Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification

There's a genre of nonfiction I call "New Hammer". It's when the writer has a new idea that he/she thinks explains all kinds of old puzzles, and proceeds to apply that new idea to everything in sight. Some of these are great (e.g. Plagues and Peoples), some are not so good (The Innovator's Dilemma). This one, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification by Timur Kuran, is not the best of the bunch, but is nonetheless pretty good. Some of the stories Kuran has to tell surprised me, and changed the way I think about certain problems.Kuran's central idea is deceptively simple -- people lie. What's more, they lie systematically. If you go around Russia asking Russians, "Do you support Vladimir Putin?", the answers will be close to 100% "Yes". It's the only safe answer. But in at least some proportion of cases, it is a lie. And, crucially, we don't know what that proportion is. This goes some way to explain why dictatorships sometimes collapse suddenly, seemingly without warning.Kuran argues that systematic lies about what people really think explain a lot of otherwise puzzling observations about societies and the way they change. As is typical of the "New Hammer" genre, he pushes the applicability of the idea a bit beyond what the data can sustain. Still, I enjoyed it and found it more informative and challenging than I expected to.

The author gives a sociological explanation of how people respond to regimes that suppress the truth. He draws mostly on the experience of the Soviet system, but also on the Islamic theocracies. His theory goes beyond regimes that rely on violence and offers a powerful answer to current American challenges to free speech and free thought. Although academic and not polemical, this book is a powerful argument for hope and courage.

Timur in writing this book has (in my view) made a significant contribution to human understanding of social interaction. He has done this by articulating the connection between our public actions and those of our peer group, identifying the necessities and connection between our public actions and the social consequences of our public and private actions. These connections and feedback loops are used to show how they force us as individuals to temper our public actions and thinking due to the risk of social reprisal.

Fascinating premise painstakingly developed in the style of a careful economist. Not a five-star review because it is a dense read - but full thesis development precludes light reading here. The premise is very valuable and explains much of why our politics appears polarized on every issue. Usually such books give a taste of the writer's political views, but I honestly cannot tell whether the writer is a liberal or a conservative - except that he eschews pat narratives. Which may in itself reflect a political orientation.

This book, which describes the obvious fact that people lie in surveys enabled me to predict that Trump would win the election. With the entire mainstream media waging war on him and vilifying him ceaselessly (they haven't stopped yet; it's now a habit) what would you say to a total stranger who asked you if you would vote for Trump. You'd Lie! Add to that, who trusts surveyors anyway. Won a bunch of dough. Thank you Timur!

I read this a while ago but remember it as being absolutely fascinating and brilliant. The work has many applications and should be a cautionary tale for all those who think that consensus leads to acceptable solutions with moral validation. Anyone who has been on a committee knows what is being described and analyzed in this book, but the clear and precise manner of the exposition is brilliant. The capacity to distill this down to a proper economic description that can do work as an analytical tool is demonstrated in spades by the later example chapters.

Great book and 20 years before its time. The best integration of economics and political science I have read in my long career.

This is an important book for people who are trying to understand how public opinion is formed and maintained - and how it can shift so suddenly. It offers important analytic tools for a review of shifts in opinion that are driven by or enforced on unconnected mass audiences by media, as well as by peer pressure on more specific and narrowly defined audiences.