Can We Please Try to Stop Politicising Incomparable Things in Clusters?

And instead go with the best evidence available in each case?

One of the things that most makes me lose faith in our species is our tendency to form our beliefs about what is true based on our political positions and to do so in clusters of issues that don’t actually have any relation to each other. Here are just a few of them.

1. Critical Social Justice theories (wokeness) are largely false & counterproductive to improving social injustice.

2. The UK is better off outside the European Union.

3. Masks and vaccines are ineffective in limiting the spread and severity of Covid19.

4. Climate change is not being influenced by human actions.

My own (provisional and subject to revision based on evidence) positions on these are:

1. True

2. False

3. False

4. False

Nevertheless, it is frequently assumed that because I am very vocal in my opposition to Critical Social Justice and advocate for liberalism instead, that I will hold all of the other positions as well. I know this because of the number of times I have been asked to contribute to discussions on the last three with the assumption that I will take a position contrary to the one that I actually have. This is infuriating for two reasons.

Firstly, it is unwarranted for anyone to believe that the fact that I have spent twelve years studying the evolution of postmodern thought into current “woke” theories and activism in any way qualifies me to have respect-worthy opinions on the functioning of the EU, epidemiology or climate science. It simply doesn’t. On those last three topics, I have had to gain my own tentative opinions by reading accessible breakdowns for the layperson written by people who do have relevant expertise and differing opinions.

In the case of the Brexit vote that I participated in, I was forced to accept that the three months I had to gain an understanding of the functioning of the EU was simply not long enough to do so. I particularly lost the will to live when it came to trying to get my head around all the documents on trade agreements and fishing rights. This is simply not my area of expertise nor my area of interest. Also, like the vast majority of people, I am reliant on scientists to form a consensus about the best way to understand and address epidemics and climate change. The fact that these consensuses adjust themselves in accordance with new evidence is a benefit and not a flaw of science. As Bertrand Russell said,

Science is at no moment quite right, but it is seldom quite wrong, and has, as a rule, a better chance of being right than the theories of the unscientific. It is, therefore, rational to accept it hypothetically.

Secondly, there is simply no rational reason for anybody who believes one or more of the above statements to be true to then believe all of them to be true. Nevertheless, it seems that very often they do and this does not appear to be because everybody other than me has somehow managed to become an expert on the evolution of postmodern thought, the workings of the European Union, epidemiology and climate science. Instead, it seems to be because of our tendency to work on loose heuristics of what we should believe in depending on what our values or moral intuitions are.

The thing that links all the issues above is the concept of liberty and an opposition to any suppression of it, particularly by powerful governing bodies. The protection of liberty, freedom of speech and belief and autonomous decision making are important moral intuitions which I share. Nevertheless, we should try to be aware of the intuitive underpinnings of them and limit the extent to which these intuitions lead us to decide what is and isn’t true. The tendency to go with intuition first and then apply ad hoc reasoning is natural to us and even useful in many situations . Jonathan Haidt discusses this at length in Righteous Minds.

Nevertheless, the issues above are either true or false. I strongly believe, based on my years of study, that the first one is true. I am inclined to believe the last three to be false based on the reading for the layperson that I have done. I am open to changing my mind on any of these given sufficient evidence to do so. I oppose any simplistic narratives demonising anybody who has a different position to me. I do not believe those who think the UK is better off outside the EU (including my husband and my parents) to be racist xenophobes and suggesting that they are is no more justifiable than suggesting I am a treasonous hater of democracy. Time will tell how this move impacts us as a country and as autonomous individuals within that country. I do wish that we could stop accusing each other of nefarious motives for having different opinions on this.

When it comes to issues of science as in the case of epidemics and climate change, it is even more ridiculous to base what one believes to be true about the management of these on moral intuitions about liberty. Instead, we should try to establish what is true first and then apply principles of liberty to way we respond to that. One can quite reasonably think that vaccines and masks are helpful in the fight to limit the impacts of Covid and oppose draconian laws that constrain citizens in oppressive ways at the same time. The arguments for and against protective measures would work so much better if we went about things this way. One can also believe that anthropogenic climate change is a real thing and that gluing oneself to roads and preventing people from getting to hospitals or damaging artwork is not going to help anything. Alternatively, people can believe that neither of these things are really true but argue against them being true using evidence and reason and not accusations that anybody who thinks they are is a woke authoritarian.

Above all, it is not helpful to cluster such disparate issues together and take a blanket position on them on political grounds rooted in moral intuitions. I would urge everybody tempted to think “I strongly believe X to be true and therefore I must also believe completely unconnected Y and Z to be true as well” to try to step away from this clustering impulse. Instead, examine issues separately as warranted, have some intellectual humility about what you do and do not know and try to apply your ethics to the facts as you can best ascertain them, rather than trying to make the facts fit your ethics. By doing this, not only are you more likely to be right more often, and thus able to address issues as they actually are, but you will also be able to help resist the increasing polarisation and pressure to accept clusters of disparate beliefs that we seem to be doing with an ever-expanding number of issues. This can only help with the development of both accurate knowledge and ethical responses to that knowledge.

Photo by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden on Unsplash