2010 Interviews with Critical Review authors

Dain Fitzgerald (seminar of 2009) interviews Slavisa Tasic (seminar of 2009) on his recent article in Critical Review on the overconfidence of regulators. Listen here.

In Dain's words: "I met Slavisa Tasic, a Ph.D. candidate in economics a the University of Turin, last summer in San Antonio at a seminar sponsored by the Critical Review Foundation. The article we discuss in the interview is his first scholarly paper, 'The Illusion of Regulatory Competence,' found in the newest issue of Critical Review (vol. 21, no. 4). Tasic takes a Hayekian perspective on government intervention informed by experimental psychology, using the work of two psychologists, Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil, who discovered what they call 'the illusion of explanatory depth' (IOED) – the 'belief that we understand the causes, effects and inner workings of complex mechanisms, events and processes much better than we actually do.' Rozenblit and Keil find that, more often than not, participants in their studies of competence and awareness on a variety of issues know far less about said issues (the working of a helicopter, etc.) than they initially thought. In Tasic’s words: 'The illusion occurs when we have a general, superficial knowledge about some obvious patterns, and confuse this with insight about the mechanics of a phenomenon.' Tasic then applies the IOED to regulatory decision makers, yielding 'the illusion of regulatory competence.'

"Also mentioned in the article (but not the interview) is the work of Dietrich Dorner, whose experiments are, on their face, more relevant to issues of state regulation. Dorner had subjects manipulate computer-simulated land use planning scenarios, with poor results manifest due to a lack of taking into account unexpected factor interdependence (competing goals and policy tools). The article did not go into any depth, so to speak, on the specifics involved, but only addressed the frustration of achieving a given goal in the model due to the ignorance that is Tasic’s theme.”

2008 Boston Conference on Political Ignorance and Dogmatism

On August 31, 2008, at the conclusion of the American Political Science Association convention in Boston, the Critical Review Foundation held its first-ever scholarly conference, at which Professors of Political Science John Bullock (seminar of 1999), Samuel DeCanio (1998), Tom Hoffman (1995), Michael Murakami (2001), Mark Pennington (1996), Ilya Somin (1997), and Nick Weller (2003) explored the implications of public ignorance with Profs. Scott Althaus (Political Science, U. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), David Barash (Psychology, U. of Washington), Bryan Caplan (Economics, George Mason U.), Arthur Lupia (Political Science, U. of Michigan), George E. Marcus (Political Science, Williams Coll.), David R. Mayhew (Political Science, Yale), Russell Muirhead (Political Science, U. of Texas, Austin), Paul J. Quirk (Political Science, U. of British Columbia), Charles S. Taber (Political Science, Stony Brook U.), and Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan). This was the first time all the CR seminar "alumni" who have become political scientists were brought together in one place to discuss their ideas with eminent scholars in political science and other fields, and according to the unanimous consensus of the participants, it was one of the few scholarly events they had attended where real dialogue, learning, and new thinking occurred.

 

Introductory Remarks

 

 

"Public Ignorance: Rational, Irrational, or Inevitable" - Scott Althaus, Bryan Caplan, Ilya Somin, Nassim Taleb, and Jeffrey Friedman

 

 

"Ignorance and Error" - Scott Althaus, John Bullock, Arthur Lupia, and Paul Quirk.

 

 

"Public Ignorance, Empirical Realities" - Sam DeCanio, David Mayhew, Mike Murakami, and Nick Weller.

 

 

"Ignorance and Dogmatism" - David Barash, George Marcus, Charles Taber, and Jeffrey Friedman.

 

 

"Normative Implications" - Tom Hoffman, Russell Muirhead, Mark Pennington, Ilya Somin, and Jeffrey Friedman.

 

 

Concluding Remarks