RAND, Cold Warriors and the Failure of 'Rational Choice Philosophy'

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/19/the-failure-of-rational-choice/?hp

by bchjam • 15 years ago

15 7 15 years ago

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

archgoon• 15 years ago

Ayn Rand's ideas come from a propaganda campaign launched eight years after she published the Fountainhead? No wonder rational choice theory is at odds with quantum mechanics!

I'm sorry, but I cannot make heads nor tails out of what the author means by "Rational Choice Philosophy" (which is apparently prescriptive) and how exactly it is different from using rational choice theory (which is completely descriptive) to model interactions of agents (rational or otherwise). I certainly have no idea how to make sense of his claim that quantum mechanics has some relation to the whole affair.

jgroch• 15 years ago

"Ayn Rand's ideas come from a propaganda campaign launched eight years after she published the Fountainhead?"

Yes, I have to wonder how much of "Rational Choice Theory/Philosophy" originated at RAND. And I wonder even more, how much (that is little) of modern individualism originated with Rational Choice Theory - contrary to the main point of the article.

redthrowaway• 15 years ago

Rational Choice Theory is the claim that the economic behaviour of groups can be best modelled by assuming each individual is operating in their own rational self-interest. It is where game theory originates, and is more or less adept at explaining the fluctuations of markets.

Rational Choice Philosophy goes beyond this to offer a prescription for how one ought to live one's life. It emphasizes the moral supremacy of rational pursuit of individual goals. Beyond merely describing how groups behave, it argues that it is good that they act in the manner described. It holds that the best outcomes are those generated by each individual pursuing their goals rationally. It forms part of the moral foundation of libertarianism, and is the genesis of such notions as the supremacy of private charity over public services. From the RCP perspective, it is morally preferable for individuals to make a rational choice to donate their time or resources to further a desired goal, than for a government (or collective) to impose those choices upon all people.

As the author states, a rational extension of this moral imperative is that individuals should seek to maximize their own power, so as to be better able to achieve their goals. This is the moral backdrop that has framed the common narrative in America, certainly since the Reagan years if not earlier. While it may seem a natural thing to believe, it is only so because of its pervasiveness in the culture that shapes our moral judgements. By contrast, in China a person who advocated RCP would be considered greedy or selfish. There, community, family, and cohesion are more highly valued. This too is a product of their shared narrative.

The author's mention of quantum mechanics is sloppy. In the Great Free Will Debate, a Newtonian determinism had seemed to spell the end of free will. If our choices are the product of electrochemical processes in our brains, which are determined by our genetics and environment, which all essentially come down to atoms smashing into eachother, then everything that will ever happen was determined at the Big Bang and so free will is an illusion. It may be a convenient illusion that has been evolutionarily beneficial, but it's an illusion nonetheless. Then, quantum mechanics came along and poked holes in determinism. Some atomic processes may not be predetermined, and are instead functions of probability. This didn't save free will, as random chance is still beyond the control of the agent, but it did call determinism into question.

What I suspect the author is getting at is that he (implictly) argues that the ability to make a rational choice depends upon the ability to know the effects of a given cause, which may not be possible if quantum processes introduce randomness. There's a couple problems with this: 1) nobody has ever shown quantum effects at a macro scale (Herr Schrodinger's cat notwithstanding), and more importantly 2) the ability to make a rational decision does not depend upon a perfect model of cause and effect. Reason need not be deductive; it is enough to make an educated guess about the state of the world and the effects of one's actions effect upon it.

The author didn't prove his central thesis, that RCP has failed. That would entail a far deeper inspection of the philosophy than was done. He did, however, make some interesting observations about it, namely that our common belief that it is good for us to act according to our desires was deliberately fostered as a counterpoint to Marxism. That's not a condemnation of the philosophy itself, however.

As for Ayn Rand, the author may simply have been saying that her ideas gained far greater prominence after the deliberate campaign to foster a moral philosophy of rationally pursuing one's individual desires.

dto1138• 15 years ago

I'll tell you what's wrong with this article. McCumber tells us that Americans' traditional demand for autonomy is really just a government conspiracy cooked up by RAND. Okay all you NYT commenters nodding in agreement---really, the clamor of the present-day Ugly American to repeal Obamacare and reduce the tax burden and rein in the EPA and the Federal Reserve and decriminalize marijuana---all these Americans groaning about the financial and regulatory weight of the federal government and its increasing impingements on our freedom---is actually also a GOVERNMENT conspiracy?

Folks, here we have a university professor who, may he delve into Hegel, Marx, or Quine, rather unsurprisingly comes up with the same standard NYT lecture---you know, the one about why Americans do not really WANT what they want (and don't deserve it, anyway, because they're too self absorbed.) Oh, and besides, W.V.O Quine criticized Rational Choice Theory. Now, WVO Quine was one of the top ten minds of the 20th century, so it might seem portentous to cite his authority here, however he seems to have been against many things that would be dear to most readers of this paper, including public education. Here's a wikipedia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Van_Orman_Quine#Politic...

CamperBob• 15 years ago

"The neat causality of rational choice ontology, always at odds with quantum physics, was further jumbled by the environmental crisis, exposed by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “The Silent Spring,” which revealed that the causal effects of human actions were much more complex, and so less predicable, than previously thought."

Shades of the great postmodern philosopher Alan Sokal ( http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/ ).

iwwr• 15 years ago

How does this

Today, governments and businesses across the globe simply assume that social reality is merely a set of individuals freely making rational choices.

connect to this

Wars have been and are still being fought to bring such freedom to Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Grenadans, and now Libyans, with more nations surely to come.

gaius• 15 years ago

This is why people who are experts in field A should not get too carried away pontificating in field B. Specifically, the opinion of a professor of Germanic languages is no more nor less valid than any layperson, in the field of economics.

RAND, Cold Warriors and the Failure of 'Rational Choice Philosophy'

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