Interviewed by Russ Roberts, Burgin says,
if you argue that you have an abstract logic that’s universally true, that you can derive wholly from thoughts within your head, if other people don’t believe that they share that logic, you are going to have an enormously difficult time convincing them that you are right. And Friedman said, in contrast, what I can do, my method, is I can say: Okay, we both share the same end; we share the end of the well-being of the poor; but I think that if you examine the data, I can show you that my way of organizing society will be more successful at achieving that than your way. And whether or not one buys into how Friedman read the data, Friedman was adamant that that mode of argumentation was much more likely to get somebody to rethink the views that they already hold than a mode that proceeds based on an abstract logic alone.
And here is a quote that’s a keeper:
this representation of ideas as being scientifically based that aren’t necessarily so can happen on the right and on the left. And the one uniform thing is that it bothers colleagues on the other side of the aisle who watch it occurring.
Toward the end, Burgin contrasts the pessimistic outlook that he associates with Hayek with the optimistic outlook that he associates with Friedman. Hayek resonated in the Depression era and again after the financial crisis. Friedman resonated in better times. I am reminded of one of my favorite Scott Sumner blog posts, and my response to it.
I may have to give Burgin’s book another chance. My first impression was that I would not like the author’s framing of the subject.
Presuming that “Friedman” is Milton Friedman, it was his son David who taught me this exact same lesson in a Usenet post back around 1990.
Assume as much of your opponent’s premises as you can, and if you can still pose a winning argument, do it from those premises.
The second big lesson is that even then you are unlikely to convince your opponent. That’s okay. You are actually trying to convince all those who are watching from between your two positions. So always behave rationally and without insult.
The fallacy here is that we are talking about ‘abstract logic’ whatever that is.
I’d say Burgin simply doesn’t know the material at hand.
Darwin didn’t give us an ‘abstract logic’ he gave us a different way of understanding the phemenena via a new understanding of the problem directly connected to a causal mechanism to explain that phenomena.
Hayek did the same thing — he pointed out an empirical problem and some basic facts, *empirical facts* doubted by no one, eg the fact of the division of knowledge and the fact that people learning in the context of changing relative prices and local conditions.
Hayek’s account changed the way *everyone* thought about the phenomena, just as Darwin did.
It’s not a ‘logic’ that Darwin and Hayek taught, it’s a causal mechanism and a way to see a problem demanding a causal explanation.
It turns out the main thing blocking understanding of Darwin and Hayek has been a *false* understanding of the *logic* of knowledge / science — a false understanding of knowledge and science shared by Friedman, Samuelson and most economists.
Samuelson came to admit that statistical ‘data’ couldn’t force the consensus and couldn’t produce the Machian ‘science’ he once imagined it would produce.
Friedman never admitted this, though many of his students have.
Angus Burgin says,
“you argue that you have an abstract logic that’s universally true, that you can derive wholly from thoughts within your head, if other people don’t believe that they share that logic”
In terms of changing wide-spread understanding, Hayek *didn’t* resonate during the Great Depression — he resonated after WWII and in the 1970s & 1980s.
As far as economics goes, Hayek influence has been non-stop in ways little understood by most economists today, almost none of which has any education or knowledge in the history of economic thought.