Doubt

I came across the following in the buddhist magazine The Tricycle, which sends me a thought for the day.

Zen ethics is grounded in the realization that one does not know what’s right. This “not-knowing” is the refuge from which all moral action originates. It’s a refuge that can’t be relegated to the role of moral abstraction and remains a free and alive expression of the moment. What’s offered us in the place of moral certainty is doubt and love, which are nearly synonymous. Doubt wears the hard edges off our best ideas and exposes us to the world as it is.

And here is an article from Robert Shiller in today's New York Times. Shiller questions the wisdom of taxpayers promoting so much home ownership, a conservative view, while not falling in the trap of believing in laissez-faire capitalism. If conservatives and liberals could talk a little more constructively, I think you would see more areas of potential agreement. Unfortunately, Republicans now act on the premise that preventing anything from getting done will get them the most votes in the next election. And Democrats decided to do things the same old way in the Senate, by having the old bulls control the agenda.

A different kind of example: there was recently a really dumb article in the Wall Street Journal crediting the ideas of Milton Friedman for turning Chile's economy around. Paul Krugman rightly criticized it, although he dumbed the issue down for political purposes. For anybody that has read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, you know this is a call to action (see here). However, she just seems to be playing into the old socialist vs. capitalist pointless argument. Reality is more complicated. See here (and don't forget to link from this post to Tyler's earlier one, which is much more detailed).

So boys and girls of the right and left, you can continue yelling at each other, picking up something really stupid from one side and criticizing it like it represented the view of reasonable people on the other (also called demonizing the other side). What you end up doing is attacking which for the purpose of reality is a "straw man." It may feel good but it doesn't help arrive at the truth and what needs to be done.

Here is a level-headed view of the financial crisis. We are far from understanding what happened; their are various plausible causal stories, some of which you can find in the FCIC articles. I was particularly enlighted by both Gorton and Brunnermeier. Here is a link to the FCIC site.

Reality is a story we tell ourselves, a particular narrative. As is memory. As is identity. I finished Strangers to Ourselves yesterday, a very compelling book. It was the inspiration for Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and Robert Burton's On Being Certain is along the same lines in current cognitive psychology. However, the doubt perhaps engendered by these views does not have to be disabling. As my friend Patrick says, there is work on the ground to be done. So what that discovering truth is not as simple as many suppose? That can make the search more interesting.

I need to think more about the insights of this cognitive psychology, which are also incorporated into behavioral economics. But for now I am on to a new topic. Brian Fagan has a new book out called Cro-Magnon, which is about what life was like for humans 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. Also on a book note, Nassim Taleb is issuing a new edition of The Black Swan in May. He has some new chapters and you can see drafts of some of it by linking to his website below.

Addendum: Klein titles her article "Socialist Rebar." This is in response to the WSJ person's view that progress is due to free market fundamentalism. She says that it is due to the socialism of Allende. Her book is often referred to as arguing against capitalistic opportunists taking advantage of disasters. But it is much more. The events she links together are not all tied together by this theme. And her characterization of hope for Latin America at the end of the book is very much in favor of nationalization of industries.