Commentary
I downloaded and read it. It’s brilliant. It seems to explain everything. Maybe it explains too much. Regardless, Kuran has given us a language to describe a remarkable feature of our times.
How is it that only a few months ago, people were afraid to wear MAGA hats and then Trump, having survived multiple assassination attempts, won not only the Electoral College but also the popular vote, sweeping the House and Senate in with him?
How can it be that during this transition time, people widely assume that the president and vice president is already not Biden/Harris but Trump/Vance?
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How can it be that foreign leaders are making pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago while Royals praise him as a great leader?
It all changed in an instant. Or seemed to. Maybe the preference for regime change was already in the air but just not revealed. It took a fair election with secret ballots to show the truth.
Kuran speaks of preference falsification, which is “the act of misrepresenting one’s genuine wants under perceived social pressures.” It is different from self-censorship because people outright lie about what they really think. When the lie persists long enough, people begin to believe the lie and essentially live fake lives, proclaiming fealty to one idea while holding another one in their heart of hearts.
He starts the book with the most mundane example of wall paint. You are invited to a friend’s house the walls of which have been repainted in fashionable starkness of which the owner is very proud. Your opinion is solicited. Instead of saying what you think, you simply go along and proclaim it to be just great.
You have falsified your preferences. “Preference falsification aims specifically at manipulating the perceptions others hold about one’s motivations or dispositions,” he writes, “as when you complimented your host to make him think that you shared his taste.”
It’s a tiny case but the problem is ubiquitous. It’s all about social pressure, peer expectations, the desire not to stick out, the drive to conform. It’s the problem of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone says they are beautiful even though he is naked. The story sounds rarified but in fact it is a driving feature of current society and probably all of human history.
Such books rarely garner professional praise because that is not how we “do science” today, but they can end up sticking in popular culture.
The preference falsification of the economics profession says that such books are not really economics. The author of this one rejected his own tendency to write as his profession expects and instead wrote a book of huge meaning.
He closely examines the case of India’s caste system, the rise and fall of communism, and the case of affirmative action in the US. In each case, the establishment was on one side and everyone knew how to fit in and falsify preferences.
In either event, public opinion was solidly on the side of the regime. But in each case, something changes and the mood changes. The hidden truth becomes exposed. The esoteric becomes exoteric. People start speaking their minds and acting according to their actual views. In each case, the regime lost control and the prevailing orthodoxy collapsed.
This is what Kuran calls the moment of the preference cascade. It can happen all at once. Seemingly out of nowhere, people reject the caste system, communism, and DEI hiring, behaving as if each system was always awful and had to go immediately.
A good example is the collapse of the Berlin Wall. One day it was heavily enforced, essential to national security and national identity, guarded with killer weaponry, and approved of by everyone on one side. The next day, it was like no one really cared anymore and the cars raced through and the thing was torn down while the soldiers watched and then joined in.
That is a great example of falsified preferences turning suddenly to a preference cascade.
In the Kuhnian view, science progresses only with the funerals of the old guard but in the Kuranian view, it happens all at once because people simply decide to stop lying.
The lying in this model is necessarily public and shaped by social pressure. When you go to the store, you buy only what you want or decline to buy at all. But when you are at a group banquet or at someone’s house for dinner, you are more inclined to go with the crowd. This of course is reinforced by many social psychology experiments from the 1960s which repeatedly proved the power of the crowd and peer pressure.
We don’t usually think of this as applying to whole societies, much less all political systems in the world at once. But that seems to be happening.
There was a headline last night about the collapse of the German government, but it could have easily been about any number of other countries facing internal pressures. The common theme is the struggle between the people and the establishment.
Let’s talk about the falsehoods surrounding COVID. Did anyone truly believe that a cloth mask at six feet would protect against a respiratory virus? Or that a new vaccine could be developed so quickly for a previously unknown infection? The absurd restrictions and regulations imposed during the pandemic have led people to question the authorities. It’s clear now that they were lying, as has been detailed in numerous articles over the years.
The crucial question now is what else have they been lying about, and for how long? The desire to believe in the authorities seems to have been shattered, leading to a cascade of truth that is just beginning.
This is why Kuran’s book and others like it are important for understanding our current situation. These books help us make sense of the seemingly chaotic events happening in the world and provide clarity in uncertain times.
Let’s hope that the truth continues to come to light until we have a full understanding of what is truly going on.
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