Why academics lose their real-world bearings

[drscott]

The cognitive elite may get passionately attached to beliefs about topics that most people never even think about. Even the “experts” may be highly informed about nothing other than their profession’s shared illusions if employment and pay bear little relation to the correctness of the expert's opinions. As Orwell (1968) smartly put it, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool."

From the interesting paper Rational Ignorance vs. Rational Irrationality.

Comments

Re: Interesting example: Islamic martyrs

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

The paper contains the grain of an idea: that given the costs of investing in knowledge acquisition, it can be "economically rational" to believe in convenient but false explanations for things so long as the cost of being wrong is low. I don't think even economists would argue that economic rationality is the be-all and end-all of behavioral science, but as a rough guide you first screen out all those behaviors which are, in some sense, econmically rational, and then look at the residue for interesting anomalies.

As the paper says, when you had Saracen troops guaranteed a spot in Paradise for martyring themselves in battle, most ran away anyway when it became clear death was the price. The 9/11 hijackers were of the subgroup that doesn't run, and their training and lifestyle was of the sort that produces cult members -- think Jim Jones -- where the short-term incentives to go along all grease the rails to the final precipice, so it becomes less and less thinkable for a member of the group to escape. These insular groups can maintain group discipline by constant reinforcement and the gradual loss of any alternative to remaining a member of the group.