You are reading Bush as saying he won’t update his priors on the evidence. But to me it is obvious that Bush is saying exactly what everybody says about themselves and about the people they support, which is that they won’t shift with the political winds.
Here’s an example of a person who follows Bush’s advice. He is an atheist and a Darwinist. He enters a Christian Creationist community. Around him everyone is a Christian and a Creationist. They make fun of him for being a Darwinist. He has two options:
A) He can make life easy for himself by seeing which way the wind is blowing and becoming a Creationist, so that people will accept him better socially.
B) He can remain steadfast in his Darwinism, because he realizes that the mass of opinion surrounding him is scant reason to update his priors, when the physical evidence and the reasoned arguments of Darwin and others speak so plainly.
Bush is saying he’s a B type.
Here’s a common expression which is used to chide someone who has shown signs of being an A type:
If all your friends jumped off a bridge then would you too?
Social pressure is not the same thing as evidence and argument. Someone who succumbs to social pressure is not being a good Bayesian rationalist.
How do I know that this is what Bush really means? Because it’s what pretty much every person prefers to say and think about himself. Everybody wants to think they have good reasons for what they do. Nobody wants to think they’re a weathervane, a leaf tossed around by the social winds. It’s a massively unremarkable statement. And it’s especially applicable to politicians, who are at extra pains to say that they are people of principle and reason, and don’t flipflop based on the latest popularity polls.
Bush says “I know what I believe in” instead of saying “I know what I know”, because the former is the way we have all been taught to talk. We have been taught to be non-confrontational, so we talk to each other about what we “believe”, what we “think”, instead of about what is real or about what is right, since discussion about what is real or right will quickly lead to arguments, which we are at pains to avoid. It’s not the right wing, by the way, that introduced this way of thinking, this relativism. It was not the right wing which taught us to stop saying “the truth” and start saying “my truth”.
This has nothing to do with any assessment of Bush as President. I am reading Bush on the basis of my knowledge of humanity, on the basis of my knowledge about what pretty much everybody likes to think about himself.
I agree, yours is a more reasonable interpretation. I think I was interpreting “winds” as referring to “the winds of evidence,” which is not reasonable in this context.
I do think your accusing me of “tribal affiliation signaling” was unnecessary and uncharitable: I don’t consider Bush to have been a significantly worse a president than any other recent presidents. I just happened to have run into the quote awhile back, and in my misinterpretation thought it was a good anti-rationality quote.
Edit: I did some thinking to try to figure out how I could have missed the obviously correct interpretation of Bush’s words. The first hypothesis (which Constant first put forth) was that I was signalling tribal loyalties—boo Republicans, yay Democrats. That does not make much sense, however, because I pretty solidly dislike all major political parties and the entire politics theater of the U.S. Maybe I was attempting to signal loyalty to the “boo politicians” tribe, but I think there’s a better explanation: a cached thought. Even though I do not currently belong to the anti-Republican tribe, I did belong to that tribe in my high school years (i.e. during Bush’ presidency), and I was most likely operating on a “Bush is stupid/irrational” cached thought.
I do think your accusing me of “tribal affiliation signaling” was unnecessary and uncharitable:
I swear that it was not my intent to make any statement about your motivation, and I have evidence of my intent. In another comment in this discussion I wrote:
I offer the hypothesis that the function of the repetition of these quotes down the years has been to signal tribal affiliation.
Notice that I wrote “down the years” and “has been”. I put in those words intentionally, to direct attention toward the repetition of the quote down the years and not toward the occurrence here in this forum.
Imagine if I had instead written:
I offer the hypothesis that the function of the repetition of these quotes was to signal tribal affiliation.
I might have written that because that still allows the intended historical interpretation, but it is more ambiguous because it also allows an interpretation that attacks you for posting the quote here now. I took pains to add words to avoid that interpretation.
Admittedly, I was not as careful over in this part of the discussion.
The memes you carry are not all your fault. I know that.
You are reading Bush as saying he won’t update his priors on the evidence. But to me it is obvious that Bush is saying exactly what everybody says about themselves and about the people they support, which is that they won’t shift with the political winds.
Here’s an example of a person who follows Bush’s advice. He is an atheist and a Darwinist. He enters a Christian Creationist community. Around him everyone is a Christian and a Creationist. They make fun of him for being a Darwinist. He has two options:
A) He can make life easy for himself by seeing which way the wind is blowing and becoming a Creationist, so that people will accept him better socially.
B) He can remain steadfast in his Darwinism, because he realizes that the mass of opinion surrounding him is scant reason to update his priors, when the physical evidence and the reasoned arguments of Darwin and others speak so plainly.
Bush is saying he’s a B type.
Here’s a common expression which is used to chide someone who has shown signs of being an A type:
Social pressure is not the same thing as evidence and argument. Someone who succumbs to social pressure is not being a good Bayesian rationalist.
How do I know that this is what Bush really means? Because it’s what pretty much every person prefers to say and think about himself. Everybody wants to think they have good reasons for what they do. Nobody wants to think they’re a weathervane, a leaf tossed around by the social winds. It’s a massively unremarkable statement. And it’s especially applicable to politicians, who are at extra pains to say that they are people of principle and reason, and don’t flipflop based on the latest popularity polls.
Bush says “I know what I believe in” instead of saying “I know what I know”, because the former is the way we have all been taught to talk. We have been taught to be non-confrontational, so we talk to each other about what we “believe”, what we “think”, instead of about what is real or about what is right, since discussion about what is real or right will quickly lead to arguments, which we are at pains to avoid. It’s not the right wing, by the way, that introduced this way of thinking, this relativism. It was not the right wing which taught us to stop saying “the truth” and start saying “my truth”.
This has nothing to do with any assessment of Bush as President. I am reading Bush on the basis of my knowledge of humanity, on the basis of my knowledge about what pretty much everybody likes to think about himself.
I agree, yours is a more reasonable interpretation. I think I was interpreting “winds” as referring to “the winds of evidence,” which is not reasonable in this context.
I do think your accusing me of “tribal affiliation signaling” was unnecessary and uncharitable: I don’t consider Bush to have been a significantly worse a president than any other recent presidents. I just happened to have run into the quote awhile back, and in my misinterpretation thought it was a good anti-rationality quote.
Edit: I did some thinking to try to figure out how I could have missed the obviously correct interpretation of Bush’s words. The first hypothesis (which Constant first put forth) was that I was signalling tribal loyalties—boo Republicans, yay Democrats. That does not make much sense, however, because I pretty solidly dislike all major political parties and the entire politics theater of the U.S. Maybe I was attempting to signal loyalty to the “boo politicians” tribe, but I think there’s a better explanation: a cached thought. Even though I do not currently belong to the anti-Republican tribe, I did belong to that tribe in my high school years (i.e. during Bush’ presidency), and I was most likely operating on a “Bush is stupid/irrational” cached thought.
I swear that it was not my intent to make any statement about your motivation, and I have evidence of my intent. In another comment in this discussion I wrote:
Notice that I wrote “down the years” and “has been”. I put in those words intentionally, to direct attention toward the repetition of the quote down the years and not toward the occurrence here in this forum.
Imagine if I had instead written:
I might have written that because that still allows the intended historical interpretation, but it is more ambiguous because it also allows an interpretation that attacks you for posting the quote here now. I took pains to add words to avoid that interpretation.
Admittedly, I was not as careful over in this part of the discussion.
The memes you carry are not all your fault. I know that.