I love easy wins

I was looking before at the book "The spirit level". It is a deeply divisive and influential book, with many people both supporting it and some making some seemingly valid criticisms of it. Right now, I don't want to take a side, I think of equality as a matter of morality; even if the evidence pointed the other way, I'd still want a more equal society. I want instead to consider what was going on in my head when I was looking into the book.

I was initially drawn to this book because of my left leaning. It looked great, evidence to justify my belief. My belief that an equal society is morally good means I want an equal society by any means (obviously within reason). When I find evidence which can achieve these ends, I jump for joy. But as you should be able to see, I am guilty of several fallacies: creating sides in a multifaceted debate, confirmation bias and the is-ought fallacy.

It doesn't end there though, I decided to check out criticism of the book, although I admit I went into war mode. I was looking for criticism so I could strike it down with my towering intellect and clearly correct information. As it happened, I brought only a pointed stick to a gun fight in both senses. My mind crawled away, wounded, cursing the day it ever decided to fight this battle and I gave up. Oh I can't be bothered with this it exclaimed.

And this reminded me of my previous post, I had missed something crucial. Not only do I give myself undue credit, not only am I prone to type one errors and not only that I turn debates into war. But I am also lazy! I like easy wins, unfortunately this was no easy win for my left centred brain. It struck me: I derive pleasure from winning, from being correct and shooting down other arguments, of course I will develop a complex where I avoid hard debates where my views will be challenged. I actually prefer to remain wrong and have a nice side to sit on and throw stones from than be buffeted by other people arguments and really engage with it.

You could call this self-flagellation, an in a way it is, I am pointing out my error in the hope that it will stick in my mind. To reiterate: Reality and morality are distinct and sometimes at odds with each other. The aim is to find the correct answer not for one side to win. I should not seek self affirming arguments. And to add to this: I should seek hard arguments and stop being so bloody lazy.

If you want to take a look at the debate:

A talk from the author summing it up: http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html

The blog of the book called the spirit level delusion: http://spiritleveldelusion.blogspot.co.uk/
A free pdf critique of the book: http://www.environnement.ens.fr/IMG/file/stages/A%20critical%20reading%20of%20The%20Spirit%20Level_Milos%20Simic-2.pdf

And heed my warnings.