Not Born Yesterday by Hugo Mercier;
Author:Hugo Mercier;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2019-12-03T16:00:00+00:00
WHAT TO DO?
Self-incriminating statements are intrinsically credible. Because they refer to our own beliefs or actions, we’re supposed to know what we’re talking about. Because they make us look bad, we would have no reason to lie.
If believing self-incriminating statements is, on the whole, a good heuristic, it also leads to a series of problems. The most obvious are the false confessions that plague judicial systems. The answers here are mostly institutional: the law should reduce as much as possible the pressures put on suspects, and make whatever pressures are left as transparent as possible for judges and jurors to consider. For example, in the United Kingdom, it is illegal for the police to lie to suspects, the whole interrogation has to be taped, and dubious confessions are likely to be suppressed before they reach the jury.54
More generally, we should keep in mind that people might confess to regain our approval, even if they haven’t done anything wrong. In such cases, we should believe in the social goals (they are willing to make peace with us) rather than the content (they have really done the thing they confess to). In the end, it is these goals that matter the most.
The same logic applies to the self-incriminating statements that are used for burning bridges. We shouldn’t assume that people intuitively hold the apparently deranged or evil views they profess. However, we should take seriously their social goal, namely, to reject the standard groups that make up the majority of society in favor of a fringe coalition. As a result, if we want them to abandon their silly or offensive views, attempting to convince them of these views’ logical, empirical, or moral failings is unlikely to work. Instead, we have to consider how to deal with people who feel their best chance of thriving is to integrate into groups that have been rejected by most of society.
People aren’t stupid. As a rule, they avoid making self-incriminating statements for no reason. These statements serve a purpose, be it to redeem oneself or, on the contrary, to antagonize as many people as possible. By considering the function of self-incriminating statements, we can react to them more appropriately.
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