The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

by Steven Sloman

So why do politicians and interest groups so often take a sacred values position rather than thinking through the causal consequences of various policies? The most obvious answer is obfuscation: The policy preference that will earn them votes or money is not what a consequentialist analysis dictates, so they avoid the consequentialist analysis. The other answer is that thinking through the consequences of a policy is hard—very hard. It’s much easier just to hide one’s ignorance in a veil of platitudes about sacred values. It’s an old politician’s ploy. The secret that people who are practiced in the art of persuasion have learned over millennia is that when an attitude is based on a sacred value, consequences don’t matter.