Abstract
We often hear claims that there is too much political distrust—so much so that society has become deeply divided and democracy itself may be imperiled as a result. At the same time, many also argue that citizens are too ready to believe “fake news,” conspiracy theories, and other dubious material on political issues, thereby also potentially threatening the viability of democracy. These complaints are in some tension with each other. How can people be both lacking in trust, and highly gullible at the same time? But the tension is more apparent than real. The two problems are rooted in common dynamics of political ignorance and irrationality. Part I outlines the basic logic of rational political ignorance, and the related phenomenon of “rational irrationality”—biased evaluation of evidence. Part II applies this logic to current concerns about “fake news” and distrust of experts. In Part III, I explain why some substantial degree of deference to experts is desirable, and probably unavoidable. The key question is whether people can find the right information sources to trust. A number of strategies can help address this, but it seems unlikely many voters will adopt them without a change in incentives. Finally, Part IV outlines how we might have better incentives to assess facts and claims to expertise well if we make fewer decisions through ballot box voting, and more by “voting with our feet.”
Professor of Law, George Mason University. Parts of this paper are adapted from my forthcoming book, Free to Move: Foot Voting, Migration and Political Freedom (Oxford University Press), from Chap. 3 of my previous book, Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2nd. ed. 2016), and from material previously printed at the Volokh Conspiracy law and politics blog, hosted by Reason magazine and the Washington Post.
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Notes
- 1.
See, e.g., Liliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Becomes Our Identity, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018); Darrell M. West, Divided Politics, Divided Nation: Hyperconflict in the Trump Era, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2019).
- 2.
See, e.g., Tom R. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
- 3.
See, e.g., Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy; James Ball, Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World, (New York; Biteback, 2018): Cailyn O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018).
- 4.
Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver, and Aaron Edlin, “What is the Probability that Your Vote Will Make a Difference?” Economic Inquiry 50 (2012): 321–26.
- 5.
Tony Blair, A Journey: My Political Life, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 70–71.
- 6.
For a more extensive discussion of the logic of rational ignorance, see Ilya Somin, “Rational Ignorance.” in Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, (Matthias Gross and Linsey J. McGoey, eds., Routledge, 2015). The idea was first developed by Anthony Downs, An Economic Theory of Democracy, (New York: Harper & Row, 1957).
- 7.
This part of the article builds on my book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2nd ed. 2016), which analyzes rational ignorance and its consequences in great detail (see esp. Chaps. 1–4).
- 8.
See ibid., Chap. 3, and Bryan Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
- 9.
For a review of the evidence, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, 92–97.
- 10.
See Daniel Williams, “Motivated Ignorance, Rationality, and Democratic Politics,” Synthese (forthcoming, 2020), available at https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs11229-020-02549-8.pdf.
- 11.
Ibid, 12–17.
- 12.
Ibid.
- 13.
For an argument for its distinctiveness, see ibid., 4–10.
- 14.
For a more detailed discussion, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, 78.
- 15.
For more detailed discussion of and the reasons why rational ignorance does not require careful calculation and is consistent with crude heuristics, see Ilya Somin, “Rational Ignorance.” in Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, (Matthias Gross and Linsey J. McGoey, eds., Routledge, 2015); and Brad R. Taylor, “The Psychological Foundations of Rational Ignorance: Biased Heuristics and Decision Costs,” University of Queensland, unpublished paper, Aug. 31, 2019, available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3443280.
- 16.
For recent overviews of the evidence, see, e.g., Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 1; Jason Brennan, Against Democracy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections do Not Produce Responsive Government, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Rick Shenkman, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, (New York: Basic Books, 2008).
- 17.
For numerous examples, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 1.
- 18.
Ibid., 1.
- 19.
Ibid., 20. Inmore recent surveys, the number who can name the three branches varies from 26 to 39%. Annenberg Public Policy Center survey, Aug. 9–13, 2017, available at https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-are-poorly-informed-about-basic-constitutional-provisions/ (26%); Annenberg Public Policy Centersurvey, Aug. 16–27, 2019 (39%), available at, https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-civics-knowledge-increases-2019-survey/
- 20.
See, e.g., Ipsos-MORI, Perils of Perception: A Fourteen- Country Study (Ipsos-MORI, 2014) (detailing similar ignorance in many leading democracies); Bobby Duffy, The Perils of Perception: Why We’re Wrong About Nearly Everything, (London: Atlantic Books, 2018), Chaps. 4–9.
- 21.
For more detailed discussion, see ibid., Chap. 3.
- 22.
For a recent defense of this view of political ignorance, see Jeffrey Friedman, Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). For a more detailed discussion of the difference between rational ignorance and inadvertent ignorance, see Somin, “Rational Ignorance,” 275.
- 23.
For more extensive discussion of these points, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, 89–91.
- 24.
See, e.g., Donald Wittman, The Myth of Democratic Failure, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Hélène Landemore, Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); James Stimson, “A Macro Theory of Information Flow.” in John Ferejohn and James Kuklinski, eds., Information and Democratic Processes, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990); Bernard Grofman and Julie Withers, “Information-Pooling Models of Electoral Politics.” in Bernard Grofman, ed., Information, Participation and Choice, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993); James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter than the Few, (New York: Doubleday, 2004), Chap. 12; and Robert S. Erikson, Michael B. Mackuen, and James A. Stimson, The Macro Polity, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
- 25.
Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 4.
- 26.
See, e.g., ibid., 94–97 (summarizing evidence); Charles S. Taber and Milton R. Lodge, “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs,” American Journal of Political Science 50 (2006): 755–69; Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” Political Behavior 32 (2010): 303–30.
- 27.
Ethan Porter and Thomas J. Wood, False Alarm: The Truth About Political Mistruths in the Trump Era, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019).
- 28.
For an overview of evidence on this point, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, 95–96.
- 29.
See, e.g., Mason, Uncivil Agreement.
- 30.
I explore this point in Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, 99–104.
- 31.
See, e.g., Muirhead and Rosenblum, Many People are Saying; Peter Nichols, “Trump Needs Conspiracy Theories,” The Atlantic, Nov. 29, 2019, available at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/trump-conspiracy-theories-ukraine/602728/.
- 32.
For a historical overview of conspiracy theories in American politics see Joseph Uscinski, American Conspiracy Theories, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
- 33.
Neil Malhotra and Yotam Margalit, “Anti-Semitism https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/11/trump-conspiracy-theories-ukraine/602728/. And the Economic Crisis,” Boston Review, May–June 2009, available at https://bostonreview.net/BR34.3/malhotra_margalit.php.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
Harris Poll survey, March 1–8, 2010, available at https://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-Politics-Wingnuts-2010-03.pdf.
- 36.
For an overview, see Andrew Prokop, “Trump Fanned a Conspiracy Theory About Obama’s Birthplace for Years. Now He Blames Hillary Clinton for it,” Vox, Sept. 16, 2016, available at https://www.vox.com/2016/9/16/12938066/donald-trump-obama-birth-certificate-birther.
- 37.
Rassmussen poll, April 30-May 1, 2007.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Each of these examples is noted in Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule, “Conspiracy Theories,” University of Chicago Law School Law & Economics Research Paper No. 387 (2008); See also Sunstein, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016).
- 40.
Malhotra and Margalit, “Anti-Semitism and the Financial Crisis”; Rassmussen poll, April 30-May 1, 2007; Harris Poll survey, March 1–8, 2010, available at https://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-Politics-Wingnuts-2010-03.pdf.
- 41.
A possible alternative scenario is that Jews deserve “blame” for the crisis because Jewish financiers or government officials caused it inadvertently, rather than deliberately. However, there is no evidence to suggest that Jewish officials and financiers behaved differently from gentile ones in this respect.
- 42.
I discuss these points in greater detail in Ilya Somin,, “Rational Ignorance.” in Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies, (Matthias Gross and Linsey J. McGoey, eds., Routledge, 2015); cf. Brad R. Taylor, “The Psychological Foundations of Rational Ignorance: Biased Heuristics and Decision Costs,” University of Queensland, unpublished paper, Aug. 31, 2019, available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3443280.
- 43.
Pew Research CenterSurvey, Jan. 29, 2015, available at https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
See Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 1, and discussion in Part I of this article.
- 47.
See, e.g., Ilya Somin, “Over 80 Percent of Americans Support Mandatory Labeling of Foods Containing DNA,” Washington Post, Jan. 17, 2015, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/01/17/over-80-percent-of-americans-support-mandatory-labels-on-foods-containing-dna/.
- 48.
Pew Research CenterSurvey.
- 49.
Cf. Brian Leiter, “Philosophers, Eating, Ethics—A Discussion of the Poll Results,” Leiter Reports, Oct. 10, 2012, available at https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/10/philosophers-eating-ethics-a-discussion-of-the-poll-results.html. This survey is admittedly of low scientific validity. But it comports with conventional wisdom on the distribution of philosophers’ opinions on this subject.
- 50.
Pew Research CenterSurvey, Jan. 29, 2015.
- 51.
See, e.g., Julian L. Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
- 52.
See, e.g., Michael Shearmer, “Why Malthus is Still Wrong,” Scientific American, May 1, 2016, available at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-malthus-is-still-wrong/; “Malthus, the False Prophet,” The Economist, May 15, 2008, available at https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2008/05/15/malthus-the-false-prophet.
- 53.
See Bryan D. Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
- 54.
Bryan Caplan, Eric Crampton, Wayne Grove, and Ilya Somin. “Systematically Biased Beliefs About Political Influence.” PS: Political Science and Politics 46 (2013): 760–67.
- 55.
See, e.g., Pew Research Center Survey, July 9, 2009, available at https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/legacy-pdf/528.pdf.
- 56.
For an overview of knowledge prerequisites for being a responsible voter under various normative theories of democratic participation, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 2.
- 57.
For an overview of these and other similar approaches to assessing experts, see Alexander Guerrero, “Living With Ignorance in a World of Experts,” in Rik Peels, ed., Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy, (London: Routledge, 2016); cf. Alvin Goldman, “Experts: Which Ones Should You Trust?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63 (2001): 85–110; Harry Collins and Robert Evans, Rethinking Expertise, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
- 58.
For a review of some of these difficulties, see Guerrero, “Living with Ignorance in a World of Experts”.
- 59.
For a detailed discussion of various proposals to increase political knowledge, and explanations of why they are unlikely to succeed in the near future, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 7.
- 60.
For extensive discussion of these three different types of foot voting, see Somin, Free to Move, Chaps. 1–4.
- 61.
I discuss this issue in much greater detail in Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 5.
- 62.
See discussion in Part I.
- 63.
For a variety of evidence to this effect, see Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, Chap. 5.; for studies showing that people analyze political information in a more biased way than other information, see e.g., Dan M. Kahan, Ellen Peters, Erica Cantrell Dawson, and Paul Slovic, “Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government,” Behavioral Public Policy 1 (2017); 54–86; Dan Kahan, “Misconceptions, Misinformation, and the Logic of Identity-Protective Cognition,” SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.29730 67.
- 64.
For a recent argument to the effect that this can reduce the impact of political disinformation, see O’Connor and Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 176–77.
- 65.
Tom R. Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
- 66.
Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in an Age of Social Media, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017).
- 67.
See Sunstein, #Republic, especially Chaps. 6, 9, 11.
- 68.
On the advantages of private planned communities as mechanisms for foot voting, see Somin, Free to Move, Chap. 4.
- 69.
See ibid., Chaps. 2–6, and Somin, Democracy and Political Ignorance, 165–76.
- 70.
See Somin, Free to Move, chap. 2; Somin, Democray and Political Ignorance, 165–67.
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Somin, I. (2020). Trust and Political Ignorance. In: Fabris, A. (eds) Trust. Trust 2020. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 54. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44018-3_11
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