How Much Do Facts Matter?
Andrew et. al.'s book is chock-full of facts. Indeed, I bet it has more charts than pages. And yet, I have to confess, I don't feel I came away from the book informed. And I worry that others won't as well.
Gelman and his co-bloggers over at The Monkey Cage (an indispensable blog about political science) are often complaining about irresponsible journalists telling stories at odds with the facts. To pick an example at random, here's Adam Nagourney claiming "Republicans voters have displayed a zeal for their candidates that Democrats could only envy." The bloggers quickly run the numbers and show that, no, the numbers have been pretty similar over the years.
And yet...
The image of zealous Republicans is much stronger than the charts I saw on the blog. Indeed, the image is so strong that we're inclined to say the numbers must be wrong -- perhaps they don't account for [insert your favorite objection here]. And so we repeat the mistaken image again.
This is nothing more than what George Lakoff talks about when he says "the truth will not set you free" -- we have models in our head of how the world works and persuading people requires getting them to switch models, not just giving them facts that prove their existing model is wrong. But, in general, this doesn't seem to be something political scientists are very good at.
The overwhelming tendency among the profession is to just run the numbers. Want to see whether campaign contributions influence votes? Well, you just get a database of campaign contributions, get a database of votes, and do the math. Calling up some donors or some
politicians to ask them about it rarely even seems to occur to them.
Interviews have their flaws, of course -- everybody lies, after all. But numbers have their flaws too. We need both. Without running the numbers, we can't weed out the lies and urban myths. But without interviews, we get the facts without any real picture of why the facts are the way they are. And without that picture, it's hard for people to really grasp what's going on, let alone think of ways to change it.
Thomas Frank's book was powerful because it laid out a very simple picture anyone could understand: working-class Kansans were hoodwinked by religious nutjobs into voting against their own interests. Larry Bartels and Andrew Gelman and others have poked holes in this picture to be sure, but what do they have to put in its place? If you want to win a battle of ideas, numbers aren't going to be enough.
Bill Moyers covered this with David Simon (THE WIRE) on Friday night...
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/watch.html
There's too much from this interview for me to quote here. Definitely recommend watching; It's made me want to help legal drugs asap. The interview is awesome. Here's David Simon's "What The Matter With Kansas" moment:
April 20, 2009 7:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree that this was one of the better Bill Moyers Journal show and IMO most of his shows are the best hour on television. Mr. Simon was profound in his assessment and that most people don't have the courage to discuss it and I can understand why. If anyone were to tell the real truth, they would be assassinated or discredited for life.
The party may have changed in Washington, but media is still owned by corporations who are run by big republicans. Nothing will change unless corporations stop running this country
April 20, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Political scientists should not be trying to change minds that way! That wouldn't be "science".
We have models. Mistaking the map for the territory is an old story. But what if people carried more than one map for a given territory, and did not have dogmatic attachment to any map?
April 20, 2009 8:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Before Borges there was Lewis Carroll (1893):
Mein Herr: Only six inches! We very soon got to six yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!
Myself: Have you used it much?
Mein Herr: It has never been spread out, yet; the farmers objected; they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.
April 20, 2009 9:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mental maps are coverings, more or less, Manifolds as in topology.
The right wing map covers a lot of the territory, as does the left wing map. They overlap. Sometimes the overlaps are "harmonious" other times they clash. Together they cover even more of the political territory, but neither one IS the real or phenomenal territory.
A master map can be devised via the correct Dialectic method, but being so general it's particularly useless on its own. So local maps are used, like Thomas Guides, or even online map services, as derivatives in one sense or another.
April 21, 2009 1:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Adding to this analogy, a map, by definition, does not account for weather. In other words, what may be an easy jaunt in good weather becomes a slog during inclement weather conditions.
Bringing it back to politics, I think the Rs are good at creating local deluges that can swamp a 'fair weather' plan laid out by looking at 'the map' days beforehand.
April 21, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Personally, I think the truth is better for humanity than ignorance, lies, or wishful thinking.
But that's just my opinion ...
April 21, 2009 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
f talks about when he says "the truth will not set you free" -- we have models in our head of how the world works and persuading people requires getting them to switch models, not just giving them facts that prove their existing model is wrong.
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