Elites are mostly lazily well-intentioned

Conformity and intellectual complacency provide a more plausible explanation for the prevalence of misguided beliefs among elites than deliberate malice.

I was planning to stop writing about luxury beliefs, but

Yascha Mounk

recently wrote a good article that extensively incorporates my critique of the concept as formulated by Rob Henderson.

Luxury Beliefs are Real

Yascha argues against abandoning the concept of luxury beliefs entirely, as my original piece's title suggests we should do¹. Instead, he proposes a thorough reevaluation of the idea, preserving its valuable aspects while discarding the less accurate elements. He ends up arriving at a synthesis between Rob’s original concept and my critique:

Luxury beliefs are ideas professed by people who would be much less likely to hold them if they were not insulated from, and had therefore failed seriously to consider, their negative effects.

Compare this to the original:

Luxury beliefs are defined as ideas and opinions that confer status on the affluent while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. And a core feature of a luxury belief is that the believer is sheltered from the consequences of his or her belief. There is this kind of element of duplicity, whether conscious or not.

The two definitions might look superficially similar, but Yascha’s version brings significant changes if one looks a bit deeper. To begin with, it de-emphasizes the status signalling aspect compared to the original. For those interested in this part, I also recommend

Bryan Caplan

’s economics inspired critique of the concept, where he argues at length that beliefs are a rather poor way of showcasing status to outsiders compared to other methods², because there is virtually no cost to holding them:

My point: It is bizarre to call something a “luxury belief” when everyone, no matter how poor or humble, can easily afford it. People don’t buy their political beliefs at exclusive restaurants. They get them gratis at all-you-can-eat buffets.

Yascha also drops the specification that those who hold luxury beliefs have to necessarily be elites. Instead, they are simply people who do not suffer direct consequences from the actions they support. Of course, those holding luxury beliefs will be heavily enriched in elites, by virtue of the fact that they are in general more insulated from any negative outcome.

But perhaps the most important difference and the one this essay is ultimately about, is that Yascha’s version makes no assumption about the intention of the people who hold these so-called luxury beliefs:

Many people who embrace luxury beliefs appear to be perfectly sincere about them; and even if some are not, a concept which requires us to make an armchair psychological diagnosis of a person’s underlying motivation before being able to use it would lose much of its utility.

The most plausible explanation for why individuals, regardless of their social status, often hold misguided beliefs that may lead to negative outcomes is not malice or deliberate deception, but rather what I call being “lazily well-intentioned³.” This is just another way of saying: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by laziness and conformity.”

Most people, even the most thoughtful among us, do not have the time to research all problems plaguing society in depth. Instead, they choose to defer to those they regard as experts in a specific field. In the absence of that, people will often simply default to the opinion of the highest status members of their social group.

Virtually all of us do this. For example, I consider myself a YIMBY and I support easing housing regulations to increase supply. However, I must admit that my understanding of the topic is not based on extensive research into housing economics or a comprehensive grasp of the potential drawbacks of such policies. Instead, my stance is largely influenced by the opinions of individuals I respect and consider intelligent within my social and professional circles, trusting that they have done the necessary due diligence on this complex issue. This does not mean I have completely put my own brain on sleep mode when judging this topic and completely trust others. The idea does pass my initial smell tests, seems entirely logical and fits with my priors. But I could be wrong! In this instance and many others, I am, for all intents and purposes lazily (since I have not read that much about it) well-intentioned (since I generally want people to enjoy better lives and lower housing prices are a big part of that.)

To moral laziness, add conformism and the desire to fit in and be seen as virtuous, if not necessarily high status. At this point, we have a pretty exhaustive explanation for why many believe things that are untrue or even harmful, as long as they happen to be the consensus in their social spheres. Notably, this explanation does not rely on the assumption of malice.

Sometimes, those with more moral agency and mental acuity will notice discrepancies between reality and the assumptions their false beliefs are built upon. When the cognitive dissonance becomes too big to ignore (and the threshold varies by person), they will start to diverge from the consensus. In time, such people will either become outcasts, join other social groups or, in rare cases, change the accepted consensus — these are what we could call “cultural entrepreneurs.” But given our evolved psychology, such instances are rare and most people spend their entire lives going with the flow and mostly adopting the beliefs most popular within their social groups.

One might question why I'm emphasizing this point so strongly. I think it’s important to do so, especially now when public discourse, particularly on the right, has become increasingly prone to conspiracy theories. There is this pervasive idea that elites are malevolent creatures that are “out to get you” and constantly scheme in order to keep other members of society as disempowered as possible. In other words, that elites play some sort of evil 4D chess. And I think the idea of luxury beliefs, at least as originally formulated, plays into this way of thinking.

To illustrate what I mean by that, let’s look at an example from Rob’s book that Yascha brings up in his essay. He argues that at least some of his classmates who decried capitalism only to take jobs in finance “were broadcasting the belief that such firms were evil in order to undercut their rivals. If they managed to convince you that a certain occupation is corrupt and thus to be avoided, then that was one less competitor they had in their quest to be hired.”

Suffice to say, I find this explanation that assumes malicious intent to not be very believable. In my experience, having studied at Oxford and seen many colleagues decry capitalism and then become investment bankers, “lazily well intentioned” is yet again the main culprit. Seventeen-year-olds arrive at university idealistic, trying to fit in and having thoroughly absorbed the surrounding cultural narratives. For various reasons that are beyond the scope of this essay, one of these narratives prevalent among the young and educated, and indeed among many of those who teach them, is that capitalism is bad. So of course, the seventeen-year-old fresh faced Classics major will believe this.

Then, as the years pass by, the Classics major realizes there is little for them to do that isn’t feeding into “evil capitalism”, other than relegate themselves to a further three years on something close to minimum wage as a doctoral student. To add to that, the chances of making it into academia long term are slim. They will watch as their peers go into a Law conversion course or indeed, finance. So the Classics major will start going through the motions everyone else they know is going through, realize making money is not that bad and they can vote for Labour anyway. Ultimately, they will likely become a young, relatively well-paid professional in London. Very little of this explanation relies on the assumption that clueless young adults disingenuously profess false beliefs to deter competition (in a very inefficient way one should add) three years ahead of their graduation date.

To be clear, the purpose of this essay is not to absolve elites of their role in perpetuating harmful false beliefs. Laziness is in itself a sin and at some point responsibility for one’s actions and beliefs must kick in. But I think having an accurate understanding of why things go badly in society is important. Accepting the “lazily well-intentioned” theory implies very different courses of action in terms of how we can improve the epistemic habits of elites compared to the 4D chess one.

For example, it suggests elites will disseminate useful and correct beliefs without having much to directly gain from doing so, as long as those beliefs are made to seem correct in their circles. A concrete example is the mRNA vaccines, which most members of the professional class advocated for once they were proven effective and vaccination was seen as a pro-social thing to do in these circles. In fact, much of the reason behind why Western institutions (still) function relatively well is that elites have internalized certain norms in a lazily well-intentioned way, which they further propagate. Most educated people accept the importance of liberal democracy, fair elections and freedom of expression and advocate for these principles, even if they have not read extensive treatises on these topics.

1. To be fair, my title was tongue-in-cheek and I obviously would prefer people to debate and discuss something than abandon it outright. But I think my exasperation at how the term is being used is warranted and I wanted to draw attention to that.

2. But, if people do not hold false beliefs primarily for signalling status, why do they hold them? My simple answer: desire for acceptance, conformism, moral laziness.

3. As a side note, there is an entire movement, called Effective Altruism, that is based on hte premise that people are, by and large, lazily well-intentioned.