Respect My Authority!!!
John Hodgman performing. Photo by David Lee from Redmond, WA, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
No.
Oh, right…The long answer: Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
You need me to expand on that further? Fine…
Respect for (false) authority is a common logical fallacy that everyone who needs someone to trust them for something has to deal with. Such as “Where’d you get your degree?” Or “Why should I trust you?” Or the very simple question that befuddles parents all across the globe since time immemorial: “Why?” As a man of a very libertarian bent (but not the Ron Paul kind,) I trust no one with important things until they’ve earned it, brophalom. The key word there being important. Oh, you’re my supervisor? You still must earn my respect. Respect ain’t conferred by title. It is always earned. It is deserved. That tends to separate the bad bosses from the good ones, but not always. You can be a nice person and still suck at managing people. Doormats don’t make good bosses, except maybe to those that take advantage of it. But then they aren’t generally considered good non-sociopathic people, are they?
Ronald Reagan had a rather simple answer when it came down to it: Trust, but verify. Overly simple? Hardly. Ronald Reagan, quite smartly, knew not to blindly trust dictators anywhere, even if their goals and America’s goals intersected temporarily. Unlike, say, Barack Obama. Or Joe Biden. Or John Kerry. Or Hillary Clinton. Or Al Gore. Do I need to keep going? You get the point?
TBV means you check on people to make sure they’re actually acting in your interest like they said they would. Spying, the use of nanny cams, etc. That brings up a fun little tangent: HALF! Eddie Murphy had a great bit in one of his stand-up specials about prenuptial agreements. Paraphrasing here, but why should I trust you not to take half once we’re married given that there is no penalty for doing so? Exactly. Back to your regularly scheduled program.
When it comes to parenting, people tend to mention the social psychology Marshmallow Test. Put simply, leave a kid in a room with a single marshmallow and tell them not to eat it. If they resist the temptation, they get rewarded with the original marshmallow and an extra one for being such a good boy or girl. In truth, the kid isn’t stupid. If he or she doesn’t trust the person running the test to follow through on the reward, they will just eat the marshmallow. That’s logically the correct approach. Furthermore, if the child is not told about the reward, impulse control is far easier to test for. Although, once again, kids aren’t stupid. With the reward mentioned, it is most certainly about trust and whether the instant gratification of a sugary treat trumps whatever the punishment for disobedience is. The carrot or the stick logic, positive or negative reinforcement.
If you lie to your kids about something huge and they find out about said big lie, they’re probably not going to trust you on the important stuff. Going to someone for advice is not the same thing as going to someone for help with a problem. I would only go to someone I really trusted for the latter.
This all goes back to a previous topic of mine: Incentives. The incentives must be there for anyone to trust you, especially if you’re telling them to do something based on your own authority. Joe Biden telling the world that America is welcoming to immigrants with Donald Trump gone from the White House has caused an unmitigated disaster at the border that has dwarfed the worst months under Trump and Obama several times over. These illegal immigrants are just responding to the incentives presented to them. In this case, I don’t think it’s a perverse incentive either. The Democrats likely desire this outcome. I don’t trust them to be this incompetent. Malice.
Back on topic, no one really has authority. It must be deserved, but that’s on an individual basis. There’s no group mentality for what constitutes earned or deserved authority. I don’t care if you like the person. Why should I trust them automatically? This goes out to the media: I’m not going to trust someone just because you do. And I’m far from the only one. Stop preaching to the choir, brophalom.
Let’s delve into one of the worst forms of this fallacy, what I call The Expert Fallacy.
To make a long story short, the expert fallacy is expecting someone to consider you an expert on something just because you or someone else calls you one. “Yes, we have Keith Chickfarthing, an expert on Middle East relations, in the studio today to react…” That kind of stuff.
John Hodgman, a man who really went off the deep end in the Trump era (hating Trump versus hating anyone who voted for or enabled him for political expediency,) once came to my university for his That Is All book tour as both a comedy high-brow speech and a stand-up show (the weird middle ground most alums of The Daily Show attempt to walk.) He even brought me on stage at one point. I had to read a testimonial speaking to his brilliance, but as Gary Busey. Yes, that Gary Busey. I got an autographed copy of the book and ended up getting the nickname Packers Fan Pajama Man from him (he never actually learned my real name,) which I would use as my Twitter name for many years afterward. I definitely annoyed him, but earned his respect by the end of it, and even got to talk to him for a little bit afterwards at a meet-and-greet. He even said on Twitter once that he will always remember me.
Now, where was I?
The entire show was brilliant, as his character on The Daily Show was the exact stereotype I’m talking about. Every time Jon Stewart would bring him on, Hodgman would be an expert in a different topic (with a chyron stating such) and pretend to know what he’s talking about. When, in truth, he knows nothing about whatever topic is being discussed, all for comedic effect to make some point.
Why should we trust this random person you’ve brought on that I’ve never heard of? They could be speaking complete nonsense and I might not know any better and believe them. Just because you, the incredibly privileged television journalist, are nodding along with whatever this supposed expert is saying doesn’t mean I have to. That’s not how respect, trust, or authority works. And if you don’t like that, get used to disappointment.
Gell-Mann Amnesia.Report
“Why are *YOU* an authority?” is one of those things that used to have answers and, because it used to have answers, it used to be a good question.
Sometimes the person would have an answer. “Well, I’m a computer technician. I build the computers that you’re complaining about. That’s how I know you’re doing it wrong. You’re complaining about a problem that I encounter regularly.”
Sometimes they would have an answer that wasn’t an answer.
If we believe that authority exists (or can exist), then asking for someone’s credentials is a good starting point. Hey, you’re giving me advice. Upon what grounds!
If we don’t, then asking for someone’s credentials is the first move in a series of moves designed to dismiss people who don’t agree with the asker (which people who do agree with the asker don’t get asked their own credentials).
It was easier when we were kids. Not, you know, because we were right about serious people saying serious things in an authoritative tone, but because the certainty that they provided was off-the-charts soothing.Report
Great piece, I enjoyed it mightily.
As you know already, Russell, we had an interesting convo on the Twitters about the marshmallow test that really speaks to authority.
Tons of scientists and social scientists have ruminated on the meaning of the marshmallow test, using it to describe children’s self-control, maturity level, and even their ability to think rationally. And we see the marshmallow test being applied to adults in much the same way towards adults by various experts as well, especially in light of the pandemic. Anyone who doesn’t wait for the second marshmallow is behaving irrationally, according to some.
But if the child doesn’t TRUST that second marshmallow coming, thinks the whole thing could be a ploy, a sham, well why the hell wouldn’t s/he just eat the damn marshmallow? The marshmallow test presupposes a level of faith in the system that there will be another marshmallow. It even presupposes that the person you’re dealing with has the ABILITY to grant you another marshmallow. If you’ve lived under a set of circumstances in which outcomes seem to be arbitrary, where people say one thing and do another, in which people you DO trust are often overridden by necessity or by another, stronger, more powerful person above them, in which your position in this world feels precarious enough so you’re not even sure you will survive to get that second marshmallow, well, eating the first marshmallow is entirely rational because the child or person has done the math and found that they don’t believe there will be another marshmallow.
“I would rather have this good thing now than wait for double of this promised thing in the future that there is every chance I will not get” may stymie social planners but it’s rational as hell.
The scientists who designed the marshmallow test thought they were producing data about “self-control” or whatever. But they were wrong. They were testing something different, and so the conclusions they drew were dead wrong. All the people who have mused endlessly on the meaning of the marshmallow test for brain development were wrong. In fact, these people are the reason so many refuse to wait for the second marshmallow – they’re experts and they’re so chronically incorrect, even one of the fundamental studies upon which they base their understanding of rationality and brain maturity is incorrect, and they’re telling some wise child who knows the way the world actually works to wait for some promise that will probably be broken.Report
As I’ve said before, my mom ran an in-home daycare center from the time I was 10 until just a few years before she died. Seeing as how she wasn’t running it make a huge profit, her rates were reasonable, especially for the rural area we lived in. It also meant we’d sometimes get kids whose parents were less than ideal. Alcoholism* and drug abuse were common.
Those kids…
If my mom had done a marshmallow test to them the first day in, those kids would have eaten the treat.
A month later, they’d have trusted my mom that another treat was coming.
Sh*te, we should be using the Marshmallow test to check the parents…
*More than a few times, mom called the cops on parents who were unfit to drive, refusing to release the child to their care.Report
What Oscar and Kristin describe here is connected to a broader theory known as attachment theory. In short, it looks at how secure children’s attachment is to their primary caregiver and how that baseline informs many of their interactions with the broader world. A secure attachment — one where the child is confident that their needs will be met — allows them to transfer this trust elsewhere. “I don’t have to worry about going to school because I know my mom will pick me up. Every time she told me she’d come back, she has.” If that attachment doesn’t form or is insecure, it is hard for the child to develop trust.
Like most psych theories (in my observation, at least) it believes a bit too much in itself. As Oscar describes, an insecure attachment with a primary caregiver need not be deterministic for all future relationships and other adults can supplant these, even if just between the child and themself.
To the post more broadly, I think a major issue is seeing expertise/authority as a binary: you either have it and it is absolute OR you lack it entirely. I think it is best to see it as a spectrum.
Case in point: I’m an early childhood teacher with a bachelors and masters in the field and 17+ years experience working within it. So, I believe I have a degree of expertise on this particular topic. But, I have not read as much on the Marshmallow Study itself as it seems Kristin has and Oscar brings his own firsthand experience observing his mother.
And while the three of us are largely in agreement on this particular topic, if we weren’t, you’d want readers to consider not just WHO we are in terms of what expertise/authority we may have but also what we’re saying. You’d want to see folks apply critical thinking skills. This is the other piece that too often seems to be missing.
If you see an expert on TV and think, “Well, what he says *MUST* be 100% right,” you’re doing it wrong.
At the same time, if you see an expert on TV and think, “Well, what she says isn’t 100% consistent with what I think therefore they MUST be wrong,” you’re also doing it wrong.Report
But the Marshmallow Test results do appear to correlate to future success.Report
“Kids who are raised by trustworthy parents more likely to succeed” is one of those things that starts whipping out of control fairly quickly.Report
Funny thing is that as a liberal when I hear a lot of libertarians/conservatives speak, they often end up being “Respect my authoritah” kind of people. Trump was the biggest “respect my authoritah” President in my lifetime. He seethed and fumed and vowed revenge whenever his authoritah was not respected. His supporters like Gaetz and the January 6 insurrectionists against Democracy have the same view point. A huge chip on their shoulders and outrage than anyone would dare disagree with them about anything or deny them a spot at the center of the United States, always first in line, for everything. Respect must be earned is a double-edged sword.Report
There’s some truth to this, although I think it’s more common among conservatives than libertarians. The extent to which liberals fall into this thinking gets underestimated, though, because the authorities they follow are non-traditional. I think that Haidt, for example, misses the mark on this. Blind adherence to Zinn’s history or reflexive nodding along with Trevor Noah are somehow overlooked.Report