Contrarian ideas

I’ve always been intrigued by ideas that go in contrary direction of the mainstream. Even when ultimately I wouldn’t agree, I find they can be a stimulating intellectual exercise. Furthermore they can question your existing beliefs or possibly strengthen them as you find new counter arguments that you can refute.

Photo by Will Myers on Unsplash

Contrarian ideas also challenge you to come up with your own thoughts, rather than repeat what you have been told again and again. Studies have shown that we are prone to confirmation bias, a tendency to seek out and favor information that confirms our beliefs. Here is an interesting exercise from the New York Times to test your confirmation bias

Below are some of the contrarian ideas I’ve come across or formed myself. I hope they still seem interesting to ponder, even if you don’t agree:

Helmets are bad

I grew up convinced that when you ride a bicycle you should really wear a helmet. It guards against injuries of grave consequence to your head in case of an accident. This seems to be the generally held belief. So I was even more surprised when I learned that wearing a helmet can have negative effects on your safety. Tim Gamble and Ian Walker demonstrated in a study from 2016 that wearing a helmet can increase risk taking and sensation seeking in adults.

Another argument against wearing helmets is that they dehumanize the people wearing them. As a result they lower other traffic participant’s care for them.

Public transport is bad

Public transport can solve a lot problems, like traffic congestion and bad air from too many cars on the road. However I thought it would be interesting to ponder the negatives which are mentioned less. In public transport, like public buses, trains or underground metros people are reliant on another institution to transport them. They ride these vehicles in masses and from and to points that are set by planners, not by them. Public transport can also overcrowd. Unlike in cars you loose your personal space and might have to ride standing. I think the negatives here are less related to comfort (although that can also be a problem if you can’t stand for health reasons and there are no free seats left. You also have higher risk of getting an infection.).

The main negative of mass transport is the effect on the mentality of the traveler. Instead of actively traveling from A to B and planning their route and taking it, they are now dependent on a third party. They have to wait for the times the public transport system offers, they are restricted to the travel destinations and pick up points set by the system. When delays occur, or the vehicle brakes down it is often out of their hands to find a solution or take a different route. The freedom to travel at your own pace and be responsible for your own journey is removed. People waiting to get on a crowded tube reminds me of caddle guided by a forcing hand. It defeats the individual’s soul and spirit. If you don’t feel like an individual in charge of your own journey and destiny responsible for your travel, it can carry over to other areas in live and effect your mentality far beyond the journey to work.

I can imagine some readers gasping at this “nonsense”, but I couldn’t resist writing and sharing these thoughts that came to me whilst riding the London tube.

More guns lead to less crime

For me counterintuitive and contrarian at the same time is the idea that more guns lead to less crime. I had assumed that less guns mean less crime. But as John Lott demonstrated in “More Guns, Less Crime” data suggests that laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons actually reduced crime. Carrying guns serves as a deterrent and offenses are less likely if the attacker knows their potential victims are armed. This is similar to the theory in international politics where Nuclear Weapons served as an instrument of peace in the cold war. The mutually assured destruction by a first strike and a counter strike deterred direct attacks between the East and West[1].

Rent control

Simmilar to the above this point comes from the libertarian literature[2]. Rent control by definition should control the price of rent. And the generally held belief is that imposing a control on rent prices can prevent rents from going up. But the case can be made that the opposite is in fact what happens. Prices go up due to rent control. As Henry Hazlitt points out rent control encourages wasteful use of space. People already occupying rent controlled houses are legally protected from rent increases. That disencourages them from moving out even when families grow smaller, which in turn leads to increased price pressure on new buildings without rent control. These rents will be higher than they would have been in a free, uncontrolled market. Furthermore rent control decreases the incentive to build new houses since the return on investment of these houses is limited or might not be profitable.

[1] Washington Post, Nuclear weapons are the U.S.’s instruments of peace
[2] See Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson