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Energy Price Rises are a result of speculation and not increase in price of gas and oil

 

Why intellectual humility matters

We should all nurture the ability to recognise our own cognitive biases and to admit when we’re wrong writes JEMIMA KELLY in The FT


What makes some people believe in conspiracy theories and false news reports more than others? Is it their political or religious perspective? Is it a lack of formal education? Or is it more about their age, gender or socio-economic background? 

A recently published study suggests that more important than any of these factors is another characteristic: the extent to which someone has — or does not have — intellectual humility. 

Intellectual humility can be thought of as a willingness to recognise our own cognitive limitations and biases, to admit when we’re wrong, and to be more interested in understanding the truth of an issue than in being right. Its spirit is captured nicely by the quote often attributed (probably wrongly) to John Maynard Keynes: “When the facts change, I change my mind — what do you do, sir?” 

In their study, Marco Meyer and Mark Alfano — academics who specialise in social epistemology, a field at the intersection of philosophy and psychology — found those who possess this virtue are much better at differentiating between accurate news reports and false ones. They suggest that having intellectual humility was a better predictor of someone’s ability to resist fake news than any of the other factors they looked at. 

In another study published last year, Meyer and Alfano found a strong correlation between “epistemic vice” (the lack of intellectual humility) and belief in false information about Covid-19, with a coefficient of 0.76. The next strongest link was with religiosity, with a moderate coefficient of 0.46. And while they did find a weak correlation between intelligence — measured by exam results, education level, and performance on a cognitive reflection test — and belief in false information, they say there is no link between intelligence and intellectual humility. 

“When you’re intelligent, you can actually be more susceptible to certain kinds of disinformation, because you’re more likely to be able to rationalise your beliefs,” says Meyer, who is based at the University of Hamburg. Intellectual humility is, he suggests “super-important . . . as a counterweight, almost, against intelligence.” 

You might think such a virtue would be almost impossible to measure, but Meyer and Alfano’s work suggests that self-reported intellectual humility — based on asking respondents to rate the extent to which they agree with statements such as “I often have strong opinions about issues I don’t know much about” — is quite effective. And other studies have shown positive correlations between self-reported and peer-reported intellectual humility, with the former generally seen as a more accurate gauge. 

You might also worry that, given the liberal over-representation in academia, the examples used in these studies would skew towards rightwing falsehoods or conspiracies. But the researchers say they were careful to ensure balance. In the case of Covid misinformation, they asked participants about their beliefs in widely disputed areas, such as hand dryers being effective in killing the virus, rather than more contested ones such as the effectiveness of masks and lockdowns, or the origins of the virus. 

Intellectual humility is important not just in preventing the spread of misinformation. Other studies have found that it is associated with so-called “mastery behaviours” such as seeking out challenging work and persisting after failures, and it is also linked to less political “myside bias”. 

However, this quality is not easy to cultivate. A recent study suggests that repeatedly exposing students to their own errors, such as by getting them involved in forecasting tournaments, could be effective. I have argued before that social media platforms such as Twitter should institute a “challenger mode” that exposes us to beliefs we don’t normally come across; another trick might be to implement a practice of “steelmanning”, a term that appears to have been coined by the blogger Chana Messinger. She describes it as “the art of addressing the best form of the other person’s argument, even if it’s not the one they presented” — the opposite of a straw-man, in other words. 

Of course, there are limits to intellectual humility: beyond a certain point it becomes self-indulgent and can render us indecisive. Running a country — writing a column, even — requires a level of conviction, and sometimes that means faking it a bit and hoping for the best. So we should cultivate other virtues too, such as courage and the ability to take action. 

But fostering an environment in which we reward uncertainty and praise those who acknowledge their errors is vital. Saying “I was wrong”, and explaining why, is often much more valuable than insisting “I was right”.

The Nehru-Gandhis and the Congress Presidency

Saeed Naqvi in The Dawn

THE media is riveted to the news that the Congress party will elect a new president in October, one who will not be from the Nehru-Gandhi family. So what will that do for the party or even for the country? Usually, insightful friends see in the jostling a pantomime sponsored by corporate chiefs whose names the Gandhis have dared to call out. The ‘rebellion’ within the Congress led by some who never won a Lok Sabha election, is an element in the script. When business captains met in Gujarat ahead of the 2014 elections to name Narendra Modi as their prime ministerial candidate, the move had a main purpose: to ensure the removal of the Gandhis from the opposition frame. The Gandhis on their part never wanted to be in politics. Now, they have an interest: to keep certain party men from capturing the party.

So, elect a new president by all means. However, a truer groundbreaking quest would be to perhaps figure out what really does India’s oldest party plan to do that would make it worthy of being the only party with a pan-India base. Statistics can be a misleading ploy but who can’t deny the hard facts the strangely stacked numbers reveal? The BJP won all of 37 per cent votes nationwide in the last general elections. The Congress got only slightly more than 19pc votes that translated to fewer than 10pc of the Lok Sabha’s seats for the first time.

But statistics are like a babbling toddler. You have to patiently understand the babble to divide the angst or the joy as the case may be. The cold facts are that the Congress was routed in 1977 and removed from power with a tally of 34pc votes, just 3pc fewer than the BJP’s current numbers. And with 34pc, the Congress was routed. However, and this is crucial, what the BJP hasn’t succeeded in doing is to have an imprint with a vote share spread in almost every Indian state. The Congress holds the position despite being in power only in Rajasthan today. Spare a thought for the needed change, if only the Congress puts its act together, not necessarily as the Lone Ranger of Hollywood movies but more like the Samurais of Kurosawa, rallying the entire opposition, resolutely and selflessly. The BJP rubs in the point that the Congress has only two seats in Uttar Pradesh, true. But the BJP had two seats in parliament once, and that was not long ago as Indian politics goes.

Focus is key. The torture the other day of a physically frail Sonia Gandhi being summoned by the government’s revenue sleuths to their offices was despicable. The BJP thrives on being mean with critics and opposition parties. When BJP’s senior leader L.K. Advani was grilled, however, over charges of dubiously transacted election funds wealth, which implied money laundering, the Congress ensured that all questions were asked at Advani’s residence. It was not his privilege, just a courtesy to a senior opposition leader. 

However, what was disconcerting other than Sonia trudging to the revenue officers thrice in a row was to see the party ‘in action’ over the matter. Every senior leader was dying to court arrest. They who never came out when mobs killed innocent Indians, or when wrong Indians were sent to jail. Protest the leader’s perverse grilling by all means. But spare a thought also for the time the same leaders were missing from view when a woman was gang-raped in Gujarat of 2002 and her rapists were set free with a nod from the highest court. Masses would have joined the Congress had it protested then as it did Ms Gandhi’s personal trauma. Who was advising the Gandhis to squander the precious chance to redeem their pledge for a national movement when citizens were being assaulted by the state? Is the new president going to lead the charge?

Whatever has happened to the second freedom movement, anyway? Had the leaders spoken out of turn? Was the thought too unwieldy for their brand of slothful politics? In that case it’s so ironical.

Gandhi critics cite the party’s recent habit of perpetually losing elections. They seem less concerned that where the party did win the states with allies, it found its satraps deserting the party to join or help the BJP in toppling the Congress and its allies. Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and more recently Maharashtra come to mind as states the BJP did not win but rules. Is changing the party president the answer?

It could be crucial, therefore, that while ushering in a new party chief, Congress leaders also define what they meant when they called for a second independence movement. Focus on that instead of undermining the critical importance of the Gandhis, not necessarily as leaders but as a uniting force at this critical juncture of politics ahead of the 2024 polls.

Let’s be clear. The family was thrust into politics by a string of dark events, beginning with Indira Gandhi’s assassination. It’s a lie that her son coveted the job as her successor. There’s no evidence to support the claim. The minions may have created the pressure rightly or wrongly that he alone could save India from the instability triggered by Indira Gandhi’s policies, chiefly towards Punjab, and then by her gruesome death. However, Sonia Gandhi is on record as threatening to leave her husband if he became prime minister. She feared, presciently as it turned out, that he too would be killed. Now that Rahul is setting out on a ‘Unite the nation march’ next month — after having refused the party president’s job yet again — he could be preparing India for the resumption of mass politics that had gone missing from the Congress worldview. He is taking a very necessary risk at a very violent moment in Indian history. Is this ambition?

27 years in China will make you humble