Cognitive biases against freedom

Why is New Labour so desperate to destroy freedom? In just one week we’ve had ID cards, a ban on smoking, the prohibition of “glorifying” terrorism and the idea of a retail regulator.

In the face of all this, we should follow Sir Peter Strawson, and regard politics the same way he regarded academic administration:

His silent yet manifest amusement at the many committee meetings he was required to attend as a professor perhaps betrayed a sense that such gatherings provided better opportunities for the observation of human folly than for the dispensation of philosophic wisdom.

I reckon New Labour’s attack on freedom is due in part to this folly, to a set of cognitive biases.

To see them, forget any nonsense about MPs being our representatives. The very fact that someone is an MP makes him unrepresentative. MPs are selected to have cognitive biases that dispose them to want to destroy freedom.

Here’s what I mean.

1. The belief that speech matters. Most of us think language merely describes reality. MPs however are more likely to believe language changes reality; they become MPs because they think rhetoric matters. This means they think talk that glorifies terrorism is more than mere words, and that laws should send “signals” – because to them, more than us, signals matter.

2. Over-confidence. Politics is a risky career in which success does not necessarily go to the meritorious; William Hague is smarter than David Cameron, Ruth Kelly more than John Prescott. The sort of people who would want to pursue such a chancy life are those with more confidence in their probabilities of success than the data would warrant. This same over-confidence makes MPs over-confident about the benefits of the laws they pass.

3. Groupthink. Politicians, more so perhaps than the rest of us, mix with like-minded people – other MPs of the same party. This further boosts their over-confidence, because their ideas, far from being challenged, are corroborated by their associates.

Sure, their beliefs are (occasionally) challenged by the media or opposition parties. But a feature of groupthink is to believe that the views of one’s enemies are less intelligent than those of one’s friends.

4. The illusion of knowledge. Having listened to days of evidence from lobbyists experts, MPs on select committees can easily commit the error of believing that the facts they have are all the facts they need. This leads them to under-weight the importance of the law of unintended consequences, or simply to ignore inherent statistical uncertainties; when did you last hear an MP talking about confidence intervals or R-squareds?

5. The salience heuristic. This illusion of knowledge causes MPs to overweight the importance of obvious, salient, possibilities, and underweight less obvious things. As Hayek pointed out, this creates a bias towards restricting freedom:

Since the value of freedom rests on the opportunities it provides for unforeseeable and unpredictable actions, we will rarely know what we lose through a particular restriction of freedom. Any such restriction, any coercion other than the enforcement of general rules, will aim at the achievement of some foreseeable particular result, but what is prevented by it will usually not be known....And so, when we decide each issue solely on what appear to be its individual merits, we always over-estimate the advantages of central direction. (Law Legislation and Liberty Vol I, p56-57.)

I suspect that MPs – by the very fact of being MPs - are more prone to all these biases than the rest of us. This doesn’t, of course, mean the rest of us are rational. It’s just that MPs are selected to have cognitive biases against freedom.

Comments

[Dander]

Banning smoking in public places is not a destruction of freedom, as you well know, Mr Stumble-mumbler!

It's making tangible the externality that smokers inflict on non-smokers.

They can still smoke, just not in my face when I'm in a public place. I know have greater freedom to go out and about without me and my family being slowly poisoned by someone else's toxic emissions.

Sorry if that sounds ranting, it's just a terse description of reality.

Smokers' freedoms have been curtailed because of the harm they do others.

[Paul Davies]

All top stuff as ever, Chris.

On a similar note: could all five of those points also be attributed to the members of blogworld in their denunciation of New Labour's attack on our liberties? :)

[Dander]

However, I agree with the main thrust of the post.

My old politics tutor was once tapped up as a potential parliamentary candidate. He reacted with horror -- what sort of person thinks he has the knowledge to spend his life telling other people what they can and cannot do?

One other bias: MPs want to change the world/country for the better. Naturally, this is very hard to do. A ban on smoking that will have profound cultural repercussions and (almost certainly) save thousands of pairs of lungs from cancerous capitulation - is one of the rare ways to make bold changes.

[david]

"Most of us think language merely describes reality."

I don't know who most of us is, but I don't believe that (I'm not in politics), and "merely" is very lame when popping up in there.

[Backword Dave]

At a guess then, David, you're in advertising or journalism. ;-) And "merely" works because it's setting the reader up for the next sentence.

Dander, you said in your first comment, "Banning smoking in public places is not a destruction of freedom ... Smokers' freedoms have been curtailed ..." and you've confused me.

Top post, Chris.

[Bishop Hill]

Dander:

A pub is private property.

[Phil]

Bishop: private property is not exempt. See .

[Phil]

Er, see http://ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20060215-nil_combustibus_profumo.html

(I hate Typepad.)

[New Economist]

Chris, aside from the retail regulator, what most of the initiatives have in common is that they are (1) quite cheap to implement but (2) attract lots of publicity and (3) accord with majority public opinion.

At a time when genuine education reform is in gridlock and huge spending rises for the NHS are no longer affordable, attempts to legislate such 'easy wins' could become ever more frequent.

Politicians were one of the first groups to understand the new 'attention economy'. Never mind the quality of the policy - look at all the press coverage!

Come back Jim Hacker, your country needs you.

[Katherine]

Of course, there is also the possibility of point 6 - that the MP's we hear about fall within points 1 to 5. They are a fairly rare breed I suppose, but there are MP's who seem to be genuinely working hard for their constituency and are the very antithesis of the George Galloway I-was-elected-on-an-issue-and-therefore-don't-have-to-do-any-other-stuff tendency.

[MatGB]

Chris, do you think that getting MPs blogging and reading blogs properly may assist in changing things?

Opening them up away from the group think and creting constructive dialogue? I think Katherine is right though; there are decent MPs, and many of them want to be decent MPs, but the system corrupts them. Hence we need to use the new technology to change it.

[Dander]

RE: Bishop Hill's comments...

A public house may be a private space according to one definition, but I think the more salient definition of the public space is one that refers to where people are free to go and engage in everyday 'civic intercourse' - if you'll excuse that high-brow description of chinwags down boozers.

If anyone still insists that banning smoking in pubs destroys freedom, then they should at the same time believe that our freedom would be extended by allowing smoking in the workplace, on public transport, airplanes, hospitals, cinemas etc. I don't see anyone campaigning to improve our freedom by taking such measures.

So unless you identify freedom with whatever the status quo has happened to throw up (and you wouldn't be alone in that irritating error), you've got to come up with a better reason to prefer the rights of smokers over non-smokers.

[tomslee]

Speaking from experience in Ontario, I can say that whatever the rights and wrongs of the smoking-in-pubs debate, you don't want to go back (at least if, like me, you are a non-smoker).

I went happily to smoke-filled pubs for years, but a few months of smoke-free air and going back into one is quite a different experience. So this move, for better or worse, is here to stay.

[Patrick Crozier]

Of course, it is just possible that politicians do the things they do because they think they'll get them elected. ID cards and the smoking ban are (I regret to say) popular. (I think the terrorism bill is more in the area of displacement activity than something that's actually going to make much difference to anyone.)

These authoritarian measures are popular because the MSM likes them. Why it is that the MSM is so against freedom, is, to my mind, the real question.

[Peter Clay]

Crozier: ID cards are quite controvertial; there are still plenty of people around who regard them as the sort of thing we fought a war to avoid. Having spent time on the streets talking to people on behalf of No2ID, I've found people having the following reasons:

- they'll stop terrorism (wrong)
- they'll keep out immigrants (racists)
- nothing to fear, nothing to hide (moralising authoritatarians)
- because we're european (!?)

Oh, and as to the Murdoch/Sky media being against freedom, I have no idea.