Henry Kim
Henry Kim
Aug 23, 2017 · 2 min read

Each of those parts is not itself controversial, but a unified theory of mental models that incorporates all these is. The idea of a person as someone who dynamically updates his or her beliefs and makes adjustment on how they perceive politics, society, and culture, and adapts is practically an anathema to people in certain fields, in part because of the implications. There is a huge industry that seeks to analyze data and measure “ideologies,” i.e. political preferences that can be neatly mapped on a multidimensional (or preferably, one-dimensional) scale that obeys Euclidean geometry. The kind of “theory of mind,” applied to, say, politics, makes a lot of these efforts virtual nonsense and raises all manner of questions about what these choices depend on. To be fair, empirically evaluating a theory like this, with so many moving parts and nuanced implications, on the kind of crude data we have on hand in a believable manner is difficult. Simple, crude, and not terribly interesting theories that presuppose not-very-dynamic mindsets are far more common, or, even when they are, those that are lacking in nuance.

PS. One of my more frustrating moments was, after presenting a purely theoretical model along these lines, I was accosted by someone who threateningly demanded empirical evidence, at an academic conference. People don’t like new ideas that don’t fit conventional wisdom neatly, and I had no iridium layers to back me up.

PPS. I suppose this is a variation on the way I summarized the teaching side of my academic career: I am especially proud of the way I was able to get students who did not especially care about politics to get interested in political phenomena and got them to think unconventionally — although I wonder, in so doing, I contributed to creation of many “conspiracy theorists” along the way. I keep wondering if I should be proud of or distressed at the way I confused so many students who like “politics” and thought themselves “well-informed” on politics.

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    Henry Kim

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    Henry Kim