reason

The mythology mindset

pnrj book reviews, cognitive science, core principles, tribal paradigm , , , , , ,

Feb 5 JDN 2459981

I recently finished reading Steven Pinker’s latest book Rationality. It’s refreshing, well-written, enjoyable, and basically correct with some small but notable errors that seem sloppy—but then you could have guessed all that from the fact that it was written by Steven Pinker.

What really makes the book interesting is an insight Pinker presents near the end, regarding the difference between the “reality mindset” and the “mythology mindset”.

It’s a pretty simple notion, but a surprisingly powerful one.

In the reality mindset, a belief is a model of how the world actually functions. It must be linked to the available evidence and integrated into a coherent framework of other beliefs. You can logically infer from how some parts work to how other parts must work. You can predict the outcomes of various actions. You live your daily life in the reality mindset; you couldn’t function otherwise.

In the mythology mindset, a belief is a narrative that fulfills some moral, emotional, or social function. It’s almost certainly untrue or even incoherent, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing is that it sends the right messages. It has the right moral overtones. It shows you’re a member of the right tribe.

The idea is similar to Dennett’s “belief in belief”, which I’ve written about before; but I think this characterization may actually be a better one, not least because people would be more willing to use it as a self-description. If you tell someone “You don’t really believe in God, you believe in believing in God”, they will object vociferously (which is, admittedly, what the theory would predict). But if you tell them, “Your belief in God is a form of the mythology mindset”, I think they are at least less likely to immediately reject your claim out of hand. “You believe in God a different way than you believe in cyanide” isn’t as obviously threatening to their identity.

A similar notion came up in a Psychology of Religion course I took, in which the professor discussed “anomalous beliefs” linked to various world religions. He picked on a bunch of obscure religions, often held by various small tribes. He asked for more examples from the class. Knowing he was nominally Catholic and not wanting to let mainstream religion off the hook, I presented my example: “This bread and wine are the body and blood of Christ.” To his credit, he immediately acknowledged it as a very good example.

It’s also not quite the same thing as saying that religion is a “metaphor”; that’s not a good answer for a lot of reasons, but perhaps chief among them is that people don’t say they believe metaphors. If I say something metaphorical and then you ask me, “Hang on; is that really true?” I will immediately acknowledge that it is not, in fact, literally true. Love is a rose with all its sweetness and all its thorns—but no, love isn’t really a rose. And when it comes to religious belief, saying that you think it’s a metaphor is basically a roundabout way of saying you’re an atheist.

From all these different directions, we seem to be converging on a single deeper insight: when people say they believe something, quite often, they clearly mean something very different by “believe” than what I would ordinarily mean.

I’m tempted even to say that they don’t really believe it—but in common usage, the word “belief” is used at least as often to refer to the mythology mindset as the reality mindset. (In fact, it sounds less weird to say “I believe in transsubstantiation” than to say “I believe in gravity”.) So if they don’t really believe it, then they at least mythologically believe it.

Both mindsets seem to come very naturally to human beings, in particular contexts. And not just modern people, either. Humans have always been like this.

Ask that psychology professor about Jesus, and he’ll tell you a tall tale of life, death, and resurrection by a demigod. But ask him about the Stroop effect, and he’ll provide a detailed explanation of rigorous experimental protocol. He believes something about God; but he knows something about psychology.

Ask a hunter-gatherer how the world began, and he’ll surely spin you a similarly tall tale about some combination of gods and spirits and whatever else, and it will all be peculiarly particular to his own tribe and no other. But ask him how to gut a fish, and he’ll explain every detail with meticulous accuracy, with almost the same rigor as that scientific experiment. He believes something about the sky-god; but he knows something about fish.

To be a rationalist, then, is to aspire to live your whole life in the reality mindset. To seek to know rather than believe.

This isn’t about certainty. A rationalist can be uncertain about many things—in fact, it’s rationalists of all people who are most willing to admit and quantify their uncertainty.

This is about whether you allow your beliefs to float free as bare, almost meaningless assertions that you profess to show you are a member of the tribe, or you make them pay rent, directly linked to other beliefs and your own experience.

As long as I can remember, I have always aspired to do this. But not everyone does. In fact, I dare say most people don’t. And that raises a very important question: Should they? Is it better to live the rationalist way?

I believe that it is. I suppose I would, temperamentally. But say what you will about the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution, they have clearly revolutionized human civilization and made life much better today than it was for most of human existence. We are peaceful, safe, and well-fed in a way that our not-so-distant ancestors could only dream of, and it’s largely thanks to systems built under the principles of reason and rationality—that is, the reality mindset.

We would never have industrialized agriculture if we still thought in terms of plant spirits and sky gods. We would never have invented vaccines and antibiotics if we still believed disease was caused by curses and witchcraft. We would never have built power grids and the Internet if we still saw energy as a mysterious force permeating the world and not as a measurable, manipulable quantity.

This doesn’t mean that ancient people who saw the world in a mythological way were stupid. In fact, it doesn’t even mean that people today who still think this way are stupid. This is not about some innate, immutable mental capacity. It’s about a technology—or perhaps the technology, the meta-technology that makes all other technology possible. It’s about learning to think the same way about the mysterious and the familiar, using the same kind of reasoning about energy and death and sunlight as we already did about rocks and trees and fish. When encountering something new and mysterious, someone in the mythology mindset quickly concocts a fanciful tale about magical beings that inevitably serves to reinforce their existing beliefs and attitudes, without the slightest shred of evidence for any of it. In their place, someone in the reality mindset looks closer and tries to figure it out.

Still, this gives me some compassion for people with weird, crazy ideas. I can better make sense of how someone living in the modern world could believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old or that the world is ruled by lizard-people. Because they probably don’t really believe it, they just mythologically believe it—and they don’t understand the difference.

In defense of civility

pnrj cognitive science, core principles, ethics, public policy, tribal paradigm , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dec 18 JDN 2459932

Civility is in short supply these days. Perhaps it has always been in short supply; certainly much of the nostalgia for past halcyon days of civility is ill-founded. Wikipedia has an entire article on hundreds of recorded incidents of violence in legislative assemblies, in dozens of countries, dating all the way from to the Roman Senate in 44 BC to Bosnia in 2019. But the Internet seems to bring about its own special kind of incivility, one which exposes nearly everyone to some of the worst vitriol the entire world has to offer. I think it’s worth talking about why this is bad, and perhaps what we might do about it.

For some, the benefits of civility seem so self-evident that they don’t even bear mentioning. For others, the idea of defending civility may come across as tone-deaf or even offensive. I would like to speak to both of those camps today: If you think the benefits of civility are obvious, I assure you, they aren’t to everyone. And if you think that civility is just a tool of the oppressive status quo, I hope I can make you think again.

A lot of the argument against civility seems to be founded in the notion that these issues are important, lives are at stake, and so we shouldn’t waste time and effort being careful how we speak to each other. How dare you concern yourself with the formalities of argumentation when people are dying?

But this is totally wrongheaded. It is precisely because these issues are important that civility is vital. It is precisely because lives are at stake that we must make the right decisions. And shouting and name-calling (let alone actual fistfights or drawn daggers—which have happened!) are not conducive to good decision-making.

If you shout someone down when choosing what restaurant to have dinner at, you have been very rude and people may end up unhappy with their dining experience—but very little of real value has been lost. But if you shout someone down when making national legislation, you may cause the wrong policy to be enacted, and this could lead to the suffering or death of thousands of people.

Think about how court proceedings work. Why are they so rigid and formal, with rules upon rules upon rules? Because the alternative was capricious violence. In the absence of the formal structure of a court system, so-called ‘justice’ was handed out arbitrarily, by whoever was in power, or by mobs of vigilantes. All those seemingly-overcomplicated rules were made in order to resolve various conflicts of interest and hopefully lead toward more fair, consistent results in the justice system. (And don’t get me wrong; they still could stand to be greatly improved!)

Legislatures have complex rules of civility for the same reason: Because the outcome is so important, we need to make sure that the decision process is as reliable as possible. And as flawed as existing legislatures still are, and as silly as it may seem to insist upon addressing ‘the Honorable Representative from the Great State of Vermont’, it’s clearly a better system than simply letting them duke it out with their fists.

A related argument I would like to address is that of ‘tone policing‘. If someone objects, not to the content of what you are saying, but to the tone in which you have delivered it, are they arguing in bad faith?

Well, possibly. Certainly, arguments about tone can be used that way. In particular I remember that this was basically the only coherent objection anyone could come up with against the New Atheism movement: “Well, sure, obviously, God isn’t real and religion is ridiculous; but why do you have to be so mean about it!?”

But it’s also quite possible for tone to be itself a problem. If your tone is overly aggressive and you don’t give people a chance to even seriously consider your ideas before you accuse them of being immoral for not agreeing with you—which happens all the time—then your tone really is the problem.

So, how can we tell which is which? I think a good way to reply to what you think might be bad-faith tone policing is this: “What sort of tone do you think would be better?”

I think there are basically three possible responses:

1. They can’t offer one, because there is actually no tone in which they would accept the substance of your argument. In that case, the tone policing really is in bad faith; they don’t want you to be nicer, they want you to shut up. This was clearly the case for New Atheism: As Daniel Dennett aptly remarked, “There’s simply no polite way to tell someone they have dedicated their lives to an illusion.” But sometimes, such things need to be said all the same.

2. They offer an alternative argument you could make, but it isn’t actually expressing your core message. Either they have misunderstood your core message, or they actually disagree with the substance of your argument and should be addressing it on those terms.

3. They offer an alternative way of expressing your core message in a milder, friendlier tone. This means that they are arguing in good faith and actually trying to help you be more persuasive!

I don’t know how common each of these three possibilities is; it could well be that the first one is the most frequent occurrence. That doesn’t change the fact that I have definitely been at the other end of the third one, where I absolutely agree with your core message and want your activism to succeed, but I can see that you’re acting like a jerk and nobody will want to listen to you.

Here, let me give some examples of the type of argument I’m talking about:

1. “Defund the police”: This slogan polls really badly. Probably because most people have genuine concerns about crime and want the police to protect them. Also, as more and more social services (like for mental health and homelessness) get co-opted into policing, this slogan makes it sound like you’re just going to abandon those people. But do we need serious, radical police reform? Absolutely. So how about “Reform the police”, “Put police money back into the community”, or even “Replace the police”?

2. “All Cops Are Bastards”: Speaking of police reform, did I mention we need it? A lot of it? Okay. Now, let me ask you: All cops? Every single one of them? There is not a single one out of the literally millions of police officers on this planet who is a good person? Not one who is fighting to take down police corruption from within? Not a single individual who is trying to fix the system while preserving public safety? Now, clearly, it’s worth pointing out, some cops are bastards—but hey, that even makes a better acronym: SCAB. In fact, it really is largely a few bad apples—the key point here is that you need to finish the aphorism: “A few bad apples spoil the whole barrel.” The number of police who are brutal and corrupt is relatively small, but as long as the other police continue to protect them, the system will be broken. Either you get those bad apples out pronto, or your whole barrel is bad. But demonizing the very people who are in the best position to implement those reforms—good police officers—is not helping.

3. “Be gay, do crime”: I know it’s tongue-in-cheek and ironic. I get that. It’s still a really dumb message. I am absolutely on board with LGBT rights. Even aside from being queer myself, I probably have more queer and trans friends than straight friends at this point. But why in the world would you want to associate us with petty crime? Why are you lumping us in with people who harm others at best out of desperation and at worst out of sheer greed? Even if you are literally an anarchist—which I absolutely am not—you’re really not selling anarchism well if the vision you present of it is a world of unfettered crime! There are dozens of better pro-LGBT slogans out there; pick one. Frankly even “do gay, be crime” is better, because it’s more clearly ironic. (Also, you can take it to mean something like this: Don’t just be gay, do gay—live your fullest gay life. And if you can be crime, that means that the system is fundamentally unjust: You can be criminalized just for who you are. And this is precisely what life is like for millions of LGBT people on this planet.)

A lot of people seem to think that if you aren’t immediately convinced by the most vitriolic, aggressive form of an argument, then you were never going to be convinced anyway and we should just write you off as a potential ally. This isn’t just obviously false; it’s incredibly dangerous.

The whole point of activism is that not everyone already agrees with you. You are trying to change minds. If it were really true that all reasonable, ethical people already agreed with your view, you wouldn’t need to be an activist. The whole point of making political arguments is that people can be reasonable and ethical and still be mistaken about things, and when we work hard to persuade them, we can eventually win them over. In fact, on some things we’ve actually done spectacularly well.

And what about the people who aren’t reasonable and ethical? They surely exist. But fortunately, they aren’t the majority. They don’t rule the whole world. If they did, we’d basically be screwed: If violence is really the only solution, then it’s basically a coin flip whether things get better or worse over time. But in fact, unreasonable people are outnumbered by reasonable people. Most of the things that are wrong with the world are mistakes, errors that can be fixed—not conflicts between irreconcilable factions. Our goal should be to fix those mistakes wherever we can, and that means being patient, compassionate educators—not angry, argumentative bullies.

Stop telling people they need to vote. Tell them they need to cast informed votes.

pnrj education, ethics, public policy , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Feb 11 JDN 2458161

I just spent last week’s post imploring you to defend the norms of democracy. This week, I want to talk about a norm of democracy that I actually think needs an adjustment.

Right now, there is a very strong norm that simply says: VOTE.

“It is our civic duty to vote.” “You are unpatriotic if you don’t vote.” “Voting is a moral obligation.” Etc.

The goal here is laudable: We want people to express the altruistic motivation that will drive them to escape the so-called Downs Paradox and actually go vote to make democracy work.

But the norm is missing something quite important. It’s not actually such a great thing if everyone just goes out and votes, because most people are seriously, disturbingly uninformed about politics.

The norm shouldn’t be that you must vote. The norm should be that you must cast an informed vote.

Best if you vote informed, but if you won’t get informed, then better if you don’t vote at all. Adding random noise or bias toward physical attractiveness and height does not improve electoral outcomes.

How uninformed are voters?

Most voters don’t understand even basic facts about the federal budget, like the fact that Medicare and Social Security spending are more than defense spending, or the fact that federal aid and earmarks are tiny portions of the budget. A couple years ago I had to debunk a meme that was claiming that we spend a vastly larger portion of the budget on defense than we actually do.

It gets worse: Only a quarter of Americans can even name all three branches of government. Almost half couldn’t identify the Bill of Rights. We literally required them to learn this in high school. By law they were supposed to know this.

But of course I’m not one of the ignorant ones, right? In a classic case of Dunning-Kruger Effect, nobody ever thinks they are. When asked to predict if they would pass the civics exam required to obtain citizenship, 89% of voters surveyed predicted they would. When they took it, only 17% actually passed it. (For the record, I took it and got a perfect score. You can try it yourself here.)

More informed voters already tend to be more politically engaged. But they are almost evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, which means (especially with the way the Electoral College works) that elections are primarily determined by low-information voters. Low-information voters were decisive for Trump in a way that is unprecedented for as far back as we have data on voter knowledge (which, sadly, is not all that far back).

To be fair, more information is no panacea; humans are very good at rationalizing beliefs that they hold for tribal reasons. People who follow political news heavily typically have more distorted views on some political issues, because they only hear one side and they think they know but they don’t. To truly be more informed voters we must seek out information from reliable, nonpartisan sources, and listen to a variety of sources with differing views. Get your ideas about climate change from NPR or the IPCC, not from Huffington Post—and certainly not from Fox News. But still, maybe it’s worth reading National Review or Reason on occasion. Even when they are usually wrong, it is good for you to expose yourself to views from the other side—because sometimes they can be right. (Reason recently published an excellent article on the huge waste of government funds on building stadiums, for example, and National Review made some really good points against the New Mexico proposal to mandate college applications for high school graduates.)

And of course even those of us who are well-informed obviously have lots of other things we don’t know. Given my expertise in economics and my level of political engagement, I probably know more about politics than 99% of American voters; but I still can’t name more than a handful of members of Congress or really any state legislators aside from the ones who ran for my own district. I can’t even off the top of my head recall who heads the Orange County Water District, even though they literally decide whether I get to drink and take a shower. I’m not asking voters to know everything there is to know about politics, as no human being could possibly do such a thing. I’m merely asking that they know enough basic information to make an informed decision about who to vote for.

Moreover, I think this is a unique time in history where changing this norm has really become viable. We are living in a golden age of information access—almost literally anything you could care to know about politics, you could find in a few minutes of Google searching. I didn’t know who ran my water district, but I looked it up, and I do now: apparently Stephen R. Sheldon. I can’t name that many members of Congress, but I don’t vote for that many members of Congress, and I do carefully research each candidate running in my district when it comes time to vote. (In the next California state legislature election, Mimi Walters has got to go—she has consistently failed to stand against Trump, choosing her party over her constituency.)

This means that if you are uninformed about politics and yet still vote, you chose to do that. You aren’t living in a world where it’s extremely expensive or time-consuming to learn about politics. It is spectacularly easy to learn about politics if you actually want to; if you didn’t learn, it was because you chose not to learn. And if even this tiny cost is too much for you, then how about this? If you don’t have time to get informed, you don’t have time to vote.

Voting electronically would also help with this. People could, in the privacy of their own homes, look up information on candidates while their ballots are right there in front of them. While mail-in voter fraud actually does exist (unlike in-person voter fraud, which basically doesn’t), there are safeguards already in widespread use in Internet-based commerce that we could institute on electronic voting to provide sufficient protection. Basically, all we need to do is public-key signing: issue every voter a private key to sign their votes, which are then decrypted at the county office using a database of public keys. If public keys were stolen, that could compromise secret-ballot anonymity, but it would not allow anyone to actually change votes. Voters could come in person to collect their private keys when they register to vote, at their convenience weeks or months before the election. Of course, we’d have to make it user-friendly enough that people who aren’t very good with computers would understand the system. We could always leave open the option of in-person voting for anyone who prefers that.

Of course, establishing this norm would most likely reduce voter turnout, even if it did successfully increase voter knowledge. But we don’t actually need everyone to vote. We need everyone’s interests accurately represented. If you aren’t willing to get informed, then casting your vote isn’t representing your interests anyway, so why bother?

The many varieties of argument “men”

pnrj core principles, ethics, heuristics and biases , , , , , ,

JDN 2457552

After several long, intense, and very likely controversial posts in a row, I decided to take a break with a post that is short and fun.

You have probably already heard of a “strawman” argument, but I think there are many more “materials” an argument can be made of which would be useful terms to have, so I have proposed a taxonomy of similar argument “men”. Perhaps this will help others in the future to more precisely characterize where arguments have gone wrong and how they should have gone differently.

For examples of each, I’m using a hypothetical argument about the gold standard, based on the actual arguments I refute in my previous post on the subject.

This is an argument actually given by a proponent of the gold standard, upon which my “men” shall be built:

1) A gold standard is key to achieving a period of sustained, 4% real economic growth.

The U.S. dollar was created as a defined weight of gold and silver in 1792. As detailed in the booklet, The 21st Century Gold Standard (available free at http://agoldenage.com), I co-authored with fellow Forbes.com columnist Ralph Benko, a dollar as good as gold endured until 1971 with the relatively brief exceptions of the War of 1812, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and 1933, the year President Franklin Roosevelt suspended dollar/gold convertibility until January 31, 1934 when the dollar/gold link was re-established at $35 an ounce, a 40% devaluation from the prior $20.67 an ounce. Over that entire 179 years, the U.S. economy grew at a 3.9% average annual rate, including all of the panics, wars, industrialization and a myriad other events. During the post World War II Bretton Woods gold standard, the U.S. economy also grew on average 4% a year.

By contrast, during the 40-years since going off gold, U.S. economic growth has averaged an anemic 2.8% a year. The only 40-year periods in which the economic growth was slower were those ending in the Great Depression, from 1930 to 1940.

2) A gold standard reduces the risk of recessions and financial crises.

Critics of the gold standard point out, correctly, that it would prohibit the Federal Reserve from manipulating interest rates and the value of the dollar in hopes of stimulating demand. In fact, the idea that a paper dollar would lead to a more stable economy was one of the key selling points for abandoning the gold standard in 1971.

However, this power has done far more harm than good. Under the paper dollar, recessions have become more severe and financial crises more frequent. During the post World War II gold standard, unemployment averaged less than 5% and never rose above 7% during a calendar year. Since going off gold, unemployment has averaged more than 6%, and has been above 8% now for nearly 3.5 years.

And now, the argument men:

Fallacious (Bad) Argument Men

These argument “men” are harmful and irrational; they are to be avoided, and destroyed wherever they are found. Maybe in some very extreme circumstances they would be justifiable—but only in circumstances where it is justifiable to be dishonest and manipulative. You can use a strawman argument to convince a terrorist to let the hostages go; you can’t use one to convince your uncle not to vote Republican.

Strawman: The familiar fallacy in which instead of trying to address someone else’s argument, you make up your own fake version of that argument which is easier to defeat. The image is of making an effigy of your opponent out of straw and beating on the effigy to avoid confronting the actual opponent.

You can’t possibly think that going to the gold standard would make the financial system perfect! There will still be corrupt bankers, a banking oligopoly, and an unpredictable future. The gold standard would do nothing to remove these deep flaws in the system.

Hitman: An even worse form of the strawman, in which you misrepresent not only your opponent’s argument, but your opponent themselves, using your distortion of their view as an excuse for personal attacks against their character.

Oh, you would favor the gold standard, wouldn’t you? A rich, middle-aged White man, presumably straight and nominally Christian? You have all the privileges in life, so you don’t care if you take away the protections that less-fortunate people depend upon. You don’t care if other people become unemployed, so long as you don’t have to bear inflation reducing the real value of your precious capital assets.

Conman: An argument for your own view which you don’t actually believe, but expect to be easier to explain or more persuasive to this particular audience than the true reasons for your beliefs.

Back when we were on the gold standard, it was the era of “Robber Barons”. Poverty was rampant. If we go back to that system, it will just mean handing over all the hard-earned money of working people to billionaire capitalists.

Vaporman: Not even an argument, just a forceful assertion of your view that takes the place or shape of an argument.

The gold standard is madness! It makes no sense at all! How can you even think of going back to such a ridiculous monetary system?

Honest (Acceptable) Argument Men

These argument “men” are perfectly acceptable, and should be the normal expectation in honest discourse.

Woodman: The actual argument your opponent made, addressed and refuted honestly using sound evidence.

There is very little evidence that going back to the gold standard would in any way improve the stability of the currency or the financial system. While long-run inflation was very low under the gold standard, this fact obscures the volatility of inflation, which was extremely high; bouts of inflation were followed by bouts of deflation, swinging the value of the dollar up or down as much as 15% in a single year. Nor is there any evidence that the gold standard prevented financial crises, as dozens of financial crises occurred under the gold standard, if anything more often than they have since the full-fiat monetary system established in 1971.

Bananaman: An actual argument your opponent made that you honestly refute, which nonetheless is so ridiculous that it seems like a strawman, even though it isn’t. Named in “honor” of Ray Comfort’s Banana Argument. Of course, some bananas are squishier than others, and the only one I could find here was at least relatively woody–though still recognizable as a banana:

You said “A gold standard is key to achieving a period of sustained, 4% real economic growth.” based on several distorted, misunderstood, or outright false historical examples. The 4% annual growth in total GDP during the early part of the United States was due primarily to population growth, not a rise in real standard of living, while the rapid growth during WW2 was obviously due to the enormous and unprecedented surge in government spending (and by the way, we weren’t even really on the gold standard during that period). In a blatant No True Scotsman fallacy, you specifically exclude the Great Depression from the “true gold standard” so that you don’t have to admit that the gold standard contributed significantly to the severity of the depression.

Middleman: An argument that synthesizes your view and your opponent’s view, in an attempt to find a compromise position that may be acceptable, if not preferred, by all.

Unlike the classical gold standard, the Bretton Woods gold standard in place from 1945 to 1971 was not obviously disastrous. If you want to go back to a system of international exchange rates fixed by gold similar to Bretton Woods, I would consider that a reasonable position to take.

Virtuous (Good) Argument Men

These argument “men” go above and beyond the call of duty; rather than simply seek to win arguments honestly, they actively seek the truth behind the veil of opposing arguments. These cannot be expected in all circumstances, but they are to be aspired to, and commended when found.

Ironman: Your opponent’s actual argument, but improved, with some of its flaws shored up. The same basic thinking as your opponent, but done more carefully, filling in the proper gaps.

The gold standard might not reduce short-run inflation, but it would reduce long–run inflation, making our currency more stable over long periods of time. We would be able to track long-term price trends in goods such as housing and technology much more easily, and people would have an easier time psychologically grasping the real prices of goods as they change during their lifetime. No longer would we hear people complain, “How can you want a minimum wage of $15? As a teenager in 1955, I got paid $3 an hour and I was happy with that!” when that $3 in 1955, adjusted for inflation, is $26.78 in today’s money.

Steelman: Not the argument your opponent made, but the one they should have made. The best possible argument you are aware of that would militate in favor of their view, the one that sometimes gives you pause about your own opinions, the real and tangible downside of what you believe in.

Tying currency to gold or any other commodity may not be very useful directly, but it could serve one potentially vital function, which is as a commitment mechanism to prevent the central bank from manipulating the currency to enrich themselves or special interests. It may not be the optimal commitment mechanism, but it is a psychologically appealing one for many people, and is also relatively easy to define and keep track of. It is also not subject to as much manipulation as something like nominal GDP targeting or a Taylor Rule, which could be fudged by corrupt statisticians. And while it might cause moderate volatility, it can also protect against the most extreme forms of volatility such as hyperinflation. In countries with very corrupt governments, a gold standard might actually be a good idea, if you could actually enforce it, because it would at least limit the damage that can be done by corrupt central bank officials. Had such a system been in place in Zimbabwe in the 1990s, the hyperinflation might have been prevented. The US is not nearly as corrupt as Zimbabwe, so we probably do not need a gold standard; but it may be wise to recommend the use of gold standards or similar fixed-exchange currencies in Third World countries so that corrupt leaders cannot abuse the monetary system to gain at the expense of their people.