1/25/2018 Conflict Vs.

Mistake | Slate Star Codex

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CONFLICT VS. MISTAKE

P OSTED ON JANUARY 2 4, 20 18 BY SC OTT ALEXANDER

Jacobite – which is apparently still a real magazine and not a one-off

gag making fun of Jacobin – summarizes their article Under-Theorizing
Government as “You’ll never hear the terms ‘principal-agent problem,’
‘rent-seeking,’ or ‘aligning incentives’ from socialists. That’s because
they expect ideology to solve all practical considerations of
governance.”

There have been some really weird and poorly-informed socialist

critiques of public choice theory lately, and this article generalizes from
those to a claim that Marxists just don’t like considering the hard
technical question of how to design a good government. This would
explain why their own governments so often fail. Also why, whenever
existing governments are bad, Marxists immediately jump to the
conclusion that they must be run by evil people who want them to be
bad on purpose.

In trying to think of how a Marxist might respond to this attack, I

thought of commenter no_bear_so_low’s conflict vs. mistake dichotomy
(itself related to the three perspectives of sociology). To massively
oversimplify:

Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. The

State is diseased. We’re all doctors, standing around arguing over the
best diagnosis and cure. Some of us have good ideas, others have bad
ideas that wouldn’t help, or that would cause too many side effects.
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deas t at ou d t e p, o t at ou d cause too a y s de e ects

Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Different blocs with different

interests are forever fighting to determine whether the State exists to
enrich the Elites or to help the People.

Mistake theorists view debate as essential. We all bring different forms

of expertise to the table, and once we all understand the whole
situation, we can use wisdom-of-crowds to converge on the treatment
plan that best fits the need of our mutual patient, the State. Who wins
on any particular issue is less important creating an environment where
truth can generally prevail over the long term.

Conflict theorists view debate as having a minor clarifying role at best.

You can “debate” with your boss over whether or not you get a raise,
but only with the shared understanding that you’re naturally on
opposite sides, and the “winner” will be based less on objective moral
principles than on how much power each of you has. If your boss
appeals too many times to objective moral principles, he’s probably
offering you a crappy deal.

Mistake theorists treat different sides as symmetrical. There’s the side

that wants to increase the interest rate, and the side that wants to
decrease it. Both sides have about the same number of people. Both
sides include some trustworthy experts and some loudmouth trolls.
Both sides are equally motivated by trying to get a good economy. The
only interesting difference is which one turns out (after all the statistics
have been double-checked and all the relevant points have been
debated) to be right about the matter at hand.

Conflict theorists treat the asymmetry of sides as their first and most
important principle. The Elites are few in number, but have lots of
money and influence. The People are many but poor – yet their spirit is
indomitable and their hearts are true. The Elites’ strategy will always be
to sow dissent and confusion; the People’s strategy must be to remain
united Politics is won or lost by how well each side plays its respective
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united. Politics is won or lost by how well each side plays its respective
hand.

Mistake theorists love worrying about the complicated and paradoxical

effects of social engineering. Did you know that anti-drug programs in
school actually increase drug use? Did you know that many studies find
raising the minimum wage hurts the poor? Did you know that executing
criminals actually costs more money than imprisoning them for life?
This is why we can’t trust our intuitions about policy, and we need to
have lots of research and debate, and eventually trust what the
scientific authorities tell us.

Conflict theorists think this is more often a convenient excuse than a

real problem. The Elites get giant yachts, and the People are starving to
death on the streets. And as soon as somebody says that maybe we
should take a little bit of the Elites’ money to feed the People, some
Elite shill comes around with a glossy PowerPoint presentation
explaining why actually this would cause the Yellowstone supervolcano
to erupt and kill everybody. And just enough People believe this that
nobody ever gets around to achieving economic justice, and the Elites
buy even bigger yachts, and the People keep starving.

Mistake theorists think you can save the world by increasing

intelligence. You make technocrats smart enough to determine the best
policy. You make politicians smart enough to choose the right
technocrats and implement their advice effectively. And you make
voters smart enough to recognize the smartest politicians and sweep
them into office.

Conflict theorists think you can save the world by increasing passion.
The rich and powerful win because they already work together
effectively; the poor and powerless will win only once they unite and
stand up for themselves. You want activists tirelessly informing
everybody of the important causes that they need to fight for. You want
community organizers forming labor unions or youth groups. You want
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protesters ready on short notice whenever the enemy tries to pull a fast
one. And you want voters show up every time, and who know which
candidates are really fighting for the people vs. just astroturfed shills.

For a mistake theorist, passion is inadequate or even suspect. Wrong

people can be just as loud as right people, sometimes louder. If two
doctors are debating the right diagnosis in a difficult case, and the
patient’s crazy aunt hires someone to shout “IT’S LUPUS!” really loud in
front of their office all day, that’s not exactly helping matters. If a group
of pro-lupus protesters block the entry to the hospital and refuse to let
any of the staff in until the doctors agree to diagnose lupus, that’s a
disaster. All that passion does is use pressure or even threats to
introduce bias into the important work of debate and analysis.

For a conflict theorist, intelligence is inadequate or even suspect. It

doesn’t take a supergenius to know that poor farm laborers working
twelve hour days in the scorching heat deserve more than a $9/hour
minimum wage when the CEO makes $9 million. The supergenius is the
guy with the PowerPoint presentation saying this will make the
Yellowstone supervolcano erupt.

Mistake theorists think that free speech and open debate are vital, the
most important things. Imagine if your doctor said you needed a
medication from Pfizer – but later you learned that Pfizer owned the
hospital, and fired doctors who prescribed other companies’ drugs, and
that the local medical school refused to teach anything about non-Pfizer
medications, and studies claiming Pfizer medications had side effects
were ruthlessly suppressed. It would be a total farce, and you’d get out
of that hospital as soon as possible into one that allowed all viewpoints.

Conflict theorists think of free speech and open debate about the same
way a 1950s Bircher would treat avowed Soviet agents coming into
neighborhoods and trying to convince people of the merits of
Communism. Or the way the average infantryman would think of
l d i hl t
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enemy planes dropping pamphlets saying “YOU CANNOT WIN,
SURRENDER NOW”. Anybody who says it’s good to let the enemy walk
in and promote enemy ideas is probably an enemy agent.

Mistake theorists think it’s silly to complain about George Soros, or the
Koch brothers. The important thing is to evaluate the arguments; it
doesn’t matter who developed them.

Conflict theorists think that stopping George Soros / the Koch brothers
is the most important thing in the world. Also, they’re going to send me
angry messages saying I’m totally unfair to equate righteous crusaders
for the People like George Soros / the Koch brothers with evil selfish
arch-Elites like the Koch brothers / George Soros.

Mistake theorists think racism is a cognitive bias. White racists have

mistakenly inferred that black people are dumber or more criminal.
Mistake theorists find narratives about racism useful because they’re a
sort of ur-mistake that helps explain how people could make otherwise
inexplicable mistakes, like electing Donald Trump or opposing
[preferred policy].

Conflict theorists think racism is a conflict between races. White racists

aren’t suffering from a cognitive bias, and they’re not mistaken about
anything: they’re correct that white supremacy puts them on top, and
hoping to stay there. Conflict theorists find narratives about racism
useful because they help explain otherwise inexplicable alliances, like
why working-class white people have allied with rich white capitalists.

When mistake theorists criticize democracy, it’s because it gives too

much power to the average person – who isn’t very smart, and who
tends to do things like vote against carbon taxes because they don’t
believe in global warming. They fantasize about a technocracy in which
informed experts can pursue policy insulated from the vagaries of the
electorate.

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When conflict theorists criticize democracy, it’s because it doesn’t give

enough power to the average person – special interests can buy
elections, or convince representatives to betray campaign promises in
exchange for cash. They fantasize about a Revolution in which their
side rises up, destroys the power of the other side, and wins once and
for all.

Mistake theorists think a Revolution is stupid. After the proletariat (or

the True Patriotic Americans, or whoever) have seized power, they’re
still faced with the same set of policy problems we have today, and no
additional options. Communism is intellectually bankrupt since it has no
good policy prescriptions for a communist state. If it did have good
policy prescriptions for a communist state, we could test and implement
those policies now, without a revolution. Karl Marx could have saved
everyone a lot of trouble by being Bernie Sanders instead.

Conflict theorists think a technocracy is stupid. Whatever the right

policy package is, the powerful will never let anyone implement it.
Either they’ll bribe the technocrats to parrot their own preferences, or
they’ll prevent their recommendations from carrying any force. The only
way around this is to organize the powerless to defeat the powerful by
force – after which a technocracy will be unnecessary. Bernie Sanders
could have saved himself a lot of trouble by realizing everything was
rigged against him from the start and becoming Karl Marx.

Mistake theorists naturally think conflict theorists are making a

mistake. On the object level, they’re not smart enough to realize that
new trade deals are for the good of all, or that smashing the state
would actually lead to mass famine and disaster. But on the more
fundamental level, the conflict theorists don’t understand the Principle
of Charity, or Hanlon’s Razor of “never attribute to malice what can be
better explained by stupidity”. They’re stuck at some kind of troglodyte
first-square-of-the-glowing-brain-meme level where they think forming
mobs and smashing things can solve incredibly complicated social
engineering problems The correct response is to teach them Philosophy
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engineering problems. The correct response is to teach them Philosophy
101.

(This is the Jacobite article above. It accuses Marxists of just not

understanding the relevant theories. It’s saying that there’s all this
great academic work about how to design a government, and Marxists
are too stupid to look into it. It’s so easy to picture one doctor savaging
another: “Did you even bother to study Ingerstein’s latest paper on
neuroimmunology before you inflicted your idiotic opinions about this
case on us?”)

Conflict theorists naturally think mistake theorists are the enemy in

their conflict. On the object level, maybe they’re directly working for
the Koch Brothers or the American Enterprise Institute or whoever. But
on the more fundamental level, they’ve become part of a class that’s
more interested in protecting its own privileges than in helping the poor
or working for the good of all. The best that can be said about the best
of them is that they’re trying to protect their own neutrality, unaware
that in the struggle between the powerful and the powerless neutrality
always favors the powerful. The correct response is to crush them.

What would the conflict theorist argument against the Jacobite piece
look like? Take a second to actually think about this. Is it similar to
what I’m writing right now – an explanation of conflict vs. mistake
theory, and a defense of how conflict theory actually describes the
world better than mistake theory does?

No. It’s the Baffler’s article saying that public choice theory is racist,
and if you believe it you’re a white supremacist. If this wasn’t your
guess, you still don’t understand that conflict theorists aren’t mistake
theorists who just have a different theory about what the mistake is.
They’re not going to respond to your criticism by politely explaining
why you’re incorrect.

Is this uncharitable? I’m not sure. There’s a meta-level problem in

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trying to understand the position “don’t try to understand other

positions and engage with them on their own terms” and engage with it
on its own terms. If you succeed, you’ve failed, and if you fail, you’ve
succeeded. I am pretty sure it would be wrong to “steelman” conflict
theory into a nice cooperative explanation of how we all need to join
together, realize that conflict theory is objectively the correct way to
think, and then use this insight to help cure our mutual patient, the
State.

So if this model has any explanatory power, what do we do with it?

Consider a further distinction between easy and hard mistake theorists.

Easy mistake theorists think that all our problems come from very
stupid people making very simple mistakes; dumb people deny the
evidence about global warming; smart people don’t. Hard mistake
theorists think that the questions involved are really complicated and
require more evidence than we’ve been able to collect so far – the
weird morass of conflicting minimum wage studies is a good example
here. Obviously some questions are easier than others, but the
disposition to view questions as hard or easy in general seems to
separate into different people and schools of thought.

(Maybe there’s a further distinction between easy and hard conflict

theorists. Easy conflict theorists think that all our problems come from
cartoon-villain caricatures wanting very evil things; bad people want to
kill brown people and steal their oil, good people want world peace and
tolerance. Hard conflict theorists think that our problems come from
clashes between differing but comprehensible worldviews – for
example, people who want to lift people out of poverty through
spreading modern efficient egalitarian industrial civilization, versus
people who want to preserve traditional cultures with all their thorns
and prickles. Obviously some moral conflicts are more black-and-white
than others, but again, some people seem more inclined than others to
use one of these models.)
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This blog has formerly been Hard Mistake Theory Central, except that I
think I previously treated conflict theorists as making an Easy Mistake.
I think I was really doing the “I guess you don’t understand Philosophy
101 and realize everyone has to be charitable to each other” thing. This
was wrong of me. I don’t know how excusable it was and I’m interested
in seeing how many comments here are “This is super obvious” vs. “I
never thought about this consciously and I think I’ve just been
misunderstanding other people as behaving inexplicably badly my
whole life”. But people have previously noticed that this blog is good at
attracting representation from all across the political spectrum except
Marxists. Maybe that’s related to treating every position except theirs
with respect, and appreciating conflict theory better would fix that. I
don’t know. It could be worth a shot.

Right now I think conflict theory is probably a less helpful way of

viewing the world in general than mistake theory. But obviously both
can be true in parts and reality can be way more complicated than
either. Maybe some future posts on this, which would have to explore
issues like normative vs. descriptive, where tribalism fits in here, and
“the myth of the rational voter”. But overall I’m less sure of myself than
before and think this deserves more treatment as a hard case that
needs to be argued in more specific situations. Certainly “everyone in
government is already a good person, and just has to be convinced of
the right facts” is looking less plausible these days. At the very least, if
I want to convince other people to my position here, I actually have to
convince them – instead of using the classic Easy Mistake Theorist
tactic of “smh that people still believe this stuff in the Year Of Our Lord
2018” repeated over and over again.

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