's the same. We should point out there are many people who actually will sit down and ponder things out. But you know, they tend not to be the people who get the votes. We tend to go for the more emotionally charged, decisive, emphatic members of our society who can hit upon these—I think that was why Bush worked so well. He said a lot of stupid things, but he was a very powerful communicator and he was very impassioned. I think he was very good at that. Obama, he's very good as well, but he seems more cautious, more reasoned, a different style, which is very interesting. So we shall see how all that pans out.
Reason: So are you defending a kind of noble lie proposition, to circumvent intuitive responses?
Hood: I'm pretty certain that we probably wouldn't have made such strides and advances in a lot of our medical technologies if everything had been in an open forum and an open platform for discussion. I think there would have been a lot of concerns which come from—I'm not saying ignorance—but more driven by intuitions about what's right and wrong. It's only relatively recently that powerful lobby groups have gone out to try and investigate these things. But, of course, it can create some real problems.
The intuition about the triple vaccine, for example. People try to make sense about autism, which seems to come from nowhere. All it took was one scientist to make a claim about single vaccines and then people started to see patterns everywhere. They started to recognize; Oh, the person they knew who had a vaccination and they see that was causally determined. And you can show them as much statistics as you like, and all the studies that have been done in Scandinavia to prove that there is no relationship between the issue of triple vaccine and autism. And yet people still draw that causal link because of the fact that these things just happen to appear in time. That's an example about the co-occurrence and two events—vaccination and an increase in autism—these people say that they're directly related and it's a very difficult one that's out there, it's very difficult to dispel these sorts of beliefs. So yeah, there are situations where sometimes it's best to keep the information reined in rather than just letting it spill out into the public and then eventually trying to get it back under control. It's just too difficult.
Katherine Mangu-Ward is an associate editor at Reason.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
|6.12.09 @ 3:16PM|#
I don't see a refusal to wear the sweater of a serial killer as "superstition," but rather only a desire not to be associated in any way with that person.
|6.12.09 @ 3:23PM|#
Katherine Mangu-Ward spoke with Hood earlier this week, via Skype.
The world has clearly moved on.
Thankee sai.
Mike|6.12.09 @ 3:30PM|#
After reading this article, all I can say is "Wow, we are all really screwed." Not only do people often not think rationally when emotions get in the way, but, even more ominously, people hate others that are willing to think rationally when most aren't.
Say it with me now: transhumanism
|6.12.09 @ 3:32PM|#
Like voting!
dhex|6.12.09 @ 3:33PM|#
Say it with me now: transhumanism
but does it get more irrational than the nerd gnostics and the singularity routine? "oh to leave this tired body behind..."
Syd|6.12.09 @ 3:41PM|#
We can quite easily talk about inserting various genes, but when people learn they come from jellyfish, for example, then an intuition kicks in that there's some violation of God's law or there's some sort of Frankensteinian type of science going on.
And some of us just think it's cool. The jellyfish genes are ones they use to make cats, mice and monkeys glow in the dark.
|6.12.09 @ 3:46PM|#
Brian Caplan said in his book that voters intuitively distrust market systems. We're hardwired for small tribal communal groups, and making a profit off of someone else is wrong. It's okay to make a living, but you shouldn't make more than anyone else... unless you're the chief or shaman.
The market as an emergent system arising out of the the interaction of individuals is an unintuitive concept. Hell, idea of a positive sum game is unintuitive. Most people just can't grasp that someone can make money without first taking it from another.
|6.12.09 @ 4:02PM|#
After thinking it over rationally, my wife and I decided to go ahead and use the bedroom where her mother died and sleep in that bed.
Now every so often we suspect that we too may die, eventually.
|6.12.09 @ 4:33PM|#
Strange. A Katherine Mangu-Ward post involving serial killers and jelly fish and not one mention of eating stuff.
Brian Sorgatz|6.12.09 @ 4:48PM|#
After reading this article, all I can say is "Wow, we are all really screwed."
Cheer up, Mike. If we were screwed, we wouldn't have had the economic and moral progress of the last few centuries.
wingnutx|6.12.09 @ 4:51PM|#
The world has clearly moved on.
Thankee sai.
Can we paint her hands red?
|6.12.09 @ 4:54PM|#
Strange. A Katherine Mangu-Ward post involving serial killers and jelly fish and not one mention of eating stuff.
I ate his jellyfish with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. There, happy now?
|6.12.09 @ 5:27PM|#
Like voting!
Super awesome ninja win for HoneyBunny.
|6.12.09 @ 6:42PM|#
It's perfectly rational not to want to wear a serial killer's sweater. While wearing it you would be reminded of the subject of serial killing; you would associate your unpleasant thoughts and feelings with the tactile feel of the sweater; and you would feel uncomfortable.
It's perfectly understandable, rational, and reasonable human nature not to wear such a sweater.
|6.12.09 @ 7:23PM|#
About the sweater, an interesting experiment would be to offer randomized groups $10 to put on a "serial killer's" sweater for 15 minutes. Offer another group the same deal with a normal sweater.
If the groups differ, then we can assume there is an irrational fear of evil clinging to sweaters.
baldanders|6.12.09 @ 9:56PM|#
I've had a very sick kitten recently (OK, probably could have put that better, given this audience, but...). I decided to bring in a stray cat and her kittens and then wound up paying some ungodly amount of money to give one of them a blood transfusion- like $1200.00. I'm a fucking idiot.. anyway, I left a small plastic container of "prescription food" (don't get me started on what a scam that is) on the counter with some water and a bit of cat food in it, plus a couple of pieces of silverware. In between dealing with almost dead kitties and trying to scrub kitten shit out of my carpet every 15 minutes I forgot about it until it began to smell really bad. When I touched the silverware I noticed that the water kept churning longer than it should have. Mainly because some sort of pupal insect had taken hold in the aqueous environment.
Now, I'm not squeamish, really. I mean, I've put on hip waders and surfed around in big tanks of rotten meat destined for- well, coincidentally, probably pet food. Worse than that, I've worked in a fair number of restaurants. But you know what? I threw the silverware away. A fork and a spoon.
I was out of bleach and it was about 2 bucks worth of silverware, and I didn't want to be eating some nice meal in 3 months and suddenly think "Hey, is this _that_ spoon?" Now if it were the family silver, I wouldn't have done that. But my family silver is available for sale (by someone else) online for about 35k, and I haven't had the balls to buy it back yet so...
Is that rational, or not? I mean- I know I could sterilize it (a lot more easily than I can sterilize my entire kitchen), and I know that there's microbes everywhere... but I don't want to have to _think_ about it while eating.
baldanders|6.12.09 @ 10:01PM|#
I should add that I would be pretty psyched to have a serial killer's seater. I would wear it every time I drank absinthe from the skull of a virgin who committed suicide after I ruined her for marriage.
Mike|6.12.09 @ 10:11PM|#
"Cheer up, Mike. If we were screwed, we wouldn't have had the economic and moral progress of the last few centuries."
That and a beer just made me feel better.
zoltan|6.12.09 @ 10:32PM|#
I should add that I would be pretty psyched to have a serial killer's seater. I would wear it every time I drank absinthe from the skull of a virgin who committed suicide after I ruined her for marriage.
One of the most superior sentences I've seen in a while--content-wise, of course.
Incidentally, I had an absinthe-lined drink last night. Delicious.
Also, it is irrational to not want to wear a serial killer's sweater, as well as not wanting to eat off the maggot-tainted fork and knife.
baldanders|6.12.09 @ 11:27PM|#
"content-wise, of course."
Thanks. And, yeah, well- spelling-wise I guess it wasn't so hot. But you know what? Fuck this bourgeois concern with spelling. Fucking Frenchmen forced "orthography" on us stout English yo-men anyway.
"Also, it is irrational to not want to wear a serial killer's sweater, as well as not wanting to eat off the maggot-tainted fork and knife."
See, I'm not sure this is really true, unless you use a very narrow definition of "rational." I have certain prejudices that amount to something like revulsion. Now, if I had to go live in the Amazon and eat grubs cut out of logs it would be irrational for me to resist that because the cost of resisting would be higher than the cost of the emotional distress involved in discarding my prejudices.
But I think I was wise to toss my silverware, if I take my existing prejudices into account. I mean- it was just a fork and a spoon, man ;).
Anyway, I just paid $1200.00 to give a kitten a blood transfusion and then came home and ate some lamb so... I clearly think that my prejudices ought to be taken into consideration when I think about what is rational and what is not.
baldanders|6.13.09 @ 5:14AM|#
It should be noted that women tend to have an overpowering urge to be impregnated by me. It's just a function of their biology. But it should also be noted that I have an overpowering urge to wear a condom.
People... almost as good as monkeys, but not quite.
|6.13.09 @ 11:10AM|#
how is the kitten ever going to be able to pay you back? kittens are a terrible credit risk.
Mike|6.13.09 @ 3:03PM|#
"It should be noted that women tend to have an overpowering urge to be impregnated by me. It's just a function of their biology. But it should also be noted that I have an overpowering urge to wear a condom.
People... almost as good as monkeys, but not quite."
You are truly a poet.
|6.13.09 @ 5:27PM|#
Brandybuck articulates a thought I've often had - that the beneficence of capitalism is counterintuitive. I hadn't linked it, though, to the notion of an emergent property, and the additional counterintuitivity therein. Nice.
|6.13.09 @ 6:40PM|#
Out of curiosity, where does one get the blood to give a kitten a transfusion? Do cats have blood types ? Do different varieties of cats have different blood types.? Probably one of those questions I never have needed to ask before and never will again.
|6.13.09 @ 6:45PM|#
Hood said that Obama seems more cautious, more reasoned. The important word here is "seems".
|6.13.09 @ 7:45PM|#
old timer - cats have blood types just like we do (no O though) - and you can freeze feline blood or take it from another like typed cat.
|6.14.09 @ 8:21AM|#
Thanks for the info, after all my curiosity then didn't kill a cat and I'm happy.
|6.14.09 @ 11:08AM|#
fishfry:
"It's perfectly rational not to want to wear a serial killer's sweater. While wearing it you would be reminded of the subject of serial killing; you would associate your unpleasant thoughts and feelings with the tactile feel of the sweater; and you would feel uncomfortable.
It's perfectly understandable, rational, and reasonable human nature not to wear such a sweater."
While that may be accurate (for some) it assumes that it even IS a "Serial Killers Sweater".
----------------------------------------
My first thought was Bullshit! No way a serial killers clothing was released from evidence to a college professor!
Anyone who'd actually believe the claim perhaps has the larger issue?
|6.14.09 @ 11:33PM|#
ho ya gonna call? The Ghostbusters are back for an all new adventure in Ghostbusters: The Video Game. With Manhattan overrun again by supernatural creatures, take on the role of a new recruit joining the famous Ghostbusters team. Equipped with a variety of unique equipment and gadgets, hunt, fight, and wrangle a wide range of ghosts in an all-new battle to save New York City from its latest paranormal plague.
Release Date: June 16, 2009
Captain Nemo|6.15.09 @ 12:47AM|#
Woman have an instinctual urge to nurture, to prepare them for child raising. It is instinctual, so all it takes is some big eyed cuddly creature to fulfill that urge. It doesn't matter if a cat is not really like a baby, the cat is enough to stimulate that lizard part of the brain to release endorphins. Pets are to having babies what masturbation is to making babies.
The money she saved by having a litter of cats instead of human babies pays for that cat blood transfusion 1000 times over. The cat pays its debt in the form of labor as a surrogate child.
Pingback| 12.9.09 @ 11:01PM
Dear Mr. Gacy » “Murderabilia” Web Sites’ Popularity and Infamy links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Scarpe Nike Italia|8.9.11 @ 11:12PM|#
is good