The Social Benefits of Iconoclasts

Years ago, my father offered me some advice. (Many such instances, but I have a specific case in mind.) When in class, he told me, never be afraid to raise your hand and ask questions or seek clarification on some point you don’t understand. People are often reluctant to do this, he said, because they’re afraid of seeming like they’re slower than their classmates. When a teacher pauses and asks “Are there any questions?” and nobody else around you has any, it’s easy to feel like everyone else is up to speed and you’ll stick out as falling behind. But, if everyone else in class also feels that way, then there can both be lots of people with lots of questions, but nobody raising their hand. Plus, there was an extra benefit, he told me. He asked, “Have you ever been in class and been confused by something, but someone else asked about it and you were glad that they did?” The answer, of course, was yes. And that was an extra reason to ask questions. Doing so would give me the chance to be that guy — by asking a question, I might also be helping other people who needed clarification but were too nervous to ask get the help they needed too.

On that last point, my dad was speaking like an economist, albeit without the jargon. In economic jargon, asking questions in had the chance to create positive externalities. I might gain additional understanding for myself, but other people could benefit in the same way. Because of this, individually people might undervalue asking questions, leading to too few questions in class being asked. Pointing this out was a way to try to encourage me to internalize the externality — to consider that if I’m feeling confused on some point, it’s likely that at least a few others are as well, and that should increase my willingness to ask questions.

The other point ties back to my earlier posting on preference falsification. The hesitance to ask questions in a classroom setting for fear of seeming like you’re not keeping up with everyone is another case where people might falsify their preferences. Publicly, students will express that they are up to speed and need no additional information, while privately desiring extra clarification. If each individual thinks they are the only one who is feeling confused, and is worried about seeming foolish compared to everyone else, then we can end up in a scenario where everyone privately wants extra explanation but publicly expresses a desire to keep moving ahead.

An iconoclast is someone who loudly and boldly takes stances far outside of conventional (expressed) public opinion. Iconoclasts can attract a lot of criticism. On the other hand, in situations where there is widespread preference falsification, the only way to break out of that is for at least some people to be willing to noticeably make their private beliefs publicly known. Each person who does so makes it just a little bit easier for the next person to do so as well. The first people to do so may face heavy criticism — even attempts at cancelation — but iconoclasts often revel in the controversy rather than being deterred by it.

There are upsides and downsides to this. In the worst case, we have trolls — people who say outrageous things simply for the purpose of causing outrage, and who revel in doing so. On the other hand, in at least some cases, people who are genuinely iconoclastic can start the process that breaks the spell of preference falsification. I have no doubt that trolls outnumber iconoclasts. But despite this, the value of open and free expression is not diminished. Even though most new ideas are terrible, some will be real breakthroughs. We don’t have a way of identifying in advance which will be which — because doing so would require us to know in advance what future experience will show. As Yogi Berra once said, prediction is hard, especially about the future.

A parallel can be made with the work done by venture capitalists. They know that most of the ventures they support will turn out to be flops and will fail — but just a few here and there will turn out to be giant successes. There’s no way to know in advance which will be which — if they knew that, then they’d only invest their money in those rare few and not bother with all the rest. But because they don’t — and can’t — know which is which, they invest very broadly to make sure those few good ideas can be found and brought out.

The same is true in the marketplace of ideas. Of all the ideas put forth that are drastically outside the (apparent) social consensus, most will probably just be duds and the people who advocate them likely trolls who just want to get a rise out of people. But some few will be different — and have the potential to make a commonly held but commonly hidden belief more freely expressed. We don’t know which ideas will be which, and most will probably be the former, but there only way to find the latter is to let all ideas out into the open.