Thoughts on thoughts

Intro

I can say with some degree of confidence that the opinions drifting about today’s political debates are held no more strongly than has been the case since the early days of our republic. Both then and now, we seem naturally determined to root beliefs deeply within an ethos, such that defending them becomes indistinguishable from defending intellect and character.

Certainly some beliefs rightly fit within this category. On a personal level, values relating to faith, justice, honor, and integrity are often held with deep conviction and are self-evident to an extent that they require little defense. At a community level, shared values might entail freedom, opportunity, economic security, and equal treatment under the law.

Public policies, on the other hand, are the manifestations of these values. They serve as the conduit through which we can achieve outcomes that protect our shared vision for America.

But while there is some consensus on what constitutes the values themselves, there is much disagreement as to what policy solutions allow us to attain them. Therefore, the conflict inherent to our polarized public discourse is most often rooted in the means rather than the ends. Simply making this distinction should help cool our tempers. For example, I would venture to assume that most Americans want less gun violence, but we diverge on which policies are needed to attain it.

But instead of serving to cool tempers, political debates are often built around personal attacks and self-defensive logic that seem to entrench us in existing beliefs, and the byproduct is a widening chasm of dissention that might otherwise be filled with middle ground. The divisiveness runs counter to the edification of our communities, which our democracy needs for nourishment.

Given the range and intensity of opinions about public policies that, once implemented, define and protect our values as a society, it’s worth considering ways to improve our political interactions.

How to Think by Alan Jacobs

Alan Jacobs dives headfirst into our unproductive political discourse in his book How to Think. The book points out how thoughtful debate and deliberate thinking have eroded and lays out a structure through which we can recover them.  He gives pause to our pursuit of being right for its own sake and to our tendency of complacency towards curating our own beliefs.

I won’t attempt to summarize his entire book or even claim that I could re-construct his logic in a way that would add any sort of value to the conversation. But I will draw from a few of his ideas to illustrate two ways in which we can improve our discourse on policy matters. It begins with a conceptual exercise to more honestly critique our own thoughts and “clean house” intellectually. The second is a more practical method of ensuring better debate outcomes.

Step 1 – Curating our own thoughts

Jacobs points to our tendency to deal with threats to our beliefs by drawing lines in the sand, so to speak. We bucket “us” and “them” and defend “us” at all costs. But, in spending our mental and emotional energy to defend, Jacobs argues that we actually forgo the process of thinking altogether. This, in turn, ensures the further entrenchment of both sides, failing to build any consensus around common goals.

Ending this cycle requires fundamental change in how we approach thinking about policy ideas. The primary adjustment is to challenge our own beliefs, which is one of the underlying directives of Jacobs’ book.

But this approach threatens us on two fronts – our egos and our mental efforts (or lack thereof).

First, pride often prevents us from acknowledging errors in logic or perceived truths and from subsequently changing our views. Letting go of our need to be right sounds a bit scary, but it’s also liberating. Second, challenging our beliefs forces us to turn off our intellectual cruise control and discard the tired bullet points we learned years ago to fend off arguments thrown against our ideas.

So, challenging our own views of public policies amounts to challenging what holds us back from forming the right views. In other words, we need humility and rigor to guide our thought process.

Another author lends credence to this approach. Philip Tetlock wrote a book a couple of years back called Superforecasting, which explores how to structure an approach to predicting future events, a practice common in most industries and government.

Although not directly related to Jacob’s work, Tetlock’s book is complementary in two ways. First, there are similarities between the practice of forecasting events and debating public policy. Both require us to make many assumptions and rigorously examine existing information to form opinions on how future events or outcomes will unfold. Second, the qualities that Tetlock ascribes to prescient forecasters are nearly identical in spirit to the ones Jacobs tells us are necessary to challenge our own beliefs.

Tetlock, for example, notes that the most astute thinkers are open-minded, careful, curious, and – above all – self-critical. This should serve as encouragement for those unwilling to challenge their personal views for fear that changing them would reflect negatively on their intellectual prowess.

He goes on to say that doubting our own views is not a fearful thing. In fact, the absence of it should raise red flags. “Declarations of high confidence often tell you only that someone was able to piece together a coherent story but not necessarily a true one.”

Let me pause here to clarify that I’m not saying all truth is relative and that there cannot be absolutes. In fact, Jacobs reminds us that committing to sincere thinking does not mean being uncertain about what’s right; “it means being scrupulous about finding the best means to get there,” which should push us to seek allies rather than enemies.

Step 2 – How then should we debate?

Now that we know how to structure a more productive internal thought process, how should we approach thinking with others?

One of the more practical examples given in Jacobs’ book is a story of an author who attended debates at the Long Now Foundation. Debates hosted by the organization require speakers to summarize the opponent’s argument to their liking before making a case of their own. This means that each participant must truly listen to and consider their counterpart and provide a respectful summary – a type of immersion or method-acting, as he describes it.

The exercise prevents us from spending time trying to quietly refute an opponent’s argument while they’re still talking, the aforementioned pitfall to which many of us frequently succumb. It also limits the manipulation of words and intentions that we tend to inject into debates when we misrepresent someone’s comments to better fit our rebuttal.

In this environment, winning a debate has much less to do with one-liners and sound bites. In fact, winning becomes about genuine reflection and the better understanding of policy issues. And if both parties are committed to this, the ultimate result could be greater consensus as one side or the other changes their views. Shouldn’t this be our goal – truly convincing someone rather than making them feel shamed or intellectually inferior?

Well, if you want to count debate victories with the number of converts you make, you have to also be open to being one yourself. Jacobs tells that when the Yale Political Union – a collegiate debate society – interviews for positions on the debate team, candidates are asked whether they have ever changed their own positions during a debate. On this topic, one of its members stated, “If you hadn’t had to jettison some of your ideas several years in, we had our doubts about how honestly and deeply you were engaging in debate.”

Conclusion

Whether or not we actually change our minds about an issue as the result of debate is not the ultimate test of good thinking. Rather, the value of the exercise is the internal transformation that happens in the process of becoming willing to change our mind. This change in perspective signals that our personal priority is no longer simply to win an argument but to find real solutions, regardless of who or where they come from. This is what it means to think. And being purposeful about how we do it is when we start to make progress.

A former Senate staffer (@jdwallner) recently offered some timely perspective on a related topic with a simple reminder that (slightly paraphrased), “Conflict is not always bad. Consensus is not always good. What’s key is remembering that there is no substitute for thinking.”

Reasonable people can disagree on the mechanics we put in motion to achieve policy goals – from gun control laws to school choice and everything in between. Over time though and as data collection improves, we come to understand more about policy outcomes, and it may not always jive with the political or economic theory we studied in college. Since none of us have access to perfect information or can consistently forecast the future, we should adopt a mindset of pursuing good ideas rather than being right. At least then we will have established a workable framework for getting public policy right.

Our personal approach to forming opinions should include equal parts rigor and humility. Our goal as a society should be less about becoming like-minded and more about becoming like-hearted. A mutually sincere interest in finding policy solutions for shared values should guide our debates.