Oh, yeah. I forgot I had some more stuff from English to put up here.

Eight months ago, my friend, whom we’ll call Michael, because that’s his name, announced that when he went to college he was going to move into an apartment. He was going to spend $723 per month on rent. Plus utilities. No, he wasn’t going to get a roommate. And living in a dorm was out of the question. I thought this was the most moronic idea ever. After all, my own plan was to live at home and spend as little money on the necessities of life as possible. Any rational person would have agreed with me.
In June, when he finally moved in, he became the biggest cheapskate in the world. Food? Cheap bologna and white bread. Laundry? The bathtub works just fine. And he’s turned his air conditioning on exactly twice since he moved in. My disbelief and frustration grew without bound. How could he justify his huge monthly expenditures yet starve himself to death? The entire situation seemed an inane farce.
But I later had a redemptive change of heart. Not only did I realize that his apartment was actually rather nice (maybe even worth the $723 per month), but I realized that I shouldn’t care. Michael’s apartment rentership and its accompanying thrift didn’t hurt me. It didn’t even seem to be hurting him. He was responsible, studious, and even had fun once in a while.
I was suffering from a set of cognitive biases. Although I was absolutely wrong, I could summon vast logical arguments to show that what Michael was doing would eventually prove disastrous. I had convinced myself, by numerous infallible proofs (or so I thought), that Michael was not ready to own an apartment or live by himself. In one of these biases, I only paid attention to examples that bolstered my own opinion: doing laundry in the bathtub or sweating through 120º heat. I neglected the evidence that Michael was doing just fine. In fact, I still find it hard to muster a concrete example of his successful household management. Jeffrey Mishlove, in his book The Roots of Consciousness, calls this confirmation bias—seeking only for information that reinforces our extant prejudices. There are other cognitive biases, including the use of overgeneralized stereotypes and a reliance on extraordinary, well-publicized information. These cognitive biases are similar to optical illusions—what we think we see is not actually there; what we think we know is not actually true.
Because of these biases, no one should have the power to command, control, or coerce others. They make it impossible to objectively say if an action is right. Any judgment is filtered through these biases, making objective decisions highly unlikely. If I am absolutely certain that blue cheese salad dressing is a crime against humanity, should I be able to ban its sale? Probably not. The same is true even if I manage to convince a large group of people that I am right. After all, most of my friends agreed with me that Michael’s apartment would be a disaster. Even groups are not exempt from cognitive biases; indeed, biases are magnified through them in phenomena such as groupthink. Biases of individuals are not necessarily canceled or mitigated in group action situations. Psychological research indicates that groups are actually more likely to take extreme actions than individuals are (Moscovici 134). For example, cultural assumptions like racism are reinforced in group actions. Individuals exaggerate their views to align with community standards, thus increasing the power of the group’s views. Since all humans suffer from cognitive biases, not even a large group of them should impose their biases on others.
Enough of the veiled allusions. What I’m really talking about is government. A government inherently has the power to coerce, but due to the cognitive-bias problem, no government can hope to find what policies are truly optimal, even with the best intentions. Even democracies can act poorly due to the group manifestations of these flaws in thinking. No government can hope to be objective, even with masses of people supporting it. [1] Because of this, it is nearly impossible to have a government that will definitively do what is in the people’s best interest. It is extremely unlikely for any democracy to implement the best policy—if it even considers it. This means that government initiatives should only be undertaken with the utmost care. Only in the most compelling circumstances should a democracy’s coercive power be used, leaving most decisions to individuals where they can only hurt themselves.
Not even scientific analysis is exempt from this indeterminacy of policy. John Ioannidis, a medical researcher at the University of Ioannina in Greece, has demonstrated that the majority of scientific research does not contribute new information, but simply reinforces biases already present in the scientific community. This is not hugely surprising; after all, why should scientists be free of cognitive bias? [2] In fact, a number of French scientists in the early 1900s believed so adamantly in “N-rays,” a visible form of X-rays, that they hallucinated them in laboratory conditions (Mishlove). This dampens the power of an appeal to rational governance through science. A technocratic government built on scientific principles is as unlikely to be ideal as a democracy.
This all seems to lead toward Edward Abbey’s observation that “anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others” (qtd. in Moncur). But let’s face it. It’s not at all likely that we will reach a state of anarchy in the near future, since most people’s biases—cognitive and otherwise—are skewed toward governmental power. And it’s far from clear that the absence of government would be better than an inefficient government. In light of this, it seems prudent to limit the power and scope of government within its own framework. Rather than actively undermining governmental authority, it is better to limit its power through the accepted mechanisms of government. Since governments faces the same judgment problem I did with Michael, we should make their default attitude permissive, not restrictive; “live and let live,” not “live and coerce.”

[1] Indeed, the justification for paternalism disappears in a democracy: The people don’t know what’s best for them, so they need to be restricted. So who is going to restrict them? The people. Hmm.

[2] It is somewhat ironic to use a scientific study to show that scientists are subject to cognitive bias, but the only consistent conclusion is that scientists do suffer from bias. For if they were not subject to bias, then their conclusion would be correct, but this conclusion is that they do suffer from bias. However, if they are subject to bias, they simply managed to come to the correct conclusion in spite of it.