A flat earther observes that NASA means "deceive" in Biblical Hebrew. He offers this as evidence or proof that NASA is a liar. As if a liar would name himself "Liar" in some foreign language because, you know, if you're a liar you have to let people know it somehow -- what kind of liar doesn't tell the truth? Reminds me of the victory lap the 9-11 inside-jobbers when they saw the interview clip with Larry Silverstein saying "So we pulled it" as if the culprit would announce in public "I did it". Or the folks who explain the UK newscaster anticipating the fall of the second building as reading the government script too early, as if the government would divulge in a script to the entire press their secrets because, you know, if the government didn't give the media a detailed script, the media might not have reported the event or omitted that a second building fell.
Why do people buy such flimsy, absurd evidence for what they want to believe? An answer lies in these notions of vertical goods and false consensus.
This is a post about vertical goods, naive realism and false consensus as described in Daniel Stone's Undue Hate, a book everyone should read. Vertical goods are good things the more of which are always better. More food is always better even if you can't eat it all, but what kind of food, well that's a matter of taste, a horizontal good, different at different points. Stone uses housing: more space is always better, given the same price, but location depends on taste, commute, kind of neighbors preferred. Money is a vertical good. What you buy with it, horizontal.
Thing is, we all have horizontal attitudes towards vertical goods. One person might prioritize freedom over money and prefer to be a struggling entrepreneur rather than be securely well-paid with a boss. (When I was 23 and a bike messenger, I turned down a cushy messenger job for a friendly boss, preferring to be an independent messenger.) When you assume that everyone agrees with your vertical priorities, you've fallen for a naive realism that your preference is the real and true one. The result is a sense of false consensus that everyone has the same priorities as you. When they behave contrary to what you think everyone believes is good, that's when you suspect they are either ignorant or evil.
Talking to a conspiracy theorist, I mentioned this NASA liar paradox belief. To me this belief is obviously illogical. It's a case of the oblivious obvious. Liars by definition don't go about announcing they're liars regardless of the language. And it's a liar paradox -- if ture, it's false, if false, it's true -- a necessary contradiction. My friend, however, didn't see it as obvious at all. Instead, he responded with suspicion. Of me.
For me, logic is a vertical good and a priority in assessing what I should or should not believe. If a belief is contradictory, it can't be true, and anyone who believes an obvious contradiction, is either cognitively defective -- ignorant -- or morally so, a person of ill intent.
But my friend holds a radically different vertical good and one that, obviously, is important to him, but also important to everyone, so he thinks. That vertical good is: freedom. And because government power is dangerously controlling and deceptive, anyone who defends government is a dangerous fool. When I talk about the irrationality of a criticism of a government program, he hears a fool defending a deceitful, dangerous power. I am the friend of his enemy. There must be something wrong with me, since everyone knows that power is dangerous and deceitful. "Why are you defending NASA?"
The questions you ask determine the answers you get, two beliefs can both be true but wrong. Why do I care about this particular contradiction? Because I find conspiracy theorists full of bad thinking, of course. But am I ignoring their underlying truth that the government is deceitful and that the game is rigged in favor of power and wealth? I am. I'm not playing their game. That's my horizontal preference. It's a bias.
Reminds me of an interchange between Nathan Cofnas and John McWhorter the linguist. McWharter asked the question that I'd have asked, "What are you getting out of this? Why are you doing this?" Cofnas, who publicized Jason Arday's plagiarism, answered with a question (the stereotypical Jewish strategy of argument : ) "Wouldn't you rather a centrist scholar expose an Araday than a rabid racist social media influencer like Nic Fuentes do it?" instead of answering with the well known truth that he's taking revenge against the institution that canceled him -- Cofnas was himself kicked out of Cambridge for racist statements -- on the one hand, and the obvious delight that some white nationalists and some people of privilege in general take in announcing how superior they are, proud of their immodesty as if it were a devilish pleasure to be the boy pointing out the emperor has no clothes while everyone else is trying to be decent and discreet. It's the Stephen Miller syndrome: everyone knows my folk are superior, but I'm the only person honest (brazen? vile?) enough to tell you to your face.
Once, on an academic Listserve, I cited a scientific peer-reviewed study showing that the Covid vaccine did not prevent contagion and therefore vaccine mandates had no justification. Mandate supporters concluded that I'm a deplorable Trump supporter and a science denier although I had just cited a scientific publication. Meanwhile the mandate supporters cited Atlantic Monthly, a journalism venue catering to a narrow audience of the center liberals. I'm not sure whether their vertical good here is "politics is more important than science -- anything associated with Trump is evil (this even has a name: Trump Derangement Syndrome)" or "we must appear to be doing good (even when there's no good available to do)" discussed at length in one of my favorite posts the Fool's Errand Attachment: a cognitive bias. And their political attack was just the punishment for not subscribing to their vertical good.
It's the horizontal choice of vertical goods that reveals our bias. We should be questioning that horizontal more often, not just to understand ourselves, but to understand others. I hasten to add that it is possible to learn ones own bias, but, contrary to a lot of pop psychologist, it's not likely that one can disabuse oneself of one's bias. And if you ask me, one shouldn't. Your bias is you. Learn it, live with it, and learn to live with others. That's the best you can.
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