Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe starts rather quickly and succinctly out of the gate. The author reviews the extant literature and folk wisdom that humans are gullible, and not suspicious of people trying to swindle them. To a great extent, this is the mainstream view now, with the emergence of the “heuristics and biases” literature, and the field of “cultural evolution” which is rooted in the idea of social cognition.
Social cognition basically means instead of thinking things through yourself you allow the community to decide. As a hadith states, the Ummah shall not agree upon an error. It’s cheap, easy, and good enough. But, this reliance on community means that irrational herds can erupt, and the opportunity arises for ‘cheaters’ to game these systems of information flow (think ‘affinity scams’).
The first chapter of Not Born Yesterday is a capsule of the view not taken in this book, so I assume the best is yet to come.
Where Not Born Yesterday begins with an economy of exposition, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West, and the Epic Story of the Taiping Civil War ranges widely across the first chapter. This makes sense, because it’s history, and twice as long. For me, the most notable aspect is that Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom starts with a global scope, emphasizing the foreignness of the Manchus, and the close attention Europeans paid to the Taiping rebels. There is even a section where observers from the American South analogize the situation to their own slave society.
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom is written engagingly, but I have to admit that many of the historical details might be difficult for readers not well versed in the broad canvas of Chinese history. But so far it promises a lot in the subsequent chapters, synthesizing social and political history.
“many of the historical details might be difficult for readers not well versed in the broad canvas of Chinese history”
I am one of those readers. I spent much time refreshing what little I knew about the opium wars, the Crimean war, and then got distracted by Fu Manchu. Without the distraction, I think I could spend at least a month (or year) acquiring a basic knowledge about the Dramatis Personae and Chronology of Major Events.
The story-telling style of the author is making that less than onerous.
As for gullibility, the idea of allowing the community to decide plays a role in the Heavenly Kingdom, does it not?
Just noticed the book club. I’ll read the book on China. I don’t see many comments here*, but don’t give up yet, Razib.
* Or, is the conversation happening somewhere else? Is this blog going to be a central location for compiling comments from across platforms?
yeah blog
i did a zoom yesterday with a few people
I was actually quite intrigued by the premise of “Not Born Yesterday.” I’d never heard that before (re: cynicism) and only ever about gullibility. That’s definitely an idea worth fleshing out!
Reminds me a little of “critical windows of development” for children’s brains. Early in life, the mind is open for input (what to eat, who to trust, language) and then becomes “cynical,” blocking out noise and becoming more stable. Might be a stretch but could there be parallels?
Liked the Taiping book too, pretty easy to understand what’s going on (but don’t ask me to recite all the main player’s names…)
Like the religious conflict aspect of it too, had no idea Christianity was that popular in China at that time.
Mercier touches on the free rider problem with regard to alarm calls. My understanding of how the spread of this trait can be (is?)controlled in complex societies is very sketchy. It is easy enough to see how this behavior would be limited in hunter gatherer society, but how is it limited in modern society. It seems to me that it is more of a political question as to who is a free rider and an extremely complex question at that. What are the present day examples of the elimination of free riders? What are the historical examples of the elimination of free riders? If free riders have not been under control since the rise of complex economies and societies, why aren’t we all free riders by now?
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom — I’ve enjoyed the first chapter. Book has a more novelistic approach than I expected, and I think some of the details about what is happening towards the end of the chapter are likely to be fleshed out with different characters in subsequent chapters. I would have liked a chapter summarizing the root origins of the civil war, which the author deliberately avoids, suggesting there is a rich histography that debates these issues in full. Too bad, his p.o.v. approach is subjective enough that I think it would have lent itself to a efficient examination of different points of emphasis that historians have advocated.
Thanks again for doing this. Sorry to blog in the comments. Hope I spot the stream next time.
It was interesting (on the personal level) that Mercier used getting conned for 20 bucks as his hook in the intro that it’s easy to believe we’re all suckers. We have an opposite story in my family folklore. My wife in late high school, pre-smartphone era, was stranded at LAX for hours trying to raise 20 bucks for a shuttle to Orange County. She almost got one guy to lend her twenty, with a genuine promise to pay him back by mail, when the wife stepped in and told him not to be a dupe. She eventually got someone on a payphone to come get her but probably went 0 for 20 with a genuine story and tears.
Hope the best is to come from this book. Chapter 1 was laying out the case for the opposition, but I don’t think he did a good job of that with the historical examples. As for Pizzagate, I still have no sense of how widespread the belief in that was at the time or if a single unhinged gunman really makes it a stronger example. Someone on a comment in another thread here suggested the WMD case for invading Iraq as a better example. I agree. It was interesting to live through a protracted Gulf of Tonkin in the internet age. I remember personally falling for the story of Iraqi intelligence meeting with one of the 9/11 gang. But then things morphed into seeing stories on Drudge about drones that could reach Israel with a payload become a lot more embedded in the minds of people I knew than the debunkings that it was really just one large balsa wood remote controlled plane, etc. etc. Post 9/11 was a crazy time, but it is interesting how we went into a war against Iraq with such strong approval.
The studies he brings up are interesting, well known, and all seem part of the ain’t-life-kooky social science model of the world I’ve been absorbing since grade school: Stanford prison, woman outside the apartment being slaughtered with no 911 call, smoke under the door, cranking the voltage to 11. But I think most of those are bologna sandwiches, and I don’t know how much to trust these.
So, I don’t think he made a strong case that conventional wisdom is that we’re gullible sheeple. I hope it sharpens up as it goes along.
We’ll see how it goes. In particular I look forward to the promised debunking of advertising/marketing. I’ve never understood how that all works economically, but I also have always assumed they do get bang for their buck.
Blog part 2
I did really enjoy Autumn. I’m completely ignorant on the history of China, so this seems like an ideal book for me, other than I’m likely to buy its claims (gullibly?) because I don’t have any prior knowledge. Liked how it has a personal angle to drive interest, but also gives snapshots into that world. From how the Manchus ruled, the exam process to escape village life, and the Christian mercenaries. Also agree with Razib that a stand out detail was how the revolt was reported at large and folded into various narratives, sympathetically by Marx and as a threatening parallel to slave revolt in New Orleans. I’ll be curious to read the case that this period in China was pivotal for the world at large. And to see those of you who know a lot more history find it convincing.
the mercier book was thin to start out with. we’ll see. i expect it to get better when he presents his own views
agree on the novelistic take re: autumn. i prefer drier so we’ll see
Just going to dump a few thoughts here. Maybe I’ll get more organized for future chapters.
“Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom”:
– I generally enjoyed the “novelistic” treatment, particularly the stage-setting when describing Hong Kong: “diseased and watery”, “malarial colony”, etc. It can be hard for moderns to remember how significant a presence was in people’s lives, especially for Western colonists in the tropics.
– The Marx quotes were interesting. He was almost entirely wrong, but that’s par for the course, I suppose. One thing stood out as probably correct, though: ‘As he explained it, the disorder in China had its roots in the opium trade; a decade earlier, Britain had cracked China’s markets open with its warships, and in doing so it had undermined the “superstitious faith” of the Chinese in their ruling dynasty.’I doubt that was a rare or novel opinion at the time.
– I’m not sure how I feel about the terminology change from “Taiping Rebellion” to “Taiping Civil War.” Really, I think the deciding factors should be how even both sides were in overall numbers as well as recruitment from the elite vs. demos (rebellion = novel political movement recruiting smaller force primarily from demos, civil war = the same recruiting larger force evenly from elites and demos). Based off territorial extent and weak elite recruitment, I would prefer the “Rebellion” terminology, but the Taiping army was bigger than I expected, according to Wikipedia. I wonder if those army size estimates are counting a lot of untrained peasants on the Taiping side and mostly professional soldiers on the Qing side?
– I was aware of the Taiping Rebellion’s roots in Chinese salvation cult tradition, so I was going in with a pretty dismissive mindset. The portrayal of Hong Rengan has softened that somewhat. That’s probably just an effect of the writing and maybe one example of why a dryer treatment can be preferable from the point of view of objectivity.
– I actually did not even know where in China the rebellion got its start. In hindsight, a southern origin seems expected for any rebellion, given a northern capital. And I suppose the Qing’s Manchu origin and the anti-Manchu sentiment makes the south even more likely.
– I was also unaware of the rebellion’s origins with the Hakka. First heard of them when I was reading about Lee Kuan Yew. Learning that was another factor in softening my initial dismissive attitude.
– “Through 1851 and 1852, the Taiping army fought its way north, absorbing the poor and disenfranchised, the criminals, all those who feared or hated the reigning Qing dynasty authorities, all who would convert to their brand of Christianity and commit themselves to the destruction of Confucianism and, above all, the Manchu overlords.”
A lot packed into that quote. I think it puts another point up for “Rebellion,” as opposed to “Civil War.”
“Not Born Yesterday”:
Lost my notes for this so this will be shorter.
– I liked the copious use of historical examples. Hope it continues even once he starts marshalling experiments and data as evidence.
– The chapter opened with one of those example lists. Already in the first few paragraphs I felt the writing could have been improved. Mainly just the fact that description of Athens screwing up the Peloponnesian War made no mention of “democracy,” “demagogue,” “credulous masses,” or anything else that would have made the connection to gullibility apparent.
– Have the Asch and Milgram experiments been re-examined in replication crisis era? I remember the Stanford prison experiment is not seen so positively lately. Couldn’t find any mention on Wiki.
– Idea-wise, I’m finding the juxtaposition of cultural evolutionism vs. Hugo Mercer’s point of view of individual epistemic vigilance to be pretty interesting. I’m a fan of the cultural evolution work, but I’m not convinced there’s a true dichotomy between the two.
– “By and large, misconceptions do not spread because they are pushed by prestigious or charismatic individuals—the supply side. Instead, they owe their success to demand, as people look for beliefs that fit with their preexisting views and serve some of their goals.”
This quote reminded me of the internet right’s theorizing about the mechanics of woke belief. The dominant strand is probably the “point deer, make horse” signal-of-loyalty theory.
I do sometimes wonder how much explanatory power that actually has versus, say, what we might call “Greg Cochran’s theory”: “people believe stupid and/or crazy things because they *are* stupid and/or crazy.” I can’t say I find either point of view thoroughly compelling. The “point deer, make horse” theory seems to give the wokeists far too much Machiavellian credit, but at the same time, if crazy ideas are spreading fast, I think you really need to make a concerted effort to develop some *actionable* understanding of why. And “people are stupid/crazy” is not very actionable.
In any case, I’ll be a little irked if Mercier never mentions individual differences in the course of this book. It would be disappointing but not unexpected for someone from the “hunter-gathering is the environment of evolutionary adaptedness” school of psychology.
Addition:
> if crazy ideas are spreading fast, I think you really need to make a concerted effort to develop some *actionable* understanding of why. And “people are stupid/crazy” is not very actionable.
And further, if those crazy ideas are spreading now, when they never did in the past, you need a theory beyond stupidity. People are a bit dumber now than in 1800, but not that much. Maybe they’re more inherently predisposed to craziness, but *why*?
Erratum:
*how significant a presence _disease_ was in people’s lives
Maybe I should finally get a blog…
Well as one of the people who pushed for “Autumn” I have to join in. Of course, being a cheap Desi I don’t want to buy the book but get it at the library. And in their covid inspired fear they gave me a audio book with CDs. Trying to figure out how to play that in this day and age.
Autumn: I’m not sure that “civil war” is incorrect term here, just maybe not for the reason given by the author. It sounds like the rebels were able to assume state functions over a significant area for a significant amount of time and organize armed forces to make war. That sounds like civil war to me, though a lot of the violence in the first chapter involves imperial forces rounding up suspects and their families for execution, which is something a state might do without an actual war.
In comparison, the federal government in the American Civil War referred to the circumstances as rebellion or insurrection, not wanting to give any legitimacy to the Confederacy and desiring to separate the rebels from the presumed majority of the law-abiding population. A war existed by the time the blockade was announced.
“..many of the historical details might be difficult for readers not well versed in the broad canvas of Chinese history.”
This would have been me a year ago but I took advantage of COVID lockdown to read Mote’s history of imperial China, so this is almost a direct progression from where it ended. Regarding the Manchus (and their various predecessors), it was weird to me how for so much of China’s history it was ruled by some outside barbarian group. At any rate, the Taipeng Civil War seems weird itself to me so far, and in a good way, especially with the visions and the religious aspect. I assume via foreshadowing that Hong Rengan is going to wind up playing a larger role than his cousin by the end of things.
I’m not quite sold on the thesis of Not Born Yesterday, either, and not much is revealed in the first chapter.
Amazon preview is your friend!
I’m frankly astonished the author made it through college level course on China and never learned about the rebellion. He doesn’t seem that old, and I know it was covered in my classes.
Now, if you asked me to give you a list of Chinese peasant rebellions in the last dynasty, I’d struggle. There are a lot! And we talk about scale, this may be larger but I still suspect it plays a role because of the stink of Christianity. Wasn’t the Ming just a peasant rebellion?
And the author is underplaying the religious angle. Is it that different than Jan Hus, or Luther, the Cathars, Mormons, or even Mohamed? Easy for us to say religion is always a cover for something else, but I’m not sure the participants felt that way.
My favorite bit was the Machuse playing the chopping the head off game, which of course because far more infamous when the Japs tried it one hundred years later. Although they started doing it during the Sino-Japanese war.
Also a bit dubious on the economic analysis. Yes, the brits pushed opium in exchange for tea so they wouldn’t lose hard currency. But they were already developing the Assamese tea estates by 1830. Also they had a huge market for clothes in India. And yes Hong Kong was a backwater. It was a backwater for a long time. There’s a reason why its called the Hong Kong and SHANGHAI bank.
But my point is that that economic system (silver for tea) was already almost over. If anything I’d like to know what the influx of hard currency did to China.
Sorry for the late entry into the discussion, but I just downloaded the books…
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week 1
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NBY, chapter 1:
The Kindle preview for this book is quite long. Sometimes previews are only a few pages, but NBY’s is several chapters long. So, if you aren’t sure you want to read it, you can give a try first. I’m glad I tried the preview, as I doubt I’ll read farther than that. I haven’t enjoyed it so far. I don’t like this style of exposition in which I have to read about, for example, bower birds and gazelles in order to illustrate a point that could be simply be stated (I read ahead to chapter 2). If the whole book is like this, its information density is not going to justify its format. Originally, I was going to say this was a general problem with psychology books written for general audiences, but then I remembered that I was enthralled by The Nurture Assumption and The Blank Slate, although at the time I was younger (more excited about everything) and in a process of unlearning.
As far as chapter 1 itself goes, I was non-plused as I have never encountered formal “gullibility theories” before. The chapter ends with a paragraph that seems transparently obvious to me–that “people look for beliefs that fit with their preexisting views and serve some of their goals.” Anyone who has waded into conflicts in medicine (and perhaps other sciences) has to be blind not to see that people put undue weight on studies that support their held viewpoints. I do it too. For example, part of the process of which The Nurture Assumption and The Blank Slate were a part was re-aligning aesthetic preferences–i.e., creating new narratives about what and who is good and bad in the world. This seems to me like it’s open to realization through self-reflection, but it is also stated formally in Thinking Fast and Slow. In fact, so far, NBY is looking like a footnote on the basic idea of that book that humans default to a narrative-formation style of cognition.
AHK, chapter 1:
The preparatory materials are proof that the Internet and graphics are superior ways to present some kinds of information. A list of dates? How about an animated timeline! Anyway, the writing is much more amenable to me than NBY, and I have already purchased both the Kindle version and the audio book. I usually don’t listen to non-fiction, but the story-telling fits very well to that format. I recently re-started The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto for the second time, but the academic navel-gazing is so off-putting that… I’ve had to re-start for the second time. In contrast, AHK is an easy read and entirely focused on the subject of the book so far, meaning I can listen to it while cooking dinner or in the gym. (My only complaint is that I don’t particularly like the voice of the reader in the audio book.)
Chapter 1 is just setting us up, and there was a lot of free-association going on in my brain while listening–like the northern Qing crackdown/Hong Kong missionary culture of that time and northern Beijing crackdown/Hong Kong democracy of today. Maybe that’s silly. I was taken down memory lane by mention of the Imperial Summer Palace, which I confused with the Imperial Summer Resort in Chengde, which I’ve visited, and which was also built by the Qing and includes miniature landscapes. In addition, it seems there are two Summer Palaces in addition to Chengde, the Forbidden City, and whatever other properties were the Emperor’s. It’s quite impressive considering the agricultural basis of the economy at that time, and one can see how uprising would appeal to peasants.
Synthesis, chapter 1:
At the risk of saying things obvious to other book club participants, when I got to the end of AHK’s prologue, with its description of the rebels’ slaughter of Nanjing, I thought, “ah, Razib is trying to get us to think past the sale”. With his growing esotericism and invocations of the Roman general Sulla, is it any wonder that, in the current domestic and international political situations, he picked a book (a) about China, (b) that focuses on the ethnic conflict angle of the Taiping Rebellion, and (c) has as its “hero” a “reactionary” general in Zeng Guofan. NBY is the perfect compliment with its obvious applicability to the growing partisan divide in the US. Although Mercier references the QAnon conspiracy theory several times, the book is equally applicable to the Russian Collusion conspiracy theory. Chapter 2 (I know, it’s next week…) ends on the note that when people abuse their influence, we would be better off if we stopped paying attention to what others say, leading to (political and then) civilizational collapse. Razib’s one-two punch: “Here’s what you can look forward to*, and here’s why you deserve it.”
(* or, “ought to strive for”…?)
More broadly:
Coming after Razib’s recent mention of The Benedict Option and the need for a secular equivalent, I assume the GNXP Book Club is some attempt in that direction. It’s a nice idea. I have no idea how big Razib’s readership is, but the blog and Twitter don’t really feel like a community to me. The only blog that achieved that in recent memory is Scott Alexander’s SlateStarCodex. Part of its success was branching out into other formats, like having its own subReddit. Perhaps that is the direction in which Razib should move, although as a personality, he seems less cut out for attracting people than the welcoming and very careful Scott Alexander. Another problem with a secular Benedict Option (retreat from and eventual preaching to the world, I take it to be, although not having read it) is that, while the early and contemporary church had what to preserve, how to conduct daily life, and what to say to the world laid out for it, secular Benedictines don’t really have anything to agree on. Ultimately, Sulla’s restoration of the Republic failed because a republic is not a belief system, it is a collection of competing interests. Is the USA an idea or a group of people in a specific place and time? Which is the leftist and which the rightist perspective, and how can secular right Benectines move ahead in that context?
Chris, I had a similar feeling to you regarding Not Born Yesterday. So far, its what I consider to be poor yield…
I found Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom to be interesting, I know almost nothing about that period.
I’m waiting for Razib to post his week 2 recap and then I’ll say more.