The need to think clearly.

My reading tells me that most Americans get their news from television. I watch almost no TV, so to me this is mind-boggling. In the time it takes to watch 1/2 hour of evening news, much of which is likely to be filler and human-interest fluff, an average reader can get through most of a newspaper, which will afford a much wider spectrum of information. But even reading just one newspaper a day won't make you very well-informed. Sure, you'll know what is in the newspaper you read, but that is the limit of the news you have gotten. If the newspaper is incomplete, unreliable or biased - and most are, to one degree or another, not so much by design but by dint of the fact that human beings, including newspaper editors and reporters, have preconceptions and faults - then what you have read is only part of the story, the part that the reporters and editors at the newspapers think is important.

If you're like me and you're a compulsive reader, you read a minimum of two or three newspapers a day and several blogs. Surprisingly, it is not repetitive and it is not boring. The New York Times, which I read in the morning on the bus on the way in to work, is markedly different from the New York Post, which I read on the bus in the evening on the way home, and both of those are different from the Wall Street Journal, which I read in the office with my coffee when I arrive at my desk. Intermittently through the day I check in with blogs just to see what people are saying. In the evening, after dinner, I frequently relax at the computer, reading whatever happens to look interesting, which often is news blogs. I do it because I find it stimulating, but I also find that reading about the same events from different viewpoints helps me figure out what really is going on.

It also has given me some insights into how people think. Blogs can be wonderful, especially when the author thinks clearly and writes well enough to translate those thoughts into readable paragraphs. Some of the blogs link to each other as part of ongoing conversations about issues. Those dialogues are often very illuminating: the authors have thought about the issues and confront head-on the arguments of the people who disagree with them. As with most discussions of policy matters, these dialogues rarely end in resolution, with both sides agreeing. But with the alternative visions presented well, it's much easier to think about the issues because the best arguments for each side of the issue have been put forward.

Earlier this month two bloggers whom I read fairly often were having a conversation about school vouchers. Megan McArdle, who blogs as "Jane Galt," is in favor of them, and Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly's "Political Animal," is against them. They both discuss whether, how and why vouchers might or might not work, and put forth all sorts of arguments. Basically, Kevin views the argument as being "really" about breaking teachers' unions rather than improving education, while Jane argues that in order to improve education it's necessary to break the monopoly of the public schools. This is a worthwhile debate, and certainly well worth having. One of the things that inhibits informed decisionmaking here is that there is a relative dearth of reliable empirical data about the relative merits of voucher systems versus centralized systems.

Perhaps more interesting than the bloggers' remarks are the opinions in the comments. I see a few categories of commenters. Some are taking seriously the point of the exercise, which is to figure out how to improve the education system. For these people, the question is a practical one, focused on likely results: if vouchers are likely to help kids, let's do them. If they're not, let's not do them. If vouchers are likely to be worse than the current system, stick with the current system and maybe tweak it a bit. All these commenters have cogent arguments: some say parents can choose how to educate their kids better than a bureaucracy, others say education is not the sort of service that can really be subjected to the free market because of informational costs and because the cost of a wrong choice by a parent (namely, a bad education for the child) is not tolerable.

Other commenters, though, took a totally different approach. For them, the issue wasn't whether vouchers will improve education or not. Instead, the issue was assigning motives to the people who disagreed with their position. In this particular case, the center of attention was teachers' unions. The pro-voucher set was sure that the anti-voucher set didn't care about education at all, but cared only about preserving the teachers' unions and their rigid support of the Democratic party. The anti-voucher set was sure that the pro-voucher people didn't care about education at all, but cared only about breaking the teachers' unions.

Isn't this insane? To me, at least, it seems that when you think about public policy, the question isn't the motives of the people who propose policies, but rather the likely outcome of implementing the policies. People can have all sorts motives for proposals, some good and some not so good, but the merits of proposals have to stand on their own, no matter what reasons people may have for proposing them.

For example, suppose there is a charity drive at work. Charity A and Charity B are both on the approved list. One person in the office - call her Pam - is a big supporter of Charity A. Lisa, who works at the desk next to Pam, can't stand Pam, so to spite Pam she gives a big donation to Charity B. Lisa doesn't say anything about what she has done or why, she just gives the money. Has Lisa done a bad thing? I can't think of any reasoning that would conclude Lisa did a bad thing. Charity B gets money it otherwise might not get. If Lisa gave to Charity B because a close friend of hers was a big supporter of Charity B, rather than because someone she hates supports Charity A, the result would be precisely the same. If Lisa gave to Charity B because she believes deeply in Charity B's mission, the result would be precisely the same: Charity B would get a donation from Lisa and Charity A would get nothing. So what difference does it make that Lisa had a bad motive for giving to Charity B? The answer: it makes zero difference.

My point is that motive is usually irrelevant to policy proposals. Either something is likely to work or it is not, either it is a good idea or it is not, either its costs exceed its benefits or they don't. We might not know for sure, but the merits of the proposal don't depend on the motives of the person advancing the proposal.

I understand why people look at motives. Figuring out how things are likely to come out on the merits is hard work. It's especially hard work for nonexperts. I have no idea how to construct an educational system, for example. I suspect that most of the commenters on Megan's and Kevin's websites don't either. But if you have a gut feeling about the issue and can assign bad motives to those who disagree with you, that makes it much easier to simply discount what they say. Focussing on motives is thus a substitute for thinking. It's a proxy for reasoning rather than a reason.

This is a pretty good concept to keep in mind when trying to figure out why people are disagreeing with you. Most people aren't evil. If they disagree with you, it probably isn't because of bad motives. It's probably because of different premises. Figuring that out takes work. But if people are going to be able to talk to one another, they need to figure that out rather than look for motives.

I'm sure in some future post I'm going to violate this nugget of possible wisdom. But I'm really going to try not to.