Tag: contrarian thinking

How Might I Be Wrong?

Nobody does it better than Tyler Cowen, and it’s not even close.

What am I talking about? I’m talking about the extremely difficult art of asking the question that is the title of this blog post, and then answering it by writing about it.

There was a post over on MR recently titled “Will Milei Succeed in Argentina?”. In the very first paragraph, Tyler points out that he (Tyler Cowen) wants Milei to succeed.

I give him a 30-40% chance, which is perhaps generous because I am rooting for him.  Bryan Caplan, who is more optimistic, offers some analysis and estimates that Milei needs to close a fiscal gap of about five percent of gdp.

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/01/will-milei-succeed-in-argentina.html

But the rest of the post doesn’t lay out reasons for why Tyler is right to root for him, or why Milei might succeed. It is, instead, the exact opposite. Tyler asks the much more difficult question: why might Milei fail?

You may or may not agree with the rest of Tyler’s post, and about his take on whether Milei will succeed or not. The real lesson to take away from here is the point that Tyler is forcing himself to ask, and answer, the most difficult question of them all for a writer: “What is the best possible argument for how I might be wrong?”

And this is a really, really difficult thing to do. Say, for example, that you are opposed to PM Modi. Your task is to write about ways in which his policies have been good for India, and will be good for India in the years to come. On the other hand, if you are a supporter of PM Modi, your task is to write about the ways in which his policies have been bad for India, and will be bad for India in the years to come.

You could take the easy way out and do a round-up of what other people (on the other side of the fence) are saying. But that’s not the point – that simply shows what other people are saying. Worse, supporters and detractors have a way of confidently expressing hopeful assertions. The causal pathways are often missing from their analyses – it isn’t so much an expression of ways in which they might be wrong. Rather, it is a statement to the effect that “if x materializes, I will have been proven to be wrong.”

What we’re looking for is this instead: “Here’s why I don’t think x will materialize. Here are my reasons for thinking what I do, and here are the ways in which I could be wrong, and for the following reasons.”

This is really, really hard to do (trust me). But the more you force yourself to do it, the better a thinker you are likely to become. I try and do these exercises every now and then, and the reason I don’t post the results of such exercises very often is because a) I avoid doing this as much as possible b) I’m not very good at it when I do get around to doing it (if you’re itching to point out the causal link between these two, I’m way ahead of you. Go away.)

So hypocrisy alert aside – I don’t practice what I’m about to preach, you see – do give it a try. Ask yourself how you might be wrong about your model(s) of how the world works.

Good luck, because you will need it.

A Pro-Classroom Argument

I am, if anything, against how learning is delivered today. Much lesser classroom teaching, much more discussions, much more of arguments, much more of thinking and writing (this ought to turn into a separate post!) is how I would prefer learning takes place.

But, if I had to force myself to think about what about traditional classroom teaching is good…

  1. Traditional classroom teaching, where the teacher talks and the students listen for the most part, allows for a much more systematic completion of the syllabus, and reduces the burden on the teacher. Teaching ought to become easier, and therefore (assumption alert) better.
  2. The teacher is able to focus on one particular aspect for the duration of that one class, and therefore is able to prepare accordingly. Random questions and answers, taking the class off on a tangent is all well and good, but you suffer, inevitably, a loss in depth when you go wide.
  3. A one-to-many mode of teaching ensures that all students have the same notes, and are in agreement about what was taught. Group based discussions (breakout rooms is what we call these things these days) for example, leaves students unaware of what was said in the other groups. Debriefing helps, but never completely.
  4. Do we underrate “sit still and listen” these days? Yes, long classes and having to focus on the voice that drones on is easy to make fun of, but have we collectively lost the art of sitting still and listening? Might we be inculcating the value of sustained concentration by having traditional classes, and might this in fact be a good thing?
  5. If a class is going to be about listening on a one-to-many basis, does this reduce the cognitive load on the student? Freed from all other requirements, classroom teaching might free up the student to learn more, by reducing the amount of effort demanded from her?
  6. Two points about discussions and debates. Doesn’t limiting the scope for discussions and debates in class make it better, by having only genuine doubts and disagreements being raised? Forcing students to take part in a discussion or a debate, when most of them seem to not want to, can end up making them uncomfortable. It can also be a time-consuming affair, and all for points that perhaps were not worth it. On the other hand, leaving only ten minutes or so for discussion at the end will “bubble up” only the most willing, most eager and most well-thought out responses. That is a good thing, right?
  7. Is a classroom really the best place to debate and discuss? Is not the opportunity cost of having to listen to your peers, rather than the person with the most amount of knowledge about the subject (the professor), very high? Students can (and should!) debate issues raised in class – but outside.

I find myself unable to come up with more, but I’m sure there are other arguments to be made for classroom-based, one-teacher-talks-many-students-listen-based model. What am I missing?

Tech: Links for 23rd July 2019

  1. “Cichon’s find shows us that when thinking about their overall impact on the planet, it’s not helpful to think in isolation about producing 2 billion iPhones. Instead, we should think about a counterfactual: What would have been produced over the past 12 years in a smartphone-free world? The answer, clearly, is a lot more: a lot more gear, and a lot more media.”
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    You might think that this piece is about technology. But it is at least as much about opportunity costs.
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  2. “Comparably high pricing has long been seen as a roadblock to success for Netflix in India, where competitors charge significantly less for their paid video services. For instance, Disney’s Hotstar service only charges consumers INR 365 for a full year of paid access.”
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    Will Netflix lower its prices in India? What do competitive markets have to say about this?
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  3. “China has been stealing our intellectual property and conducting cyber-warfare, and China is an unusually dirty country dirtying up the planet. Trump’s 25% tariffs on China should be reframed as a carbon tax.
    You don’t want people negotiating trade treaties who are dogmatic about free trade. The worse job they do, the better job they think they are doing. You need people who are skeptical to be negotiating trade treaties, in order to get a better deal for the U.S. You don’t want them to be playing John Lennon’s “Imagine” in the background.”
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    Notes from a Peter Thiel speech. If you want to learn how to do contrarian thinking, there probably isn’t a better person around.
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  4. “Of all the fables that have grown up around the moon landing, my favorite is the one about Stanley Kubrick, because it demonstrates the use of a good counternarrative. It seemingly came from nowhere, or gave birth to itself simply because it made sense. (Finding the source of such a story is like finding the source of a joke you’ve been hearing your entire life.) It started with a simple question: Who, in 1969, would have been capable of staging a believable moon landing?”
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    I am (emphatically!) not saying that the moon landing was a conspiracy. I just enjoyed reading this article because it is a good exercise in the following exercise: I don’t believe it – not for a second. But if it were to be true, how might it have been done?
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  5. Not the most well written article you’ll find, and the advertisements aren’t fun to switch off – but a useful list of startups in the education space. As you might imagine, a topic I find very interesting indeed.