"A nice guy"

Jon Snow's claim that Tariq Aziz was a "nice guy" has been widely attacked: Nick Cohen called it "everything that's wrong with the British Left handily summarised in one tweet."

But what exactly is the error here? I don't think Snow is defending the Saddam regime: it's no defence of a murderous tyranny to claim that one of its members seemed like a decent bloke.

Instead, I suspect there might be one of two different mistakes - each of which is quite common.

One arises from the fact that, in judging Aziz's character, the personal impression he made on meeting him is only a fraction of the total information available. Any reasonable assessment would ask: would someone spend decades as a key member of a brutal dictatorship if he really were a nice guy?

The answer is: perhaps not. Even if Aziz started as a decent bloke, he might well have been corrupted by proximity to the worst form of power.

Snow seems therefore to be overweighting private information and underweighting public information.

But as I say, this is a common mistake: it's closely related to that most ubiquitous cognitive bias, overconfidence. We see often see it in financial markets. For example:

 - The neglect of base rate information - for example the tendency for many takeovers to fail - and overweighting of private information ("this acquisition seems a good idea") can lead to catastrophically expensive takeovers, such as RBS's of ABN Amro.

 - Investors often pay too much (pdf) for newly-floated companies because they overweight their private feelings and underweight an obvious public signal: if this is such a good business, why are the people who know it best selling it?

 - One reason for momentum in asset prices is that people cling to their prior private beliefs. For example, if bad news hits a company, its owners are loath to sell because they cleave to the belief that it's a good stock. This causes prices to under-react to bad news, and so drift down in subsequent weeks.

Let's though, ignore all this and assume that Aziz really was a nice guy. The fact remains that his life did not improve the condition of humanity. And this poses a question: to what extent does character matter?

Adam Smith thought not."It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" he wrote. Marx agreed. The well-being of workers, he said, "does not, indeed, depend on the good or ill will of the individual capitalist." Both instead thought incentives and social structures were more important that individual dispositions - though they differed upon the effect that capitalist incentives had. And the famous experiments of Philip Zimbardo surely corroborate them.

In calling Aziz "a nice guy in a nasty situation" Snow might have been acknowledging this. But I fear he was underestimating the extent to which some situations are so nasty that they render individual character irrelevant. Again, this is a variant of a common cognitive bias: the salience heuristic leads us to overweight obvious information - the impression a guy makes on us - and underweight less salient facts such as how social structures and incentives shape behaviour.

And again, Snow's error is common. Lefties commonly attack bankers and top footballers as greedy, when in fact their wealth arises not from greed but from the structure of 21st century capitalism.

In these ways, I'm sympathetic to Nick's point: Snow's tweet does express a lot that's wrong with how many people think about society.

Comments

[Alex]

Surely there's cognitive bias from Cohen too.

Firstly, essentialism - that there is something like the "British Left" which would subscribe to everything in Jon Snow's tweet, as if it were a description of the behaviour of a species of panda.

Secondly, an anti-Hayekian bias - I honestly know very little about Aziz, but it's entirely possible for a "nice guy" to be part of a complex centralised organisation (like the Iraqi state) and not be in control of a lot of the bad things that happen.

[Steve]

Also, the idea that Snow is even on the left only works in the cosy world of Westminster and establishment writers like Cohen. Paul Mason, fair enough, he was on the picket line at the BBC strike and has a clear attachment to the labour movement but Snow is for me more like an affable, socially concerned but privileged do-gooder. Good for him, but he is not exactly in the vanguard of workers' struggle.

[Pete]

Most of Cohen writes about the middle east can be filed under "cognitive dissonance". He never forgave the straw man he's constructed and dubbed "the Left" for calling the Iraq war correctly while he joined the establishment cheerleading squad. Much of his subsequent career has been spent hacking away at this straw man to prove to himself that he was the morally righteous one all along.

He's a good writer - sensible and compassionate on many topics. And I don't think there should be huge shame attached to having got Iraq wrong - most people did. I just wish he'd get over it.

[Roger Scruton]

He was a Christian as well, which is possibly why he opposed the illegal invasion of his country, given its inevitable consequences in terms of Islamic terrorism gaining the strength it never had in the days of Saddam and his non-existant WMDs.

Mission Accomplished!

[Dave Timoney]

Ex-public schoolboy suggests a government minister was "a bloody good bloke". And this is news?

[Keith]

I agree with the key idea. Circumstances determine human actions. But the problem with accepting this is off course that it casts doubt on the idea that character and "free" will matter in the big scheme of things called society or history. Thus it violates BOURGEOIS morality and philosophical assumptions. The veil of capitalist oppression would fall from our eyes if we did not hold onto them!

pete is too kind, I think it was pretty obvious that Iraq would be a disaster. The million or so people who marched against it seem to have got it right.

Cohen and the Labour leadership seem keen on blaming every problem on a non existent all coherent "left" while cosying up to the Tory party on every issue. Lets fight imaginary monsters as it is easier than thinking up convincing reasons for supporting Labour.

[Phil]

You're sympathetic to the point you would have made, not the one Nick Cohen actually did.

My reaction to that tweet was that if that's *everything* that's wrong with the Left, we're in pretty good shape.

[David]

Jon Snow knows nothing.

[Strategist]

>>>I don't think there should be huge shame attached to having got Iraq wrong - most people did.

I disagree. Most people did not 'get Iraq wrong', and there should be huge shame on those that did, for being so easily fooled.

But Nick Cohen did not get Iraq wrong; he was an eager propangandist for the egregious lies of that time. He has failed to feel the shame he should, you know, the kind when you've got the blood of tens of thousands on your hands.

[Staberinde]

OK, but let's imagine the Man In the High Castle scenario. The Axis powers win WWII and evil pervades leadership, institutions, education etc. Within such a society, isn't it possible that there remain 'nice guys'? My point is that while every member of a society is, to varying degrees, complicit in its evils (whatever they may be), there are nonetheless those who play an active role in these evils (the bastard who gasses people) and those who merely get on with their lives (people on checkouts). There are various cultures who've practised human sacrifice through the ages, but I wouldn't label the everyday Joes within those cultures 'evil' for their complicity.

Inevitably somebody's mentioned Iraq. Was it an evil? Many think so, but not all. Many more consider it a tragic mistake. If you think it was an evil, then who is evil in their complicity? Does marching against the war balance the moral scales, or should marchers have taken direct action? Is anyone who didn't vote LibDem in 2005 complicit in the evil of the Iraq war?

And what about today? Are those who voted Tory evil? How appealing is such shrill moralism to the electorate? Do we really want to re-create the American culture wars, whereby the Left are unpatriotic tax and debt addicts and the Right are religious heartless gun-nuts, with never the twain meeting?

[Doug]

Nick Cohen's view of the world is warped by his Zionism. Hence the logic of a former Leftist performing intellectual somersaults about invading Iraq.