The fact the examples are all left-wing does matter because it’s an indication that Henderson is conceiving of his idea to reinforce his right-wing populist views and those of his readers, not because he’s approached the concept through the lens of a neutral observer. In other words, part of the failure of his reasoning stems from his ideology and dogmatism.
Anecdotal evidence is evidence, sure, but it’s so low quality as to be worthless most of the time. There’s ample anecdotal evidence that bigfoot exists, or chupacabras, or the Loch Ness monster, etc. but the scientific community rightly rejects these accounts as not sufficiently reliable to say that these species actually exist.
I completely disagree with you that science and scientists are all falling prey to confirmation bias, and therefore there is nothing different about what Henderson is doing here, as you seem to suggest. Even if this were true, it’s an incredibly weak defence of Henderson. “Well all scientists lack rigour, therefore there is nothing wrong with Henderson’s complete lack of rigour”. Many wrongs don’t make a right.
In any case, I only raise the basic principle of hypothesis testing (i.e. that one must attempt to disprove a hypothesis rather than only gather evidence to prove it) to highlight Henderson’s failure of reasoning. His luxury beliefs idea doesn’t rise to the level of being science to begin with. It’s a hypothesis that he seems to believe is plausible, perhaps so plausible as to be obvious to him. But it isn’t. It’s only “obvious” if you’re already dogmatically committed to right-wing populism because it reinforces those beliefs. It’ll have the ring of truth to people who like politicians like Donald Trump and resent educated coastal “elites”. The right-wing populists will just accept it without thinking about the problems with it.
I’m glad you raised the idea that intelligent people can hold irrational beliefs despite their intelligence. I couldn’t agree more. There is a distinction between general intelligence and critical thought, judgment, or wisdom. I agree that sometimes intelligent people are simply better at rationalizing their nonsense views, and that’s precisely what I perceive Henderson to be doing here.
A less affluent college with a higher proportion of people with “luxury beliefs” than the proportion of people with those beliefs at a more affluent college is inconsistent with Henderson’s views. He equates luxury beliefs with affluence. Therefore, the more affluent the place of higher education, the higher the proportion of people holding luxury beliefs we should expect to encounter there. Maybe what you mean by “compatible” is that this inconsistency doesn’t disprove his idea, and I would agree with that, but it’s still another piece of evidence against it.
The reason I brought up other possible reasons for the decline in marriage is because I wanted to demonstrate how easy it is to engage in a bit of armchair pondering to come up with plausible hypotheses for why marriage rates fell among the working class in the 1960s. Henderson hasn’t done anything more than that. Also, he doesn’t frame “luxury beliefs” are a small cause of falling marriage rates among several other causes, he frames it as a major or primary cause. Go read his article on luxury beliefs in the New York Post to verify this if you need to.
When Henderson appeared on the Jordan Peterson podcast, he said that decriminalization of drugs was one of the luxury ideas that affluent people held that harmed the lower classes. It would follow that he believes criminalizing drugs is therefore at least less harmful to the lower classes, if not beneficial to them. This is not a strawman, it’s a reasonable inference to make about his beliefs based on his expressed views.
If you’re going to call my arguments straw men, you need to explain how I refuted a weaker or distorted version of Henderson’s idea rather than his actual idea. I did my best to treat him fairly. Interestingly, I perceive you to be doing the opposite. You seem to be bending over backwards to find reasons why Henderson’s idea holds up when it clearly doesn’t.
Finally, you shouldn’t misunderstand my critique. I’m not saying affluent people hold no irrational beliefs, or hold less of them than poor people (although that’s probably the case simply due to education). I’m specifically pushing back on his notion that what he calls “luxury beliefs” uniquely originate among the affluent, are only left-wing ideas, trickle down to the lower classes, and harm the lower classes.
