just a game

Bryan Kaplan came to Rhodes College last week. He packed out the auditorium and impressed the entire academic community. Every “renowned” social scientist and business professor at my school attended the lecture.

This is the guy who wrote “The Myth of the Rational Voter.” He discussed the major points of his famous book.

1) people do not understand how the pursuit of private profits often yield public benefits: anti-market bias.

2) people underestimate the benefits of interactions with foreigners: anti-foreign bias.

3) people equate prosperity with employment rather than productions: make-work bias.

4) people tend to think economic conditions are worse than they are: pessimism bias.

His major assumption is that when experts and non-experts disagree the expert is generally correct. (At the end of the lecture, the questions from professors were quite comical – they surely all felt themselves to be experts as well.)

He used the biases to explain how the general population makes decisions and as a means to refute that ignorant voters vote ignorantly. He called it rational irrationality. My labor teacher really liked that term – I wonder why…

I was far from impressed – despite his frail stage presence – his content was also LACKING.

Here’s the real bias he should have addressed – the faith bias. Let me first note that the faith bias has a major correlation with herd mentality.

Everyone places faith in something – even atheists. People will place faith in either an organized religion, a man made institution/movement, their friends, and/or their family.

For example, faith directed toward friends provides a point of reference for an individual. Organized religion allows a person to not only use the time proven institution as a point of reference but also all the other believers who follow same doctrine.

Friends can also direct a person’s opinion. If that person uses their friends as a point of reference, they may experience a positive mental reward from joining the movement or institution their friends belong to.

This faith brings ALL humans security. It allows us to think we are not crazy – that we’re not alone.

Many times, faith also keeps our minds from toiling over troublesome topics – such as the afterlife or moral responsibility.

Let’s face it, if the average person was left alone to create a workable society tabla rasa he would likely create something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than the contemporary and more than likely it would be INEFFECTIVE.

Faith is an important part of all human’s genotypic expression – with phenotype corollaries.

Part II of this post will substantiate why Kaplan was off with his judgment. I will also go on to discuss a visit by the CEO of St Jude’s to Rhodes – a far less public event than Kaplan’s.  He gave a lecture on the Human Genome Project - which applies to Kaplan’s faulty assumptions and my point.  I will also attack current economic practices that are hindering the advancement of the field.

People need to open their eyes.