Status Trumps Arguments

Robin Hanson:

Are elites nicer than other people? No, but they are better at being nice contingently, in the right situations where niceness is rewarded. And also with being mean contingently, in the situations where that is rewarded. Other people aren’t as good on average with correlating their niceness with rewards for niceness. A similar pattern applies to elites and arguments.

In a world with many strong prediction markets, social consensus would be set by the people willing and able to trade in those markets. Which could be most anyone. And those traders would in general be responsive to good arguments, as they are on the hook to win or lose a lot of money if they fail to listen to good arguments. So then arguments would be a powerful force for producing better beliefs.

But in our world, the perceived social consensus is mostly set by elites. That is, by whatever seems to be elites’ shared opinion. And so the power of arguments depends on elites being willing and able to listen to them. Do they?

Many elites are selected for their ability to generate and evaluate good arguments. So many are quite able to listen. But as with being nice, elites are especially good at a contingent strategy: they listen to and generate good arguments when they are rewarded for that, but not otherwise.