3.5 Stars DNF (Read 60%)

While this book was very interesting and food for thought. I simply did not like the, in my opinion, overly difficult and unnecessarily so, writing style, which was a cause of great annoyance.

Interesting discussion about how different views of human nature lead to different visions of the purpose of government. He contrasts the "constrained" view of human nature with the"unconstrained" - basically a difference between believing humans are basically selfish vs basically good respectively.

Reminded me of a long-standing irreconcilable division I read about in Chinese philosophy. Sowell argues these disagreements about human nature manifest as drastic differences with regards to government policy, specifically on optimizing processes (constrained) vs. optimizing outcomes (unconstrained). Worth a read!

This review is in Albanian. :)

Ky është një nga librat që unë do shpëtoja nëse do gjendesha në një botë në prag të apokalipsit. Pra është një nga librat e mi të preferuar sepse më dha një instrument të ri për të parë, analizuar dhe sitemuar ato çfarë dija mbi botën, sjelljen dhe politikën në linja të gjera.

Sipas Sowellit ekzistojnë dy pikëpamje/vizione të natyrës njerëzore. Ai i kufizuar apo me kufizime (Constrained), dhe ai i pakufizuar apo pa kufizime (Unconstrained). Këto dy pikëvështrme rrjedhin dhe përmbysin gjithë fushat e aktivitetit dhe veprimtarisë njerëzore.

Ata që adoptojnë vizionin pa kufizime të botës, dhe që në raste të tjera mund të quhen utopistë, besojnë se njerëzit janë thelpësisht të mirë, të patëkeq; se natyra njerëzore mund të tjetërsohet pra mund të ndryshohet për së miri (shiko njeriun e ri komunist); se qëllimet kanë rëndësi dhe ndoshta edhe më shumë rëndësi sesa rezultatet (shiko makabritetin e revolucionit francez); se njerëzit janë në gjendje të jenë të paanshëm dhe se kanë së pari një ndjenjë detyrimi shoqëror.


Pikëpamja apo vizioni i botës me kufizime, argumenton se: qenia njerëzore është thelpësisht egocentrike, pra e udhëhequr nga vet-interesi (megjithëse ky në rrjedhën e vet mund të prodhojë efekte dhe sjellje në dukje altruiste, shiko për shembull citatin e famshëm të Adam Smithit mbi bukëpjekësin interesin e tij dhe benefitin e konsumatorit...gjithkush i udhëhequr nga benefiti personal).

Ata që ndjekin vizionin e botës me kufizime besojnë gjithashtu se natyra njerëzore është e patjetërsueshme në harkun kohor të jetës së një njeriu dhe se jemi në thelp qenie jo perfekte, me difekte, cene, vese etj.
Po ashtu moraliteti ynë si individë dhe më gjerë si shoqëri rrjedh prej vet-interesit, pra incentivat dhe shkëmbimet kanë një rol të rëndësishëm (për sa i përket moralit, shiko për shembull Etikën Mjekësore në rastin e një pacienti të infektuar me një sëmundje fortësisht ngjitëse dhe vdekjeprurëse. normalisht do të përforcohej e drejta e konfidencialitetit mes pacientit dhe mjekut, por në rastin e një sëmundje që përbën rrezik për shoqërinë më të gjerë, mjekut i lejohet nga ana etike dhe dontologjike që ta raportojë sëmundjen e pacientit tek autoritetet.)

Këtë libër e rekomandoj për të gjithë ata që duan një mjet më shumë për të kuptuar botën.

This was a really interesting book (that Sowell wrote before I was born). The premise is that ideologies in American (and international) politics stem from one of two sources: the unconstrained vision and the constrained vision. The unconstrained vision views the world as limitless in possibility if we can only think them up. The constrained vision values the hierarchies currently in existence and only seeks to improve what is already though. This is very much a discussion of liberal versus conservative thought, which has a basis in individual temperament (recent studies have found). I can now appreciate the good intent behind both sides of the argument, but Sowell makes a point to address the serious and devastating repercussions behind good intentions and preaches caution before allowing our ideological pursuits to lead to bad results. No amount of good intention can justify the suffering of humankind (this in reference to the starvation, violence, and death of millions at the feet of communism, national socialism, marxism, and the like). A very enlightened and big-picture book.

A great transition from the book “Blink” I just read which speaks absout the unconscious actions we take. This book lost a start because it seemed more like a textbook than a personal account of information. It also seemed a bit pompous in its language which became snobby at a point.

I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed reading this book, despite how deeply I disagree with its author. I appreciate the clarity and thoroughness with which Sowell lays out his framework: I found that it shed light on much of our partisan divide that I'd not previously understood, and it also helped me to identify and articulate my own perspective.

Sowell, with all the typical hedges about necessary-simplification of a much more complex reality, lays out two primary visions guiding people's politics. TM Scanlon summarized the thesis in his review:

The fundamental difference separating liberals and conservatives, according to Sowell, is a difference in “visions,” that is, in very general views about how the world works, what possibilities are open to us, and how much it is possible for us to know. People who hold different visions also tend to have different moral views, but these moral differences, Sowell contends, are not fundamental. Rather, they are consequences of more basic disagreements about causality and knowledge.

The conflict referred to in the title of Sowell’s book is between two such visions. According to what he calls the “constrained vision,” human beings are inevitably limited in both sympathy and knowledge. No amount of progress will produce human beings who are consistently altruistic or are capable of knowing more than a very limited amount about the world or even about the consequences of their own actions...This “vision” emphasizes the permanent need for social institutions to provide incentives that remedy the deep deficiencies in human motivation and to make decisions that are beyond the capacities of even the ablest persons...

The opposing “unconstrained vision”...is, Sowell argues, based on faith in the moral perfectibility of mankind and in the power of human reason. According to this vision, many of the evils in the world are the result of remediable moral defects and avoidable ignorance. Because human beings are morally perfectible, institutions like criminal laws and competitive markets that shape their behavior through external incentives are of at most temporary importance; such restraints can be dispensed with as mankind improves. Even now, the unconstrained vision takes it to be possible for the best among us to discover, by the use of “articulated rationality” (that is, by laying out a chain of reasons supporting a specific conclusion), what the best social policy is. This faith in reason, according to Sowell, leads those who hold the unconstrained vision to approach social problems through seeking “more direct control by those with the requisite expertise and commitment to the public interest,” the latest in this line being advocates of “industrial policy.”

Not surprisingly, Sowell is better at explaining his own (constrained) vision of the world, than he is at explaining the visions of those he disagrees with... Scanlon does a bang-up job pointing out some of these misunderstandings in the review linked above. But even if it is an inaccurate portrayal of prominent liberal/progressive/left thinkers, it is a telling description of how some conservatives may read them.

I'm also fairly convinced that while Sowell's framework is a mis-portrayal of these prominent thinkers, it is not a mis-portrayal of the typical liberal/progressive/left thinker you might encounter on the street rather than in a philosophy course. You know, thinkers like me.

I should pause to hedge a bit here. Sowell frequently points out that we should not assume a perfect left/right, liberal/conservative alignment with the unconstrained/constrained dichotomy, but I also think it would be silly to suggest there isn't any alignment. Generally speaking, I lean liberal/progressive/left, and I also consider myself more philosophically aligned with John Rawls and Laurence Tribe (considered to have an "unconstrained" vision in Sowell's view) than with Friedrich von Hayek and Adam Smith ("constrained" thinkers).

I think it is a testament to Sowell's genuine efforts to "see the other side" of things that I was never put off or offended by his description of the "unconstrained" vision. I never found his portrayal dismissive. Often, I wholly agreed. When I did disagree, it was generally at the edges rather than the heart of the matter... And, importantly, I found myself articulating ideas, as I read, that I don't think I would have been aware of without his provocation.

For instance, Sowell describes people with an unconstrained vision as being more concerned with results than process.

If a footrace is conducted under fair conditions, then the result is just, whether that result is the same person winning again and again or a different winner each time. Results do not define justice in the constrained vision.

To those with the unconstrained vision, the best results should be sought directly.

I suppose I must admit, when it comes to society, I do pay a lot of attention to results, but not because I don't believe in the primacy of fair process, but rather because I believe certain results belie corruption to that process. The same person winning a race again and again may not necessarily mean the race is unfair, but it certainly means we should take care to ensure that person is not cheating.

What I appreciated about the constrained vision, as described by Sowell, was its humility. What stymied me was its abdication of responsibility to try for good in the face of flawed humanity.

There are no doubt many progressives that see themselves as superior rationalists capable of "solving" problems that have plagued society for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. I am friends with some of these progressives. I have been known to become one of them when I get too caught up in myself. And that kind of arrogance is certainly worth avoiding.

Sowell describes contemporary society as the result of collective wisdom, "Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along." He balks at the kind of arrogance that leads a person to believe they can design a system better than what has already heretofore evolved. To change a system intentionally is only to reveal the wisdom of it that was previously taken for granted.

This reminds me of Chesterton's Fence, a concept that has influenced me immensely, particularly in my professional life. As Chesterton himself put it:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

Let's just say, early in my career I was a fan of tearing down fences I didn't understand. I learned the wisdom of Chesterton's Fence through many unpleasant experiences, and now I apply that wisdom as often as I can remember it.

Chesterton's Fence is an inherently conservative idea, but it still makes room for intentional reform. A person must be tempered by humility but not paralyzed by it.

One of the most fascinating aspects of reading this book 37 years after its publication is seeing the way Sowell connects systemic thinking with conservative politics. What I generally see today is an association between systemic thinking and progressivism. For instance, when I see the Right and the Left at odds over critical race theory, I tend to see a battle between an individualist view of racism and a systemic view of racism. We progressives see a racist system that can exist regardless of individual racism. Progressives like me focus on the way power accretes within societal systems resulting in oppression.

But Sowell gave me reason to see the systems through another lens: power may accrete within societal systems, but so too wisdom. How do we navigate the tension there?

There's an idea that has been rolling around in my head for a few months now that I've termed "technologies of abdication." The thought hit me while contemplating algorithms, and how we sometimes use algorithms to abdicate responsibility.

I remember when I worked for Google, taking calls and emails on their general support line for advertisers. Fairly regularly, someone would call concerned about the unpaid search results. Every once in a while, they'd have a really good argument for why a particular results page was demonstrably harmful to a person or a group.

We'd have no particular justification for maintaining the status quo other than the inviolability of algorithm. I use the term "inviolability" in two ways. The first is literal. No one answering phones had any access to anyone with any power over Google's search algorithm. The second is more philosophical. I worked at Google in in the early days, when almost all of us really believed in Google as a beneficent force. We were organizing the world's information. We weren't being evil. And we believed in the algorithm. It wasn't perfect, but it was as close as we could get, and ever improving. It wasn't just that we couldn't change the algorithm to address one small flaw, it was that we didn't want to. The algorithm was, in a way, sacred.

Abdication of responsibility begins as an inevitable consequence of a commitment to a sacred process, but it becomes a self-sustaining process for maintaining and amassing power. This process need not be conscious, though it can be and often is a conscious strategy to deflect attention away from mechanisms of power and influence that do exist. Other times the abdication is merely reflex. Sometimes it stems from a well-meaning deference to the collective wisdom that developed it.

Algorithms are a technology of abdication. So is the market economy. And democracy.

The sacred processes that underlie these technologies of abdication are built to prevent tyrannical use of power by any particular individual or group of individuals, and this is why we hold them sacred.

But unchecked, technologies of abdication lead to systemic oppression -- intentionally or not! And a technology of abdication cannot check another technology of abdication without the two becoming an intertwined system of oppression while incentivizing everyone involved to abdicate responsibility for change.

Individuals must check technologies of abdication by refusing to abdicate responsibility, by stepping into the power they have, however meager in the face of that system, and acting morally within that power. We cannot abdicate our responsibility to do the best we can just because there are individuals who won't and because we'll never be so wise as to wield our power perfectly.

So I suppose Sowell is right when he contends that people like me believe in the perfectibility of individuals and society. I think we can do better and we can do worse, and in this way we are perfectible.

Oh, I have so many more thoughts on this, but I also need to get around to doing other things I'd planned to do today. This is a review I hope people comment on, so please do if you've read this far.

A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell is a bit more scholarly than many of his other books that I've read. In order to absorb the most of the ideas he is sharing in the audio book version, I even slowed the speed down from the usual almost double speed that I normally play. Dr. Sowell explores and discusses controversies in politics that arise from many sources; but the conflicts that endure for generations or centuries show a remarkably consistent pattern. In this classic work, he describes the two competing visions that shape our debates about the nature of reason, justice, equality, and power: the "constrained" vision, which sees human nature as unchanging and selfish, and the "unconstrained" vision, in which human nature is malleable and perfectible. A Conflict of Visions offers a convincing case that ethical and policy disputes circle around the disparity between both outlooks. With books by Thomas Sowell you need to fasten your seatbelt and let the learning begin!

Sowell's discussion of the two visions: constrained and unconstrained (though there is a range between them) and their effects on views in economics, law, and other fields. The unconstrained basically admitting of no limits on human capacity.

Such as differing views on war, the unconstrained view that it can be prevented by enlightenment and good will, being an irrational thing, and the constrained view that it's caused by people's rational conclusion that it will benefit them (however evil it is, or mistaken the conclusion turns out to be, like other conclusions). Or whether people should be guided by the wise and provident, based on whether you think them capable, or incapable because they can't possibly know all you need.

I've actually only read half this book, but it's already enough for me to HIGHLY recommend it. That said, the material is too deep to pull off in audiobook form, so after getting halfway through the book I concluded that this one needed to be read in physical form or focused on exclusively for a while if in audio. Will plan to do it in the physical form hopefully one day soon.

My personal track record with Thomas Sowell is full of great books. After Basic Economics and Knowledge and Decisions I finally got to read A Conflict of Visions. Rarely do I have a chance to read something so well articulated as to be pleasurable in it's exposition yet profound at the same time. Each time I read a book by Thomas Sowell I feel better for having done so, and worse by not reading it sooner!

A Conflict of Visions is about the two conflicting visions driving people's perception of economy, law, social processes, equality and power. It tries to explain why the same people find themselves at opposite sides on even disparate issues and the proposed origin of this disparity is the innate ideology (or vision) of a person.

The author points out two important visions: the "constrained" (tragic) vision and the "unconstrained" (utopian) vision.

This dichotomy doesn't cover the whole spectrum of human though, and some people might lie between those two visions or have different visions on different issues the divide is apparent enough historically, and can be seen currently in on the political and social arena.

The constrained vision is believes that human beings are ultimately constrained - limited in both understating as well as morality. Because of this fundamental limitation solutions for problems are impossible, only trade offs.

The trade-offs are arrived by time-tested (evolved) systematic processes disregarding individuality but regarding incentives and disincentives which that system creates. Economic prosperity through the free market system, justice as seen a process not-discriminating anyone, society driven by tradition. Because constrained vision doesn't trust men it leads itself naturally to another political *system*: of checks and balances.

The unconstrained vision believes that a man's nature is ultimately unlimited - infinite progress is possible if only given chance. The followers of this vision prefer "sufficiently smart" decision makers as drivers of policies, they disdain tradition and don't trust systematic processes - thinking them bothersome at best, corrupted at worst.

The followers of this vision have an individualized conception of equality and justice. They believe in equality as defined as equality of outcomes not equality of opportunity. Because the nature of man is not limited, the power given to decision-makers is unlimited because they can be trusted to do the right thing. This exhibits itself in economy in the form of central planning, increased importance of judges to give "individualized" sentences etc.

The unconstrained vision tries to find root causes social ills - a man commits crime because he's sick, or poor or was forced to it. The constrained vision knows the limitations of man and tries to look for causes of social health - lack of crime explained by better policing, social customs, jail sentences.

The two visions are always at odds with each other, even seeing basic things as different. Knowledge in the constrained vision is dispersed, non perfect and a person knowledge in one area probably means that he has a lack of knowledge in others. In the constrained vision people are expected not to stray from their area of expertise - due to the law of unforeseen consequences, in the constrained vision people are expected to "help" in areas Knowledge is the pinnacle of achievement in the unconstrained vision and is trusted implicitly.

Equality in the constrained vision is understood as equality of opportunity, versus the equality of outcomes sought by the followers of the unconstrained vision. Power is seen as the ability to change someone's decisions in the unconstrained vision, while it's seen as the ability to limit options in the constrained vision.

It's hard to explain the characteristics of both of the visions but the book presents them as a logical whole, giving citations and enumerating the followers of each particular vision. It's an incredibly well written book combining sociology, philosophy, economy and theory of law that left me in a deep contemplative state.

https://pricemacro.com/2020/08/10/a-c...

This book is an excellent philosophical assessment on the ideological origins of modern day politics.