I know I'm a bit late to this, but I do think you are right about the distinction.
With preference falsification, you're in a situation where people believe X but say not-X, because everyone else says not-X and deviating has a cost. Timur Kuran talked about the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. You think Communism is bad, but you b…
I know I'm a bit late to this, but I do think you are right about the distinction.
With preference falsification, you're in a situation where people believe X but say not-X, because everyone else says not-X and deviating has a cost. Timur Kuran talked about the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. You think Communism is bad, but you believe you are in the minority and so say Communism is good. But in reality, everyone thinks Communism is bad but says Communism is good. There's a coordination problem. Then there's a signal that, in fact, others might agree with you, so you express that Communism is bad, which intensifies that signal to others. The cascade rapidly changes social reality.
It would be like if you worked with a bunch of judgmental vegetarians and you love hamburgers. You might lie and tell people you hate hamburgers and order Tofu, which you prefer less, and signal that you're a judgmental vegetarian, too. But then you find out your boss has a Slim Jim in their purse, and everyone admits they only ordered Tofu because they thought everyone else was vegetarian. Everyone is better off now that they can order hamburgers without being judged.
But if you, and everyone, were indifferent between hamburger and tofu, no cascade would take place because there's no individual reward for 'defecting' and getting to eat hamburgers.
The collapse of Biden's support fit preference falsification because, privately, everyone thought Biden was too old but wouldn't express it publicly until a signal (the debate) changed how acceptable it was to express your private belief.
The gay marriage story is an information cascade, but not a preference falsification (again, as you noted, unless people's private beliefs contradicted their public statements). Preference falsification *includes* an information cascade, but that information cascade has to be driven by people expressing their true preferences. It's really hard to distinguish between the two looking only at revealed preferences, though.
Yes, your and Timur Kuran's examples seem to me as clear cases of what I associate with the notion of "preference falsification," unlike some of the cases used by Albatross and David (some of which are simply cases of conformism without any meaningful "falsification" going on).
"The collapse of Biden's support fit preference falsification because, privately, everyone thought Biden was too old but wouldn't express it publicly until a signal (the debate) changed how acceptable it was to express your private belief."
Privately believing that Biden is unfit to be POTUS while publicly making opposite claims would be a case of preference falsification, although do note that in David's model those people _believed_ that Biden was fit to be president:
"Now apply the same logic to beliefs about Biden. As long as the accepted orthodoxy among Democrats is that Biden is in fine shape, fully competent to be president for another four years, that any purported evidence of mental failure is Republican propaganda, it is in the interest of a Democrat to believe it too."
I know I'm a bit late to this, but I do think you are right about the distinction.
With preference falsification, you're in a situation where people believe X but say not-X, because everyone else says not-X and deviating has a cost. Timur Kuran talked about the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. You think Communism is bad, but you believe you are in the minority and so say Communism is good. But in reality, everyone thinks Communism is bad but says Communism is good. There's a coordination problem. Then there's a signal that, in fact, others might agree with you, so you express that Communism is bad, which intensifies that signal to others. The cascade rapidly changes social reality.
It would be like if you worked with a bunch of judgmental vegetarians and you love hamburgers. You might lie and tell people you hate hamburgers and order Tofu, which you prefer less, and signal that you're a judgmental vegetarian, too. But then you find out your boss has a Slim Jim in their purse, and everyone admits they only ordered Tofu because they thought everyone else was vegetarian. Everyone is better off now that they can order hamburgers without being judged.
But if you, and everyone, were indifferent between hamburger and tofu, no cascade would take place because there's no individual reward for 'defecting' and getting to eat hamburgers.
The collapse of Biden's support fit preference falsification because, privately, everyone thought Biden was too old but wouldn't express it publicly until a signal (the debate) changed how acceptable it was to express your private belief.
The gay marriage story is an information cascade, but not a preference falsification (again, as you noted, unless people's private beliefs contradicted their public statements). Preference falsification *includes* an information cascade, but that information cascade has to be driven by people expressing their true preferences. It's really hard to distinguish between the two looking only at revealed preferences, though.
Yes, your and Timur Kuran's examples seem to me as clear cases of what I associate with the notion of "preference falsification," unlike some of the cases used by Albatross and David (some of which are simply cases of conformism without any meaningful "falsification" going on).
"The collapse of Biden's support fit preference falsification because, privately, everyone thought Biden was too old but wouldn't express it publicly until a signal (the debate) changed how acceptable it was to express your private belief."
Privately believing that Biden is unfit to be POTUS while publicly making opposite claims would be a case of preference falsification, although do note that in David's model those people _believed_ that Biden was fit to be president:
"Now apply the same logic to beliefs about Biden. As long as the accepted orthodoxy among Democrats is that Biden is in fine shape, fully competent to be president for another four years, that any purported evidence of mental failure is Republican propaganda, it is in the interest of a Democrat to believe it too."
Hence, no "falsification".