I consider what I describe here to be of pretty limited ‘practical’ value (where by ‘practical’ I mean having a benefit not directly based on feelings). I care about knowing whether the minimum wage is a good policy, to pick one example of the kind of question I had in mind with this post, but pretty much only for intellectual curiosity, and the same is true for most similar questions.
This feels like an indicator that we need to get more specific.
There are a few distinct things I can match to, “Picking an opinion on a topic”.
There’s the Social Instruction Manual Version. You want to be able to do the symbolic thing of Having a Conversation About Minimum Wage. Which side do you root for, what do you boo and yay, what sorts of words should you say to which people, etc.
There’s adopting specific predictions with X about of certainty. This would be listening to someone talk about minimum wage and going, “Okay, I now expect that if a minimum wage was put in place in Examplestan, XYZ consequences would happen with probability P.” This could be “practical” (maybe you need to make decisions based off of this prediction), but it doesn’t have to be.
Then there’s adopting an attitude. I see an attitude as a large set of under-specified rules for making predictions about the subject of the attitude. (quote taken from the first page of googling “why should we raise the minimum wage?”)
To be sure, increasing the minimum wage alone won’t solve the broader problems of wage stagnation and income inequality. We need to make greater investments in job training and strengthen labor protections, among other policies. But a higher minimum wage can provide an important lift to the 2.2 million Americans currently earning minimum wage and help tens of millions of other workers who earn a few dollars more than $7.25.
This doesn’t really tell me how to make predictions about minimum wage related issues, but it does point me in a direction.
Roughly, I see Social Instruction Manuals as not super important, specific predictions as useful based on how much I’m interested in the topic, and attitudes as often to risky to adopt without a lot more thought. It seems important to make clear which one I’m after, because I’d use different rules for picking people to adopt different kinds of “opinions” from.
Which of these did you have in mind when writing this post? Or were you thinking of something different form my three options?
This feels like an indicator that we need to get more specific.
There are a few distinct things I can match to, “Picking an opinion on a topic”.
There’s the Social Instruction Manual Version. You want to be able to do the symbolic thing of Having a Conversation About Minimum Wage. Which side do you root for, what do you boo and yay, what sorts of words should you say to which people, etc.
There’s adopting specific predictions with X about of certainty. This would be listening to someone talk about minimum wage and going, “Okay, I now expect that if a minimum wage was put in place in Examplestan, XYZ consequences would happen with probability P.” This could be “practical” (maybe you need to make decisions based off of this prediction), but it doesn’t have to be.
Then there’s adopting an attitude. I see an attitude as a large set of under-specified rules for making predictions about the subject of the attitude. (quote taken from the first page of googling “why should we raise the minimum wage?”)
This doesn’t really tell me how to make predictions about minimum wage related issues, but it does point me in a direction.
Roughly, I see Social Instruction Manuals as not super important, specific predictions as useful based on how much I’m interested in the topic, and attitudes as often to risky to adopt without a lot more thought. It seems important to make clear which one I’m after, because I’d use different rules for picking people to adopt different kinds of “opinions” from.
Which of these did you have in mind when writing this post? Or were you thinking of something different form my three options?