On principles and pragmatism

One of the many ways we can disagree is on how a problem is best approached. This is interesting because it leaves two people who --- otherwise completely agree on the facts of the world and their values --- in disagreement on what ought to be done. This often boils down to one’s appetite for change and their belief that it can occur.

Principles, one the one side, are the absolute distillation of our ideals. They are the core things we believe to be true, or want to be true. If everything we decide can be derived from these central tenets, we describe it as a principled approach. They start with beliefs and work forward until they discover what best to do.

Pragmatism goes the other way. It starts with what we want to see happen and works backwards to figure out how we can get there. If there isn’t a likely path to possibility, it’s dropped. This is practical, and it can get a lot done. But the results can also be messy and mercurial without the rigidity of principles.

It is often said that people get more conservative as they age. I don’t think this is true. Sure, relative to the current progressive ideology an elderly person might be more conservative. But compared to the views they held as a youth, surely they’ve progressed immensely.

Instead, I think it is of principles and pragmatism by which we change. The youth --- full of spirit or naïvety --- hold fast to the hope that the world can be a principled one. The experience that comes with age delivers a more pessimistic pragmatism. The elderly suspect that change often can’t occur, and have brushed up with enough alternative viewpoints to question if there is any principles worthy of our trust. To interpret this as a shift to conservatism isn’t completely wrong, as pragmatism is conservative by nature. Pragmatism clings on to local maxima, afraid to make too large a jump from the status quo.

The dangers of pragmatism (other than being stuck in a local maxima) are the second order effects. It is very hard to know what will happen as a result of any odd action, and the difficulty grows with the complexity of the system. In our modern world, the full ripple effect of a change is unknowable. Pragmatic actions, which seemed sensible at the time, can lead to unexpected consequences. A whack-a-mole game can then emerge as each issue is band-aided by another pragmatic action.

Principles also have their shortcomings too, of course. Second order effects are just as possible, but with the benefit that, however unintentionally, at least those effects stem from your first principles too. The greater danger comes from those principles themselves proving to be wrong. The pragmatist can try something else if their choices don’t seem to be working, but the principled must abandon their entire belief system and start over from scratch.