One Rule for Us; One Rule for Them

A shorter version of this article is in the current issue of Perspective Magazine.

Back in the days when I ran a record label, I noticed an interesting asymmetry. To the record-buying public, the weekly charts were just a musical race where the best song won. In reality, the song was only one part of the equation; we also have to factor in the recording … the way the record was mixed, the lead singer’s performance, the arrangement, etc. On top of which there was what you might call the ‘implementation’, I mean things like the marketing budget and strategy, the music video, payments to retailers (you didn’t think they just put records in their windows because they liked them did you?), approaches to the music press and TV producers, and of course, the all-powerful Radio 1 playlist committee.

So what’s the asymmetry??

Well, whenever a band had a hit, it was, for them, definitive proof that their song was great, that was all there was to it.

However, if a record didn’t make it, well that was a different story. A miss meant the record’s producer had messed up the recording or the mix, or the label had screwed up the release.?

As far as the band were concerned, success happened because of a good song, but failure was rarely blamed on the song. Failure was caused by problems in the recording, or the record label having done a bad job.

A definite asymmetry. However, the really interesting asymmetry emerged with regard to rival bands. When a rival band had a hit, it was always despite a “very ordinary” if not actually “crap” song. It was just that the rival’s label had some dodgy contacts at Radio 1 or Top of the Pops.?

On the other hand, if a rival’s release didn’t chart, well, of course, that was because they’d written a rubbish song.

One rule for us; one rule for them.

No great surprise there – what can you expect from bloody musicians, eh??

Well, it isn’t just musicians who do this. I’ve seen it in authors, broadcasters, film directors, actors, copywriters, and economists.?

Economists?? Yes, me!

A couple of weeks ago, I was writing an evaluation of an economic policy. It was a policy that I’d liked but it seemed to have failed. However, because I liked the policy, I caught myself automatically looking for problems in its implementation. Yikes.

Once the scales had fallen from my eyes, I realised we all fall into these kinds of asymmetric judgements all the time, especially when it comes to politics.?

When we’re confronted by the apparent failure of a political idea we approve of, we don’t change our minds. Instead, we blame the way it was handled: it just wasn’t done properly, or maybe it was deliberately sabotaged by its opponents.?

Yet, when an idea that we don’t like fails, we don’t bother looking at the implementation at all.? In these cases, we just know it failed because it was a bad idea; a bad idea which now stands naked for all to see.?

Of course, if we apply different standards to the ideas we like and ideas we don’t, we’re going to make a lot of mistakes.

A particularly vivid example of the dangers of asymmetric standards of judgement can be found in the demise of Logical Positivism.?The Positivists sought a secure foundation for knowledge. An important prerequisite of which was the elimination of “nonsense”. Their approach was neatly encapsulated in the famous Verification Principle:?

“The meaning of a proposition is its method of verification.”?

Accordingly, if a proposition has no conceivable method of verification, it’s meaningless. How would you verify something like: “There has always been an unknowable force guiding the history of mankind.”?

The verification principle allowed the Positivists to eliminate great swathes of impressive but vacuous claims.?Martin Heidegger’s claim: “The nothing nothings.”, was a particularly notorious example of the kind of claptrap the Positivists wanted to expose and eliminate.

For a while, it looked like genuine progress was being made. However, guess what the Positivists forgot to do??They forgot to subject their own ideas to the tests they subjected ideas they wanted to expose as nonsense. Specifically, how would you verify the claim: “The meaning of a proposition is its method of verification”?

Urrr… you can’t. Ergo, by its own standards, the verification principle is nonsense.?

Of course, there followed decades of work by committed Logical Positivists in the attempt to shore up the verification principle. The idea was fine, the problem had to be in its formulation. However, by 1976, A.J. Ayer, the school’s principal populariser, admitted defeat: “The main defect of Logical Positivism was … that most of it was false.”?Although he couldn’t help adding: “I still want to say it was true in spirit.”

How easy it is for us to repudiate ideas we don’t like, and how difficult to abandon the ones we do.

When an idea we don’t like fails, we blame the idea;?when an idea that we do like fails, we blame the way it was implemented.?We have to be on our guard against this. If we don’t use consistent standards of judgement, we cheat ourselves and render our commitments effectively worthless.

All this can easily be applied to such things as the Brexit debate; the question of whether real socialism has ever been tried; the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget; and the sanctions against Russia. Whatever you want,? the list really is endless.?

It’s illuminating …though possibly uncomfortable…to try to catch yourself in the process of adopting asymmetric standards. If you’re pleased that something has failed, you will doubtless see the failure as the inevitable result of a bad idea.?However, if you’re disappointed by a failure, you will almost certainly find yourself looking for problems in implementation.?

Asymmetric judgement is all too seductive. In fact, I’m in its clutches as I write this. You see, I’m not altogether convinced that I’ve argued my case particularly well, but that’s ok, I know the idea is sound, it’s just my implementation that isn’t quite right.