Tag Archives: ideology

On simple answers

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Bayes’ rule exercise: is a simple or a complicated answer to a complicated problem more likely to be correct?

Depends on the conditional probabilities: if simple questions are more likely to have simple answers and complex questions complicated, then a complicated answer is more likely to be correct for a complicated problem.

It seems reasonable that the complexity of the answer is correlated with the difficulty of the problem. But this is an empirical question.

If difficult problems are likely to have complex answers, then this is an argument against slogans and ideologies. These seek to give a catchy one-liner as the answer to many problems in society. No need to think – ideology has the solution. Depending on your political leaning, poverty may be due to laziness or exploitation. The foreign policy “solution” is bombing for some, eternal appeasement for others.

The probabilistic preference for complex answers in complicated situations seems to contradict Occam’s razor (among answers equally good at explaining the facts, the simplest answer should be chosen). There is no actual conflict with the above Bayesian exercise. There, the expectation of a complex answer applies to complicated questions, while a symmetric anticipation of a simple answer holds for simple problems. The answers compared are not equally good, because one fits the structure of the question better than the other.

Which ideology is more likely to be wrong?

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Exercise in Bayes’ rule: is an ideology more likely to be wrong if it appeals relatively more to poor people than the rich?

More manipulable folks are more likely to lose their money, so less likely to be rich. Stupid people have a lower probability of making money. By Bayes, the rich are on average less manipulable and more intelligent than the poor.

Less manipulable people are less likely to find an ideology built on fallacies appealing. By Bayes, an ideology relatively more appealing to the stupid and credulous is more likely to be wrong. Due to such people being poor with a higher probability, an ideology embraced more by the poor than the rich is more likely to be fallacious.

Another exercise: is an ideology more likely to be wrong if academics like it relatively more than non-academics?

Smarter people are more likely to become academics, so by Bayes’ rule, academics are more likely to be smart. Intelligent people have a relatively higher probability of liking a correct ideology, so by Bayes, an ideology appealing to the intelligent is more likely to be correct. An ideology liked by academics is correct with a higher probability.