Loved this Kevin Simler essay on the concept of crony beliefs. And if you like this kind of writing, I also recommend his book Elephant in the Brain (I shared some favorite highlights here).
A few key paragraphs (shared verbatim):
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I contend that the best way to understand all the crazy beliefs out there — aliens, conspiracies, and all the rest — is to analyze them as crony beliefs. Beliefs that have been “hired” not for the legitimate purpose of accurately modeling the world, but rather for social and political kickbacks.
And so we can roughly (with caveats we’ll discuss in a moment) divide our beliefs into merit beliefs and crony beliefs. Both contribute to our bottom line — survival and reproduction — but they do so in different ways: merit beliefs by helping us navigate the world, crony beliefs by helping us look good.
At work, we’re rewarded for believing good things about the company. At church, we earn trust in exchange for faith, while facing severe sanctions for heresy. In politics, our allies support us when we toe the party line, and withdraw support when we refuse.
Going further, crony beliefs actually need to be protected from criticism. It’s not that they’re necessarily false, just that they’re more likely to be false — but either way, they’re unlikely to withstand serious criticism. Thus we should expect our brains to take an overall protective or defensive stance toward our crony beliefs.
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