|
The world has gotten so complicated in the past century that
we no longer have the expertise to evaluate the advice we are
given.
We examine below several areas that affect most of us on a
personal basis:
Health
The rapid advances in medicine over the past century have led
to treatments for a wide variety of conditions that were hopeless
before. New drugs and surgical techniques improve the quality of
life of millions everyday. So we go to the doctor with some
problem and we get a recommendation for treatment. This
recommendation itself is partly based on the doctor's own
experience and partly based upon information provided to the
doctor by medical journals, drug companies and continuing
education.
When we accept the recommendation we must use a certain amount
of trust which in turn is based upon the trust practiced by the
doctor in the sources that provide him with information. If we
want to research the recommendation ourselves can we actually
intelligently evaluate the claims and warnings provided? Not only
are they of a statistical nature, but usually involve highly
specialized vocabulary as well.
Sometimes we get a second opinion. What happens if they
disagree? Ultimately we are forced to adopt a course of action
not directly based upon the underlying information. We must just
trust the advice given and hope for the best.
In a sad example of how this works I refer readers to the New
York Times of June 25, 2005 front page story on autism and this
ongoing story.
There is a widespread belief that the mercury-based
preservative used in some vaccines caused autism. The fact that
studies of up to 125,000 children have been conducted with no
correlation does not faze the believers. The prefer to turn
instead to various "remedies".
I think the situation is best summarized in these quotes from
the story:
"This is like nothing I've ever seen before," Dr.
Melinda Wharton, deputy director of the National Immunization
Program, told a gathering of immunization officials in Washington
in March. "It's an era where it appears that science isn't
enough."
and:
"It's really terrifying, the scientific illiteracy
that supports these suspicions," said Dr. Marie McCormick,
chairwoman of an Institute of Medicine panel that examined the
controversy in February 2004.
and finally:
"It doesn't seem to matter what the studies and the
data show," said Ms. Ehresmann, the Minnesota immunization
official. "And that's really scary for us because if science
doesn't count, how do we make decisions? How do we communicate
with parents?"
Here we have an example of how even overwhelming public health
evidence can not be evaluated unambiguously by some people. In
many other cases the medical evidence is less clear cut, making
the evaluation even more difficult.
Finance
For financial advice the situation is in some respects even
worse. The only objective measure that we can usually use is to
look at how well the advisor did in the past. But as the ads
always say: "prior results don't predict future returns". In
addition, at any given time, there are always people suggesting
exactly opposite strategies. One says inflation is increasing,
buy stocks. Another says inflation is under control, buy bonds.
In fact most self-directed plans by small investors do worse that
the market averages. And remember that even for popular
investments like average-based mutual funds half do worse than
average.
One of the overlooked truisms of investing is that if someone
comes up with a technique that consistently beats the others than
it will be copied and soon lose it's effectiveness. Thus there
can never be a magic bullet, at least for long. Another thing to
remember is that if a investment choice is so wonderful why is
the advisor telling you about it instead of keeping the
information to himself and making a killing?
Politics
Politicians and their spokesmen provide analysis of the causes
the problems and then offer proposed solutions. In many cases
opposing camps attribute the same conditions to completely
opposite causes. High unemployment is caused by high taxes, or is
caused by too low taxes which leads to insufficient investment.
Let's suppose we believe one point of view and vote for that
policy. Once the person gets elected we have no guarantee that
they will pursue the course of action they promised anyway.
So we are forced to support a candidate both on untestable
assertions and unenforceable promises. No wonder demeanor and
personality are stressed so much in political campaigns.
Commerce
Every day we are bombarded by advertising claims from various
businesses. People are taught at an early age that much of these
claims are either exaggerated, misleading or false. One of the
favorite techniques is the incomplete comparative, as in: "Works
Better" (than what?). This disregard for the trust of the
consumer extends into the business practices of the firms as
well. Thus we get corporate press releases about the benefits of
various corporate policies, ranging from environmental concerns
to tax policy. Relations with investors are also subject to
misleading information as the number of stockholder and SEC
settlements and fines over the past five years testifies to.
Promises to employees and retirees are another area where the
authority of the firm has to be evaluated, especially in terms of
long-term viability and proper fiduciary responsibility in its
investments on behalf of its workers.
If the corporation wants to be treated as the equivalent of a
person as far as the law is concerned, it is proper to evaluate
it as an authority in its areas of participation.
Religion
All religions depend on appeals to authority as a
justification for their beliefs and dogmas. Since there is no
contemporary, unambiguous, way to demonstrate the claims of
supernaturalism, citations to prior authorities are used as the
primary means of justification. Thus we get the words of the
founders or prophets as well as commentaries from others gathered
into various foundational books. Modern religious leaders cite
some special connection with the past as the source of their
present authority.
Difficulties arise from both the conflicting claims of
competing contemporary religions as well as from discrepancies
within the dogma of each religion itself. People who are
dissatisfied with some aspect of their current religious
affiliation often switch to another that they find more in
keeping with their own view of the world.
Given this degree of unknowability in the world it seems
unsurprising that a majority of people would take the statements
of religious leaders as trustworthy. The rest of our world is too
complicated for surety, so why not belief in the supernatural as
well.
Evaluating Authority
With so much uncertainty in the world how can we decide what
to believe?
There seem to be several tests that can be applied:
- Expertise
-
The source of the information should have the right
background. For medical advice the person should be a
credentialed practitioner in this area. This also means
evaluating the source of the credential. In most cases a
state-sanctioned medical license is taken to be a good
indication. But many other health workers have established
certificate granting organizations to lend an aura of authority
to their members. Thus we get "licensed" chiropractors,
osteopaths, and homeopaths, for example. Sites like Quackwatch may
provide some guidance.
- Experience
-
The claim of experience has a powerful one always used by
authorities wanting our trust. We have village and church
"elders", "senior" political advisors, experienced doctors and
financial analysts. The implied claim is that these people are to
be better trusted because of the implicit knowledge that comes
with having been involved for a period of time. But what about
the recent medical graduates that are freshly trained in the new
protocols vs the "experience" doctors who haven't learned
anything new since they entered practice? In rapidly changing
situations "experience" may actually make a person's authority
less valuable.
- Verifiability
-
With the exception of formal religion most decisions to trust
an authority rely on an implicit use of the scientific method.
One of the precepts of this method is that a given proposition
can be tested or that a sufficient number of test have been
already conducted. Drug trials are a good example, if many people
have already taken a specific drug and a significant number were
helped then we assume there is a good likelihood that it will
help us in similar circumstances.
Various stock schemes also use a similar technique. One of the
most long-lasting is the "Dow Method" which looks at the pattern
of stock prices to predict future price trends. If a given
pattern in the past has been followed by a trend in a certain
direction then following this advice in the future should be
successful as well. As with many other such schemes the fact that
real statistical analysis shows these strategies to be unreliable
has not stopped the continued used and marketing of such
schemes.
Religious appeals to authority are complex. On the one hand
believers are supposed to have "faith" which is taken to mean the
acceptance of the teachings of authority without the tests of
verifiability. On the other hand the same authorities feel free
to make use of "scientific" evidence to reinforce their
arguments. For example, various stories in the Bible are
frequently backed up with appeals to archeological evidence. The
difficulty arises in those cases where direct intervention of
supernatural powers is credited with some tangible result. The
most frequent instance is attributing some event as arising from
prayer. When the result does not follow from prayer then the
argument is used: "God moves in mysterious ways". But, if it is
impossible to tell when prayer will work on not then it is not
verifiable and cannot be used as proof of the reliability of the
beliefs of authorities.
- Disinterest
-
The motivation of the authority is, perhaps, the most
important test as to the trust to be placed. If an authority
stands to gain very little from their advice there is a
presumption that they are not providing the information for
personal gain
Until the recent industrialization of the health industry the
assumption was that a doctor was a disinterested authority. His
interest lay with improving the patient. This provided personal
satisfaction as well as enhanced his standing and thus brought in
new patients. The patients interests and the practitioners thus
coincided. In the past two decades this has shifted as large
companies have moved into the field. Insurance companies
interests are concerned with minimizing costs and medical
suppliers with maximizing sales. Thus, their influence on doctors
makes the doctors less of a disinterested party. Doctors stand to
lose perquisites provided by medical suppliers and stand to lose
their affiliations with insurance companies and hospitals if
their recommendations are consistently to costly.
Financial planners have always been suspect when it comes to
disinterest. In the days of the personal relationship between a
broker and an investor there was the assumption that a broker
would recommend investments that would succeed so that the client
relationship would continue. Transaction fees were the primary
source of income so one recommendation yielded the same fee as
another. Now we have very few personal relationships. Instead we
have brokerage firms that make concealed deals with security
issuers and then act as shills to promote these preferred
offerings. In the case of financial advisors not affiliated with
a securities firm, (on air personalities, columnists and private
newsletters) it is not possible to determine the degree of
disinterest. There has been some attempt to force analysts to
reveal if they have a financial interest in the firm they are
recommending, but there are many other ways to compensate an
advisor without them holding the underlying securities. It must
thus be assumed that anyone giving financial advice stands to gain
from this in some fashion and thus should not be considered
"disinterested".
Politicians have always been treated with caution. In most
cases the promises they make involve very indirect benefits to
the voter and the benefit the individual voter can offer are
usually small as well. Thus, the disinterest of the politician is
assumed to be irrelevant. In the case of large donors and
corporations making contributions to politicians the exact
opposite is expected as the phrase "pay to play" illustrates.
This trend has resulted in the almost complete separation of the
interests of the politician and the general voting public.
The world of commerce was probably the first area where the
failure of disinterest manifested itself. "There's a sucker born
every minute" was not said as an example of the disinterest of
businesses. The trust in commercial enterprises has become so low
that most run almost continual public relations campaigns to
counter this. Thus we get stories about the good works done by
various companies in the local community or the charitable
contributions they make. More telling is the recent rise in
"Astroturf" front groups. These are set up so as to seem to be
spontaneous groups formed by the common people who are concerned
with an issue, but are really working on behalf of unpopular
issues for the sponsoring corporations. Their backers need to be
kept disguised if they are to have any credibility at all and to
appear "disinterested". In many cases they have names that are
very similar to real "grassroots" organizations which have been
formed in direct opposition to the corporate policies. One must,
therefore, always assume that a corporation is not acting as a
disinterested party and must be very skeptical of the motivation
of any organization for which the funding and backing is
obscured.
Organized religion has always made a claim of disinterest as a
source of authority. "Saving souls" and the like is given as
their goal. Unfortunately all organized religions take on an
organizational structure and become a type of business. They need
to maintain their organization and possibly expand it. So there
interests become conflicted. They need to keep their members from
straying. They accomplish this through various positive and
negative techniques. Maintaining membership so that a religious
authority can intervene on your behalf promotes a life-long
dependency.
On the individual practitioner level many are motivated by
their wish to direct the lives of others. They get some type of
psychic satisfaction from being regarded as an authority. To
stray from their dogmas weakens their authority and increases the
probability that others may do so as well. This is way most
religions include a great deal of implied guilt and punishment if
the authorities are not followed. Just because a religious leader
is "saving souls" does not mean that they are not gaining
something from having followers. Religious leaders don't meet the criteria
of disinterest automatically, but need to be evaluated on a case-by-case
basis.
Faith vs Trust
Having a trust in a person or institution has been shown to be a complex
issue. The reliability of the advice and the disinterest of the authority
must be evaluated with incomplete information. This is further complicated
by the issue of "faith". Faith (meaning religious faith) depends upon the
critical faculties being suspended when listening to authority. In the past,
as well as today, these religious authorities have branched out into other
areas of society. They depend upon the faithful maintaining their uncritical
stance and thus following their leaders in these other areas. We have seen the
extreme effects of this progression in aberrations in the US history with cases
like the Salem witch trials. In the rest of the world the blending of religious
authority with civil society has led to theocracies such as Iran. In most cases
the result has been a reversion to an insular, inefficient society with human
right curtailed and economic development stifled.
Religious believers should apply the same critical tests to all forms of
authority and not let appeals to "faith" lead to unquestioning trust.
|