It is often said that if you can predict my response to a question or an issue that I am an “ideologue” incapable of thinking for myself. This is wrong. The opposite is true.
Let’s start with the case where you can predict each of my responses.
If you can predict everything I say, then all of the following are true:
- I have a well defined set of axioms (ground truths), which you are also aware of
- I (and you) have both the necessary information and intellectual ability to build up from these axioms in a logically sound manner to reach the question or issue at hand.
Two math professors need not discuss undergraduate calculus together. For any question, each of them can build from the mathematical axioms they understand so well and reach an answer. Discussion would be both boring and useless.
If you can’t predict everything I say, then at least one of the following is true:
- One of us is misinformed or uninformed – the information one of us is using to build from our axioms is incorrect or incomplete, leading to the wrong conclusion.
- One of us is stupid – there is a logically incoherent jump in our journey from axiom to conclusion
- The opponent simply pointing out this inconsistency should end the debate, provided the mistaken party is smart enough to actually recognize the incoherence as an incoherence
- My axioms are contradictory
Let’s return to the example of mathematicians. Each one can predict the other’s response to a question precisely because they know what they are talking about. They are fully informed, and build their arguments with logical coherence on sound axioms. One professor’s ability to predict the other’s response is a sign of mastery and coherence, not dullness.
If the two professors disagree on the answer to a question, they need to start looking for the incoherence. Is one of them misinformed or uninformed? Is one of them stupid? Does one of them have contradictory axioms?
The interesting debate here lies not in their conclusion, but in the axioms they are building from and the logical steps from these axioms to their conclusion. Once the logical errors are found, the two professors can once again predict each others’ conclusion and they can rest well knowing their thinking is not flawed.
This analogy translates to the realm of public discourse – political or otherwise.
Public intellectuals have a strange career. They offer the world ideas in a well articulated manner. If you are as smart as them and as informed as them, you should be able to predict everything they say (provided both you and them have the ability to make the necessary logical jumps from their axioms to their conclusions). But, if you can predict everything they say, they’ll lose a listener. So it is in their best interest to keep their cards close to their chest, to only offer as much information as necessary – to keep you coming back for more assistance in understanding their personal ideology.
They are incentivized to debate conclusions rather than axioms and logical steps. Debating the conclusion will get clicks and attention, of course, because their audience already has come up with a conclusion (likely and emotional, illogical conclusion). It will also allow them to remain in the spotlight for longer, because a new issue will always come up. If they haven’t yet revealed their axioms, their listeners will return.
A public intellectual reaches obsolescence (amongst followers as smart or smarter than them) once their axioms are revealed. Either their axioms are revealed as flawed, discrediting the public intellectual as a charlatan, or their axioms are coherent and their audience (again, of people as smart or smarter than them) knows their conclusion before it is articulated.
Don’t listen to the talking heads for longer than you need to. Spot the charlatans, absorb the axioms of the strong thinkers, and move on. The only ones worth listening to are the ones who are both more informed than you and smarter. You want to be taken to logical conclusions you couldn’t come to yourself.
Stay coherent.
Teddy Holappa 