Playing “What If” to Manipulate Policy Debates
When we talk about solving social problems, we can’t help but ask “What if”? and similar questions. What if we banned abortion? What if repealed all of the nation’s gun laws? What if the government canceled student loan debt. Think of an issue that’s been in the news lately and you’ll be able to add your own questions. This is important to do whenever someone proposes a solution to a social problem. But, asking honest questions about those solutions can be challenging. You’ll see why in a few minutes.
In spite of the challenges, asking “what if” is important even if we can’t predict the future. And we can’t predict the future. All we can do is apply logic, statistics, and past research to the question at hand. If we try hard, we can learn enough to talk about probabilities. Sometimes we forget that, and sometimes we are encouraged to forget it. The Web, in particular, is full of pundits who “know” that gun confiscation is coming or gay marriage will destroy the nuclear family. Those people can be experts in manipulating peoples’ minds to sell ideas that can’t stand on their own.
Politics, Psychology, and Social Policy
Social policy questions can’t really be answered with mathematical precision. No one can say how much gay marriage will affect the divorce rate. Other social policies introduce risks, but that doesn’t mean current science lets us predict those risks. These limits on scientific certainty are only a part of the picture. Our minds, the media, and government officials can work against us in four ways:
Framing — Politicians and pundits like to present issues as issues of freedom, or power or safety. Those are examples of frames. Frames tend to shape, or distort thinking. If you buy into the frame of gun control as a public health issue, you are not thinking like someone who framed the issue in terms of personal security. Whenever a politician or pundit presents the solution to a social problem, they are also presenting a frame that tends to make their position look good.
Time — Everyone has a limited amount of time and attention. Whole books have been written about this. Suffice it to say, many of us lack the time to think about social problems and their solutions. With roughly 9633 solutions to various social problems out there, no one could hope to keep up. Even if we limit ourselves to tracking a few social issues, we can get snowed under by proposed solutions, criticisms of those solutions, and responses to those criticisms. It can be exhausting!
Knowledge — People have different concerns and interests, and limited time. These obvious facts lead to a not-so-obvious conclusion: having a limited amount of knowledge about scientific reasoning, polling, et cetera inevitably, sometimes hamstrings our ability to rationally analyze what people are saying about social problems.
Mind — It might be hard to believe this, but our minds are prone to all kinds of biases and errors. Whole books and many, many online articles address the limitations of the human mind. If you want a short survey of the landscape, spend some time with Wikipedia.
If you go there, you will learn that we can encounter many challenges when we try to evaluate evidence, judge risks or rewards, and evaluate consequences.
American Gun Laws and Russian Gun Laws
Keep in mind that what follows is an effort to teach a mode of thinking. Don’t expect to find any good answers on the quality of effectiveness of gun control laws. This article isn’t about gun laws, but interested readers can learn more about Russian gun control laws. Rifles are hard to get. You probably can’t get a handgun permit unless you work in a “high risk” profession like banker or jeweler. Shotguns that hold one or two shells are relatively easy to get.
Gun control in the USA is, to somewhat oversimplify, much more permissive. States have various laws on things like concealed carry and removing guns from homes where people might be mentally unstable. An American citizen can even own a machine gun, though this is apparently a bureaucratic hassle and a massive expense. If leasing a Honda Fit seems expensive, you are never going to be able to own a machine gun.
Russian Gun Laws and American Gun Laws
The homicide rate is higher there, so we have to wonder what might happen. Here is where things get a little bit complicated. Someone who is against gun control laws will tend to assume the homicide rate will drop. More Russians will be able to defend themselves with guns.
A gun control supporter would say that homicides will go up because loose gun laws mean more violent thugs can get guns. Permissive gun laws will cause demand to go up, which will cause supply to go up. If there are more guns in circulation, there are more guns to commit violent crimes with.
What if the United States adopted Russia’s restrictive gun laws? The logic here is a mirror image of what you just read. Gun control supporters will swear that homicides are going to decline, while gun control opponents will point out that homicides will increase because citizens can’t defend themselves.
Of course, radical changes in gun laws have consequences beyond just the homicide rate. That doesn’t necessarily matter. People on both sides of the gun control debate will find it easy to attack gun control laws for a variety of reasons.
Principles and Consequences:
How do we know what’s right and wrong or what’s a good idea or a bad idea? Philosophically, people tend to focus on either the relevant moral principle or on the practical consequences of a choice. People reasoning from principles might reject gun control laws because they reduce freedom. People who want to legalize gay marriage probably are working from exactly the same principle.
In other cases, someone might look at the consequences of a decision. Perhaps Joe decides that banning concealed carry or something like that will lead to more rapes and murders and shootings. He can’t accept that consequence of tougher gun control laws. Even though he doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t want to do anything that would make society more dangerous for some people.
As you may know, most of us consider the principles and consequences. Personal liberty is super important. The consequences of letting almost anyone have any kind of gun they can afford might be unacceptable to someone who places a high value on personal liberty.
But there is a problem here. Did you spot it? If you were paying attention before, you recalled that predicting the future of society is difficult, at best. No one can say how much violence might increase or decrease because gun laws changed in a big way.
Needless to say, many propagandists are out there trying to exploit this uncertainty. Prominent people will suggest that strict new gun laws will lead to gun confiscation, perhaps reeducation camps and slavery. Other prominent people will swear that if men are allowed to marry men, in a few years we’ll have legalized child molestation, group marriages, marriages to animals, even marriages to vacuum cleaners. The horror!
Analyzing Social Problems is Hard
Ask and Answer “what if” questions with care. Even if no one tries to cloud your judgement, there are 101 ways your answer can be incomplete or wrong. Time, lack of knowledge, and dishonest or lazy framing can make it hard to evaluate claims about what causes a social problem. The same things also make it harder to know what to do. Will more gun control reduce gun violence? Will legalizing gay marriage increase the divorce rate? It isn’t easy to say what will happen. It is, however, easy to say that propagandists and politicians will try to manipulate our perceptions.
