Who Won the Debate?

So, who do you think won the debate?

That’s a loaded question, of course. And it doesn’t much matter whether it’s the last debate or the next debate. Because, short of some cosmic gaff, the person who won the debate is almost certainly the person you supported before the debate began.

Not only did he or she win the debate, but you can remember and repeat—and will be happy to do so if asked--the three or four specific comments that cemented the win in your mind.

Now, let me tell you a story, reported by Leonard Mlodinow in The Drunkard’s Walk.

Researchers gave a group of undergraduate students the same set of studies about the efficacy of capital punishment. It turns out some of the students supported the death penalty and some were against it. It also turns out that half the studies supported the idea that the death penalty had a deterrent effect and the other half contradicted the idea.

The researchers also gave the subjects clues pointing out the weak points in each of the studies, sort of like reading editorials in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in the days before the debates. (It’s hard to believe these two editorial staffs live in the same country, much less the same city.)

You might guess what happened: Both those students who initially supported the death penalty and those who initially opposed it reported that reading the studies had strengthened their beliefs.

Rather than convincing anyone, the data polarized the group.

The truth is, Mlodinow tells us, not only do we preferentially seek evidence to confirm our preconceived notions, but we also interpret ambiguous evidence in favor of our ideas. “Our clever brains can reinforce their beliefs even in the absence of convincing evidence.”

So, who won the debate?

Unfortunately, this unintentional manipulation of evidence is a fact of life at work. You read the resume of a job candidate, for example, and decide he or she is fully qualified for the position at hand. (Besides, you are desperate to fill the slot.) You then ask a series of questions designed to reinforce your belief. The interview is a great success and the candidate is hired.

A thousand years ago I took a course on interviewing and the leader kept emphasizing the need to ask questions that developed contrary evidence. Now I know why.

I should point out that in some cases, the creative use of evidence is a bonus: Your spouse lives with you for years and still likes you and still gives you the benefit of the doubt. (Praise the Lord for that kind of evidence tampering!)

But sometimes, the ability to shape evidence is a disaster.

The most controversial issue during America’s first decades as a republic--incomprehensible to a twenty-first century American—was slavery. Seen by the founders as a dying institution in 1790 (and in many respects it was), it gathered strength and a growing chorus of vociferous defenders throughout the first half of the 1800s as the worldwide demand for cotton exploded and slave labor became an increasingly valuable asset in America.

In 1820, for example, cotton constituted 39% of U.S. exports; by 1840, 59%. Another measure of slavery’s rising tide: Between 1814 and 1819, a prime field hand grew in value from $400 to as much as $1100.

In 1839, Henry Clay estimated that slaves represented $1.2B in capital in the United States. That’s equivalent to $273B in capital in 2008—roughly the market cap of a GE or Microsoft or Walmart. Slavery supported the entire economy of certain southern states, and much of the economy of several northern textile states. Slavery made the Southern planter class the richest people in America.

Consequently, there were large numbers of Americans in the first half of the nineteenth century who had good reasons to seek any evidence available to support this “peculiar institution.”

And so, in 1837 when Theodore Dwight Weld published his book, The Bible Against Slavery, a firestorm erupted. Could there be a less impeachable source than the Bible?

Daniel Howe (What Hath God Wrought) takes us through the controversy:

Like other abolitionists, Weld quoted St. Paul’s great speech in Athens, that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). One did not enslave kinfolk. But the defenders of slavery answered by quoting Noah: “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren” (Genesis 9:25). In rebuttal, Weld responded that no evidence showed Africans descended from Canaan. For abolitionists like Weld, slavery clearly violated a precept of Mosaic Law that Jesus had declared one of God’s greatest commandments: “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18; Mark 12:28-31). To this, the redoubtable Southern Baptist Thornton Stringfellow pointed out that many other passages in the Pentateuch indicate God’s Chosen People practiced chattel slavery and that God, far from issuing a blanket condemnation of the institution, prescribed legal rules for it (as in Exodus 21). Rabbi M. J. Raphall of New York City vouched for the legality of slavery under the Torah. Abolitionists retorted that the patriarchs practiced polygamy too, but this did not legitimate it for Christian men. When opponents of slavery appealed to the Golden Rule in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, proslavery writers pointed out that Paul’s Epistle to Philemon proved that the church of New Testament Times, like the Israel of Old Testament times, had included slaveholders and recognized their rights.

Later, Francis Wayland (President of Brown) and Richard Fuller (a leader of the new Southern Baptist Convention) exchanged views in a series of published and widely read letters. “Who ‘won’ the biblical debate depends on whom you ask. At the time, each side felt it had the better of the argument.”

Sound familiar? (So, who won the debate?)

In fact, when I read the arguments, the proslavery commentators actually used more, more specific, and frankly, more convincing evidence than did the antislavery commentators. It turns out the Bible is a terrific source for general antislavery feelings but specific proslavery arguments. An 11th Commandment forbidding the practice would have been very helpful.

The bottom line is that human beings—even those intellectually gifted in other respects—can rely on their “clever brains” to bend ambiguous data to justify anything, even the most abhorrent and immoral of human institutions.

Mlodinow offers a great metaphor for how we process information. When we say we “see clearly” we are relying on an organ, our eye, which has a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina, and good resolution in a narrow area of about 1 degree of visual angle around the retina’s center. (If we bought a video camera that works like our eye, we’d return it for a refund.) To compensate, we move our eyes constantly to different portions of a scene. “And so the pattern of raw data sent to the brain is a shaky, badly pixilated picture with a hole in it.”

Our marvelous brain grabs this data, combines the input of both eyes, and fills in the gaps by interpolating. The result is that we “see clearly.”

That is, in a sense, how we handle all incoming information and make sense of the world—by interpolating around our fuzzy vision and blind spots. This shaping of evidence is called—and we convince ourselves that we practice--“thinking clearly.”

Not only are we good at shaping evidence to our use, but when things get really chaotic, we see patterns and draw connections that don’t even exist. “Even bad answers feel better to people than no answers,” report researchers at Northwestern University. “The less control people have over their lives, the more likely they are to seek quick, easy solutions, however implausible.”

You might conclude, then, that a financial meltdown is a particularly bad time to elect the Leader of the Free World. (After all, we’ve barely had any time to blame Congress, the President, the Fed, the Treasury, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, both political parties, Wall Street, Freemasons, the Illuminati, Skull & Bones, the New World Order AND irresponsible homeowners and lenders.)

Because, the folks at Northwestern report, what we often need more than good evidence is order—even imaginary order.

In other words, when things are slightly off, we wear lucky socks. When things are way, way off, we are prone to create theories and conspiracies and draw preposterous conclusions of all sorts. When things are crazy and stressful, as they are now, our “clear thinking” really kicks into gear.

This is a very good thing to remember as we interview our next potential employee, as we listen to the next presidential debate, and as we work through this financial mess and election season.

Mlodinow says, “We needn’t be pessimists, for it is possible to overcome our prejudices . . .It is a great step if we learn to question our perceptions and theories. [And,] we should learn to spend as much time looking for evidence that we are wrong as we spend searching for reasons we are correct.”

So, one more time: Who won the debate?

Posted by Entrepreneur Generations

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