A few posts back, I presented my model of confidence/competence and used it to explain why politicians, as a general rule, are poor critical thinkers.

It is, unfortunately, all too easy for a politician to hide incompetence in most areas as long as the politician is very competent in the single most essential skill of politics: persuasion. (And I do think there is at least a moderate correlation between confidence/arrogance and persuasive powers.) Those who are persuasive can spin their way out of anything, by blaming poor results and unintended negative consequences on other factors (usually on the opposing political party) and by playing on the cognitive biases of their constituents.

High confidence is practically a prerequisite for a politician, because … voters believe confidence and decisiveness equates to competence. But sadly we are just electing the arrogant. The truly competent may be too humble to ever run for office.

But my friend and fellow Rush fan™ Steve Horwitz says in this Freeman article (and in this earlier article) that we should not assume politicians and bureaucrats are incompetent, but rather that government’s failings come from two key structural problems: (1) the “knowledge problem” and (2) the “Public Choice problem.” Pardon me for the lengthy quote:

“Knowledge problem” was coined by the late Austrian economist Don Lavoie in his work on the socialist calculation debate.  Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek argued, each in his own way, that the fundamental challenge facing socialist planners is to fill the role played by market prices, which serve as surrogates for the pieces of knowledge held by the millions of individuals who supply and demand goods.  Market prices, as Mises pointed out, serve as “aids to the mind” by guiding entrepreneurs and consumers as they appraise possible future outcomes and then engage in economic calculation in making decisions.  Hayek’s contribution was to argue that what enables prices to do this is their capacity to serve as proxies for the deeply held knowledge and preferences of all market participants, whose buying and selling generate the prices in the first place.

What complicates this further is that a good deal of the relevant knowledge is tacit, meaning that even those who possess it cannot specify what they know.  How do you keep your balance on a bicycle or know when to pull your foot off the clutch in a manual transmission?  You know how to do those things, but explaining in detail exactly what you do is impossible.  The advantage of markets is that they allow us to make economically relevant tacit knowledge available to others through buying and selling in the market.  This knowledge can’t, however, be communicated to planners either verbally or through statistics.

The bottom line is that socialist planners attempting to abolish markets, but interested in efficiency, would have no way of knowing what people value, so they would be unable to determine what outputs to make from a given set of inputs or which inputs to use to make any particular output.  They would not be “planning;” they would be stumbling around in the dark and the result would be economic chaos and poverty.

…

The Public Choice problem refers to the fact that many arguments for government intervention assume that politicians and bureaucrats are selfless and public-spirited, concerned only with doing what is best.  In the real world, though, we know that politicians often act in their self-interest, just like market participants do.  Unlike the market, however, political institutions do not channel self-interest into unintended consequences that benefit the public at large.  Self-interested political action leads to undesirable unintended consequences.  Think of how politicians’ desire to get reelected by spending more on their constituents and keeping their taxes low leads to larger budget deficits even though none of the politicians may have intended to run deficits.

Faced with the knowledge problem, it’s no surprise that politicians and bureaucrats will turn to self-interest.  Once they realize that knowing what the public interest is and how to achieve it are hopelessly complex, trying to get reelected or keep their jobs becomes an unsurprising next step.

The Public Choice problem assumes only that office holders and government workers pursue their self-interest as frequently as people are assumed to do in the market, not that they have evil intentions. The perverse outcomes they produce are often unintended. And that is the difference between the Public Choice problem and the malevolence principle.

Together the knowledge and Public Choice problems provide the structural critique of government that enables classical liberals to avoid the pitfalls of assuming malevolence, incompetence, or grand conspiracy.  This structural critique is robust precisely because it applies even if we assume politicians and bureaucrats are incredibly smart and well-meaning.

I agree completely that these are the two key structural shortcomings of government, and furthermore, that they cannot be overcome no matter how competent and smart and well-meaning politicians are.

But I disagree with Steve that we should not also say that government attracts the arrogant and incompetent, as I attempted to show. I realize Steve was trying to point out fundamental structural reasons why government cannot do better than the free market, independent of competence and intentions, and in that he succeeded. But if there were truly competent politicians running the show, then by the very nature of their competence they would have the intellectual humility to avoid central planning and intervention. (This, by the way, is one of the reasons I lean towards thinking that the libertarian worldview is the only one strongly consistent with critical thinking.) Only the intellectually arrogant and incompetent believe they can do better than the market. Hence it is the combination of intellectual arrogance that accompanies incompetence, along with the structural problems Steve points out, that causes government to fail.

Today’s fortune cookie:

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

From AP, via the Alabama Local News:

Staff members at an agency that oversees offshore drilling accepted tickets to sports events, lunches and other gifts from oil and gas companies and used government computers to view pornography, according to an Interior Department report alleging a culture of cronyism between regulators and the industry.

This is the fundamental problem with government and politics in America today: government has enough power that it is worthwhile for companies to petition officials for preferential treatment, and officials are sufficiently human and corruptible to succumb to the temptation to use their positions of power for personal gain. Consequently, government has become more about power brokering and favoritism than about crafting effective solutions to our country’s problems. The only difference between the two parties is the particular role they each play in this little fiction. Republicans pose as defenders of free markets and Democrats pose as defenders against the evils of capitalism, while both groups hypocritically broker their power to the unfair advantage of their own favored groups.

From Cafe Hayek:

Ferguson described civilization – including each component part, such as language, law, and the economy – as being “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.” Failure to understand not only that undesigned social orders are real, but also that these undesigned orders are superior to any arrangements that could be consciously designed and engineered, is perhaps the greatest source of tyranny and disorder of the past 200 years.

– Donald J. Boudreaux

The belief that one can intentionally design social orders that are superior to those which emerge naturally equates to  intellectual arrogance. Hence, to generalize Don’s quote just a bit, it is this intellectual arrogance, along with the related and commensurate lack of critical thinking, that is the greatest source of tyranny and disorder of the past 200 years.

And by AIG, I mean Answers In Genesis. Yeah, I know, this stuff is such nonsense my dog could probably fisk it. But I’m not proud, so here goes:

Atheists are “coming out of the closet” and becoming more vocal about their message that “there is no God.” Professor Richard Dawkins (Britain’s leading atheist) is encouraging those who share his views to express their opinion. Author of The God Delusion, Dawkins says he wants to “free children from being indoctrinated with the religion of their parents or their community.” Will Christians be prepared to “give an answer” to the atheists’ claims?

Materialistic atheism is one of the easiest worldviews to refute. A materialistic atheist believes that nature is all that there is. He believes that there is no transcendent God who oversees and maintains creation. Many atheists believe that their worldview is rational—and scientific. However, by embracing materialism, the atheist has destroyed the possibility of knowledge, as well as science and technology. In other words, if atheism were true, it would be impossible to prove anything!

So the existence of knowledge is dependent on materialism being false?

Here’s why:

Reasoning involves using the laws of logic. These include the law of non-contradiction which says that you can’t have A and not-A at the same time and in the same relationship. For example, the statement “My car is in the parking lot, and it is not the case that my car is in the parking lot” is necessarily false by the law of non-contradiction. Any rational person would accept this law…

Okay so far. I would note, though, that the law of non-contradiction was first put forth by Plato, a non-Christian who (presumably) believed in the Greek pantheon of gods.

…But why is this law true? Why should there be a law of non-contradiction, or for that matter, any laws of reasoning? The Christian can answer this question. For the Christian there is an absolute standard for reasoning; we are to pattern our thoughts after God’s. The laws of logic are a reflection of the way God thinks. The law of non-contradiction is not simply one person’s opinion of how we ought to think, rather it stems from God’s self-consistent nature. God cannot deny Himself ( 2 Timothy 2:13), and so, the way God upholds the universe will necessarily be non-contradictory.

So according to the author (Dr. Jason Lisle), the laws of logic exist because they are a reflection of the way God thinks. He offers no evidence to back up this assertion, of course, because there is none.

Laws of logic are God’s standard for thinking. Since God is an unchanging, sovereign, immaterial Being, the laws of logic are abstract, universal, invariant entities. In other words, they are not made of matter—they apply everywhere and at all times. Laws of logic are contingent upon God’s unchanging nature. And they are necessary for logical reasoning. Thus, rational reasoning would be impossible without the biblical God.

I will hereby stipulate that the laws of logic are abstract, universal and invariant (although not for the unsubstantiated reasons Dr. Lisle states) and that they are required for rational reasoning. Glad we are in agreement on that part. I shall therefore hold him to those laws and to rational reasoning throughout the rest of his article.

The materialistic atheist can’t have laws of logic. He believes that everything that exists is material—part of the physical world. But laws of logic are not physical. You can’t stub your toe on a law of logic. Laws of logic cannot exist in the atheist’s world, yet he uses them to try to reason. This is inconsistent. He is borrowing from the Christian worldview to argue against the Christian worldview. The atheist’s view cannot be rational because he uses things (laws of logic) that cannot exist according to his profession.

Claiming that a materialist can’t believe in things that aren’t physical, such as logic, thought, and math, is a straw-man argument. Materialists do believe that intangible phenomena exist. What distinguishes them from non-materialists is that they believe that these phenomena exist as a result of material interactions and require no non-material, spiritual/soul, or otherworldly explanations. Consciousness, for example, is a real — albeit intangible — phenomenon that arises out of the complex interactions within a physical brain.

And even if  Lisle’s first claim in this paragraph were correct (which it is not), his second does not follow. An atheist who applies the laws of logic with rigor, even if he is borrowing those laws from the Christian worldview, should still arrive at valid logical conclusions, no? Or does logic only work for Christians? (In which case we’ll add intellectual arrogance to the list of critical thinking offenses being committed in this article.)

I would also point out, again, that many of the laws of logic were first noted by Plato and other philosophers of that era. While Plato was an anti-materialist, he certainly didn’t believe in (and probably wasn’t aware of!) a Christian God. Wonder how he stumbled upon those laws of logic then?

The debate over the existence of God is a bit like a debate over the existence of air…

Except that it’s not. At all.

…Can you imagine someone arguing that air doesn’t actually exist? He would offer seemingly excellent “proofs” against the existence of air, while simultaneously breathing air and expecting that we can hear his words as the sound is transmitted through the air…

Similarly (as long as we’re making retarded analogies), can you imagine someone arguing that logic comes from God? He would offer seemingly excellent “proofs” against atheists being able to use logic, while simultaneously making unsubstantiated assertions and expecting that we can see the logic in his irrational and fallacious thinking. Irony? You’re soaking in it.

…In order for us to hear and understand his claim, it would have to be wrong. Likewise, the atheist, in arguing that God does not exist must use laws of logic that only make sense if God does exist. In order for his argument to make sense, it would have to be wrong.

Dr. Lisle has failed thus far to demonstrate that the laws of logic make sense only if God exists. Not only does he take for granted — rather than offer any proof or evidence or reasoning for — the existence of God, he has also failed to prove that the laws of logic come from God, even if we stipulate that God exists. He has only made unsubstantiated assertions. Not a very good display of logic.

How can the atheist respond?

The atheist might say, “Well, I can reason just fine, and I don’t believe in God.” But this is no different than the critic of air saying, “Well, I can breathe just fine, and I don’t believe in air.”

Except that it’s completely and utterly different.

This isn’t a rational response. Breathing requires air, not a profession of belief in air. Likewise, logical reasoning requires God, not a profession of belief in Him…

Argument by analogy is one of the weakest forms of logical argument. And the above is a particularly weak analogy. The analogy hinges on the presupposition that God exists just as strongly as air exists. By making this analogy, Dr. Lisle is assuming the atheist to be wrong in order to prove the atheist wrong. This is begging the question, yet another logical fallacy.

…Of course the atheist can reason; it’s because God has made his mind and given him access to the laws of logic—and that’s the point. It’s because God exists that reasoning is possible. The atheist can reason, but within his own worldview he cannot account for his ability to reason.

So now we at least have an admission that atheists can in fact use the laws of logic, even though they disbelieve in its source.

The atheist might respond, “Laws of logic are conventions made up by man.” But conventions are (by definition) conventional. That is, we all agree to them and so they work—like driving on the right side of the road. But if laws of logic were conventional, then different cultures could adopt different laws of logic (like driving on the left side of the road). So, in some cultures it might be perfectly fine to contradict yourself. In some societies truth could be self-contradictory. Clearly that wouldn’t do. If laws of logic are just conventions, then they are not universal laws. Rational debate would be impossible if laws of logic were conventional, because the two opponents could simply pick different standards for reasoning. Each would be right according to his own arbitrary standard.

Here’s another straw-man argument. He falsely assumes atheists believe laws of logic to be mere conventions rather than universal laws, and then defeats his false assumption. But logic is as universal and as objective as math, and I don’t think atheists believe otherwise.

The atheist might respond, “Laws of logic are material—they are made of electro-chemical connections in the brain.” But then the laws of logic are not universal; they would not extend beyond the brain. In other words, we couldn’t argue that contradictions cannot occur on Mars, since no one’s brain is on Mars. In fact, if the laws of logic are just electro-chemical connections in the brain, then they would differ somewhat from person to person because everyone has different connections in their brain.

Another straw-man. As I previously noted, atheists do in fact believe in intangible things such as thought. They believe that thoughts arise from electro-chemical connections in the brain; thoughts are not the connections themselves.

Sometimes an atheist will attempt to answer with a more pragmatic response: “We use the laws of logic because they work.” Unfortunately for him, that isn’t the question. We all agree the laws of logic work; they work because they’re true. The question is why do they exist in the first place? How can the atheist account for absolute standards of reasoning like the laws of logic? How can non-material things like laws exist if the universe is material only?

To not be able to account for something doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation, just that the explanation remains unknown thus far. If you say “I can’t think of an explanation other than God, so God must be the explanation,” you are guilty of the argument from ignorance fallacy. And you are violating God’s logic. Wonder if He is getting pissed yet, because you are really on a roll, Dr. Lisle.

As a last resort, the atheist may give up a strictly materialistic view and agree that there are immaterial, universal laws…

I suspect most atheists would agree with this in the first place.

…This is a huge concession; after all, if a person is willing to concede that immaterial, universal, unchanging entities can exist, then he must consider the possibility that God exists.

Laws of logic and math, as immaterial and universal as they are, can be proven and demonstrated (and written down, and computed, and …); God cannot be. Thus, the conclusion does not logically follow from the premise.

…But this concession does not save the atheist’s position. He must still justify the laws of logic. Why do they exist? And what is the point of contact between the material physical world and the immaterial world of logic? In other words, why does the material universe feel compelled to obey immaterial laws? The atheist cannot answer these questions. His worldview cannot be justified; it is arbitrary and thus irrational.

That the atheist cannot answer these questions does not mean there are no answers, merely that the answers are unknown. To assume otherwise, again, is to fall victim to the argument from ignorance fallacy. There is an entire branch of logic called epistemology which deals with the limits of knowledge, and it’s ironic that Dr. Lisle ignores these very limits himself.

Conclusions

Clearly, atheism is not a rational worldview…

Clearly. (Guffaw.)

…It is self-refuting because the atheist must first assume the opposite of what he is trying to prove in order to be able to prove anything. As Dr. Cornelius VanTil put it, “[A]theism presupposes theism.” Laws of logic require the existence of God—and not just any god, but the Christian God. Only the God of the Bible can be the foundation for knowledge (Proverbs 1:7; Colossians 2:3).

Heh. Nice circular logic, using the Bible to prove that the biblical God is the foundation for knowledge.

Since the God of Scripture is immaterial, sovereign, and beyond time, it makes sense to have laws of logic that are immaterial, universal, and unchanging. Since God has revealed Himself to man, we are able to know and use logic. Since God made the universe and since God made our minds, it makes sense that our minds would have an ability to study and understand the universe…

Which is more rational: declining to believe in a God whose existence has not been demonstrated, or basing all manner of arguments on the unproven existence of said God? Sorry, I think the atheists win here.

…But if the brain is simply the result of mindless evolutionary processes that conveyed some sort of survival value in the past, why should we trust its conclusions?

This is the first intelligent thing Dr. Lisle has said. And as an added bonus, he has offered us this fallacy-laden article to demonstrate why we should not trust the brain’s conclusions.

If the universe and our minds are simply the results of time and chance, as the atheist contends, why would we expect that the mind could make sense of the universe? How could science and technology be possible?

Because there is an abundance of evidence to demonstrate that this is so. I’m starting to get the distinct impression that Dr. Lisle doesn’t grok this whole evidence-based reasoning thing.

Rational thinking, science, and technology make sense in a Christian worldview. The Christian has a basis for these things; the atheist does not. This is not to say that atheists cannot be rational about some things. They can because they too are made in God’s image and have access to God’s laws of logic. But they have no rational basis for rationality within their own worldview. Likewise, atheists can be moral, but they have no basis for that morality according to what they claim to believe. An atheist is a walking bundle of contradictions. He reasons and does science, yet he denies the very God that makes reasoning and science possible. On the other hand, the Christian worldview is consistent and makes sense of human reasoning and experience.

“An atheist is a walking bundle of contradictions” just snapped the needle off my irony-meter, so I guess I’ll have to end the fisking here. Just a closing thought…

The very, very best that Dr. Lisle (or any other Christian apologist) could have done here would have been to make valid arguments leading to conclusions that are true only if the underlying premise — that God exists — is true. But ultimately God’s existence is unprovable (or at least has not yet been proven). So any argument that can be made in this context, however valid its form may be, always boils down to “You are irrational if you do not believe in a God whose existence I cannot prove.” But it is entirely rational to disbelieve something that has not been proven. So this in turn reduces to “You are irrational if you are rational,” which is a contradiction (remember that law of contradiction?), and therefore false.

And one last item, for those readers who have forgotten:  I’m not an atheist myself. I believe in God. But I also believe in critical thinking. And trying to mix those two, as I’ve said before, can lead to problems:

Bottom line: Whenever you are unwilling to critically examine one of your beliefs (whether faith-based or not), you CANNOT, by definition, be engaged in critical thinking.

Let’s face it: Rand Paul does not do himself any favors with his pedantic exactness in sticking to the purist libertarian philosophy. (Dare I say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree?) But in his equivocation over the Civil Rights Act (CRA), I think he forgets that the CRA was effectively a reversal of past decades of government-enabled Jim Crow laws. CRA was necessary at the time because society wasn’t going to solve the problem on its own (especially since it was a problem created with strong government backing). Sure, maybe it compromised on the purist libertarian position of limiting government interference in private affairs — but it did so for a huge net gain in personal freedom for those groups who were being treated unfairly. The net result was a win for those who truly care about liberty.

Having said that, this editorial in the NY Times, titled “Limits of Libertarianism,” is a grossly unfair criticism of Paul specifically and libertarians in general, and chock full of critical thinking gaffs:

By denigrating several of the signal achievements of modern American society, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act, Rand Paul has performed a useful service for voters who are angry at their elected officials. He has helped to illuminate the limits and the hazards of antigovernment sentiment.

Straw man argument. Libertarians are NOT anti-government; they are anti-BIG government. The anonymous author (how brave) has outed him/herself as someone who unfairly characterizes his/her opponent’s viewpoints.

Many Americans are sputtering mad, believing that government has let them down in abetting a ruinous recession, bailing out bankers and spending wildly. But is Rand Paul really the remedy they had in mind? His views and those of other Tea Party candidates are unintentional reminders of the importance of enlightened government.

Um… no. His views and those of the Tea Party candidates are representative of those Americans who are sputtering mad at big government. But fans of big government love to misinterpret what the Tea Party movement means, and will continue to do so until it no longer matters.

In a handful of remarkably candid interviews since winning Kentucky’s Republican Senate primary this week, Mr. Paul made it clear that he does not understand the nature of racial progress in this country.

As a longtime libertarian, he espouses the view that personal freedom should supersede all government intervention. Neighborhood associations should be allowed to discriminate on the basis of race, he has written, and private businesses ought to be able to refuse service to anyone they wish. Under this philosophy, the punishment for a lunch counter that refuses to seat black customers would be public shunning, not a court order.

I, for one, would love to live in a world where a public shunning carried more weight than anything the government could do. (And maybe we’ll see such a shunning come next election! LOL!) Problems would get solved faster and more effectively, and the state wouldn’t have so much power to be brokered and abused.

It is a theory of liberty with roots in America’s creation, but the succeeding centuries have shown how ineffective it was in promoting a civil society. The freedom of a few people to discriminate meant generations of less freedom for large groups of others.

This is a straw-man argument combined with a false dichotomy.

It was only government power that ended slavery and abolished Jim Crow, neither of which would have been eliminated by a purely free market. It was government that rescued the economy from the Depression and promoted safety and equality in the workplace.

This is quite possibly the most retarded paragraph I’ve ever seen in the NY Times, and that’s saying a lot. It was actually the government which legalized slavery, prior to the Civil War, and the government (both federal and state) which passed Jim Crow laws afterwards, up until the 1960’s. How could a free market be expected to reverse government laws? And no mention whatsoever of government’s role in ineptly prolonging and worsening the Depression.

Republicans in Washington have breathlessly distanced themselves from Mr. Paul’s remarks, afraid that voters might tar them with the same extremist brush. But as they continue to fight the new health care law and oppose greater financial regulation, claiming the federal government is overstepping its bounds, they should notice that the distance is closing.

The extremist brush being used to tar Paul is being brandished by the media, not by voters. It’s wishful thinking on the part of the author to impute these same sentiments onto the voters. And what is meant by the “distance [is] closing” here? Is the author really trying to equate fighting health care laws and increased financial regulation to being against the CRA? Seems like an ad-hominem and a false comparison fallacy combined.

Seriously, NY Times. This editorial was crappy even by your low standards.

I love to hear/read people’s Rush stories. Maybe some day I’ll post mine. For now, here is Geoff Reading’s Rush story.

I found a 2112 cassette tape in my P.E. locker midway through seventh-grade. I got home and put it in my mom’s shoebox-sized player recorder - the kind with the little toggle switch. Just play, stop and forward. The tape was already rewound to the beginning of side one.

“Overture/Temple of Syrinx” blew my little sevey head CLEAN OFF. It was the most stunning thing I had ever heard. It screamed at me, “ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION?!! LIFE IS ALL AROUND US BEING LIVED!! DON’T SLACK! LIVE!!!!”

…

Twenty-five years after our first introduction, Channing was coming over to my house to show me the Rush in Rio DVD.  It was a beautiful sunny winter day in Southern California. In a few weeks my son would be born; a few months later I would re-relocate my cuddly little family to the lying cruel beauty that makes up the seven week Seattle summer…

Channing and I sat in my living room watching the DVD talking about how huge the Rio crowd was, how “Closer to the Heart” is basically the national anthem down there and had to be added to the set at the last minute, and then about all that Neil Peart had been through losing first his daughter (in a car crash) and then his wife (from a broken heart) in the same year. We talked about the books Neil had written, some about joy some about grief - books that Chan had read all of. It was just he and I.

Then “The Pass” came on. The first resolution from the verse into the chorus caught me completely off guard. The chord change. It was like I had been punched in the stomach with emotion. My eyes welled up and I instinctively  looked over at Chan to see if he had seen me nearly burst into unexplained tears. He hadn’t…

HT to Rush is a Band

I’ve made yet another model. This one is so simple and obvious that it’s arguably not worth making, but that’s never stopped me before.

It’s a simple graph of confidence versus competence:

Fig. 1. A model of confidence versus competence.

Any person can be mapped into this model by plotting the person’s confidence in his/her ability versus the person’s actual level of ability. Those people who fall on the line have a perfect assessment of their own competence. Those who fall above the line have inflated opinions of their abilities and are therefore arrogant. Those who fall below the line have underestimated their abilities and are therefore humble. It should be noted that a person can be arrogant for some abilities and humble in others, just as a person can be competent in some abilities and incompetent in others.

People naturally interpret confidence and decisiveness in others as signs of competence, and conversely interpret uncertainty and a lack of confidence as signs of low ability. The implicit assumption is that a person’s confidence or lack thereof is generally warranted — i.e., people seem to believe that everyone clusters pretty close to the line in my model of confidence/competence, like so:

Fig. 2. People tend to assume that everyone accurately assesses their competence.

But we know from the Dunning-Kruger effect that incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own abilities and generally fail to recognize their inadequacies. (See here for their full report - pdf.) Moreover, Dunning-Kruger also showed that people who do have true knowledge and ability tend to underestimate their own level of competence.

So in actuality people cluster more like this:

Fig. 3. In reality, incompetent people tend to be arrogant and competent people tend to be humble.

Because of the common and widespread misinterpretation of confidence (shown in Fig. 2), those who are very decisive and confident tend to fool people enough to rise through the ranks, and those who are uncertain and hesitant tend to have a harder time doing so. Now, in the corporate world and in the military, one cannot rise very far on the power of confidence alone. Competence in these environments is rather easily observable, as is its lack, so the arrogant are soon exposed.

But it’s a different story in politics. It is, unfortunately, all too easy for a politician to hide incompetence in most areas as long as the politician is very competent in the single most essential skill of politics: persuasion. (And I do think there is at least a moderate correlation between confidence/arrogance and persuasive powers.) Those who are persuasive can spin their way out of anything, by blaming poor results and unintended negative consequences on other factors (usually on the opposing political party) and by playing on the cognitive biases of their constituents.

High confidence is practically a prerequisite for a politician, because (as Fig. 2 shows) voters believe confidence and decisiveness equates to competence. But sadly we are just electing the arrogant. The truly competent may be too humble to ever run for office.

This. Is. Awesome.

It’s a hand-made model of Bag End (that’s from the Hobbit / Lord of the Rings, for those of you who are deaf, dumb, blind, and live in a cave). Click the link to see a few dozen more pictures. The detail is staggering.

HT to Skepchick.