Judgement as Fake Explanation

Since writing Descriptive Before Prescriptive, I’ve thought a bit more about the general pattern I’m trying to point at. A big part of what goes wrong is: a value judgement becomes a fake explanation, stopping curiosity. If an atheist writes off a religious belief as “just stupid”, it feels very much like a sufficient explanation. Really, though, it has very little content.

This is closely related to the idea in Errors vs Bugs and the End of Stupidity. An “error model” treats mistakes as mostly random, dependent only on broad traits like skill level, intelligence, and so on. A “bug model” instead postulates cause-and-effect mechanics which lead to a mistake. An error model may be useful as a first approximation, but a bug model is typically much more informative. Unfortunately, possession of an error model can keep you from looking for a bug model.

Although we could think of this as purely a descriptive problem (involving aggregate statistical models vs more detailed causal models), error models have a strong prescriptive component. I think that’s part of the reason why they can be such an effective thought-stopper: judging something by an error model makes it “good” or “bad”, which doesn’t just serve as a fake explanation; it serves as a fake solution, too.

Another example: I’m not poly myself, but I once advised a friend who was frequently cheating on romantic partners and unable to control this to try polyamory. Telling this story to another friend, I got the reaction “this just sounds like a terrible person”. I think “terrible person” serves as both a fake explanation and a fake solution: it hides the details in an error model, and it creates a visceral sense that you should just get away from such a person, stop associating with them, not try to help them. (This can be a good solution — but I’m pointing at the process.)

I’m not denouncing judgement (as delicious as that contradiction might be!). Judging is necessary at some point, to make decisions. However, whenever there’s an opportunity for better understanding, judgement has to take a back seat to that. Otherwise, it’s all-too-easy for prescriptive thinking to block its own descriptive foundations from being built.