[HN Gopher] Why I don't discuss politics with friends
___________________________________________________________________
Why I don't discuss politics with friends
Author : shw1n
Score : 462 points
Date : 2025-04-02 18:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (shwin.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (shwin.co)
| shw1n wrote:
| Wrote this after noticing myself repeating the same
| conversational pattern over the years w/ friends, across the
| political spectrum
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Online or in person?
| shw1n wrote:
| mostly in-person actually
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| I've noticed this too, on average people are incapable of
| holding a moral position through to the end.
|
| - Bad parenting is bad, we should have a permit for it --> are
| you ready to get denied the right to try having kids?
|
| - Thou shalt not kill --> except those really bad people I
| don't like!
|
| - Stealing is bad --> except when you're "starving"
|
| Our perception of good and evil are multifaceted, with most of
| it happening in our background cognition.
|
| There is a strange "mirror" stopping people from exchanging
| once a rift has opened. Someone else posited that it might be a
| fight or flight reaction.
|
| I posit that our cognition is based on negation, and thus the
| shape of our tool impact our results.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > when someone asks "who did you vote for"
|
| I find it astonishing that anyone would ask this. The only time
| I've ever been asked this question has been by pollsters. In my
| social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.
| shw1n wrote:
| Thanks for reading!
|
| Yeah it seems there is less of a taboo among my friends,
| despite a strong tilt in one political direction.
|
| I suspect this is because most people assume everyone shares
| the same opinion in our state
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Most people in the majority, you mean?
| shw1n wrote:
| yes, I believe so
| JohnFen wrote:
| Well, in my group, there's no taboo on telling people your
| political opinions and voting behavior, only on asking
| (because it's nobody else's business unless you choose to
| make it so). So in practice, I know the political stances of
| most in my social circle.
| voxl wrote:
| In my friend group it's clear as day: either you voted to kill
| and deport other people in the friend group or you didn't.
| Pretty obvious the group would like to know if you're secretly
| interested in their demise.
| doright wrote:
| But I guess for prioritizing the happiness of the friend
| group, _some_ amount of ignorance is needed if someone in the
| group is ultimately going to model the world on "they kill
| and deport or they don't" given enough information to make
| that declaration, and eventually a person on the other side
| is encountered?
|
| I understand that some things can be more important than just
| having fun though, down to personal values.
|
| "To be ignorant" sounds like a moral failing on its face, but
| I feel it is increasingly becoming required in some
| circumstances with the explosive amount of information
| available to subscribe to nowadays.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Keeping selfish assholes as friends is not a priority of
| mine.
| doright wrote:
| I'm talking more about not bringing up politics to avoid
| giving too much information to people who will make up
| their own conclusions based on those facts and aren't
| amenable to change. And choosing not to bring up politics
| for the purpose of figuring out who out of the friend
| group is the selfish asshole.
| skybrian wrote:
| If you're sure you already know what other people think, I
| guess there's not much point in asking them their opinions?
| You're not going to listen to their answers anyway.
|
| All you really want to know is what category to put them in.
| dcrazy wrote:
| See, this is the problem. People don't vote for individual
| policies, they vote for candidates.
| manfre wrote:
| correct, their vote says "I'm okay with everything this
| candidate says they'll do."
|
| You can't cherry pick policies from a candidate and pretend
| your vote is not culpable for all the harm it inflicts.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| Not really. Some people love the candidates but I suspect a
| lot of us vote against the other side more than for a
| candidate.
| bakugo wrote:
| The shamelessness with which some commenters openly display
| the exact aggressive tribal behavior discussed in the article
| should be studied.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| On one hand, it feels like this question is a lot more relevant
| than ever. It's easier to ignore politics when each side
| doesn't see the other as an existential threat to their way of
| life.
|
| Like it would be easy not to ask someone's religion when there
| isn't a 35% chance they're going to say "extremist martyr".
|
| But I don't ask this question if I don't think I know the
| answer already, and I only ask it with people I think I can
| have a conversation with.
| stouset wrote:
| I just try and imagine people having this debate in 1932
| Germany.
| YZF wrote:
| It's a good point but the flip side is not every point in
| time is 1932 Germany.
|
| How do we keep a democracy where ideas we don't agree with
| can still be implemented if there's a majority (assuming
| minority rights are protected reasonably well) while at the
| same time ensuring we don't end up with democracy being used
| as a tool to get a totalitarian regime.
|
| For a more recent example we can look maybe at Turkiye.
|
| Preventing ideas that are still within the boundary of a
| democracy from being implemented is not democracy either.
|
| The US e.g. has a Supreme Court and a constitution.
| Presumably as long as that court is functional and the
| constitution is applied then all is good?
|
| Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with Germany's fall
| into fascism and whether there was some sort of watershed
| moment where it was clear that something was broken and could
| still have been remediated.
| lovich wrote:
| >The US e.g. has a Supreme Court and a constitution.
| Presumably as long as that court is functional and the
| constitution is applied then all is good?
|
| Have we got some news for you
| seanw444 wrote:
| > Unfortunately I'm not familiar enough with Germany's fall
| into fascism and whether there was some sort of watershed
| moment where it was clear that something was broken and
| could still have been remediated.
|
| Fascism is an easy sell when it's immediately preceded by
| the Weimar Republic.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weAopdKILLw
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| A friend lamented in 2016 "If I vote for X I'll lose my
| friends. If I vote for Y I'll upset my family."
|
| I reminded the voter of the secret ballot and the ability to
| just lie.
|
| "Tell them what you think they want to hear", was my advice
| porridgeraisin wrote:
| https://youtu.be/DXY_8cJlGMc
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I sometimes grin and say "it's a secret ballot" and how they
| react to that can be revealing.
| jajuuka wrote:
| It's not that shocking. It makes a really good short hand
| question to find out where someone is politically. You could
| spend ten hours discussing what the perfect immigration system
| looks like or you could ask who they voted for and get a
| baseline to go off of. The question only removes nuance if you
| stop right after.
| erehweb wrote:
| It looks like unintentional moderate and intentional moderate on
| chart switched, unless I'm misunderstanding?
| shw1n wrote:
| hey thanks for reading! I believe that's right
|
| intentional moderate = they're trying to straddle the middle,
| meaning they adjust views based on political swings
|
| unintentional moderate = they accidentally end up in the middle
| from the average of their views, for which some may be extreme
| left or right
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| If you can't talk about politics with your friends, then they are
| not your friends.
| shw1n wrote:
| I get the sentiment but guess I disagree, esp in the modern age
| with the increased polarization painting opposing sides as evil
| daily
| curiousgal wrote:
| Isn't that increased polarization largely driven by, you
| know, certain political actions? I find it strange to argue
| that both sides are evil nowadays. I'd say one is evil and
| the other is hypocritical and self-serving. The choice is
| still pretty clear.
| setsewerd wrote:
| Tacking onto this I think the more important variable for
| ease of conversation is the extent to which someone's sense
| of identity is tied to their political beliefs.
|
| E.g. I'm moderately left but I'll still engage in healthy
| conversation with right-leaning friends and acquaintances
| because I like to understand where they're coming from.
| However I have some friends who I love dearly but know that
| despite their intelligence and how much I enjoy their
| company, they've become very tribal in their politics, so I
| don't bother engaging in political discussions with them
| beyond basic diplomatic contributions. Or posing questions
| that offer new perspectives. I still trust them and value
| their friendship though.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| But this is the difference between friends and acquaintances.
| My friends are more likely to share my views, but even if
| they didn't talking about this stuff would not damage the
| friendship since it's beyond ideology and more about shared
| sacrifice and loyalty.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Who among us does not entertain the happy illusion that our
| genuine friends number more than is the reality?
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Precisely. I make a clear distinction between my friends and
| my acquaintances. My friends would do anything for me, my
| acquaintances, not so much.
| mightyham wrote:
| Was going to comment the same thing. I try to avoid politics
| with co-workers and family because they are people that you are
| obligated, on some level, to interact with and have decent
| social cohesion. Friendships are entirely voluntary, so I can't
| begin to understand choosing to spend time with people that you
| can't honestly share your thoughts and feelings with, political
| or otherwise.
| protonbob wrote:
| I think it's somewhat funny that two of the images in this blog
| post, the two signs, and the miner, are commonly used to mock
| faux intellectualism and a feeling of moral superiority.
| jchw wrote:
| I don't think it's a coincidence, but it also doesn't
| necessarily undermine their utility. In fact, I think a lot of
| images that are also used in a mocking context get there
| because they wind up being overused and over applied, in part
| because they're actually really good.
|
| Another example of an illustration I like that is somewhat
| derided is the classic equity vs equality cartoon with the
| boxes[1]. I say this in spite of the fact that I generally find
| myself identifying more with equality as a baseline, and the
| simple reason is it's a good illustration of the potential
| pitfalls of overindexing on equality.
|
| IMO It's all in how you use them. It's hard to avoid that
| useful metaphors/analogies often become overused and cliche.
|
| [1]: https://interactioninstitute.org/illustrating-equality-vs-
| eq...
| shw1n wrote:
| yeah it's just a great image for making a bet that might fail
| imo (the miner one)
|
| this reply nails it imo, some images just boil things down
| perfectly
| forthwall wrote:
| I think it's ok to be hypocritical and have friends with
| different vastly political beliefs, in the end relationships;
| friendships, lovers, etc are not usually an outcome of rational
| behavior, so I don't mind having friends who are politically
| different because it's the unconscious connection that brought us
| together.
|
| As long as there's respect that's what matters.
| pokstad wrote:
| Politics aren't the outcome of rational behavior either. The
| strongest belief systems that people have are instilled in them
| at a young age. Also, people can change.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Different brains having different experiences reach different
| conclusions.
|
| If two people don't have some different opinions, at least one
| of them isn't thinking for themselves.
| zelon88 wrote:
| Politics is more regional than any other single factor. Like
| religion.
|
| You're highly unlikely to grow up Protestant in Israel just
| like you're highly unlikely to going to grow up with liberal
| views in Tennessee.
|
| Second to geography is demographic. You're unlikely to support
| DEI if you're surrounded by 90% white people all the time, and
| you're unlikely to decry globalism after you've been exposed to
| large cities and dense population centers for a long time.
| tstrimple wrote:
| > you're highly unlikely to going to grow up with liberal
| views in Tennessee
|
| Don't pretend like Nashville doesn't exist. It's very much
| rural very homogeneous areas versus more urban and diverse
| areas. It's much easier to label entire demographics as The
| Enemy and then vote to elect someone to attack The Enemy when
| you've literally never met The Enemy and just rely on what
| your news stations of choice tell you. Who The Enemy is
| changes. It's been women's suffrage and and civil rights.
| It's been "Mexicans" and Arabs and Gays and now Trans folk.
| But conservatives will literally always have The Enemy to
| rally against.
|
| Growing up in more diverse areas means you're more likely to
| have met a Muslim who doesn't want to "kill or convert you"
| or a trans person who just wants to live a normal life in the
| best way they can, or a DACA recipient just trying to make a
| life in the only place they have ever known as home. Knowing
| these people builds empathy for outgroups. The key trait
| conservatives seem to lack. More they seem incapable of
| comprehending it. So "liberals" can't support "illegal
| immigrants" because they actually want the best outcome for
| people. That's a concept conservatives can't comprehend. So
| it must be that liberals support them for all the "illegal
| voting" that "illegal immigrants" are doing. Never mind that
| these people cannot vote. Never mind that if these people
| could vote, they are far more religious and far more likely
| to ascribe to the conservative social political agenda. It
| makes absolutely no sense that "liberals" support "illegal
| immigrants" to capture their votes. But that's a hard fact to
| conservatives.
| shw1n wrote:
| yeah I tried to include this via
|
| "It's not that truth-seeking is a requirement for friendship,
| far from it."
|
| agree (and thanks for reading)
| stretchwithme wrote:
| One thing I definitely don't do anymore is discuss politics with
| any friends or family ONLINE.
|
| It's just not worth it. Publish or tweet something if you have
| something to say and want to reach a lot of people. Talking to
| ONE person and risking your relationship has a lousy cost/benefit
| ratio.
| shw1n wrote:
| yeah I sorta mention it in the footnotes, I find writing a nice
| medium for this because there's less gaslighting / interrupting
|
| so I guess I agree to some degree
| cobertos wrote:
| How do you avoid the pain of someone expressing a particularly
| hurtful political opinion (i.e. entire class of ppl should die)
| if you don't filter relationships by political beliefs?
|
| I generally keep people's political opinions at arms length, as
| some relationships are worth the pain or lack of depth. But it
| has caused unforseen pain at times, and hurts when relations
| from different spheres interact negatively.
| ty6853 wrote:
| By interacting with the positive aspects of the person and
| ignoring or disengaging from the political opinions I don't
| like. If they want to kill jews or whatever, they have the
| right to that opinion, doesn't bother me so long as I'm not
| obliged to partake. I might engage the view but if neither of
| us are benefitting from the conversation there is no point in
| continuing down that particular path.
| dcrazy wrote:
| There are opinions which should cause one to seriously
| consider ending their friendship. I would hope "wanting to
| kill Jews" is on pretty much everyone's list.
| kcplate wrote:
| It seems to me that the bad qualities of a person that
| would cause them to embrace genocide should be evident
| long before you get into a friendship that you would need
| to end.
| dcrazy wrote:
| You would think, but unfortunately the world is full of
| duplicitous people.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| This extends to actions vs beliefs too.
|
| F.ex. one of my most altruistic and charitable friends is
| a Trump supporter
|
| She's run a Christmas time charity for 10 years, solely
| out of the goodness of her heart, to ensure that families
| in our community who are struggling get what they need
| for a happier holiday in tough times.
|
| It's a non-trivial 6 months of work, between making
| prizes for donation-driving lotteries, attending events
| and promoting, and then finding the most cost-effective
| deals for the families.
|
| So I choose to say "She's a better person than most I
| know, in some ways, and disagrees with me in others.
| Worth friendship."
| blast wrote:
| It undoubtedly is. I have to assume the GP slipped up
| with a really badly chosen example, since their point is
| otherwise pretty middle of the road.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| That sounds so bleak.
|
| What's the endgame to this approach? Seems to me, folks
| with genocidal thoughts and feelings would find more
| positive reinforcement amongst themselves and less negative
| reinforcement everywhere else. Not great for the "genocide
| is bad" theory.
| ty6853 wrote:
| The negative reinforcement is supposed to be when they
| actually attempt to unlawfully kill others, a 9mm bullet
| goes through their head. Until then, they have the right
| to their opinion.
|
| It's hard to imagine _isolating_ them from counter points
| is going to mitigate their position.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I think there are ways a friend can be toxic without
| threatening death. This friend may encourage you to
| isolate from your jewish friends, or explicitly make your
| jewish friends feel unwelcome by saying slurs while in
| group settings. This friend is explicitly making you in
| the position where you have to isolate your own friend
| groups from each other to "keep the peace", i.e. you are
| forced to do the labor, instead of them, to handle the
| harm they are causing.
|
| Like we all know a guy who we can't keep around because
| he keeps saying unhinged stuff, or creeps on any women,
| or whatever it is he does that ruins it for everyone
| else.
|
| So I think it's more nuanced than just refusing to cut
| off heinous viewpoints. It's also how this person injects
| this view in your existing friend ecosystem.
| cobertos wrote:
| Hmm, sounds about right. I still feel like being around
| people when they express such radical beliefs reflects
| poorly on me and hurts me in some unexplainable way.
|
| When challenging such beliefs I find some are hyperbole or
| a side effect of group-think. Rarely are they genuine, but
| when they are it's the most worrying. And that's usually
| when I stop engaging that line of thought.
| greybox wrote:
| Something I try to remember when discussing politics or playing
| Scrabble: "You can be right, or you can have friends"
| shw1n wrote:
| great quote, I agree
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Hah! One of mine:
|
| I'd rather be right than popular, and I usually am.
| segmondy wrote:
| In normal times this would be okay.
| _verandaguy wrote:
| I strongly disagree with most of this post.
|
| Politics dictates so much of daily life, at every level, that
| it's important to be able to have conversations about it. It's
| frankly self-righteous to see yourself as the one person with
| nuanced opinions in a crowd of simpletons, and while I do think
| that politics in many liberal democracies has become more
| polarized, you'll never restore nuanced debate or good-faith
| disagreement in political discussions by just avoiding the topic.
|
| I'm not advocating for politics being the _only_ thing you talk
| about with your friends, but if you and your friends are able to
| have useful discussions about the impact of some policies over
| others, can have constructive disagreements over reasonable
| political discourse, and can identify larger problematic trends
| in politics, a lot of good can come of that.
| stretchwithme wrote:
| Ideally, one should select friends that are respectful of
| other's opinions. Certainly, one shouldn't keep someone close
| who isn't.
|
| But with family and acquaintances, it's not worth getting into.
| Except when someone isn't being respectful. Then I will
| certainly speak up and ask why they aren't respecting someone's
| right to think for themselves.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| I don't have a problem with my dad's view that taxes should
| be low or that we should be responsible with the environment.
| I don't have a problem with his view that over-regulation is
| a danger. I don't have a problem with my dad's opinion that
| capitalism is great, even with my disagreement.
|
| I have a problem with the fact that my dad votes for people
| who do not do those things, and then gets upset when people
| point that out to him.
|
| He told me that "I think people just need to have more
| patience with each other and accept our differences" as a
| moral to a story he told about being a manager to trans and
| non-binary folks. IMO it's 100% the right take, and he holds
| no negative feelings for any trans people or nonbinary
| people.
|
| Then he votes for the anti-trans candidate.
|
| How do you square that circle?
|
| The reality is that I know my dad's voting history (we have
| talked about politics) and my dad is not an idealist or a
| pragmatist or conservative or liberal.
|
| My dad is a populist.
| djrj477dhsnv wrote:
| Doesn't a lot of it come down to having to choose between
| only two parties?
|
| It's unlikely that most people will agree with all the
| positions of a party, so they choose the one who most
| closely aligns with their highest priority issues.
|
| Perhaps trans policy is just a lower priority issue for
| your dad. His voting may be illogical based on your
| priorities, but may be the rational choice based on his
| ranking of issues.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > Then he votes for the anti-trans candidate.
|
| > How do you square that circle?
|
| I don't know your dad, maybe he doesn't see that candidate
| as "anti-trans"?
|
| If you think that some group has unfair benefits you can
| vouch for stripping those benefits without seeing yourself
| as "anti". Your drive is not hatred but fairness. You can
| be misguided but that's a different question.
|
| If you think church must pay taxes, it doesn't make you
| anti-church. If you want to reduce police funding it
| doesn't make you anti-police. If you want stricter control
| of guns that doesn't make you anti-guns.
|
| The whole "anti" split is indeed a sing of the tribalism
| which in US takes a binary form. You're either with us or
| against us.
| shw1n wrote:
| I don't think I ever make the only-nuanced-opinion claim, the
| claim I'm making here is many people don't _want_ to have
| useful discussions, they just want to proselytize
|
| I actually say there are reasons to persevere and encourage
| debate if it's not just trying to "win":
|
| "However, one reason to persevere is to find the 1% of people
| that also want to see the world as it is. Aka, finding your own
| community of anti-tribalists."
|
| "Few things give me greater joy than a discovery-ridden
| conversation with smart friends, and this is only enhanced if I
| learn something I previously believed to be true is actually
| wrong. Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong
| and you will quite literally make my week."
| grandempire wrote:
| > Politics dictates so much of daily life, at every level,
|
| That's weird because you can live life of total ignorance of
| what's happening in the news. Lobbying and marketing make you
| think things are important that aren't.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > That's weird because you can live life of total ignorance
| of what's happening in the news.
|
| Being unaware of politics, just like being unaware of biology
| or physics, doesn't reduce or disprove the degree to which it
| impacts your life, it just recuces your understanding.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Of course, but I think people tend to overestimate the
| amount politics, especially federal politics actually
| impact their lives.
|
| Spending hours a day worrying and reading about cancer risk
| and fatalities increases your understanding, but it
| certainly isn't healthy or proportional.
| grandempire wrote:
| Only if you believe PR and material published by NGOs is
| equivalent to political understanding.
|
| It's a nice thought. But it's kind of like thinking you
| will become an athlete by watching ESPN talk shows. Or
| maybe even hoping to learn about physics by watching the
| Big Bang theory. You might pick up some new words, but It's
| two levels removed from the real thing.
| _verandaguy wrote:
| You can drive a car blindfolded, too, in ignorance of the
| wall you're driving into; that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
|
| A marginal understanding of what's happening in the world
| around you helps you navigate it better.
| whobre wrote:
| I don't discuss politics with anyone anymore. Just wish I had
| made that decision 30 years ago...
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| In my experience the (now ancient) Sequences are not of much use
| in learning how to change your mind. With only a cursory
| background in psychology, his advice tends to consist of generic
| platitudes. Not much practical application.
|
| I'd recommend a short course in mindfulness instead, at whatever
| point in the spectrum between science and mysticism you're
| comfortable with.
| canadiantim wrote:
| I don't discuss friends with politicians either
| shw1n wrote:
| this guy gets it
| pcblues wrote:
| I'm 52. For me, there was a time when it was considered impolite
| to talk about sex, religion and politics. Then it became super
| fun when done with open/questioning/rational/critical minds, and
| a lot of progress in my own thinking was achieved from the
| usually non-threatening but lively debates and fights among
| friends and family for ideas. Then it shifted in the last ten or
| fifteen years. When social media started having friends of
| friends, the tribalism kicked in. It was explained very well in a
| talk between Maria Ressa and Jon Stewart. She is brilliant, and
| well worth listening to.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsHoX9ZpA_M
| shw1n wrote:
| yeah I actually also enjoy it when the other party is more
| interested in learning than winning
|
| will check this out, thanks for reading!
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Very much this. The world has changed. It used to be that
| assuming other people have a low capacity for political reason
| was itself a "political position" - namely elitism. Folks like
| Orwell come from a long, long tradition of the educated and
| socially astute working class. Social media turned the joy of
| everyday political banter, rational scepticism, and good-
| natured disputation into a bourgeois pissing contest with
| seemingly life-or-death stakes.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Then it shifted in the last ten or fifteen years. When
| social media started having friends of friends, the tribalism
| kicked in. It was explained very well in a talk between Maria
| Ressa and Jon Stewart._
|
| Also by Jon Stewart on Crossfire in 2004:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE&t=310s
|
| The critique about what passes for debate is as apt today as it
| was then.
| an0malous wrote:
| Everything is because of increasing wealth inequality, it is
| the root cause of almost every societal problem. It was easier
| to have non-threatening debates because everyone felt more
| secure. When people are stressed and afraid, the debates aren't
| just intellectual exercises but things that could mean the loss
| of real opportunities in their lives. This is a trend that has
| been going on for a very long time, Pikkety showed
| mathematically that it's easier to make money when you already
| have money and this runaway process is nearing an extreme.
|
| I firmly believe that if wealth distribution today was the same
| as it was in the 70s-90s, the culture wars would be
| significantly dampened or non existent. If people could still
| buy homes, afford to have kids and healthcare, we would all be
| able to talk about religion, sex, and politics without this
| extreme tribalism. It's happening because there are way more
| "losers" in the economic game now, it's become a life or death
| issue, and people are looking for who to blame.
| hgomersall wrote:
| I largely agree. Recently I'm somewhat minded to think the
| issue is actually about the huge expansion of the rentier
| class. The problem began with the adoption of neoliberalism
| and the mainstreaming of the idea that you could reasonably
| "earn" money by simply having money. Prior classical and
| Keynesian thought railed against such rent seeking and sought
| to eliminate it as a parasitic drag on the economy.
|
| Since the decision was made post GFC to bail out the banks
| and protect capital over the normal person that just wanted a
| house to live in, the position of the rentiers has been
| consolidated hugely. We have Rachel Reeves thinking we in the
| UK can build a growth strategy on the back of financial
| services (which generally means "rent-extraction services").
| A rational system would separate the GDP from the real
| economy from the income from rent extraction, and seek to
| eliminate the latter.
|
| To the common man, they see themselves working longer and
| harder than they used to and getting a smaller and smaller
| slice of the pie. It turns out when your real outputs have to
| support a sizeable portion of the population who have
| dedicated their lives to the art of rent extraction to live
| like kings, you don't see much of the gain.
|
| I have many contemporaries that have gone into finance. A
| vast pool of intellectual capability, shuffling money around
| playing zero sum games, and ultimately protected from loss by
| the power of the state.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| affordability & inflation & services =/= wealth inequality
| an0malous wrote:
| It roughly does for inelastic goods like housing,
| education, and healthcare
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| All of these can be more elastic. See: zoning reform and
| prices in blue cities vs red cities, single-payer
| healthcare in every developed country other than the US.
| Inequality is not the distinguishing factor.
| zeveb wrote:
| > It was easier to have non-threatening debates because
| everyone felt more secure. When people are stressed and
| afraid, the debates aren't just intellectual exercises but
| things that could mean the loss of real opportunities in
| their lives.
|
| You're right that people _feel_ less secure, but that doesn't
| mean that they are correct when they feel that.
|
| By pretty much any measure, I believe that people in 2025 are
| far _more_ secure than they were in 1975, 1985 or 1995.
| YZF wrote:
| Agree social media is a big problem. It lets people live in an
| imaginary reality echo chamber.
|
| However in the real world and 1:1 you can still have good
| discussions with smart people who disagree with you. And we
| _need_ to have those.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > but lively debates and fights among friends and family for
| ideas
|
| The missing ingredient is "intellectual honesty". It used to be
| the case that when you talked to people on the right they would
| - refer to events that actually happened and true statements
| about the world - accept them in the context of wider
| events (although there's always been a risk of making policy
| from one exeptional incident) - make an argument that
| followed logically from those
|
| This did end up in duelling statistics and arguments over what
| mattered, but that's a reasonable place for discussion.
| Nowadays it's much deeper into making wild arguments from
| conspiracy theories with no or highly questionable evidence.
| Pizzagate. Birtherism. And so on.
| rdegges wrote:
| I'll provide an opposing viewpoint. In the last 10 years, I've
| lost friendships and family because people in my life have voted
| for candidates that stripped rights away from women, minorities,
| etc.
|
| Having a vast difference between opinions is fine, but some of
| their decisions are fundamentally against my core beliefs and
| have done literal harm to many people I know.
|
| For that reason, terminating family and friendships has been
| absolutely worth it for me.
|
| Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are
| protected and respected, we have no common ground, and it's
| pointless to tiptoe around these insanely harmful beliefs while
| maintaining a facade of friendship.
| fatbird wrote:
| Elsewhere in this thread I've said that you can have non-
| judgemental, solicitous conversations with anyone, just to
| learn how they feel or think about something.
|
| But I agree with parent that it's perfectly justifiable to draw
| lines that limit potential relationships. You're not obligated
| to welcome everyone or tolerate views in others that have
| unbearable consequences for yourself. Vote with your feet.
| daft_pink wrote:
| I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and
| trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful
| than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
|
| I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those candidates
| for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and
| there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
|
| I'll be honest that I'm Jewish and certain posts about
| Palestine where friends or non Jewish family have specifically
| expressed values that I find anti-myself I have completely cut
| out of my life. (not all beliefs about pro Palestine are anti-
| semetic, but most are) But I believe that most views at the
| party level are just different priorities or different view
| points and tolerance is necessary, because they are not
| directly in conflict.
| rdegges wrote:
| I totally get where you're coming from. But regardless of
| their reason for voting for a candidate, if the net effect is
| that 150m+ women lost rights and other horrible outcomes,
| it's the same as endorsing it.
| gmoot wrote:
| It's not though.
|
| Looking at exit pool demographics might help if you're
| struggling to have any empathy for a Trump voter. They are
| largely working class and undereducated and astonishingly
| diverse for a republican candidate in recent memory.
| hooverd wrote:
| There's an amazing ability for people to not believe
| Trump is going to do the things he says. See Venezuelan
| immigrants getting screwed over or the recent tariffs.
| atmavatar wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for.
|
| Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least
| acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You
| don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies
| because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in
| its policy agenda that you really want.
|
| It doesn't matter if the opposing party advocates for raising
| taxes or even eating kittens.
|
| That's true even if realistically, there are no other parties
| capable of winning. You can support a third party, abstain
| out of protest, or even begin a grass-roots campaign to start
| yet another party. You can even try changing the FooBar party
| from within, so long as you don't vote for them until
| sufficient change has occurred.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| I disagree, but I think moral purity is a less ethical way
| of living than practical action - best exemplified by the
| story of the Good Samaritan.
|
| Similarly to "silence is complicity." Refusing to oppose a
| party by choosing the other is indicating acceptance of
| what they will do.
| btilly wrote:
| _Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least
| acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You
| don 't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking
| puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax
| cut in its policy agenda that you really want._
|
| Virtually no independent thinker is going to support either
| major party's platform, for the simple reason that both
| parties have a collection of inconsistent policies that are
| an incoherent ideological mishmash. Therefore you do not so
| much vote FOR a party as you instead hold your nose and
| vote AGAINST the other one.
| MrJohz wrote:
| Sure, but in the US, the choices right now are between a
| party that you might not fully agree with, and a party
| whose explicit platform is to strip fundamental rights
| away from women, LGBTQ people, and other minorities, all
| while dismantling the basic structures of democracy in
| order to guarantee their hold on power for as long as
| possible.
|
| When you vote for a party, you may not fully agree with
| all their policies, but you are stating that the
| drawbacks are acceptable compromises. When you vote for
| FooBar, you might not want puppies to be kicked, but you
| consider it a tradeoff worth making if it gets you that
| tax cut.
|
| If you are looking at the political landscape of the US
| as an independent thinker, and are questioning whether
| abandoning the principles of human rights and liberal
| democracy are a tradeoff worth making, then I really
| question whether your thoughts are really as independent
| as you would like to believe.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| This is the problem with a two-party system. It makes
| every citizen either complicit in the worst party or the
| second-worst party.
|
| You can't hold who they voted for against people in a
| two-party system. There just isn't enough choice.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > and a party whose explicit platform is to strip
| fundamental rights away from women, LGBTQ people, and
| other minorities, all while dismantling the basic
| structures of democracy in order to guarantee their hold
| on power for as long as possible.
|
| This certainly might be what you believe their platform
| amounts to. But it is most certainly _not_ their explicit
| platform. Accuse people of what they actually have done,
| not what you believe their actions to be logically
| equivalent to. Otherwise there can 't actually be a
| reasonable discussion, because you're giving off heat
| rather than light.
| yibg wrote:
| Actions speaker louder than words. It might not be their
| platform, but it's what they're doing. If you see your
| party taking action to strip away rights from LGBTQ
| groups, immigrants, women and you still support them,
| then I don't know what else to say.
| MrJohz wrote:
| This is their explicit platform. Trump's presidential
| campaign officially ran on the basis of "Agenda 47",
| which clearly sets out their goals and aims. It includes
| dismantling the basic structures of democracy (in the
| form of heavy expansion of executive powers), and
| reducing access to healthcare for women and LGBTQ people.
| We have already seen evidence of the above, as well as
| events like the new administration arresting protestors
| without due process.
|
| I think your point is that Project 2025 is not Trump's
| explicit platform, which is correct (although this
| doesn't affect my statement which was about his explicit
| platform). However, if it looks, walks, and talks like a
| duck, we also need to be willing to call it a duck.
| Project 2025 goes significantly above and beyond Agenda
| 47, the group behind it explicitly endorse Trump, and
| many of Project 2025's authors are involved in the Trump
| administration. Being an "independent thinker" does not
| mean accepting what both sides say at face value, it
| means looking at people's behaviour and drawing
| judgements based on that.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _...women, ... and other minorities..._ "
|
| According to polls, slightly more women voted for Trump
| in 2024 than in 2020 and significantly more minorities
| voted for Trump in 2024 than in 2020
| (https://www.nbcwashington.com/decision-2024/2024-voter-
| turno...). One party energetically claims to be on the
| side of the oppressed but the oppressed don't exactly
| seem to be flocking to be on the side of that party.
| Makes you think, doesn't it?
|
| The Democrats cannot win as long as there's a substantial
| faction inside it unwilling to face the reality of what
| voters actually think instead of what they want to tell
| the voters to think.
| btilly wrote:
| You are giving a fully partisan version from one side,
| while ignoring the partisan view from the other. Not
| entirely your fault correctly stating what the other side
| thinks, in terms that the other side will agree with, is
| an extremely hard task. It sounds like it should be
| simple. But getting it right requires getting past our
| cognitive biases that the other side is wrong, which make
| it hard to actually see what they are seeing.
|
| Here is a Republican take that is about as biased as your
| take on Republicans. "Democrats are fully infected by the
| woke mind virus, destroying merit in favor of DEI,
| promoting antisemitism in support of Hamas terrorism, and
| suppressing free speech in favor of totalitarian
| control."
|
| Both partisan perspective have some truth, and a lot that
| is false. For example, while it is true that Trump
| represents a threat to democracy, threatening democracy
| is not part of the Republican party's explicit platform.
| Conversely, while it is true that there has been a sharp
| rise in antisemitism on the left, most of that really is
| antizionism. (That said, if you try to make Palestine
| free from sea to sea, where will over 7 million Jewish
| refugees go? You're unlikely to be more lucky than Hitler
| was in the 1930s in finding a country who is willing to
| accept them. What happens then?)
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| This is a fundamental difference with how people on the
| (American) left and people on the right view politics.
| Those on the right frequently vote based on a single or a
| few issues, ignoring the rest of the platform that may be
| unpalatable. While those on the left frequently view voting
| as an endorsement of the whole person. Any unwanted policy
| tends to be a turn off. It's why you say "you don't get to
| absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies" while the
| right does just that. You would be better served
| understanding the values and motivations of your opposition
| rather than projecting your values onto them and judging
| them based on a strawman.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Does it matter what drives someone to vote for a
| candidate if the outcome is all the same? It feels like
| we're discussing manslaughter vs. first degree murder. I
| don't want to be friends with someone who takes the life
| of someone else and doesn't feel remorse for it.
|
| Maybe it's a good theoretical exercise, but life is too
| short for me to appreciate the various reasons that might
| drive someone to become an asshole.
| crote wrote:
| I would've probably agreed with this point 10 or 15 years
| ago. Someone saying "I would've liked universal
| healthcare, but lower taxes are more important to me" has
| an understandable position. I might not _agree_ with
| their choice, but I can respect their decision.
|
| However, these days the American political landscape
| looks a lot different. I understand having priorities,
| but if someone believes that a magical make-eggs-be-
| cheaper plan should have a higher priority than their
| friend (i.e., me) having basic human rights, why would I
| want to be friends with them? It doesn't matter if they
| personally agree with the politician's strip-their-
| friend-of-basic-rights plans or not, the fact that it
| isn't a priority to them _at all_ says enough.
| genewitch wrote:
| What basic rights do I have that you don't, and where are
| these codified?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| In the US there are no federal antidiscrimination
| protections for LGBT people except in employment through
| Bostock (and conveniently, Trump's EEOC has stopped
| pursuing these cases). You can be evicted from your home
| for being gay but not for being black or Christian.
|
| Access to gender affirming care for trans minors is
| banned in more than half of US states. The very same
| medicines are allowed to be given to cis minors.
|
| In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people from
| comfortably existing outside of their homes for more than
| a few hours at a time.
|
| It has only been 22 years since sodomy laws were found
| unconstitutional. It has only been 10 years since gay
| marriage was legalized nationwide. Thomas wrote in his
| Dobbs concurrence that Lawrence should be revisited.
| Several state legislatures have passed resolutions
| calling for Obergefell to be overturned.
|
| While less of a "basic right", the Trump administration
| has banned trans people from serving in the military.
| Visibility of gay or trans characters in media available
| for minors is also regularly threatened. Products for
| trans people sold at stores like Target have led to bomb
| threats.
| genewitch wrote:
| > Access to gender affirming care for trans minors is
| banned in more than half of US states. The very same
| medicines are allowed to be given to cis minors.
|
| The Cass report conclusions and recommendations should be
| listened to, it was a way better and more thorough study
| than the Netherlands study that begat all of the "gender
| clinics" in the US and elsewhere. https://webarchive.nati
| onalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20250310143...
|
| > In 13 US states bathroom bills prevent trans people
| from comfortably existing outside of their homes for more
| than a few hours at a time.
|
| As far as bathrooms, i feel uncomfortable in public
| restrooms. I don't know what the rate of people that feel
| uncomfortable in public restrooms, but those of us that
| do find family or single occupant restrooms, and know
| what places have those. No one wants to piss in a literal
| trough, i could be wrong.
|
| I don't consider sodomy a basic human right, but i could
| be argued with, i guess.
|
| I don't see what "bomb threats" have to do with human
| rights, in this context. Is there a human right to have
| products available at Target? If everyone boycotted
| Target (like they did with Bud Light), is that a
| violation of human rights, too?
|
| I am unsure why people keep deleting their replies. It is
| possible to have a reasoned discussion about inflammatory
| topics.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| This is how things often goes. "Oh those aren't actually
| rights."
|
| You can think this, I suppose. But let me tell you that a
| very large number of LGBT people _do_ consider these
| things to be questions of their basic rights.
| genewitch wrote:
| i'm willing to listen to arguments about why any of those
| are basic rights. I am unsure about the housing, so i
| didn't mention it. Upon a quick check, Bostock prevents
| _renters_ from being evicted or otherwise un-housed
| merely for being LGBT. Unless i see actual writing that
| shows there is a literal directive to ignore complaints,
| i cannot just accept your words. top results for eviction
| of LGBT sort of news is about people "behind on rent."
| If i don't pay rent for 2 months, i'll also get an
| eviction notice (sometimes called a pay or quit.)
|
| there's groups of people that think all kinds of things
| are "basic rights" but it doesn't mean they are. I could
| say nothing is a "basic right" since any example you can
| give is violated _globally_. Maybe some stuff should be
| globally truly basic rights. But i am willing to listen
| to arguments that any of these things are a basic right
| as it stands.
|
| just a for instance: Sodomy. saying it's a human right
| implies that sexual intercourse is a basic human right. I
| am unsure if you _really_ want to make this argument.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Bostock applies to Title 7. The reasoning is that
| discrimination based on sexuality or gender identity is
| sex discrimination, which can be applied to other laws
| like the FHA but this is not established federally and
| the Trump administration is currently in legal fights
| explicitly in opposition to this position. So I do not
| think that it is fair to say that Bostock prevents
| renters from being evicted based on their gender identity
| or sexuality.
|
| [Here](https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/removing-gender-
| ideology-and-r...) is an EEOC's "literal directive"
| pulling back on relevant cases. If you want specific
| cases then [this
| article](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/eeoc-transgender-
| discrimination...) references specific ongoing cases that
| have been dropped by the EEOC.
|
| And I _do_ think the ability to have consenting and
| private intercourse without being imprisoned is a human
| right. I did not expect that this would be controversial.
| genewitch wrote:
| the eeoc link doesn't mention housing or "rent."
| https://www.findlaw.com/lgbtq-law/housing-discrimination-
| pro... this says that HUD and DoJ handle those cases.
|
| If you're talking about employment (which the EEOC
| appears to cover) - i've been fired for not cutting my
| hair short enough. I've been fired for refusing to wear a
| tie for a cubicle job. In the US, employment is at-will,
| generally. If that's what you have an issue with, then
| let's talk about that. Even if the issue is with hiring
| discrimination of any kind, i can get behind that, too.
|
| And there's a subtle, yet perceivable difference between
| what you said, "sodomy laws" and your statement now about
| "consenting and private intercourse." i also notice you
| didn't mention "between adults."
|
| I don't really want to have a side-channel discussion,
| here. The employment vs housing statements, you either
| had a typo, or it was a red herring, i am unsure. I feel
| like this is devolving, perhaps of my own fault, into a
| god of the gaps argument.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| My original comment regarding the EEOC was about the
| impotence of Bostock in modern federal courts because the
| EEOC is dropping cases of Title 7 workplace
| discrimination brought by LGBT people. Although the US
| generally has at-will employment, there are certain
| reasons for firing people that are prohibited by law.
|
| The discussion of housing is separate from that and is
| instead a point about the fact that LGBT people do not
| have federal protections in this domain. I thought that
| my post was very clear. LGBT people do not have any
| federal protections in many domains (housing for
| example). They have protections in some domains
| (employment, via Bostock) and even that is backsliding
| because of the EEOC's changing behavior.
|
| Only adults can consent. The sodomy laws struck down in
| Lawrence were about consenting and private intercourse,
| both in general and in the very specific case of Mr.
| Lawrence.
|
| I am _extremely_ uninterested in any discussion that
| smacks of painting gay people and their relationships as
| in any way related to child rape.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Most views on Palestine are just different priorities or
| different viewpoints too. You can equally say that not all
| support for Trump is rooted in misogyny and xenophobia, but
| most is. Perhaps you should not recommend that other people
| engage in such tolerance when you won't.
| 0dayz wrote:
| But.. You're going against your own principles here, you
| can't say that purity test bad and then have a purity test
| yourself.
| lovich wrote:
| Your purity tests are bad. Their purity tests are
| righteous.
| 0dayz wrote:
| Aha, thank you so much, I understand now.
|
| I really should read the philosophical school of "me
| good, you bad" it sounds so convenient.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for.
|
| I thought the GOP was pretty clear throughout the election
| cycle, from President to local office, that their desired
| world can only come to be through a drastic restructuring of
| the Constitutional status quo ante.
|
| I don't know that "I only voted for (e.g.) tax cuts,
| everything else is collateral damage and I'm not culpable for
| it," is a defensible moral stance.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > than applying purity tests to your friends and family
|
| It's more about watching people pivot towards unquestionable
| evil. "Empathy is a sin" is such a deep, dark line in the
| sand. I'm not going to just stand there and watch you cross
| it.
| goatlover wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for.
|
| Well, Alabama outlawed abortion except for life of the
| mother. A federal judge had to rule that the state can't
| prosecute doctors and reproductive health organizations for
| helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions.
| The Project 2025 plan is for the Republican controlled
| Congress to at some point pass the most restrictive federal
| abortion law they can get away with.
|
| That is stripping away the rights of women to choose. There
| are many religious conservatives who support this.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That's one possible framing. But from their perspective,
| they are defending the lives of innocents from those who
| wish to do them harm. If one accepts their framing of the
| issue, that's a righteous cause indeed. Why is your framing
| accurate, and theirs inaccurate?
|
| You're doing what so many people do in the abortion debate,
| and begging the question. You can't simply sidestep deep
| differences of opinion on moral issues by declaring your
| position to be right and theirs wrong. It's wilful
| ignorance of a whole lot of nuance that exists on this
| topic, nuance that _must_ be engaged with if one wishes to
| be effective in having a discussion.
| goatlover wrote:
| Their framing needs to acknowledge that the fetus is part
| of the mother's body, not an independent life, and that
| child birth has risks. Thus the autonomy of the mother
| over her own body has to be part of the discussion. Their
| framing can't depend on a soul entering at conception, or
| God/their sacred scripture telling them abortion is
| murder. That's not a rational or legal basis for
| compelling other people who don't believe that way.
|
| If they want to enter a scientific discussion on
| viability and neural development for when to start
| placing limits on abortion, and how making victims of
| rape or incest carry to term is ethical, then we can have
| a meaningful discussion.
|
| Otherwise, they can feel free to go have their own
| theocratic community in the wilderness where they don't
| choose to have abortion. Also known as Alabama these
| days, unfortunately for those stuck wandering the
| wilderness with them.
| yibg wrote:
| I think there is value in trying to understand the other
| "tribe". If for nothing else, then for practical reasons in
| figuring out how to defeat the other tribe at the next
| encounter.
|
| I also think especially in today's political environment,
| political beliefs at least partially reflect an individual's
| core values. In some cases I may not want to associate with
| people that have fundamentally opposing core values to my
| own. For example this guy's interviews with his parents:
| https://www.tiktok.com/@thenecessaryconversation
| watwut wrote:
| > I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and
| trying to understand where they are coming from is more
| useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
|
| Most of the time this is just being an enabler, who excuses,
| makes up rationales and blames "the other side" for not being
| nice enough to extremists. Especially when we talk with about
| fascist close groups. People who say this achieve only
| limitations on the opposition to extremists. They rarely or
| never manage to move extremist into the center.
|
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for.
|
| Why are you so sure? There are plenty of conservatives who
| openly talk about it. It is not being tolerant when you
| decide that no one is allowed to do that observation. You are
| not being neutral here, you are biasing the discussion toward
| the extremism when you do it.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for.
|
| Sure. But this is that age-old meme: You know those people
| (most people?) in 1930s Germany who supported the Nazi party
| but they perhaps weren't really for annexations and genocide.
| You know what they call those people? Nazis.
|
| People who voted for Trump are responsible for the fate of
| Ukraine, the demise of Nato, the fallout with Canada and
| Mexico, the inevitable inflation and economic turmoil of
| tariffs etc. And that's of course even if they only voted for
| Trump because they hold "traditional republican values", or
| because of single issues like gun rights, migration or taxes.
|
| > tolerance is necessary
|
| Tolerance stops at intolerance. You can never tolerate
| intolerance. Apart from that, politics also relies on a few
| fundamental things like the reliance on facts and experts,
| and respect for the rule of law. Obviously you can't ever
| tolerate "politics" which starts to tamper with either of
| these. Luckily I can keep a tribe which consists of people
| who agree with this, which can vote for any party in my
| parliament, and is 98% of the population. I'd hate to be in
| the US though where the tribes cut down the middle of the
| population.
| arp242 wrote:
| First you try to argue tolerance and understanding, and then
| you say that "most pro-Palestine views are antisemitic" and
| that you cut off all contact with people who hold those
| views. Your hypocrisy is astounding and you should be
| embarrassed.
| daft_pink wrote:
| What I was suggesting was to be tolerant of more general
| views like choosing a political party or candidate and
| large complicated things, and reserve intolerance for
| actual directed hatred.
| zepolen wrote:
| Yes that's why he called you a hypocrite.
| thrwaway438 wrote:
| Didn't these friends and family essentially apply purity
| tests to us?
|
| I've cut off my aunt who still claims the 2020 election was
| stolen. The data I worked with to support fragile communities
| was removed/altered in the transition (CDC Social
| Vulnerability Index). I've already lost my job in the federal
| purge. I have a [former] coworker who was born intersexed
| that cannot be legally recognized by the government. I'll
| likely lose my right to marry due to my aunt's beliefs. My
| boyfriend will likely lose access to lifesaving medication
| with cuts to funding. My grandma is paying for hospice care
| with social security and claiming Trump is fixing the
| country. I'm renewing my passport; several friends have
| already left the country.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for.
|
| I'm sure there were people who voted for the Republican party
| in the last USA election for purely economic reasons.
| However, "anti-woke" policies were absolutely the most
| important issue for a lot of people. Just this week the
| attorney general in my state posted an "April Fool's Day
| Joke" where the "joke" was him standing next to a LGBT flag.
| moolcool wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for
|
| I don't know, man. If they're really your friends, those
| should be non-negotiable.
| tombert wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure that they weren't voting for those
| candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those
| rights and there were other policies and values that they
| were voting for.
|
| In some markets, about one third of the entire Trump campaign
| advertising was fear-mongering about how dangerous LGBTQ
| people are. They wouldn't have spent so much on this if they
| didn't think it was a uniquely important to their
| constituents.
|
| I think you're unequivocally wrong if you don't think that
| Conservatives in the US are above voting for a single issue.
|
| I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be
| able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on
| that.
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _I don 't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict
| to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't
| comment on that._
|
| Wise, given the guilt & political climate. But, see also:
| Progressive except Palestine (also known as PEP) is a
| phrase that refers to organizations or individuals who
| describe themselves politically as progressive, liberal, or
| left-wing but who do not express pro-Palestinian sentiment
| or do not comment on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_except_Palestine
| tombert wrote:
| The issue is that I feel like there's an awful lot of
| opinions on this, and it's difficult for me to find
| objective information on this stuff.
|
| I tend to be pretty progressive, so it's probable I would
| be more on the Palestine side, but I try not to express
| strong opinions on things that I haven't done at least a
| cursory amount of research on, and I also don't really
| want to be labeled an antisemite or racist or anything
| like that.
| pcblues wrote:
| If you remove yourself from a group, how will they change their
| minds without a dissenting opinion? I had to do it myself
| eventually, for my own sanity, but I believe this is still a
| real problem I am no longer addressing among my loved ones.
| rdegges wrote:
| In my case, my goal isn't to change anyone's mind. It's to
| preserve sanity -- I can't in good faith "pretend" to get
| along and have normal conversations when people are actively
| engaging in behavior that directly harms myself and others.
| fastball wrote:
| Could you give an example of behavior that "directly"
| harmed yourself or others which caused you to sever ties?
|
| Politics is almost always indirect, usually with multiple
| levels of indirection.
| Philpax wrote:
| People proudly voting for parties and policies that
| demonise trans people, of which I know many. I cannot be
| your friend in good conscience if you're willing to
| destroy the lives of my other friends.
| duckfan wrote:
| How are their lives being destroyed?
|
| Being told that you have to follow the same rules as
| everyone else for e.g. spaces designated to be used
| solely by the opposite sex, doesn't seem so bad.
| Philpax wrote:
| I don't believe you're asking this question in good
| faith, but there are many, many attempts at erasing them
| from public existence: https://translegislation.com/
| bakugo wrote:
| Please define "erasing them from public existence".
| Provide concrete actions that are actively being taken,
| not vague concepts of "bad things".
| Philpax wrote:
| I would recommend clicking on the link and scrolling
| down.
| bakugo wrote:
| I did. It's almost nothing but intentionally obtuse terms
| that mask the actual issues being discussed.
|
| For example, what exactly is "gender-affirming care"?
| Because I suspect that includes giving life-altering
| drugs to young children.
| rimbo789 wrote:
| Gender-affirming care is good and needed to protect kids.
| duckfan wrote:
| A lot of people strongly believe this to be true.
| However, the evidence does not support this.
| tekla wrote:
| Not answering question.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I don't think they're arguing in a good faith with you.
|
| ""Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware
| of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their
| remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are
| amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is
| obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in
| words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even
| like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous
| reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their
| interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since
| they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to
| intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely,
| they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by
| some phrase that the time for argument is past."
| jccalhoun wrote:
| This is an oversimplified strawman argument. Biological
| sex is a complex subject. The cultural understanding of
| sex is complex. If I has a man take my 2 year old
| daughter to the men's room is that a bad thing? (For the
| record I don't have any children)
| duckfan wrote:
| I don't think anyone is arguing that you should be barred
| from taking your hypothetical two-year-old daughter into
| the men's bathroom if the need arises. That's really not
| the issue.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| but I thought "Being told that you have to follow the
| same rules as everyone else for e.g. spaces designated to
| be used solely by the opposite sex, doesn't seem so
| bad."?
| duckfan wrote:
| Perhaps think on that a bit more then. Consider for
| example that female-only spaces don't exclude women who
| are pregnant with male babies.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| That is, by definition, indirect. So that doesn't qualify
| as "directly harming" anyone, even if your analysis of
| those policies is otherwise accurate.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| No it isn't. When people see the anti trans party winning
| elections they see that as permission to bully trans
| people. The vote directly leads to abuse.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I am bi, my "friends" would hate LGBT people, constantly
| talk how we're pedophiles and so on, and kept voting for
| parties against equal rights.
| bakugo wrote:
| So, basically, you believe that everyone who doesn't
| strictly adhere to your own ideologies is insane.
|
| You're pretty much the exact kind of person that the
| article talks about.
| shw1n wrote:
| I actually agree, I don't think people should merely dismiss
| differences on issues that strike at core values -- I think
| it's okay to cut friends/family off on huge differences in
| values. I have actually done this to both left and right-
| leaning friends.
|
| But what I'm arguing is that most people do not actually come
| to these values by way of thinking, but rather by blindly
| adopting them en masse from their chosen tribe.
|
| And when they choose not to be open to the possibility they
| might be wrong, then they have a religion, not a
| intellectually-driven view.
|
| This is okay if acknowledged imo, as per this sentence in the
| piece:
|
| "If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge
| their choice to remain in the bubble, that's totally fair. I
| respect it like I'd respect anyone who chooses to participate
| in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is
| falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."
| KyleJune wrote:
| One way people keep themselves in bubbles is by dismissing
| counter opinions as being tribal or trendy. Some opinions may
| appear that way because the people that have them seem
| similar. But it could also be due to them having similar
| backgrounds that led them to those opinions. For example,
| most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's not group think,
| it's based in evidence that they have studied. From the
| outside, it might seem like group think.
| memonkey wrote:
| Ah, for some reason, this is the comment that reminded me
| specifically of Nietzche's Master-Slave Morality[1].
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
| shw1n wrote:
| correct, but then those individuals could explain those
| views
|
| popularity is not the same as tribal, tribal implies a
| blind following -- when individuals cannot explain _why_
| they believe something
| sfink wrote:
| > For example, most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's
| not group think, it's based in evidence that they have
| studied. From the outside, it might seem like group think.
|
| I'm willing to bet that in most cases, that _is_
| groupthink. It 's hard to tell, because the conclusion is
| identical to one based on evidence, so you can't infer from
| the opinion whether it's groupthink or not.
|
| Sometimes you can tell by how someone holds a belief.
| Defensiveness, unwillingness to consider ways in which
| their chosen belief is not 100% wholly good, or shouting
| someone down are evidence of groupthink. For example: if
| someone brings up that in the past some inactive virus
| vaccines contained live viruses and a doctor claims that it
| never happened and could never happen, that's either
| groupthink or just a doctor sick of arguing with uninformed
| patients who has given up bothering with explaining the
| intellectual basis of his beliefs.
|
| My personal suspicion is that the 1% don't exist, that
| everyone's opinions and beliefs are a mishmash of tribalism
| and intellectual conclusions, it's just that the balance is
| very different in different people. I try very hard to make
| my stances intellectually based and evidence-driven, yet I
| continually discover that more and more of my deeply held
| policy positions aren't as clear cut and the real world is
| more nuanced than I thought.
|
| It's not like nuance is a binary thing (by definition!)
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| My method to discern between beliefs with intellectual
| backing and those from the community is by presenting them
| with some bizarro counterargument. If they copy/paste
| specific phrases and keywords, it's from the community. If
| they engage with the argument and refute it, then they have
| given them proper thought.
| nerptastic wrote:
| I can appreciate comparing these immovable political stances
| to a "religion".
|
| One thing I've noticed, as people get more entrenched in
| their viewpoint, is that they stop accepting the possibility
| that they're wrong, and this flawed thinking starts to extend
| to the wildest corners of their position.
|
| "Well, if I'm right about the person, the person is right
| about everything too. And anyone who disagrees with me is
| therefore wrong about EVERYTHING."
|
| It's a very shallow viewpoint, and some people just refuse to
| accept that they're wrong sometimes.
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| Have they eaten two plates of food and enjoyed two drinks and
| then announced, "I'm a proud republican and support Trump
| 1000%?" Because that's what we're getting and we're banning
| neighbors and friends we've had for 25 years over it.
| gedy wrote:
| Maybe try understanding that expecting everyone to hold their
| nose and vote for the dog shit alternative "opposition"
| candidates provided is not a good litmus test for friendship
| either.
| gedy wrote:
| And I say this with all sincerity: I'm also disappointed in
| my friends continually voting for Democratic candidates after
| Obama, as it's clear the DNC will do nothing as long as they
| can rely on these votes. They put up losing and awful
| candidates while supposedly our democracy depends on it.
|
| If I were to cut them off as friends for being part of the
| problem, that sounds unreasonable right?
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Why does it sound unreasonable? If it's problem that
| affects you deeply enough, if you sincerely believe that
| they're a core part of that problem, then I don't see why
| the person you replied to would be opposed to it.
| hattmall wrote:
| How does having less friends actually benefit you though? It
| just seems dumb, because presumably you were friends for some
| reason.
|
| I don't see how cutting them out creates a positive. It's like
| "Javy thinks men can become women", now I have one less person
| to play disc golf with.
|
| What's the point of that? People can have different opinions,
| it's not their only character trait.
| petersellers wrote:
| I don't have friends for the sake of "having friends". I
| choose the people I want to hang out with because I enjoy
| their company and like/respect them. Being around them makes
| me happy.
|
| Similarly, people I dislike (rude or mean people, for
| example) make me unhappy when I'm around them. Cutting them
| out of my life is a net benefit there too, because I'm
| happier without them.
| theshackleford wrote:
| > how does having less friends benefit you?
|
| Quality over quantity for a start.
|
| > people can have different opinions
|
| Not every opinion deserves the same level of tolerance,
| respect or acceptance. If someone I know starts goose-
| stepping I'm not going to write it off a "just a difference
| in opinion."
| kerkeslager wrote:
| The other comment I made here was flagged, though it very
| clearly doesn't have anything in violation of the rules. It's
| clear that people here are using flagging to try to censor
| opinions they don't like.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| The question then becomes how to convert a member of a tribe to
| ones own correct tribe. It's a very tough question to answer.
|
| It's like spycraft during the cold war. A double agent must
| pass as being in both tribes for the good of their country.
| They literally isolate themselves from their homelands tribe to
| embed themselves in another. They are forever changed. They
| can't go back. In other words: to change another changes
| oneself too. It weakens ones own group identity.
|
| Almost all people would never want to risk their identity to
| change another person for the good of their group. It's very
| risky and very painful.
|
| Another way that the article suggests is to let people change
| themselves.
| yhavr wrote:
| Lol. "Liberal" people create an echo chamber by eliminate
| opposing opinions and then are surprised that people elect far-
| right candidates.
|
| > Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are
| protected and respected
|
| It wasn't hiding from uncomfortable things, opinions and
| people, that created the world where you can even think about
| women or minority rights, or even know how to write to express
| your opnions. So this approach will not create the world you
| described.
| Dansvidania wrote:
| indeed. This kind of attitude is contrary to what is needed
| to produce the sort of world desired.
|
| The conceptualization of what fundamental even means is very
| much subjective, so posing such a condition to dialogue is,
| in principle, the negation of possibility of improvement on
| either side.
|
| this is the core kernel of what a tribe even is in my
| opinion: pose a subjective condition, divide people based on
| it.
| havblue wrote:
| The subtle art of not giving a f** had a great chapter on the
| importance of deciding your values, that is, what's important
| to you. The parent advice clearly stated what's important:
| living in a world where fundamental rights are protected and
| respected.
|
| Clearly defined values are fine until we get more specific
| though. What values? Whose responsibility? And what's holding
| is back from achieving what we want even if our party is in
| charge? Is it a matter of excluding people who disagree with
| us? More money? Or is the utopian vision we're attempting not
| presently achievable?
|
| So is an agreement on fundamental rights for everyone what
| you want to live your life on? Or do you have other
| priorities in the meantime where you can agree with people on
| more immediate matters?
| HamsterDan wrote:
| +1. I had to cut a lot of people out of my life after seeing
| the Democrats' response to October 7th. I cannot be friends
| with anybody who votes for candidates that support
| exterminating Jews.
| qwerpy wrote:
| +1. I'm cutting people out of my life who think it's
| justified to harass families on the street or write Nazi
| symbols on their property because they happen to be riding in
| a particular brand of car. Fascism/Nazism should not be
| tolerated.
| rimbo789 wrote:
| I agree that's why Musk should driven out of society
| hackeraccount wrote:
| I'm jealous of you. I've got a limited number of family members
| and friends and find it difficult to get more of either. I
| don't think I'm in a position to burn them on politics so I'll
| just have to take them as they are.
| sporkit150 wrote:
| Wow. This is well put. Thanks. I wonder how those so quick to
| write others off will reflect on it at the end of life.
| tombert wrote:
| I haven't talked to my grandmother since Trump won the first
| time in 2016.
|
| It wasn't _just_ that she voted for him, but the fact that she
| actively supported all of his policies around immigration,
| including mass deportations that would have included my wife
| (who was on DACA at the time). She has also said some extremely
| disturbing stuff about what should happen to gay people that I
| don 't even know that I can post without breaking some form of
| TOS, which would be horrible already, but slightly worse to me
| because my sister is gay.
|
| It's easy to say "just be neutral and don't talk about politics
| around her", but there are some issues with that.
|
| First, you don't know my grandmother; no matter how much I try
| and avoid any political subject she _will_ keep bringing it up.
| She will divert a conversation about my job as a software
| engineer to somehow a rant about how Mexicans are stealing
| American jobs (this actually happened). I could just roll my
| eyes and bite my tongue, but this brings me to my next point:
|
| Second, neutrality isn't neutral. I don't really know who
| started this myth that somehow avoiding the subject is "not
| taking a side", it's just a lazy way to endorse the status quo.
| If I keep trying to be amicable with people who actively want
| my wife to be deported, then that's sort of signaling to my
| wife that I don't give a shit about what happens to her. I _don
| 't_ want to signal that, because it's not true. At that point,
| my only option is to either stop talking to my grandmother or
| talk to her and constantly push back she says something racist
| or horrible, which isn't productive.
|
| Before you give me shit over this, _all_ of you do this. You
| all draw the line somewhere. You probably all draw it at
| different points than I do, but you absolutely do draw the
| line. If your best friend suddenly joined the Klan and became
| the Grand Wizard, you probably wouldn 't continue being friends
| with them, even if you could avoid talking politics, because
| that would signal that you're ok with their racism. You also
| probably wouldn't be friends with Jeffrey Dahmer even if you
| could avoid the whole "killing and eating people" topic.
|
| As it stands, I don't really feel bad for cutting her off. I
| absolutely do _not_ make a concession for age on this. If you
| 're going to live as a grownup in 2025 then it's not wrong to
| judge someone by 2025 standards. I don't give a fuck what the
| world was like when you grew up, you have to live in the world
| as it is _now_.
| daft_pink wrote:
| Further, I mute and unfollow aggressively any family or friends
| that just constantly post political news/rants etc from Facebook
| and other social media platforms.
| pcblues wrote:
| Name-calling by commentators dehumanised the debates. I still
| don't understand why it is considered OK.
|
| "They do it" should not be enough of a reason, but it affects
| youtube income for individuals, so let the market work, I guess?
| /sarcasm
| jasonlotito wrote:
| I disagree strongly with this. This is how we get into the state
| of political divisiveness that we are currently in. Discussing
| politics has always been a verboten topic with many families and
| friends, and now we are here where we think not talking about it
| is healthy.
|
| Not discussing politics with friends is really indicative of the
| friendships you have. This is really an article about someone who
| has failed to discuss politics with "friends." As someone who
| routinely talks politics with friends (and we do _NOT_ all agree
| with each other), it 's a healthy experience. One where you can
| get a better understanding of people and their beliefs.
|
| Stay in your bubble. But let's not pretend it's healthy or good.
| shw1n wrote:
| Not sure if you read the article, because it's quite plainly
| stated that my reason for writing it is precisely because I
| _have_ discussed it with many friends (and continue to do so)
|
| Unless I encounter a signal that someone wants to remain in
| their bubble
| dang wrote:
| "Why I don't discuss politics with friends" implies that you
| don't discuss politics with friends. What you're saying here
| sounds quite different. It sounds like "I _do_ discuss
| politics with friends, except when I encounter a signal that
| [etc.] ".
|
| On HN, your title should match what the article actually says
| (" _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or
| linkbait_ "
| -https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
|
| I think if we change the title to " _When_ I don 't discuss
| politics with friends", that would be more accurate given
| what you've written here.
|
| Edit: I looked at the article and didn't see anything that
| particularly mitigated the title, so I've put it back to
| "Why" above.
| ballooney wrote:
| I do worry about seeing more of these posts, as a way of SV
| people - who bare a substantial burden of guilt for enabling the
| collective mess we're in because the ad-tech/algorithm dollars
| were nice - collectively distancing themselves from facing said
| guilt.
|
| No idea is this particular person is especially part of the
| problem, I'm just talking about general vibes.
| light_triad wrote:
| Welcome to the Bay Area!
|
| The big issue is a lot of people will believe what they want to
| believe. Most folks are not scientists - they start by assuming
| their conclusions and will choose the soothing moral and
| emotional rhetoric over evidence.
|
| Trying to see the world objectively puts you in a category of
| outliers. The people you become friends with due to proximity in
| everyday life will not be outliers.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Most people are unaware of how small that outlier group is.
|
| Like there's an even bigger group of people who _think_ they
| 're scientific and unbiased and impartial but they actually
| aren't. That group is more likely the group you and I are in.
|
| The group of actual objective people is so small that you may
| never meet a single person like this in your lifetime. That
| person may even be autistic.
| light_triad wrote:
| Part of being scientific is realising that you can't be
| completely unbiased and impartial, but you can be thorough,
| systematic, rigorous and informed by evidence rather than
| soundbites.
|
| Some questions don't have definite answers, it's the
| sophistication of the analysis that counts.
| shw1n wrote:
| nailed it (and ty for the welcome!)
| rqtwteye wrote:
| It's super sad that the political establishment has managed to
| polarize people so much that a rational discussion about very
| important issues is not possible anymore for a lot of people.
| It's a dream come true for unscrupulous politicians and oligarchs
| who can do whatever they want as long their propaganda is strong
| enough.
| lyu07282 wrote:
| I think its a side-effect of depoliticization by neoliberal
| reform from the 80s onward in the western liberal democracies.
| Everything has already been privatized and financialized,
| technocratic decision making has taken over. People are
| increasingly hurt by this system, but there is no political
| conceptualization of where that hurt is coming from. So people
| are galvanized into impotent political camps where they can
| hysterically scream about gay people, abortion, immigrants,
| guns or whatever.
|
| I would be very curious to know what people here even consider
| "rational debate", probably a bunch of centrist takes on gay
| people, abortion, immigrants, guns or whatever would be my
| guess.
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| Most people are afraid of words, not a great start for
| discussion :p
|
| And then there are forbidden words, words that make you lose
| your job, or your freedom...
| simpaticoder wrote:
| I like it. There's an easier answer to "why don't people move
| from tribe to view". It's because it's painful to question one's
| own beliefs, and that's how that change happens. In fact such a
| move appears masochistic to many, since it almost never pays to
| undermine loyalty in favor of principle.
|
| I hypothesize that we're seeing the influence of the legal system
| on the public turbo-charged by Citizens United money. An attorney
| is paid to be a "zealous advocate" for their client. This means
| never spending effort on anything that might be against the
| client's interest. Self-reflection is stochastically against
| their interest, so why even risk it? Considering alternative
| views might be against your interest, so why risk it? Therefore,
| in this new zeitgeist, such behavior is not just perverse and
| painful, but even unethical and wrong.
|
| The problem, of course, is that for this system of adversarial
| argument you need an impartial judge. In theory that would be the
| public, but it turns out flooding people's minds with unethical
| lawyer screed 24x7 turns more people into lawyers, not judges.
| "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the
| earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for
| none now live who remember it." This could very well refer to the
| value of dignity, honor, integrity, fairness in debate, respect
| for one's opponents. These are always under assault, but in the
| last 10 years they have been decimated to the point people don't
| remember they ever held sway and young people don't know what
| politics was like when they did.
| shw1n wrote:
| "since it almost never pays to undermine loyalty in favor of
| principle"
|
| nailed it imo, thanks for reading!
| jchw wrote:
| Challenging your own viewpoints is not just hard, it's
| downright dangerous. You can really lose your sense of identity
| and question your own morals if you are not well-grounded. It's
| much easier to dig your heels in and try to limit your self-
| reflection to be more "safe". (I still think you should
| question your viewpoints, but I don't blame people for being a
| little afraid.)
|
| This is especially true if you have a history of being somewhat
| cruel to people on the basis of a conclusion you're not really
| 100% sure you agree with anymore. Now if you question it, you
| have a lot of guilt to contend with.
| shw1n wrote:
| Yep agree with this a lot, identity-shattering is dangerous
| indeed
| johnea wrote:
| I totally disagree. "Shattering" one's identity (which is a
| completely fictional idea, only existing inside one's head)
| is essential for finding one's place in the universe.
|
| Failure to adopt an accurate perspective of one's place in
| the universe is the greatest source of human anxiety.
|
| Plus, if you can't discuss something like politics with
| people, are they really your friends at all? Not very good
| ones at least...
| shw1n wrote:
| Sorry I should clarify, I personally agree with you and
| share your opinion on shattering identifies being a
| positive
|
| But I understand why someone may not want to I guess
| techpineapple wrote:
| I would say as I've gotten older, I've actually tried to be a
| little more grounded in my beliefs. Our political world is so
| crazy, that I think sometimes, it can even be hard being
| committed to basic kindergarten morality. "Look at all these
| bad people doing bad things and being successful, maybe I
| should do bad things to be more successful" is a challenge to
| your viewpoints that is worth cutting off at the roots.
| hathawsh wrote:
| OTOH, I am the kind of person who feels great joy in
| discovering that I have been wrong about something, I have
| learned something better, and I have deepened my
| understanding. It could be about anything. Challenging my
| viewpoints is very enjoyable.
|
| It surprises me that most people don't seem to feel that way
| and I struggle to understand why. Apparently, people often
| feel angry and alienated by the truth. I think that never
| makes sense, but I've learned to accept that people simply
| feel threatened by the truth sometimes and I can't usually
| convince them otherwise.
| shw1n wrote:
| I feel this way too, it's in one of the footnotes actually
|
| "[8] Few things give me greater joy than a discovery-ridden
| conversation with smart friends, and this is only enhanced
| if I learn something I previously believed to be true is
| actually wrong. Seriously, come prove some core belief I
| have as wrong and you will quite literally make my week."
|
| Thanks for reading!
| hathawsh wrote:
| Thanks for writing! This is a very well written essay
| that I need to read repeatedly.
| shw1n wrote:
| Ty! I wrote it for myself / to send people to when we
| encounter the same conversation loop haha
| jchw wrote:
| I generally agree, but some views wind up being pretty
| central to one's identity. It's easy to give up a viewpoint
| where the stakes are very low, but the stakes _can_
| potentially be very, very high (on a personal level.)
| bloopernova wrote:
| You _have_ to be wrong to learn. Sure it can be frustrating
| to try to make or do something difficult. But you 've never
| done it before, of course you're not going to know all the
| correct answers! It just makes it all the more sweet when
| you do make progress and start to know more about a
| subject.
| swat535 wrote:
| I suppose, but there is no such thing as objective morality,
| it's all subjective. That's not to say people shouldn't feel
| guilt or hesitate when evaluating their past actions, but we
| often act based on the best framework we had at the time.
|
| Morality evolves, both personally and culturally, and trying
| to hold a static identity in the face of that change just
| leads to more internal conflict. It's uncomfortable, yeah,
| but clinging to certainty for safety's sake can be more
| corrosive in the long run.
| jgord wrote:
| .. "we will need writers who remember freedom" Ursula Le Guin
|
| Both of our best ways at getting to the truth - Journalism and
| Science - rely on entertaining and following all sorts of
| contradictory ideas and then comparing them with observed
| reality.
|
| Universities in particular need to be physically safe spaces,
| where ideas of every kind can be mercilessly attacked.
|
| We are losing what took so long to build.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| They become too entangled with identity. The advantage of
| holding one's identity loosely, and attributing it one's
| actions, is it facilitates changing one's mind about certain
| things, or updating beliefs in increments.
| fatbird wrote:
| The author has a huge blindspot: discussing politics with others
| where it's not a co-operative search for truth; instead it's an
| opportunity to let your friends explain themselves. Don't
| challenge them, ask them questions. Let them talk it out. Offer
| your own observations not as ways to change their minds but as an
| invitation to elaborate and explore.
|
| You don't need to share your opinions in every conversation. You
| don't need to challenge another's beliefs that you disagree with
| or think are factually wrong. You can bond over listening to
| them. And they can invite you to share your thinking non-
| judgementally.
| shw1n wrote:
| This is actually how most of my conversations operate, I rarely
| share my beliefs in conversation, but ask questions -- often
| geared towards a tribal view I've detected
| jerf wrote:
| I don't converse about politics at all, because _conversation_ is
| not generally amenable to anything other than some vague virtue
| signaling in all but the _very_ best of circumstances. For
| instance, a basic rule of conversation is that unless you have a
| _very_ good reason, once a conversation wanders away from a
| topic, you don 't drag it back to the same topic. That's great
| for idly chatting and catching up with friends, and it's a rule
| for a good reason, but it's quite far from what any sort of
| thought or an interaction that might actually change my mind on
| some topic requires.
|
| While I don't disagree that people are quite tribal, I would
| observe that determining that people are tribal based on
| conversations can be a bit misleading, because the conversational
| form is _extremely_ biased towards expressing things that will be
| indistinguishable from "tribalism", since all you have time to
| do is basically to put a marker down on the broadest possible
| summary of your position before the conversation baton _must_
| move on. That is, even a hypothetical Vulcan who has gathered all
| the data, pondered the question deeply, and come to the only
| logical conclusion, is going to _sound_ tribal in a conversation,
| because that 's all a conversation can convey.[1] Sufficient
| information conveyance to actually demonstrate the deep pondering
| and examination of all the evidence is _ipso facto_ a lecture, or
| at best, a Socratic dialog or an interview, neither of which is a
| conversation in this sense.
|
| For better and worse (and rather a lot of each), this medium
| we're working in right now at least affords itself to complete
| thoughts. It has its own well-known pathologies, like the
| interminable flame wars descending off to the right endlessly as
| two people won't let something go, and many others, but at least
| it's _possible_ to discuss serious matters in a format similar to
| this, based on writing in text that can be as long as it needs to
| be without anyone needing to interrupt to maintain basic social
| niceties. There 's a reason the serious intellectual discourse
| has been happening in books and articles for centuries if not
| millennia now.
|
| Note how conversationally gauche it would be for me to monopolize
| a conversation long enough to simply read this post, and by the
| standards of intellectual discourse this is a rather simple
| point.
|
| [1]: In fact, most people will read the Vulcan as _exceedingly_
| tribal, because no amount of reciting snap counterarguments
| against the Vulcan 's position will cause him/her to so much as
| budge an inch or even concede that "perhaps reasonable people
| could think that" or any other such concession. The snap
| counteragument was encountered a long time ago, and analyzed in
| the light of all the other data, and they have long ago come to
| their conclusions on it. If they can be moved, it will take a lot
| more. This is difficult to distinguish from a maximized tribalist
| in any reasonable period of time in a conversation.
| jeremiem wrote:
| I agree that conversation is generally not very productive as
| we often talk past each other.
|
| I would recommend anyone that struggle to discuss divisive or
| controversial topics to learn and watch Street Epistemology
| [0], or Compassionate Epistemology [1]. It's comparable to a
| Socratic dialog.
|
| The basic idea that I got out of it is to unwrap one, and only
| one, person's beliefs at the time, find their best reason for
| that belief and see if the reason holds if it was used to
| believe something else. Repeat with the next best if not. By
| hiding your opinion on a topic, it's a lot easier to explore
| someone else's as they shouldn't get defensive or combative.
|
| There are a lot of videos of this kind of interview, my
| favorite channel: Cordial Curiosity[2].
|
| [0] https://www.streetepistemology.com/ [1]
| https://compassionateepistemology.com/ [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/@CordialCuriosity
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > The insidious nature of this question comes from the false
| representation as earnest, intellectual discourse. Many who ask
| it may truly believe they're engaging earnestly, but their
| responses quickly reveal an angle more akin to religious police.
| ... Most vulnerable to this behavior are the intellectually
| honest + socially clueless, who engage in good faith, unaware of
| the pending social ambush.
|
| My favorite thing about this enlightened centrist/individual
| thinker line to kick off with is it's almost universally used by
| people who have one or more abhorrent viewpoints in their back
| pocket, and the "social ambush" described here would be much
| better phrased as, well, disclosing what that is and just saving
| us all some time. I personally am deeply curious what beliefs
| Ashwin has been ambushed about.
|
| If you have thoughts on how tax brackets should be constructed,
| or whether we should move to flat taxation, whether highway
| budgets should include beatification or whether that should be up
| to municipalities, what zoning restrictions are used for a given
| area, all that type of what _should be politics,_ neither myself
| nor anyone I know would "ambush" you for those beliefs.
| Discussing and rounding out those kinds of issues is the
| foundation of how a Democracy works. We have to discuss them, and
| you should have opinions on at least a few of them, and you
| should share them! That's how it works. And for what it's worth,
| I can't fathom a situation I would ambush anyone over those sorts
| of issues. I might disagree, and I might ask for elaboration or
| perhaps suggest alternatives to what you want to do, but I
| wouldn't shame you for them.
|
| If on the other hand you think horrible things that for some
| insane reason have gotten traction lately, like that putting
| tariffs on foreign goods is somehow going to bring back American
| manufacturing (it isn't), that some of your fellow citizens who
| might be gay, trans, both, or something else shouldn't enjoy a
| full set of rights under the law for whatever cockamamie reason
| you'd like to cite (they should), that children should be re-
| introduced to the labor market to bolster the amount of cheap
| labor available (they shouldn't), that the government should be
| doing genital inspections on children who want to play sports to
| make sure no one's "cheating" (stupid, horrifying, illegal in
| several ways) and I could go on, then yeah, you probably will
| find yourself socially ambushed. And you should be. That's how
| shaming works. That's what we have done to one another for
| thousands of years when we behave anti-socially: if you act anti-
| social, you are not going to have an easy time being social.
| That's, again, just how that works.
|
| I of course don't wish that fate on anyone, I have been spurned
| from communities and it sucks! But I did survive that process and
| a number of those experiences, awful as they were at the time,
| shaped me into a better person overall with a more internally
| consistent and defensible belief system than the one I was
| indoctrinated into as a child.
|
| And yeah, a lot of this is also just "political tribalism sucks!"
| Cosigned, 100%.
| curiousgal wrote:
| I am incredibly jealous of how eloquently you've put it...
| shw1n wrote:
| The assumption that social ambushes only occur for horrific
| beliefs is an amazingly naive take on humanity. By this logic
| it's implied that the women burned in the Salem witch trials
| must've done something to deserve it.
|
| I've been ambushed for explaining: - to right-leaning folk that
| most migrants are seeking a better life - to left-leaning folk
| that securing a border is not a crazy idea - to right-leaning
| folk that subsidies to help restore agency to people who've had
| a rougher start and benefit everyone - to left-leaning folk
| that merely allocating money to an government agency does not
| necessarily mean anything beneficial happens
|
| Not even taking a stand, just pointing out opposing points --
| hardly an anti-social, horrible act
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > The assumption that social ambushes only occur for horrific
| beliefs is an amazingly naive take on humanity. By this logic
| it's implied that the women burned in the Salem witch trials
| must've done something to deserve it.
|
| That is an incredible leap in logic with far too many layers
| to properly litigate.
|
| > I've been ambushed for explaining: - to right-leaning folk
| that most migrants are seeking a better life - to left-
| leaning folk that securing a border is not a crazy idea - to
| right-leaning folk that subsidies to help restore agency to
| people who've had a rougher start and benefit everyone - to
| left-leaning folk that merely allocating money to an
| government agency does not necessarily mean anything
| beneficial happens
|
| I think you're wholely unaware of the concept of dog-whistles
| and their role in our modern politics.... I mean not even
| modern, those go back centuries.
|
| In any case:
|
| - You were probably ambushed for suggesting migrants are
| seeking a better life because many right leaning people are
| propagandized so heavily into thinking every migrant is a
| rapist felon drug selling child molester.
|
| - You were probably ambushed for endorsing border security
| for the same reason, because it's become a dog-whistle for
| unhinged levels of racism and nationalism projected by the
| right. And while I don't endorse that level of over-
| correction on the part of whoever ambushed you, I also don't
| not-understand it. The dehumanizing rhetoric around
| immigrants is fucking disgusting and shameful, literally the
| stuff of Nazi's, and especially given the ongoing abuses by
| border patrol, the active deportations of people who've
| committed no crime due to administrative incompetence on
| their and other agency's parts, again, I'm not surprised
| people might be telling you to can it about needing _more_ of
| that.
|
| - Again, this is a ridiculous amount of propaganda going back
| to the 80's, where the Reagan campaigns created outright
| fiction about "welfare queens" (and again, more racism there
| as they were always implied to be black) that's led to
| decades of "welfare reform" which is better stated as
| "fucking over the poor for profit."
|
| - And you likely got ambused about the last thing because....
| it's wrong, and again, not only is it wrong, it's a hot
| button issue that's been, again, ruined by the Reagan
| administration who, along with their compatriots in the
| Thatcher administration and similar austerity administrations
| and politics worldwide, have systematically defunded
| uncountable numbers of public services, which leads to a
| degradation in those services, which leads to more
| justifications for more cuts, which leads to a death spiral
| which is why virtually no government agencies anywhere are
| effective anymore.
|
| > Not even taking a stand, just pointing out opposing points
| -- hardly an anti-social, horrible act
|
| And like, I get that _you personally_ aren 't advocating for
| these things, but what you are doing, unintentionally, is
| invoking bad faith rhetoric that is, at the risk of sounding
| dramatic, behind the political movement that is more or less
| responsible for the fact that _nothing works anymore and
| every government on Earth is struggling._ And for you, that
| 's probably a minor, or perhaps major annoyance. For other
| people, it's life threatening. For certain groups of people,
| they may not only find the actions of border control and
| immigration courts abhorrent, _they might well be the targets
| of those actions relatively soon._
|
| To put it another way, you may not have strong feelings about
| zoning regulations or deciding where a sewage line goes in
| your town. However, if you say that to the person who's back
| yard is full of overflow sewage and it's causing their family
| to become ill and their home to be borderline unlivable,
| they're probably going to be quite pissed off with you
| because just because something isn't a critically important
| issue _to you_ doesn 't mean it isn't _to someone else._
|
| Context is important. I would encourage you the next time you
| feel so ambushed, instead of getting defensive and/or running
| away, _ask questions._ Why is this issue so important to this
| person? Why are they so upset with what you 're saying? Is
| there another angle to this that you're unaware of?
| ranger207 wrote:
| > I think you're wholely unaware of the concept of dog-
| whistles and their role in our modern politics...
|
| I'd think the opposite actually. If you bring up border
| security, then the conversation can go in one of two ways:
| a discussion of the actual policies of border security, or
| a conversation that hears the dog whistle and proceeds
| under the context that you fall into the tribe that uses
| that dog whistle. The latter is an ambush. The policies
| themselves still exist even outside of their historical
| context as dog whistles. The question is if can you have a
| conversation with someone that talks about the policies
| themselves or not
| oasisaimlessly wrote:
| You're doing yourself a disservice by creating a false
| dichotomy of "things that are okay to discuss" (tax brackets,
| zoning) and "things that aren't" (tariffs, manditory genital
| inspections), when it's very unlikely that anyone will have the
| exact same bifurcation point as you.
|
| And, I have to say, I thought it was pretty amusing that you
| appear to treat someone discussing tariffs with the same
| severity as someone discussing mandatory genital inspections.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > a congregation member asking "you believe in god, right?"
|
| That's a very good analogy.
|
| For some, believing in god or not doesn't matter much and they'll
| go to church mostly to make friends and be part of a community.
|
| For others, being expected (or not) to believe in God is a no go,
| and losing friends/family holding these expectations will be a
| price to pay.
|
| We all have our boundaries, and disagreements on some specific
| topics will be out of them. Cutting friends/family with
| incompatible stances is just one instance of that IMHO, be it
| political, religious or anything else that matters enough.
| shw1n wrote:
| appreciate it! (and thanks for reading)
|
| yeah the religious enforcement is what always popped into my
| head when I watched it unfold
| antisthenes wrote:
| This is a good stance, but with a caveat.
|
| I do have friends who are able to have nuanced views about
| politics/economics/AI, and generally high-level vague things that
| concern the entire human civilization.
|
| But I also have friends that can't have those nuanced views, and
| when you try to engage in good faith discussion with them, they
| resort to tribalism and are not interested in finding nuance
| through reasoning.
|
| With those I don't have any discussions about it.
|
| If you are a friend - try to be someone from the first category.
| Don't engage in tribalism with your friends if you value them
| (unless your whole group is a bunch of bullies, in which case do
| whatever).
| shw1n wrote:
| ^ agreed
| kubb wrote:
| I actually ask my friends what they think and don't judge them
| for it. Everyone has some way to build up their belief and it's
| interesting to listen to these.
|
| They often have horrible reasoning but I don't try to talk them
| out of it, just nod, polite comment, move on.
| ulnarkressty wrote:
| > 1. become truth-seeking
|
| How does one even begin to do that? Looking at people I know who
| describe themselves as "truth-seeking", it seems that it is a one
| way ticket to Conspiracyland.
| pcblues wrote:
| Tim Minchin said it well when he said to be hard on and
| critical of your own opinions. Among many other things :P
|
| https://www.timminchin.com/2013/09/25/occasional-address/
| techpineapple wrote:
| Yeah, I sort of have a counter-belief that, generally speaking
| the way to have the most.... Grounded understanding of
| everything is to be a bit dispassionate about whether or not
| you have the truth. Being truth seeking has probably a 80/20
| chance of going conspiracy nut vs actually being honestly truth
| seeking. Especially if you're not trained or the subject isn't
| in your wheel house.
| shw1n wrote:
| yeah this is a very real risk
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| we may not be wired by default to include unknown unknowns in
| our decision making, even when we manage to include known
| unknowns :p
| shw1n wrote:
| I guess recognizing when you're desiring a certain outcome so
| much you put blinders on to contradicting evidence
|
| my method is to constantly try and prove my beliefs wrong, via
| the "oscillating" I describe in the piece
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| I have to tell you and most people reading this is that you
| belong to a tribe of people who only _think_ they are impartial
| and unbiased and reasoned thinkers, but they actually aren 't.
|
| The level of objectivity that we strive for is just really
| possible.
| shw1n wrote:
| agreed, but if the seed of doubt can be planted at all then I
| consider this essay successful
| techpineapple wrote:
| One thing I didn't see mentioned, and maybe this is part of being
| tribal, but politics is often not about the positions you take,
| but about the game theory of how you stay in power, and convince
| a group of people about the positions you take.
|
| One thing I hate about the trump administration, and maybe all
| politics is fundamentally like this, is you can't really disagree
| with them. You can't really disagree with them because it's
| really hard to figure out what position they're taking. I find it
| makes discussing things with family really difficult. I can
| intellectually agree that "A nation should protect it's borders"
| and have a nuanced perspective on how much immigration is the
| right amount, but then I'm never going to square that with what
| the politicians are actually doing, right? We can't have a
| nuanced conversation with what the right immigration policy is,
| when the administration is deporting people without due process,
| or when the current administration says the problem with
| immigration is that Joe Biden let judges run wild in 2019.
| shw1n wrote:
| I personally think this is the right approach, where you can
| assign probabilities to the unknowns (the "thinking in bets"
| section)
|
| Because then the discussions/research switch toward data and
| evidence, with the results downstream of those
|
| Overall when people can agree "I understand stance 1 if the
| data says X, or stance 2 if the data says Y", and then all the
| energy goes into the data analysis, I consider that a
| successful conversation
| lispisok wrote:
| I think the groupthink and independent thought axes need to be
| flipped. Way more toeing the party line and groupthink near the
| center. The more fringe you get the more independent thought
| there is. It might be crazy and wrong but it's not groupthink.
| shw1n wrote:
| I guess the dots should be described as "average of all views"
|
| PG explains it better here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
| dcrimp wrote:
| is "becoming truth seeking" not some sort of religion - like the
| sports team - and the bay area is your tribe? Perhaps you were
| already suggesting this in your article and I've missed this - if
| so I apologise.
|
| you seem to suggest that truth-seeking > tribalism, and we should
| pity the poor fools who are about tribalism. In this way, you're
| being tribalist against tribalism, no?
|
| If ignorant tribalism brings people community and happiness,
| isn't that just as valid and commendable as truth-seeking?
|
| Truth-seeking might provide a level of understanding of the world
| which is of value to your operating in life. It is not
| necessarily a sublime good of it's own right. Too much of it will
| alienate you from your mates.
|
| I'd wager types like you might find on HN, Bay Area, could do
| with a little less seeking, in fact.
|
| The Underground Man comes to mind, and presents the extreme of
| this spectrum. But then maybe he'd find mates in an area filled
| with other Underground Men?
| shw1n wrote:
| haha yes I was wondering if someone would pick up on this,
| totally agree
|
| I absolutely joke I am "tribal against tribalists", which to me
| is sorta like someone implying their greatest fear is fear
| itself.
|
| I do mention it is a totally fair belief to have in that piece,
| and respect conscious decisions to value that like I respect
| people's decisions to follow more traditional religions, but
| only have issue when it's passed off as a truth-seeking value
|
| Have not heard of the Underground Man, will check it out --
| thanks for reading btw!
| jameslk wrote:
| The article is titled _Why I don 't discuss politics with
| friends_ but it doesn't explain the _why_? Unless I missed it. It
| seems to just talk about the challenges.
|
| Why don't you discuss politics with friends? Are you worried
| about loss of friends? Do the conversations ruin your day? Do you
| feel alienated?
|
| Depending on the _why_ , there's different points I'd argue for
| or against the reasoning. Without that piece, it's kind of hard
| to discuss the premise of the article without just guessing its
| implications.
| shw1n wrote:
| This sentence was intended as that answer, but I guess it
| wasn't clear enough:
|
| "And this is fundamentally why I don't discuss politics with
| friends.
|
| It's not that I don't want or am scared of opposing views (in
| fact the opposite is true[8]), but rather because of how common
| others' desire to "remain in the bubble" is."
|
| I actually am willing to risk alienation to find people that
| enjoy this sort of discussion-based discovery as much as I do,
| but found most people I encounter don't actually want that --
| so I try and respect what seems to be the average opinion.
| panstromek wrote:
| I feel pretty much the same, except the political situation here
| (central Europe) is pretty mild. I can't imagine being in the US
| right now.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| For what it's worth, the situation in the US right now is
| largely fine. It's hard to appreciate what the reality on the
| ground is like if all one sees is the media (which stirs up
| trouble because that makes them money) or terminally online
| Doom posters (a lot of the commenters on any social media
| site). But for the average person, life is going on as normal.
| Some people like things the administration is doing and some
| dislike them, but most people don't feel the need to make it
| the central feature of their lives.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| If your friends are the sort that stick to tribes instead of
| thinking independently get smarter friends.
| shw1n wrote:
| this is me trying haha
| braza wrote:
| The author gains a great insight into the social consequences of
| discussing politics with friends, but I think it might be part of
| something larger, a sort of intellectual signaling of meta-
| contrarianism.
|
| At least in the countries where I live, debating politics is less
| about civic duty and being a citizen, and has become a substitute
| for sports; people prioritize their passions, and they are not
| concerned with getting the government to implement the policies
| it promised in the first place, but with defending a side.
|
| In Germany, we see on state broadcasts every single day
| discussions about how the USA is bad, Elon Musk, Donald Trump,
| how some war in a distant place is bad, and so on; and nothing
| related to local politics.
|
| If you invite someone to go to the municipal legislative service
| to talk with someone about why we still have underinvestment in
| kindergartens, even with record revenue, while other groups of
| society are capitalizing on social benefits, nobody will show up.
|
| Getting in front of a keyboard and brigading online to talk about
| federal elections and/or officials of other countries is cool: it
| gives you the latest scandal of the day, you can congregate with
| people of your chamber, it provides audience for podcasts, and it
| generates talking points that sound intellectually tasty.
|
| At least for me, the politics that matter most are local
| politics; and this is the craziest thing: it's the kind of
| politics where you can do something as an individual, you will
| have someone to hear you out, and with some effort, you can make
| a real and direct difference for your community.
| fabiofzero wrote:
| Everything is political, so have a nice time discussing the
| weather with your friends.
| scoofy wrote:
| Ugh... I can't stand cloudy weather! A "nice day" means no
| clouds! I just can't be around people who think clouds are
| nice. If they like that weather so much, why don't they move
| somewhere where it's cloudy all the time! /s
| sMarsIntruder wrote:
| I can talk for hours of non-political things. And I'm not
| talking about sports or similar things.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| I lived in China in the early-2000s, and one of the things I
| noticed is that no one ever talked about any sort of politics.
| Never. It was weird at first, as political discussion is so
| ingrained in the culture (in the US). Even just regular
| smalltalk, like, _" How's it going, Bob? / It'd be a lot better
| if the city council would pull their heads out of their asses and
| fix these potholes!"_ - there was nothing like that.
|
| I asked a few local friends about it, and got two basic
| explanations:
|
| 1. What's the point? No one is empowered to change anything, so
| why bother talking about it at all?
|
| 2. You can get in big trouble for saying the wrong thing in
| public.
|
| The weirder thing I noticed is that I kinda enjoyed it. It was
| nice to not hear a bunch of bitching about the government (not
| saying the government shouldn't be criticized - it should; just
| saying it was nice to be completely removed from it for a time).
|
| Not sure if it's still like this in China; I haven't been there
| in years, but yeah, this was really strange to me when I lived
| there.
| techpineapple wrote:
| I do think that a scary thing is that if there's a descent into
| fascism, how many people will hardly notice, or maybe even
| enjoy it. There was a quote I heard on this American life
| recently, that went:
|
| "Life under autocracy can be terrifying, as it already is in
| the United States for immigrants and trans people. But those of
| us with experience can tell you that most of the time, for most
| people, it's not frightening. It is stultifying. It's boring.
| It feels like trying to see and breathe under water -- because
| you are submerged in bad ideas, being discussed badly, being
| reflected in bad journalism and, eventually, in bad literature
| and bad movies."
| ty6853 wrote:
| I have been in countries like that and I've found they were
| quite open to talking to me about it, since I was obviously a
| foreigner much less likely to snitch on them than even their
| family or friends. Buy a beer for someone in a dictatorial
| country and I pretty much guarantee you they will open up in
| private.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| A lot of people are in a particular tribe because they literally
| cannot be in the other tribe because the other tribe sees them as
| subhuman, as people who should be deported, who should lose their
| rights, etc. A lot of them realize that they're in a tribe and
| don't particularly like it, but since the political system is set
| up in a way where you can't reasonably have more than two
| parties, they don't have a choice.
|
| Basically, the author is making it seem like everyone other than
| a select few are tribal idiots, but that's a fundamental outcome
| of our political system. You can pick and choose your policies,
| but at the end of the day, you're voting for one of two parties.
| shw1n wrote:
| I actually totally get this and think it's totally fair to be
| in a tribe (I say this in the piece), this is less about how
| people vote and more about how they discuss issues
|
| Only time I have issue is when a view is presented as truth-
| seeking instead of tribal
|
| But agreed, our political system is setup this way
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I believe in the future we will see a much more pronounced split
| between people who prefer reality to those who prefer un-reality.
|
| Un-reality is the mediated, constructed "reality" that can be
| conjured up and perpetuated through mediums such as the Internet.
| It needs constant effort behind it to keep it going because it
| isn't tethered to actual experience. Un-reality is things like
| the hyper-partisan views on things that seem like they change on
| a whim, or extremist views on gender relations. It requires a
| tribalistic level of affiliation. It is something that has
| evolved to prize self-perpetuation (e.g. memes) over the views it
| claims to espouse. (This pattern of growth at all costs also
| occurs in other contexts, such as business.)
|
| Reality, on the other hand, is the messy, boring, uncontrollable
| and unmediated thing we experience as humans. It is harder to
| transmit online because it isn't something that is easily
| swallowed, but it has a universal appeal to us as we recognize
| humanity in it. Reality has much bigger downs and ups than un-
| reality does, that's what makes us want to escape it sometimes.
| It also has really crappy truths and circumstances in it; there's
| no respawns or undo.
|
| In some sense, this split already exists: fans of un-reality we
| often label as too online, implying that they prefer online life
| to actual life. I believe the biggest difference here lies in the
| preference for mediated vs unmediated interactions.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The entire problem is that both tribes think your comment
| applies to them.
|
| We do not agree on what _reality_ is
| Nursie wrote:
| Who is "both" tribes? Why can there be only two? And why do
| you not think the parent is talking about both of those
| tribes compared to more moderate, less terminally-online
| people?
| panstromek wrote:
| I'll just add one thing I learned: what people do is way more
| important than what they say or what their politics is.
|
| I now find it much more practical to focus on things we can agree
| on and actually do something about in the real world and try to
| build from that.
|
| Generic political debates are not very actionable and they are
| risky for social reasons mentioned in the article, so I think
| they are largely a waste of time with negative externalities.
| ListeningPie wrote:
| I like this, but what we do, is vote. Between work and kids
| there is no more time "to do". I donate to UNICEF but that's
| it.
| fastball wrote:
| Work and raising kids are important activities that are a
| great way to take the measure of a person.
|
| What more do you really need to look at?
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Work, raise kids, vote to let women die rather than remove
| an already-dead fetus--yeah, sorry, people dying does kinda
| matter to me, actually, and I don't think that's crazy or
| can be dismissed as "tribalism".
| delichon wrote:
| The "What [the political spectrum] Actually Is" graph shows more
| independent thinkers to be unintentional moderates. The chart is
| a claim that independence leads to moderation. I deny that. The
| most independently minded thinkers I know frequently drift off
| into extremes where most tribes dare not tread. The tribalists
| are so moderate in comparison that I would turn that christmas
| tree upside down.
| shw1n wrote:
| this was based off Paul Graham's piece:
| https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
|
| where individual views may hit extremes, but the average of
| those views will be in the middle for independent thinkers
|
| his essay explains it better, though I do agree there should be
| some dots on either end and up high
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| Extreme views seem to scale most with education. Those highly
| decoupled from either tribe can be educated as well, but does
| seem more common with those less politically engaged. I am
| optimistic about the resurgence of an "abundance" agenda pushed
| by center-left Liberals.
|
| > The most independently minded thinkers I know frequently
| drift off into extremes where most tribes dare not tread.
|
| They've found another tribe.
| dogleash wrote:
| > 3. Most people don't want to graduate from tribes to views
|
| I checked out of political conversations when I noticed I was
| teaching remedial civics over drinks and none of us were having
| fun. So I just sit back and watch people who just want to engage
| in reality tv style yelling confrontation.
| shw1n wrote:
| I take this angle when I detect dogma now
| scoofy wrote:
| There is some good stuff here, but I generally disagree.
|
| The difference for me is, I don't like everybody, and not
| everybody has to like me. That's okay, and it's not about
| disrespect, it's just that I like to surround myself with people
| who are thoughtful before they are opinionated.
|
| If you know me, and you respect me, and I say something you think
| is crazy... if they first think you think is "Wait, I thought I
| respected him, but he's a bad person" instead of "Wait, I respect
| this person and they're saying something I disagree with. Am I
| wrong about that?", then, guess what, I'm not actually interested
| in having a deep relationship.
|
| I studied philosophy in college and grad school. I had to
| "relearn" how to interact with people outside of the university
| setting for many of the reasons in this essay. However, upon
| reading the horrifying "how to win friends and influence people"
| way of interacting with normal people through flattery and
| shallow interaction, I thought fuck it, I just don't actually
| want to be close with people I can't have a real conversation
| with.
|
| Not everyone gets to the right position right away, that's okay.
| I'm a strong small-"L" liberal, and I have friends that are
| conservatives, socialists, and even the occasional anarchist. The
| difference is that we're all still trying to figure it all out.
| We're not all pretending that "well if those people didn't exist
| then we'd have utopia already" because, well, all these system
| exist all over the earth and it ain't a utopia anywhere. We'll
| make our points, we'll needle each other in a friendly way, and
| we'll all say "fuck it, we're doing our best."
|
| That doesn't mean I'm friendly with everyone (remember, I don't
| like everyone, and not everyone likes me), because there are
| plenty of political positions that pretty much _require_ people
| to be unthoughtful. The views need to be consistent, and pretty
| much anything that end advocating substantial discrimination
| against certain people over other people isn 't going to be
| internally consistent. Axioms are arbitrary, reason is not.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _However, upon reading the horrifying 'how to win friends
| and influence people' way of interacting with normal people
| through flattery and shallow interaction"_
|
| Say what now? The book is littered with passages urging the
| reader to be sincere in interactions.
| scoofy wrote:
| The book has you meta-analyze every aspect of your
| conversation. You're basically treating everyone with kid
| gloves all the time. Never tell someone they're wrong, go out
| of your way to praise people, treat everyone like the noble
| protagonist in their own story.
|
| All of this is fine and dandy, and incredibly practical in
| practice, but it presupposes that you're talking to someone
| whose thinking processes are in opposition to any analytical
| thinking or self-critique.
|
| I'm not saying the book isn't _useful_ , my point is that the
| type of people for whom the book is effective are not the
| type of people I want to be close friends with.
|
| To put it another way, my friend's parents are classic
| NIMBYs. If I want to hold their hand, and walk them to a
| place where they can see that their actions are harming the
| next generation, then, yes, Dale Carnegie's prescriptions are
| _very effective_. My point is _I don 't actually want to be
| close friends with anyone who needs their hand held just to
| see things from a different person's perspective_.
|
| I try to be kind, I try to be honest, I try to be upfront
| about who I am and what I stand for. I have made lots of
| close friends just by being willing to be patient with people
| who have different views from my own, without actually having
| to pretend I don't have any views at all. My friends are
| mature enough to understand that we are both smart people,
| and if I say something that puts them off, then we ought to
| be able to discuss it and learn from each other.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _You 're basically treating everyone with kid gloves
| all the time. Never tell someone they're wrong, go out of
| your way to praise people, treat everyone like the noble
| protagonist in their own story._"
|
| The book says that a person can deliver criticism and
| disagreement in ways that don't make the recipient
| defensive and that people respond positively when their
| accomplishments are recognized in a sincere and meaningful
| way. As for the last, that's simply the way most, if not
| all, people are; it's a failing that's almost universal.
|
| It's about learning to be a person that is thoughtful to
| others and considerate of the foibles of humanity. I
| suppose a person could use it as a template for faking
| empathy and generally being manipulative but that's very
| much not what it suggests.
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean, I'm not going to change your mind. I don't want
| to. I've read the book. I found it very helpful in a
| practical sense, while at the same time as finding it
| horrifying.
|
| >that's simply the way most, if not all, people are; it's
| a failing that's almost universal.
|
| Again, I don't disagree with you that this is a problem
| for the median person. My point is that, for the most
| part, I'm not really interested in being _close_ friends
| with the median person. Friends in a sense? Sure. Chat at
| a bar? Sure. But not people I really talking about
| interesting things with. The median person isn 't going
| to mesh very well with my personality.
|
| The ivory tower was an isolated tower for a reason.
| Intellectuals were _literally under threat of execution_
| for the vast majority of human history. The underlying
| currents for that are basically reflected in the
| assumptions that Carnegie makes.
|
| I want intellectual friends. I _want_ be shown that I 'm
| wrong. I _learn something_ when I 'm wrong. I understand
| that's not a common trait, but it's how I am, and how I
| want to be.
| shw1n wrote:
| I'm not sure where I see we disagree?
|
| I actually agree with everything you said, mostly just want
| people whose views are actually tribal and not open to
| discussion to acknowledge them as such, via:
|
| "If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge
| their choice to remain in the bubble, that's totally fair. I
| respect it like I'd respect anyone who chooses to participate
| in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is
| falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."
|
| unless you're saying I shouldn't bother being polite and
| avoiding the convo at times, which I guess I disagree there
| scoofy wrote:
| My point mostly that you're probably not actually close
| friends with people you can't discuss politics with. And if
| you are, then you are interested in different types of
| friendships than I am.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| A good friend of mine confessed that he doesn't argue to change
| other people's mind, he does it to change his own.
| shw1n wrote:
| smart friend
| thisislife2 wrote:
| I noticed this with one of my friend, and have tried to
| inculcate this mode of thinking and behaviour - he really
| listens and asks insightful question instead of talking about
| his political views. It just stuck me one day that I was the
| talking, and I had no real idea of his political views because
| he was so agreeable.
| orwin wrote:
| If you reduce politics to 'what politians do', sure, I avoid it
| too.
|
| Even when I know that outside of the US, most of us have the same
| opinions on what the trump admin is doing (especially in the pen
| and paper RPG community, where not being transphobic is basically
| a requirement), I still hate comments and discussions about it,
| probably for the same reason than the author does.
|
| I disagree with his axis though, I've read a lot, and I mean _a
| lot_ of books and the more I read, the more left I went. And I
| started almost tea-party libertarian, then liberal-libertarian
| (because logic, and my class) then I understood power and class
| and became original libertarian (think Emma Goldman).
|
| But politics are much more than that, it's how society organize,
| and if you can't talk to everybody about your city evicting the
| parasites who mismanaged and eventually brought down the
| waterlines because you're afraid of 'groupthink', you are fucked.
| shw1n wrote:
| Yeah I fully accept that there could be valid dots in the top
| left (or even top right) corners, just didn't include them to
| keep the chart's point simple and b/c it was also based on Paul
| Graham's article which made the same point
|
| > But politics are much more than that, it's how society
| organize, and if you can't talk to everybody about your city
| evicting the parasites who mismanaged and eventually brought
| down the waterlines because you're afraid of 'groupthink', you
| are fucked.
|
| Yeah I guess I differentiate between the individuals who could
| help you determine the truth of the mismanaging parasites vs
| the ones that just blindly support or hate them.
| orwin wrote:
| I do think you have as much top dots on the left, right and
| middle. Because the radical center peg themselves as
| 'reasonable', doesn't mean they don't have an ideology they
| follow blindly. TINA, the 'third way' and all this stuff is
| groupthink too.
|
| Just observing the epidermic reactions to MMT, the
| strawmaning, and all the Schopenhauer playbook thrown at a
| new, Occam's razor compatible economic explanation of how
| money works is probably what made me doubt this 'reasonable'
| stance, and I'm now convinced that once you've been persuaded
| that _you_ and your group are the 'reasonable', you're in
| fact so entrenched in your beliefs you'll dismiss anything
| that shake your worldview as unreasonable and strawman it
| (the lessWrong community is the perfect, small-scale
| example).
|
| The only dots you should find on top, outside of groupthink
| are the one who read, and wrote new concepts.
|
| > Yeah I guess I differentiate between the individuals who
| could help you determine the truth of the mismanaging
| parasites vs the ones that just blindly support or hate them
|
| The justice system found them guilty and they got fined, but
| if no one acted, they would have sold their water rights to a
| company with suspiciously the same executives and owners
| during bankruptcy. Political movement made the municipality
| sweep in during bankruptcy, claim the water rights as part of
| repayment, and now administer the water lines and cleaning
| stations (and the watchdog are happy with cleaner water, and
| we locals are happy with cheaper water).
|
| When everybody ignore politics, you'll have the West
| Virginian 'Freedom Industry' turn into 'Lexycon LLC', and
| nobody will say anything, because 'it's political'.
| marcuschong wrote:
| In the country where I live, the problem is that it became much
| of a religious question. People feel like one candidate
| represents values different than mine, and that by not aligning
| with them, I'm not an ally. I don't have friends with such
| different values, but managing family has become a big problem
| during these times. It's very hard, for example, hearing your
| mother-in-law defending a change in the constitution that would
| forbid women to have an abortion, even when raped and at any time
| of pregnancy, when you have a small daughter. That person is
| actively trying to make the world a horrible place for my family,
| according to my values and honestly any sane person.
|
| EDIT: typo.
| waltercool wrote:
| Discussing politics with friends and relatives is what makes you
| a moderate overall.
|
| Otherwise you will grow up inside an echo chamber, far away from
| reality.
|
| People talking about politics IRL makes you understand and reason
| other points of views. If you can't tolerate others views, then
| you are clearly a radical.
| paul7986 wrote:
| I do my best to avoid talking and or thinking too much about
| politics. If I do i then realize family members to friends have
| sold their mind, intelligence, ability to clearly point out right
| from wrong, etc to political emotional babble from either side.
| sD4fG_9hJ wrote:
| Thoughtful perspective on the social risks of political
| discussions. However, respectfully engaging with differing
| viewpoints is valuable for personal and societal growth. Perhaps
| focusing discussions on understanding each other's underlying
| values and experiences, rather than specific political positions,
| could lead to more productive conversations.
| gmoot wrote:
| This can be done, carefully, through in-person conversations. I
| think it may be nearly impossible on social media, whose
| primary purpose seems to be to enforce group identity.
| zephyreon wrote:
| This. I try to meet everyone where they are when entering into
| political discussions. I've learned a lot from people as a
| result of this and -- I'd like to think -- have successfully
| communicated an understanding of my own perspectives. Being
| able to sit down and talk to someone you disagree with is so
| important and I feel it is something we have gradually lost
| over time.
| crooked-v wrote:
| I have no reason to "respectfully engage" with beliefs like
| 'trans people should all be put in jail'
| (https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-
| policy/texa...) or 'kill all the Jews' (https://www.theatlantic
| .com/politics/archive/2017/08/nazis-r...).
| latexr wrote:
| On the flip side, one black man has reformed hundreds of KKK
| members through conversation alone.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-
| convinc...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Dav.
| ..
|
| Sometimes you have to fight1, but other times engaging with
| an open mind2 really is the most efficient strategy. Shouting
| at the opposition only cements them in their own thinking; to
| change minds you have to understand and engage them where
| they're at. And yes, this is _way_ easier said than done and
| can be quite frustrating.
|
| 1 You probably won't convince a fascist dictator to change
| their ways by appealing to their better nature, and it would
| take too long while irreperable damage is being done.
|
| 2 Even if the other side believes in something appallingly
| hateful.
| cardanome wrote:
| The perspective of the article is completely delusional. The
| idea that the author thinks they are above the petty "tribe"
| politics and have based their views on rationality and
| scientific evidence is complete bollocks.
|
| The author has less self-awareness that the classic "I voted
| for the guy everyone else is voting for" guy. At least the
| later has a hint of consciousness about his own limitations.
|
| Every ideology under the sun thinks they are based on objective
| truth. In reality our political views are shaped by the friends
| we have, our family, our upbringing, our social class, the
| media we consume, the experiences we made, our deep core vales
| and so much more. Most of it is not even conscious.
|
| If you think you are above it all, you are just deluding yours.
| You just enjoy being in the enlightened centrist tribe or
| whatever.
|
| Not choosing a stance is also choosing stance. If you see
| injustice and decide to stay neutral you decided to side with
| the oppressor.
|
| In the end it is up to you to decide which tribe you want to
| belong. Do you want to march with those that fight for human
| dignity and social progress or those that want to oppress the
| many for the benefit of the few. Or do you want to sit by the
| sidelines while other people are striped of their human rights?
| tlogan wrote:
| Excellent post.
|
| It wasn't always like this. I remember when you could be pro-gun
| and pro-environment--and still have thoughtful, respectful
| conversations with people who held different beliefs.
|
| Today, if you're not fully aligned with every talking point of a
| political party, you're instantly labeled either a fascist or a
| communist. And sometimes it borders on absurd: the moment party
| leadership shifts its stance, the whole tribe flips with it. It
| wasn't that long ago that Republicans staunchly opposed tariffs.
| Now? They're all in.
|
| My question is: What changed? When did we become so tribal--and
| why?
| ajkjk wrote:
| Large scale divergence in the two human moralities: social
| morality (rules for people around us to protect the community,
| largely coded liberal) and personal morality (moral intuitions
| for how to keep you and your immediate family safe). The two
| have become at odds with each other so everyone feels intensely
| and uncompromisingly threatened by those who ascribe more to
| the other, leading to two groups that can no longer even 'treat
| with the enemy' much less collaborate on their mutual
| preservation. This was aided along by a whole lot of largely
| unchecked fearmongering because it turns out that that sells
| views, clicks, and ratings.
|
| (and possibly also a general dumbification of everything due to
| bad education combined with lowering social standards for who
| is allowed to have a public voice and be take seriously;
| confusingly thus was one of the points of a standard of
| decorum, because it served as a filter on who was intelligent
| enough to be a thought leader.)
| 0dayz wrote:
| A combination of factors:
|
| 1. Apolitical people are now political
|
| 2. News stations running more opinion pieces than actual
| newsvand being selective about said news
|
| 3. Seeing politics as an identity similar to a belief instead
| of a state of mind
| adornKey wrote:
| People were always tribal. You just call out a group to be
| evil. And it takes just a little bit of propaganda and people
| will ignore any rational arguments and start harassing a group.
|
| Witch-hunts (last conviction in Europe was 1944), jews,
| communists, americans, non-americans, all sorts of religious
| groups, ... history is full of that.
|
| One thing that changed recently is that nowadays propaganda is
| very organized and well funded. I also think there was a pretty
| calm period for a few decades (but only in certain regions of
| the planet). In the cold war period the tribes were very fixed
| and the evil was always far away, so locally not much happened.
| ranger207 wrote:
| IMO it was technology allowing more viewpoints to be expressed.
| First with more than 3 TV stations, then of course the
| internet. Before that transition, everyone was mostly part of
| one tribe, because mass media was mostly homogeneous. After, it
| was increasingly easy to find tribes that fit your exact
| viewpoints, and reject other sources of information
| seanw444 wrote:
| > It wasn't that long ago that Republicans staunchly opposed
| tariffs. Now? They're all in.
|
| Which Republicans are we talking? The old guard that held
| leadership positions for decades, making the decisions while
| most of the public weren't invested? Or the new guard that
| hijacked the Republican party after the population started
| getting invested after recent events?
|
| Every "conservative" I know is in favor of protectionism, and
| tariffs are a strong manifestation of that. Don't conflate the
| get-what-you-get leadership, and the disenfranchised voterbase
| for having been the same people.
| tlogan wrote:
| Both Regan and George H.W. Bush were anti tariffs and pro
| free market. I believe the change happened with Trump. Good
| interview about that is here [1]
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/19/nx-s1-5215953/how-the-gop-
| wen...
| seanw444 wrote:
| And most of the conservatives I know that are actually
| politically-aware are critical of both. For many reasons.
| Bush for his wars and the Patriot Act, and Reagan for his
| anti-2A policies and eternal blue-ification of California.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| From what I've seen, tribalism is core to innate human nature.
| It's always been there, and until human nature can be edited
| like a spreadsheet, it always will be.
|
| What's changed now is how visible it's become and how much
| easier it is to mass organize people and split up into echo
| chambers that favor a specific viewpoint.
|
| Before, people were not well organized. The internet has been a
| revolution in spreading views and allowing like minded people
| to hang out together. Turns out that's not always for the best.
| But there's no going back. It's only going to get worse until
| something happens that unites people more than it divides them.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| I'll never forget calling Yang a tool in a group of math nerds
| back around 2019. Instantly outgrouped. I don't think this alone
| caused our friendship to crumble, but the fact that we couldn't
| discuss actual policy makes me tend to agree with this post.
| Animats wrote:
| _To have an informed view on any given issue, one needs to:_
|
| 1. _understand economics, game theory, philosophy, sales,
| business, military strategy, geopolitics, sociology, history, and
| more_
|
| 2. _be able to understand and empathize with the various (and
| often opposing) groups involved in a topic_
|
| 3. _detect and ignore their own bias_
|
| 1) is a lot of work. Just finding out what's going on is hard.
| Partly because news-gathering organizations are far more thinly
| staffed than they used to be. There aren't enough reporters out
| there digging, which is hard work. There are too many pundits and
| influencers blithering. Read the output of some news outlet,
| cross out "opinion" items and stories based on press releases or
| press conferences, and there's not much left. The Economist, the
| Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the New York Times, and Reuters
| still have people who dig for facts. Beyond that, reporters are
| thin on the ground. If you can only read one thing, read the
| Economist for a year. Each week they cover some country in
| detail, and over a year, most of the world gets a close look.
| (Although at the moment, their China coverage is weak, because
| their reporters were kicked out of China for doing too much
| digging.)
|
| Background is necessary. Many pundits seem to lack much of a
| sense of history. Currently, understanding the runups to WWI and
| WWII is very useful. Understand what Putin is talking about when
| he references Catherine the Great and Peter the Great. Geography
| matters. Look at Ukraine in Google Earth and see that most of the
| current fighting is over flat farmland and small towns, much like
| Iowa. Look at Taiwan and realize how narrow and exposed an island
| it is. There's no room to retreat after an invasion, unlike
| Ukraine.
|
| As for empathy, there's a huge split in America between the areas
| above and below 700 people per square mile. Above 1,500 per
| square mile, almost always blue. Below 400 per square mile,
| almost always red.[1] This effect dwarfs race, religion,
| ideology, or income level. It's very striking and not well
| recognized in public discourse. There's a minimum viable
| population density below which small towns stop working as self-
| supporting entities. (On the ground, this shows up as empty
| storefronts on Main Street and a closed high school.)
|
| On bias, there are many people in the US whose lot has been
| slowly getting worse for decades now. That's the underlying
| source of most US political problems.
|
| [1] https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-
| pol...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I guess I just don't see "tribalism". I know it's a popular
| description though for the divisiveness we find ourselves in
| politically.
|
| But I consider the things important to me, the beliefs, the
| issues: and they, all of them, align with a progressive, left-
| leaning ideology. I'm not just glomming on to everything one
| "tribe" or another stands for ... one group actually reflects
| everything I believe. (I think I could split a few hairs here and
| there, but we're still talking perhaps 95% alignment.)
|
| But I don't think that is too surprising. Others, smarter than
| me, have gone into great detail about the underpinnings of left-
| leaning or right-leaning world views in people. Fear of change,
| empathy ... a number of ideas have been put forth. By this
| reasoning it naturally follows that those of a certain
| "personality" will also share common beliefs, ideologies.
|
| The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere
| in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels
| dismissive.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| The graph in the article of "what the political spectrum
| actually is" where independent thought was only found in the
| middle was so funny to me that I had to do a double take. Maybe
| this is a joke or April Fool's prank or something?
|
| I read the article quickly so maybe I'm misreading it but if
| that graph is serious it really undermines his position as a
| thoughtful moderate to me. But maybe he really does believe
| that everyone on the left and the right only has groupthink. I
| agree with you that it's definitely not _all_ tribalism
| rf15 wrote:
| European here. I'm on the left, but I don't hang out much
| with people from the left: they're really often driven by
| ideology and cannot for the life of them come up with working
| political plans to push the needle. They're completely
| rejecting the complexity of compromise and gradual change
| towards the ideal, convinced that any act that isn't absolute
| is a betrayal of their values.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| Sure I mean a lot of people on every political leaning
| don't have practical policies but that's besides the point
| (people can even have bad independent thoughts so
| impractical policies aren't inherently relevant). The graph
| isn't even "often people who disagree with me are tribal"
| it's "literally only some people near me ideologically are
| independent thinkers".
|
| Edit: this is the graph, everything outside of a group of
| moderates is 100% on the "groupthink" side of the graph.
| It's an inherently condescending way to look at people who
| you disagree with and a disservice to your point if you're
| trying to get people to listen to each other.
| https://images.spr.so/cdn-
| cgi/imagedelivery/j42No7y-dcokJuNg...
| bodiekane wrote:
| I think you're taking the graph way too literally.
|
| The Republicans and Democrats are both coalitions made up
| of many different groups, and their policies are
| constantly shifting depending on which individuals get
| elected and which of those sub-groups hold more power, as
| well as due to different sub-groups shifting allegiances.
|
| It's statistically almost impossible that someone would
| agree 100% with the platform of the Republicans or
| Democrats at any given moment. Even if you just pretend
| there are exactly two stances on a given issue (R or D)
| you'd still be looking at like 2^1000 different possible
| outcomes (for 1,000 different issues). The more perfectly
| someone claims to align to one party, the more likely it
| is that they're doing so out of tribalism than because
| they actually matched the exact one-in-a-zillion set of
| opinions.
| gonzobonzo wrote:
| Even more so when you see how quickly these coalitions
| will shift their beliefs or take on new beliefs when
| they're signaled to do so by leaders of the coalition.
|
| You often see this in real time during political
| conversations (both online and offline). Someone will
| say, "No one on my side ever said X, that's a vicious
| smear perpetrated by the other side." Someone will
| response with an example of a prominent leader on their
| side saying X. The first person will suddenly do a 180,
| and start explaining why X is just a commonsense position
| and it's silly for anyone to be offended by it.
| lupusreal wrote:
| This is why I don't talk politics with anybody I respect.
| It would quickly make me a misanthrope.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| AI's ability to sift through text is almost to the point
| of being able to pick out these idiots so they can be
| ignored.
|
| We're not too far off from a future where anyone can
| mouse over their username and a browser extension will
| tell them whether the username they are mousing over is
| consistent in their beliefs or if they're a flip flopping
| POS shill for whatever color party they're peddling the
| policy of.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| The graph isn't "agrees with Republican" and "agrees with
| Democrat" as the axis (I also would say you can agree
| with people and still be a free thinker, viewing
| positions as independent doesn't really make sense,
| there's underlying ideology that heavily correlates them
| but all of this is besides the point). The idea that the
| far left is agreeing dogmatically with the democratic
| platform is clearly factually incorrect to anyone who has
| met people actually on the far left (they rarely even
| agree with other people on the far left) and a similar
| thing can be said about the far right.
|
| The really obvious example of this is look how much of a
| thorn in the side of the Republican Congressional
| leadership the far right has been. Agreeing rigidly with
| a party will not put you at the edge of the graphs at all
| (for most parties globally it would put you somewhere in
| the middle)
| oasisaimlessly wrote:
| The graph X axis could just as well have been labelled
| "agrees with Republicans" and "agrees with Democrats";
| perhaps it would've been clearer that way. But really,
| any polarization axis would've worked.
|
| The ideal graph would have two opposing labels
| dynamically generated according to the beliefs of the
| reader to be along a polarization axis for which the
| reader exists in the middle.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| It's not just that the axes are wrong, there's a
| fundamental problem with the idea of the graph in an
| article about considering viewpoints and overcoming
| tribalism. Fundamentally the author put a graph in the
| article about tribalism and not considering other views
| where only people close to him ideologically are "free
| thinkers" (it's especially weird since "free thinkers"
| are congregated where most people are). You can sorta see
| this problem with the rest of the article, there are a
| lot of claims about how other people think badly and how
| he thinks is good. This is his perogative but it makes
| the article deeply insular and not really about how to
| understand and reason with other people.
|
| It's particularly frustrating to me since from my
| experience I think both sides thinking he is farther away
| ideologically than he is is from then is from this
| tendency. I have the opposite problem, people generally
| think I'm much closer ideologically than I am even though
| I'm uncompromising in my principles (I'm very far left
| and even a vegan, which is anathema to many people). I've
| found if I listen to people and, more importantly, am
| willing to understand and speak to _their_ values the
| more my experience is the exact opposite of the writer
| 's. People's political views are often irrational but
| also they are driven by a diverse set of underlying
| ideologies and values and if you think "independent
| thought" is going to cluster in particular spot in an
| ideological spectrum and everyone else is just subject to
| groupthink (but you aren't somehow) then of course
| talking to other people who aren't ideologically close to
| you is going to be miserable.
| rob74 wrote:
| > _They 're completely rejecting the complexity of
| compromise and gradual change towards the ideal, convinced
| that any act that isn't absolute is a betrayal of their
| values._
|
| Interestingly enough, this also describes a member of the
| Trump Party (formerly known as the Republican Party).
| bell-cot wrote:
| American here. Otherwise, fairly similar.
|
| Not saying that our right is much better. Their top
| "virtue" seems to be competent campaigning & hard work in
| pursuit of political power. (Which, obviously, worked for
| them.) Vs. our left seems too busy holding low-effort
| ideological purity beauty contests to particularly care
| about being in power.
|
| I've heard that some of the brighter voters, who voted for
| Democrats due to "Trump is the worst choice" arguments, are
| waking up to just _how_ low-functioning the Dem 's are. Not
| saying that that'll do any good - but it's nice to hear.
| whiteboardr wrote:
| This. 100%
|
| Same behaviour, or should we call it helplessness, can be
| witnessed in democrats responses since this whole thing
| went into round 2.
|
| I'm shocked on how little actionable and constructive goals
| are part of the "conversation".
| n4r9 wrote:
| I think you're talking about a subtly different thing. OP
| was simply saying "it's very possible to be a rational
| independent thinker and yet be non-centrist". What you're
| saying is "a lot of people I've met who are more left than
| me are impractical".
|
| Relating to your point, I would add something based on my
| experience in the UK. In the last 30 years we've twice had
| a Labour leader elected. Both times campaigning as a hard-
| nosed centre-left pragmatist, and with some on the left
| echoing similar sentiments about compromise and pushing the
| needle.
|
| Blair admittedly did some good stuff - Lords reform and
| minimum wage. But he also introduced and then tripled
| university fees, greatly expanded private initiatives in
| the public sector, and engaged in an activist
| interventionist foreign policy culminating in the invasion
| of Iraq. These are changes whose ill effects we're still
| reeling from as a country.
|
| Starmer is looking to shape up very similarly, from his
| U-turns on private school charitable status, tuition fees
| and the two-child cap, to his reluctance to condemn the
| Gazan genocide and cuts to disability allowance.
|
| Was it better to have these as prime minister Vs the
| conservative candidate? Yes, probably. Can they really be
| said to be pushing the needle? I doubt it.
| shw1n wrote:
| it was meant as a visual specifically for Paul Graham's
| article here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
|
| I should probably generate a new one or just remove since it
| appears to have sent this message to multiple people
|
| But yeah I don't think it's entirely tribalism, but I do
| largely agree with PG's essay, though I'd understand a
| contesting of his statement that "the left and right are
| equally wrong about half the time"
| trinsic2 wrote:
| I read that I think he means it is tribal thinking if you
| have a desire to convince instead of search for truth in a
| curious way.
|
| I didnt read that people on the left or the right are
| always tribal. But yeah, its easy to go that way when you
| are not able to see the truth in opposite viewpoints.
| shawndrost wrote:
| But which is it? Do you agree with Graham's essay and your
| own graph, or do you disagree?
|
| It sounds like you believe in the graph, but don't want to
| turn people off. Just own your belief.
|
| FWIW I think you should disagree with Graham's essay and
| your own graph. Saying that "left" and "right" were both
| 50% wrong is like saying the same about "federalist" and
| "anti-federalist". Even if the sides are 50% wrong, the
| free thinkers would be widely distributed.
| shw1n wrote:
| Ironically this seems like an example of the tribalism my
| essay is about -- I agree with his essay, but only
| partially agree with the graph
|
| I think the hump could be slightly shifted left or right,
| but the points on the graph are the averages of an
| individual's _entire_ collection of views
|
| I don't believe an independent thinker would come up with
| a set of views that perfectly match the left or right's
| doctrine since at least some of those views are somewhat
| arbitrary -- in that sense I agree with him
| hgomersall wrote:
| You even say so in your essay. I'd say an issue is people
| picking up on the graph but ignoring what you wrote.
| duffmancd wrote:
| I think the issue might stem from the fact that (as I
| read it) the essay is talking about "for the people who
| are moderate (in the middle of the left/right axis), some
| are distributed higher on your graph, while some are
| lower". Which says nothing about "for the people who are
| distributed higher on the graph, how many are in the
| middle of the left/right axis". Your graph makes explicit
| an answer to the second question which the essay avoids.
| (There is a bit of an implication in the last two
| paragraphs, but PG is explicit it's only about people he
| knows).
| jampekka wrote:
| There are also centrist doctrines. Even explicit ones
| like the radical centrism.
|
| A major problem is trying to project a hugely
| multifaceted phenomenon like political outlook into one,
| or even few, dimensions. And then even discretizing the
| one dimension. And then categorizing (other) people's
| thinking or ideologies into these.
|
| Another problem is assuming that there is some universal
| "optimal" or even good policy. Instead there can be even
| fundamentally contradicting interests or goals between
| e.g., dare I say, classes which can lead to well informed
|
| I'm not claiming you don't appreciate these, but the
| conclusions to me seem to require such problematic
| assumptions. The intent is likely something like trying
| to simplify complex phenomena into something manageable
| (i.e. an ideology), but these tend to be very leaky
| abstractions.
| leoedin wrote:
| I don't think the graph agrees with the essay.
|
| In the essay, the "unintentional moderate" is defined as
| someone who holds all kinds of views, some from the far
| left, some from the far right, some from the middle - but
| by chance the average of their views makes them a
| moderate.
|
| I had to go looking for that, because the graph doesn't
| show that at all. I think the graph is a bad take on the
| ideas in Paul Graham's article.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It's not uncommon for people who decide they have
| "discovered" the "real political spectrum" by simply adding a
| new axis to the traditional left-right spectrum to
| coincidentally idealize one pole on that new axis, viewing
| all variation on the left-right axis as indicative of
| distraction from what is important.
|
| Asserting that people varying on the left-right spectrum also
| cluster around the _anti-ideal_ pole of the idealized axis
| while everyone closer to the ideal pole clusters around the
| left-right center is not as common, but reflects the same
| cognitive bias, though it is _particularly_ amusing when that
| axis independent thought (ideal) vs. groupthink (anti-ideal),
| such that freethinkers are asserted to by ideological uniform
| even outside of the shared commit to "free" thought, while
| sheepish adherents of groupthink are more ideologically
| diverse.
|
| (And, yes, that graph is deadly serious -- as well as, IMO,
| hilariously wrong [0] -- and fairly central to the theme of
| the post.)
|
| It's even more funny that this "free thinker" is decrying
| tribalist groupthink, asserting (as already discussed) that
| free thought exists only in an extremely narrow band in the
| center of the left-right axis, and talking about how they
| can't talk politics with anyone outside their group and are
| "desperate for like-minded folk". The lack of self-awareness
| is...palpable.
|
| It's even more funny that all the ideas he embraces and
| purports to have trouble finding people he agrees with are
| the standard doctrines of the rationalist/EA/longermist
| faction that is so popular in the tech/AI space (and the
| conceit of being uniquely free thinking is also common to the
| faction.)
|
| [0] Actual free thinkers are, IME, distributed widely -- not
| necessarily evenly, but certainly not clustered in one spot
| -- across both the left-right axis and a number of other
| political axes [1][2], such as the authoritarian-libertarian
| axis, so both the distribution shown and the assertion that
| the "real" political spectrum is two dimensional with only
| freethought vs. groupthink added to the classic left-right
| axis are incorrect.
|
| [1] For a number of reasons, including both differences in
| life experiences and thus perceived probabilities on various
| factual propositions, but also on fundamental values which
| life experiences may impact, but not in a deductive manner,
| because you can't reason to "ought" from "is".
|
| [2] Free thinkers _do_ differ from groupthinkers in that
| their positions in the multidimensional space of political
| values are likely not to fall into the clusters of
| established tribes, but to have some views typical of one
| tribe while other others fall out of that tribes typical
| space (and possibly even into the space of an opposing
| tribe.) But there are enough different tribes
| shw1n wrote:
| posting my explanation of the graph from another comment
| here
|
| "it was meant as a visual specifically for Paul Graham's
| article here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
|
| I should probably generate a new one or just remove since
| it appears to have sent this message to multiple people
|
| But yeah I don't think it's entirely tribalism, but I do
| largely agree with PG's essay, though I'd understand a
| contesting of his statement that 'the left and right are
| equally wrong about half the time'"
| musicale wrote:
| Yes, you're misreading it. Independent thought vs. groupthink
| is the vertical axis.
| Lendal wrote:
| What he means is that according to the graph if you call
| yourself an "independent thinker" then you can't be an
| extremist. You are automatically a centrist. All the dots
| on the "independent thinker" half are all centrist. None
| are left or right. An interesting bias that he's admitting
| to. Made me roll my eyes and stop reading right there, and
| just skim the rest for all the "independent thinker"
| tropes.
|
| If you want to feel superior and virtue signal, just label
| yourself an "independent thinker." It's so easy.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| It's common in tribalism to see ones own tribe as rational
| and the other tribes as groupthink.
|
| We can see this in discussions about misinformation today.
| "Brainwashed masses" is a tribal concept about a tribe.
| chromatin wrote:
| Yes, that also struck me as nonsensical.
|
| If he were really trying to demonstrate a 2d Gaussian _, it
| would instead be a circle or elipse of points with highest
| density at the origin.
|
| _ perhaps in the end he was not
| keiferski wrote:
| My thought is that if someone aligns exactly with X political
| ideology, they aren't really thinking for themselves and are
| just adopting whatever their tribal group believes about X
| subject. I see this all the time - collections of beliefs that
| otherwise have nothing to do with each other, but are adopted
| by the same people because "that's what X group thinks about
| it." This is very rarely a conscious thing.
|
| This becomes even more obvious when you look at how these
| collections of beliefs have changed over time, which to me just
| shows how they aren't based on any fundamental intrinsic
| personality traits but are trendy and groupthink-based. Ditto
| for geographic differences.
|
| So I don't think being a centrist implies one is not tribal,
| rather that _the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of
| issues align with the "default" of a group_ implies how tribal
| you are.
|
| In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person
| probably has a basket of opinions that don't fit into neat left
| or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
| shw1n wrote:
| this is exactly it, from here:
| https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
| n4r9 wrote:
| This essay feels shallow and dismissive to me. The
| sentiment is that you can't be a smart, independent thinker
| whilst going too far left or right. As with many of his
| essays, my take is that PG - who lives a highly privileged
| life - is basing this opinion on the caricature of reality
| that he gleans from the media and internet forums. It's
| easy to think what he thinks when the only representation
| you see of the far left is mindless "woke"ism.
|
| Firstly, does he think that Marx was dumb? And leading
| left-wing figures like AOC, Sanders, Varoufakis, Zinn, or
| Zizek? No, for all you might disagree with them, they're
| smart and independent. They did not acquire their opinions
| in bulk. I even admit that right-wing figures like Shapiro,
| Bannon etc... are smart and independent, even though I
| think they're snakes.
|
| Secondly, the essay overstates the degree of uniformity
| within the far left and right. Have you not seen the
| animosity between anarchists and Trotskyites? They only
| agree insofar as believing we can do better than
| capitalism. And those on the far right who have a global
| free market ideology will be at odds with those who want to
| restrict movement and apply protectionist tariffs.
|
| [EDITED TO ADD] Thirdly, he presupposes that the
| distinction between right and left is purely one of logical
| competence. This is captured by him saying "both sides are
| equally wrong". But personal values also drive the
| polarisation. Those on the right tend to highly value
| tradition, loyalty, and family. Those on the left tend to
| highly value universal welfare and the environment. It's
| not really possible to label these "right" or "wrong", they
| are expressions of our fundamental desires for ourselves
| and the world. If you start from different axioms, you'll
| tend to get different corollaries even if perfect logic is
| applied.
| jampekka wrote:
| It's the technocratic or perhaps "enlightened centrist"
| tribe. There's similar vibe in the post, and even though
| there's some introspection about the author's own tribe,
| he doesn't seem to question whether his political
| thinking could be tribal.
|
| It's indeed typical for this tribe to off-hand dismiss
| thinking that they deem somehow "ideological" without
| even really trying to figure out what the thinking is.
| Also a lot of self-congratulation, exceptionalism and
| motivated reasoning is exhibited, but these are typical
| features of any tribe.
| rightbyte wrote:
| You are describing the problem of getting a picture of a
| party or movement from media and without interacting with
| them.
| n4r9 wrote:
| That could explain the second issue I describe. _Maybe_
| the first. But I do not think he has such an excuse for
| the third.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye sure the third point is a attempt to differentiate
| left and right on a fundamental level.
|
| If I were to do that, I would say something like "pull
| the ladder up behind you or tear it down before you" with
| a comical touch. I don't think it is possible to keep
| such descriptions short or stringent.
| jjani wrote:
| At the risk of sounding very arrogant, I've found this
| incredibly obvious even when I was just 18 years old. Decades
| have passed, plenty of my beliefs have changed, but this one
| hasn't.
|
| The chance that _one_ "ideology", whether it's liberalism,
| conservatism, anarchism , fascism or any-ism is always the
| right answer to every single societal question, is 0. It's
| comparable to the idea of exactly 1 of the (tens of)
| thousands of religions being the _true_ one, correct in
| everything, with all of the others being wrong.
|
| And this extends to politics. Where I'm from, the political
| landscape is very different from the US, with at least 5+
| different parties that support different policies in various
| ways. At the same time, it's similar - there isn't a single
| one that approaches things on a case-by-case basis, each of
| them being ideology-based.
|
| > So I don't think being a centrist implies one is not
| tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a
| variety of issues align with the "default" of a group implies
| how tribal you are.
|
| Absolutely, "centrism" is an ideology in itself. This is also
| why the usage of the word "moderate" in the article and by PG
| is very unfortunate. That word too comes with a whole lot of
| baggage, and saying that independent thought leads to one
| being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that
| word, is straight up wrong. We need a different word, but I'm
| not great at coining those. "pragmatic" is the best one I can
| come up with. I can feel a "pragmatism is an ideology!"
| coming, but "the ideology of not looking at things from an
| ideological perspective" is entirely different from anything
| else. I'm sure the bright minds here can give better words.
|
| > In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent
| person probably has a basket of opinions that don't fit into
| neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
|
| Very much so. And as the article points out, this is
| unfortunately a very lonely experience, so it's completely
| logical that most don't opt for this, instead choosing the
| warmth of a dogmatic community.
| keiferski wrote:
| Funny that you say pragmatic, because that's exactly the
| word I tend to use when describing my own political
| beliefs. The best that I have come up with is "pragmatic
| with a propensity for..." and a few sub-categories that
| more accurately define what I'd like to see politically
| happen.
|
| For example - _preventionism_. It seems to me that many
| issues could be avoided or eliminated entirely if we tried
| to prevent them from happening in the first place, rather
| than choosing between two actions, both with unavoidable
| negative consequences.
|
| Another is _aesthetics._ For some reason, the simple desire
| to make public spaces more beautiful is not really a policy
| position adopted by any political group, at least in a
| primary way.
|
| And so maybe the solution is an issue-based political
| system in which votes and resources go toward specific
| issues and not parties. (Or work toward eliminating those
| issues in the first place.)
| nradov wrote:
| Some states such as California have a non-partisan ballot
| proposition where citizens can vote directly on issues.
| It generally works fine, although it's not clear whether
| the net impact has really been positive.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| On the one hand it defeated affirmative action repeatedly
| in one of the most left wing states, on the other
| proposition 13 created a class of landed gentry and
| permanently screwed the state's tax base.
| shw1n wrote:
| PG has two different terms for it in his essay:
| unintentional moderates vs intentional moderates
|
| https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
|
| That's what represents the two circled areas in the graph,
| though I realize if people don't have that context it could
| be confusing
|
| added an explanation to clear things up
|
| fwiw, I don't think that's arrogant, I've met plenty of
| high schoolers that understand this concept
| rafaeltorres wrote:
| > saying that independent thought leads to one being
| "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word,
| is straight up wrong
|
| Agreed. Independent thought usually leads to one being
| moderate when that person is already living a comfortable
| life.
| yibg wrote:
| Maybe one counter indication of tribalism is how often you
| disagree with your "tribe". I'm fairly left leaning too, but
| I also find myself disagreeing with a lot of left leaning
| policies or talking points. Maybe that's a good sign.
| bluescrn wrote:
| It's only a good sign if they're able to speak out, and
| aren't terrified of expressing their dissent in public.
|
| Both the left and the right seem captured by a small
| minority of radicals, using social media echo
| chambers/purity spirals to shut down often-quite-reasonable
| disagreement. And we're clearly past the point at which we
| can just ignore 'social media politics', given how much it
| seems to have led to the current state of things in the US.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| At the risk of sounding pessimistic, and as someone who
| also identifies himself as leftist: If the end result is
| voting between black/white binary choices, and that act of
| voting is itself one of the most important self-expression,
| does the fact that I disagree with them in a few points
| matter?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >does the fact that I disagree with them in a few points
| matter?
|
| Perhaps not, but you're also lending legitimacy to a
| system that is abusing you.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| But this isn't a board game that you can quit and go
| home. You are subject to your government rules regardless
| of if you participate or not. So it is probably better to
| try and get political representation that you agree with
| 60% of the time, rather than one you agree with 5% of the
| time.
| 9rx wrote:
| Even better is to try and get a democracy than to live
| life by the whims of a dictator. Getting to choose your
| favourite dictator is of little consolation.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> and that act of voting is itself one of the most
| important self-expression_
|
| That's what lobbyists want you to believe, at least. It
| makes their job a lot easier if they are the only ones
| carrying out democracy.
|
| You need to select someone trustworthy enough to not
| botch your message, sure, but _usually_ all political
| parties put up people who are trustworthy enough. What is
| much more important is your expression to the hired after
| they are on the job. That is the only way they are going
| to know what you are thinking. They are not mind readers,
| surprisingly.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Arguing with leftists all the time is the sure sign that
| you're a leftist.
|
| (seriously, this is a significant asymmetry between the two
| that has been there for at least a century. There isn't one
| lockstep leftism, there's thousands of micro factions
| arguing about most things)
| engineer_22 wrote:
| why do you think the political right is any different?
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| the right is good at presenting a facade of cohesion.
| those differences are better-hidden from view until the
| common enemies of the right are destroyed and they need
| to begin eating each other.
| thrance wrote:
| To be fair, I've rarely seen a group fighting itself more
| than the progressive left. If tribalism truly exists, it
| exists mostly on the right.
| infecto wrote:
| Right but that's because there are more micro interests on
| the left. It's still tribal though. If I start to bring up
| deregulation of building housing, there will be a strong
| immediate backlash by certain factions on the left. I see
| it more that there is little room for discussion, within
| these different groups there are only binary options and if
| you are with them on all talking points, well you are the
| enemy.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Emotional investment is a subtly different issue to
| package-deal opinions.
| pixl97 wrote:
| > If I start to bring up deregulation of building
| housing, there will be a strong immediate backlash by
| certain factions on the left.
|
| I do suspect that if you what the deregulation actually
| meant to both left and right people you'd find two
| (probably overlapping) camps aligned on NIMBY and Housing
| prices go up as your largest groups.
|
| Structural and safety engineers regardless of political
| affiliation will tell you why deregulation of some
| standards is a bad idea.
| nkrisc wrote:
| You've hit the nail on the head. The platforms of political
| parties are amalgamations of specific interests and agendas,
| and not necessarily a cohesive world view born of an aligned
| set of principles. Most (all) political parties have
| positions that conflict logically, spiritually, or
| practically. Yes, that includes your preferred party on the
| right or left.
|
| So anyone who's views align perfectly with a party are
| probably just parroting what they've heard because no
| sensible individual would arrive at that set of values
| naturally on their own; it would - and does - take some
| serious mental gymnastics to hold these contradictory values
| in your head.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| You're correct. Most people's views (i.e. moderates) are
| ideologically inconsistent with party-line. The loud X/bsky
| types refuse to decouple, and will double down even if the
| facts are wrong. Mind you on social media blue-tribe is
| much further left than the Democratic party.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent
| person probably has a basket of opinions that don't fit into
| neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
|
| That doesn't stop them from voting a straight red or blue
| ticket every time if that's what they've been indoctrinated
| to do.
|
| We've all encountered some old man who by all accounts should
| be a republican. They own a small business, have conservative
| social views, like their guns, minimize taxes, etc, etc. But
| they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they
| learned to do back in the 1960s. And on the other side is the
| stereotypical southern white woman who believes in every
| social thing the democratic party has but still votes red
| because she was raised in a religious household and came of
| age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to
| christians.
| keiferski wrote:
| Sure, but to be fair, we're talking about political
| discussions and not strictly voting behavior. It seems like
| a given to me that most voting behavior is only a vague
| approximation of what people actually think and want.
| brightlancer wrote:
| This is such a great contrast:
|
| > But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what
| they learned to do back in the 1960s.
|
| and
|
| > but still votes red because she was raised in a religious
| household and came of age during the peak of the right's
| lean toward peddling to christians.
|
| There's no explanation for why the old man votes "blue"
| other than he learned it in the 60s. OTOH, the woman votes
| "red" because "she was raised in a religious household" and
| started voting when The Right was "peddling to christians".
|
| "peddling" -- that's a pretty negative term.
|
| I don't know if it's ironic or demonstrative that an
| article about how difficult it can be to have political
| conversations produces a comment thread with such biased
| viewpoints.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| You don't have to consider yourself part of a tribe. Others
| will consider you anyway.
|
| You are a man or a woman, young or old, Asian, White, Black,
| Latino, straight, gay, rich, poor slim, fat, etc.
| roenxi wrote:
| The technical terms for the first few in that list are
| sexism, ageism and racism. While it is true people do that,
| it is considered a bad idea because it doesn't capture
| reality in a productive and meaningful way. And doesn't
| seem relevant to keiferski's comment.
|
| The aim should be that people have to _voluntarily_
| associate with their tribe. It might be the hermit tribe
| where all the hermits sign up to be alone together.
| YZF wrote:
| I think the claim is that a lot of people stick with the tribe
| regardless of how closely it matches their world views. It
| might be dismissive but it resonates. I've seen people keep
| voting for the same parties even when the policies have shifted
| very significantly.
|
| Since you are left leaning, presumably American, a good example
| is the Republicans. The current policies and values of the
| Republicans seem to be _very_ different than let 's say those
| of 20 years ago. But you don't see a lot of movement, i.e. you
| don't really see people saying because your actions of policies
| changed I'm going to re-evaluate my support for you. Maybe the
| other team is now closer to my world views. It's a lot more
| common that people just keep voting for their camp or team. I'm
| sure there are studies, this is very anecdotal. There are also
| many e.g. single issue voters, they only care about a single
| issue and nothing else.
|
| Independent thinkers, who dive deep into issues, who challenge
| beliefs, who weigh multiple issues and considerations, who
| potentially shift their position when the goal posts have moved
| or they've evaluated new information, are rare. It's much
| easier to stay in an echo chamber/team/tribe. We see this all
| the time, another example is the pandemic. It's lack of nuance.
|
| You see this in the political discourse. Instead of debating
| things of substance it's more of a rally around the team
| approach. You're never going to see in-depth
| discussion/analysis on tax policies, or security policies.
| Anything that doesn't meet your world view is automatically
| discredited whether it has merit or not, It's going to be they
| bad we good/polarizing/conspiracies etc. This pushes people
| farther apart and I think it also pushes policies farther
| apart. Maybe _sometimes_ it is that simple but plenty of times
| it 's not.
| shw1n wrote:
| exactly
| crote wrote:
| A lot of this is due to the failure of the American political
| system: there is simply no room for a third party. A lot of
| people don't _want_ to vote for "their" party, it's merely a
| strategic vote in an attempt to keep the worse of two evil
| out of power.
|
| If you vote for a third-party candidate, you might just as
| well not have voted at all. The parties will only genuinely
| start caring about policy when that gets fixed, and voters
| will only start looking into politics when there is more than
| one option on _their_ side of the aisle.
| toast0 wrote:
| There is room for third parties, but it's a hard road and
| in my lifetime, I've not seen any parties really try to
| take the road.
|
| You've got to get your party organized at all levels and
| running candidates in most contests. Everyone seems to want
| to run a Presidential candidate, but if you're going to run
| only one election, it should be one you have a chance of
| winning. A lot of federal office holders previously held
| state or local office. If you want to seriously contest
| federal offices, you need to have candidates with elected
| experience. So, start with local districts, city
| council/mayorship, maybe county offices. From there, work
| towards state office. Then you can pick up some house
| seats, and eventually senate seats too. When the time is
| right, maybe try some of your seasoned politicians for
| President.
| lucyjojo wrote:
| world views change with time and parties lead&follow the
| process at the same time.
|
| that will be shown strongly in a locked 2 party system like
| the usa has.
|
| you say it is strange that not more people switch camps, but
| this is not accidental, an extreme amount of effort and
| resources are spent to maintain this.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| Thing is you don't even need a deep dive. Some things sound
| fishy. Some things are obvious political spin. This alone
| should stop people from identifying with any party.
| wwarner wrote:
| By definition, reason can only take you so far in politics, as
| it's the arena in which decisions must be made without complete
| information. No matter how well reasoned your arguments, no
| matter how well informed you are, you're still going to resist
| switching allegiances. So, imo, politics is just about 99%
| loyalty.
| protocolture wrote:
| I think it refers to people, who I have run into quite a lot,
| who when faced with a new fact about politics or the behaviour
| of politicians, back the team over the idea.
|
| Like if you were to say consider yourself a progressive. I
| would consider you a progressive, unless you for instance,
| supported something incredibly conservative that was performed
| by a "Good Guy" politician on your team.
|
| For instance, we used to have this chap Daniel Andrews. Who was
| for better or worse, a mild progressive. He took a very hard
| stance on Covid related issues. Progressives, backed the man
| regardless. Conservatives criticised his every move. However,
| his own human rights review, found that he had violated the
| human rights of citizens in certain circumstances.
|
| If you mention this to his critics, it reinforces their team.
| But if you mention this (incredibly obvious good faith
| criticism) to his supporters, not only does it reinforce their
| team, but they immediately seek to identify you as someone on
| the other team. A "crazy anti lockdown conservative" or
| similar. - That for me is the essence of tribalism.
|
| To be fair I think this is a symptom of social media rather
| than just political awareness.
| shw1n wrote:
| agreed -- I also think social media exacerbated this
| Devilspawn6666 wrote:
| I've seen another example over the last few days.
|
| Quite a few people who have been vociferously pro-EU and in
| favour of their protectionism, tariffs and non-tariff trade
| barriers have been going crazy over the US imposing tariffs,
| even though the US rates are far lower than the EU's.
|
| A similar group has historically been strongly against
| government corruption but recently have been attacking
| efforts to uncover and stop corruption in the US Federal
| government.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > efforts to uncover and stop corruption in the US Federal
| government.
|
| Unserious. The big cheques in Wisconsin don't count? The
| presidential cryptocurrency?
| myrmidon wrote:
| > even though the US rates are far lower than the EU's
|
| What does "far lower" mean to you? Can you give examples?
| Because to me, the view "Trumps tariffs are only matching
| what foreign nations already do" is just factually wrong.
|
| Personally, I just think blanket tariffs as a significant
| form of government income is highly detrimental, from a
| foreign policy perspective (=> alienates allies, encourages
| retaliation), as a tax-substitute (because it's basically a
| regressive "tax-the-rich-less" scheme, which, given
| meteorically rising wealth inequality, is the last thing we
| need) and also for economic development (because there is
| neither the workforce, nor the actual desire, to build up
| low-margin manufacturing in the US-- making those products
| 30% more expensive is not gonna change that meaningfully).
|
| > A similar group has historically been strongly against
| government corruption but recently have been attacking
| efforts to uncover and stop corruption in the US Federal
| government.
|
| I don't have a lot of beef in this, personally, but if
| you're talking about doge:
|
| I just have to look at their website, and what I see are
| numbers that don't add up _at all_ , containing a lot of
| cuts for purely policy reasons, wrapped in _highly_
| partisan messaging.
|
| I'd be strongly against that even if they advocated for
| wheelchair accessibility and gay rights on their twitter,
| or w/e.
|
| Corruption, to me, is if you buy influence on government
| policy by spending money on officials, and that is
| _exactly_ what I see under Trump.
| LocalPCGuy wrote:
| Both of these are basically strawman arguments - there are
| legitimate, non-tribal reasons to be against the actions
| taken re: tariffs and the purported anti-corruption tasks.
| For example, a person can be strongly against government
| corruption but also be strongly against the current
| efforts/methods being used for a multitude of reasons. And
| similar for tariffs. (Not having those debates here, just
| pointing out that I don't believe those examples hold up.)
| protocolture wrote:
| You uh seem to have consumed some tribal coolaid lmao.
| bsder wrote:
| Martin Luther King was pretty clear what he thought of "the
| middle":
|
| > I must confess that over the past few years I have been
| gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost
| reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great
| stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White
| Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white
| moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who
| prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a
| positive peace which is the presence of justice
| shw1n wrote:
| yep, this is the "intentional" moderate which I also classify
| as tribal
|
| distinctly different from the "accidental" moderate who could
| harbor indignation against racial prejudice as one of their
| views
|
| https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
| bsder wrote:
| The person receiving the pointy end of a spear doesn't much
| care whether you explicitly chose to stab him or whether
| you stabbed him because you are following your tribe.
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| I think holding political opinions on the basis of what a
| famous (historical) person feels about them is sort of the
| thing being criticized here.
| goatlover wrote:
| It's an example of when "not being tribal" is wrong,
| because one side wanted to keep denying civil rights to a
| group of people. The correct side was to protest and put
| pressure on the system. Take the war in Ukraine. There
| isn't a middle ground between resisting Russian aggression
| for Ukrainians and fighting back. You either resist, or you
| get conquered. Not all issues and situations have some
| happy middle ground where both sides are equal parts
| wrong/right.
| shw1n wrote:
| you can be "not tribal" and still protest/put pressure on
| the system, has nothing to do with being moderate
|
| tribalism refers to _how_ you get your beliefs, not what
| you do with them
| saagarjha wrote:
| Sounds like a kind of dumb thing to criticize, then.
| Picking the side of Martin Luther King Jr. on civil rights
| is...uh...kind of a difficult position to argue against.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yet, huge swaths of the US electorate to this day oppose
| Martin Luther King Jr.'s goals, message, methods, and
| outcomes.
| dkarl wrote:
| > The implication instead seems to be that unless you are
| somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal".
| That feels dismissive.
|
| It's not about where you are on the spectrum. I know neoliberal
| moderate Democrats, people who would have voted for George H.W.
| Bush in 1988, who are more tribal about current U.S. politics
| than any socialist I've met. What makes it unpleasant to talk
| politics with them is a combination of two things: the narrow
| set of answers they're willing to accept on every topic, and
| the anger and suspicion they broadcast at anyone who says
| anything else. For example, they have an acceptable set of
| answers for why Trump won in 2024 (racism and sexism) and if
| you suggest any other contributing factors (like arrogance,
| elitism, and various screw-ups in the Democratic party) then
| you must be on the other side, blaming the victims and making
| excuses for Trump supporters. You can say a dozen things
| morally condemning Trump and the Republican Party and then make
| one strategic criticism of the Democrats, and they'll look at
| you like maybe they can't ever trust you anymore. They'll
| parade their emotional distress and look at you sideways if you
| don't have the energy to mirror it. All this without being
| especially politically informed, politically engaged, or
| politically radical, or caring if anybody else is informed,
| engaged, or radical -- they judge themselves and others purely
| by fervor and narrowness.
| shw1n wrote:
| yep, this is exactly it -- it's not where you end up, it's
| the inability to separate from a group
|
| there are tribalists on the left, right, and in the middle
| lupusreal wrote:
| I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of
| tribalism is the inability to have low-stakes conversations
| about politics. To somebody who is deep in tribalism, every
| private ephemeral one-to-one conversation they have is a
| vital battle which very well may decide the fate of the
| world, so their vigilance and inflamed passion entirely
| justified and rational. Being a part of the tribe ruins their
| humility, the tribe is important, they are wed to the tribe,
| any political discussion they have is on behave of the tribe,
| and therefore very important. Alliance with the tribe confers
| importance to themselves and they thereby lose their
| humility. They lose the ability to recognize that the
| conversation isn't actually important, that they can relax
| and treat the other person like a human rather than a
| faceless representative of the enemy who they have a vital
| responsibility to defeat.
| munificent wrote:
| _> You can say a dozen things morally condemning Trump and
| the Republican Party and then make one strategic criticism of
| the Democrats, and they 'll look at you like maybe they can't
| ever trust you anymore._
|
| I think some of this is a consequence of a decade or so of
| bad faith "wolf in sheep's clothing" online discourse.
|
| I remember way back before Trump's first term, before
| GamerGate, before the alt-right when people would "joke"
| about racist and neonazi stuff on 4chan and elsewhere. It was
| framed as "We're just kidding around because it's fun to be
| edgy. It's ironic. Obviously, we're not _really_ racist
| neonazis. " People, mostly teens, took the bait and thought
| it was all in good fun but over time those ideas sunk in and
| actually stuck.
|
| The next thing you know, we've got white supremacists
| parading in broad daylight.
|
| If you poke around the dark (and these days not so dark)
| corners of the Internet, you can literally find people with
| toxic fringe beliefs discussing how to subtlely soften up
| their targets with seemingly innocent "just asking questions"
| when the ultimate goal is to (1) obscure which tribe they are
| actually a member of and (2) persuade people over to their
| tribe without them realizing it.
|
| When you're in an environment where people like that do
| actually exist and participate in discourse, it's reasonable
| to wonder if the person you're talking to really does share
| your beliefs or not.
| dkarl wrote:
| How are those two situations remotely similar? A criticism
| of the Democratic Party should not be seen as a morally
| reprehensible "joke" that you have to walk back like "ha
| ha, just kidding, I would never criticize the party."
|
| The idea that the Democratic Party is a flawed, mundane
| institution full of fallible people who make mistakes is
| not a toxic idea that we need to keep out of the discourse
| lest it "sink in and actually stick." It's more like
| medicine that the party is trying to administer to itself
| with one hand while the other hand tries to bat it away.
| jader201 wrote:
| One quality of "tribal" that I think gets overlooked is that
| those that are part of a "tribe" are not willing to be wrong.
|
| I feel like those that are more in the middle - in addition to
| be "accidentally in the middle" as pg says -- they're open to
| hearing the other side, and even open to being wrong.
|
| Those that I know that I might define as "tribal" -- and that
| goes for either side -- are certainly not open to being wrong,
| and not even really open to listening to the other side -- even
| a rational discussion.
|
| Some may pretend to listen and maybe even engage in a
| discussion, but only out of being polite, not out of genuine,
| open curiosity.
| toasterlovin wrote:
| > one group actually reflects everything I believe
|
| If you swap "group" for "religion," this is how I feel about
| Catholicism. Make of that what you will.
| lynx97 wrote:
| How do you avoid being "tribal" if you are not centerish?
| shw1n wrote:
| just by being able to understand why you believe what you
| believe, for each individual view
|
| center-ish is not a requirement, but a correlation -- rarely
| will someone independently come up with views that 100% match
| the somewhat-arbitrary positions of the left or right
| StefanBatory wrote:
| And what if "middle" is a tribe too ;)
| lend000 wrote:
| Is it really likely that an intelligent person like yourself
| could hold 95% intellectual alignment with one of the two
| lowest common denominators (largest pluralities) in a country
| on complex political topics? Consider how much each party's
| platform has changed in the last 20 years, and how much more
| they will change in the next 20. I would say it's more likely
| that someone like yourself is quite intelligent and creative
| and is instead unaware of those deeply ingrained tribal
| instincts.
|
| Media in the US, especially now via incessant social media
| feeds, fuels this. It showers us with information showing how
| the "other side" is bad. So you can have a correct opinion that
| the other tribe is bad without any quantitative metrics to
| compare how bad it is compared to your tribe, which is also
| very bad.
|
| Btw, regarding the basic personality traits thing. I found this
| paper very interesting [0]. Sort of refutes the "conservatives
| lack empathy and fear change" angle. On average, I suspect most
| liberals and conservatives have very similar averages across
| most personality traits and are mostly just a product of their
| environment.
|
| [0]
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34429211/#:~:text=Our%20meta...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If you think these beleifs are inherent in the temperament of
| people, that doesnt explain the change of these beliefs over
| time. Progressive, left leaning ideology had different stances
| 20 years ago, let alone 50 years or in China or India.
|
| Sometimes this is easier to see from the outside. For example,
| if the conservative right all independently arrived at the same
| conclusion based on personality, isnt it strange how the
| consensus all moves together and changes over time
| pseudalopex wrote:
| My impressions were they meant values and you meant policies.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think you are probably right.
|
| If you find people with shared values, and follow their
| changing policies, That still seems like tribal behavior to
| me.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| It's natural to internalise the groups we belong to. In other
| words they become me. Or my identity is formed by the group.
|
| When social scientists say something is socially constructed
| that's approaching this.
|
| It's hard to see oneself apart from the group one belongs to.
| In fact to separate oneself causes real pain. In the article it
| says that people don't want to look outside their tribe; I
| would say that people shouldn't even think about looking
| outside as it will cause trauma. It would literally cause
| psychological identity wounds.
|
| One aspect of politics is this pain avoidance.
| michaelt wrote:
| I once read an interesting article that said in multipolar
| political systems, coalitions between opinion groups happen
| after the election; whereas in two-party systems, the coalition
| forms before the election.
|
| So you get people who think taxation is theft allied with
| people who Back The Blue. You get people who think life is so
| sacred abortion should be banned allied with people who'd like
| to see an AR-15 under every pillow. You get people who think
| nazi flags and the N word are free speech, allied with people
| who think books with gay and trans characters should be banned.
|
| And personally I'm pro-environment and think nuclear power has
| a part to play; I think we should help the homeless by
| increasing the housing supply and letting builders do their
| thing; that the police should exist but need substantial reform
| to stamp out corruption and brutality; and that women's issues
| like abortion and trans women in abuse shelters should be
| decided by women, not men like me. But I'm in a political
| coalition with people who think nuclear power is bad, that we
| need rent control, that we should defund the police, and so on.
|
| In an electoral system with proportional representation,
| largely unrelated views would all be different parties, no
| party would have a majority, and _after_ the election they 'd
| form alliances to build a ruling coalition.
|
| But because of America's electoral system, someone has to take
| all those views, duct-tape them together and call it a
| consistent political ideology.
| shw1n wrote:
| this is probably my favorite comment on this post so far,
| super interesting
|
| if you can find the article I'd love to read it
| verisimi wrote:
| > that women's issues like abortion and trans women in abuse
| shelters should be decided by women, not men like me.
|
| This got me wondering... Thinking in reverse, are there any
| issues that you think should be decided by men only?
|
| Underlying your thought, seems to be the idea that some
| people should be excluded from certain political/ideological
| conversations.
|
| Whereas for me, I see all people as individuals, each with a
| right to their opinions. Ie, I wouldn't start from a point of
| separation as this bakes in special interests, sexism,
| racism, etc.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> This got me wondering... Thinking in reverse, are there
| any issues that you think should be decided by men only?_
|
| Military conscription and field duties would be an example
| I can think of.
|
| For example, in my European country we have mandatory
| conscription for men over 17 but there was a referendum a
| while ago if this should still be kept, and it was funny
| that women also got to vote on whether men get conscripted
| or not lol. And guess what, most women (and boomers) voted
| in favor of the mandatory conscription of young males by
| quite a margin and unsurprisingly the only ones who voted
| against but got outvoted, were the young men.
| verisimi wrote:
| Yes this discriminates, but your example illustrates the
| exact _reverse_ way to what I meant. Being subject to
| conscription is like a negative right /loss of rights -
| men are being forced to potentially put their lives on
| the line. Can you think of a female equivalent where
| females are ordered by the government to put themselves
| in harm's way?
|
| In both cases it seems like the discrimination is not in
| favour of men. Apparently men ought not to get a say in
| "women's issues", but it is also right that men be forced
| to put their lives on the line.
|
| If that is correct, it is the case that men have _less_
| rights.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| If absolute gender equality is what we're after, I think
| the premise is flawed form the start.
|
| Men have less rights by nature/biology because they are
| expendable (women are the reproductory bottleneck of the
| species) and they are the only gender with the physique
| optimized for physical fighting and hard labor, hence the
| famous line "women and children first".
|
| We can say it's unfair and imbalanced but that's not
| gonna change biology and the status quo when push comes
| to shove and an enemy invades or a natural disaster hits
| and human meat is needed for the grinder, hence why
| there's no sympathy towards men and why much less
| societal help available to men in need (men have 10x the
| suicide and homelessness rates than women).
|
| Men and women can never be equal in absolute terms
| outside an utopia of peace and prosperity, because
| evolutionary biology and gender dysmorphia has engineered
| our bodies to be good at completely different tasks meant
| to complement each other in order to ensure the survival
| and procreation of the tribe/species.
| verisimi wrote:
| > If absolute gender equality is what we're after, I
| think the premise is flawed form the start.
|
| I thought we were talking about some sort of equality. Re
| the OP, who mentioned that they wouldn't participate in
| certain "women's issues", I couldn't think of an
| equivalent example where women shouldn't participate in
| "men's issues". That fact alone strikes me as unequal -
| it can't be that one sex (or race, or whatever other
| distinction) should have rights in law, that others don't
| have. Such a circumstance would an example of creating
| inequality, which I think is the antithesis of the OP's
| point.
|
| These questions are not straightforward. Presumably we
| don't want to initiate or institutionalise inequality.
| dubbel wrote:
| They answered your question "are there any issues that
| you think should be decided by men only?"
|
| In this sentence, you are looking at different parts of
| the equation depending on case 1 and 2:
|
| > Apparently men ought not to get a say in "women's
| issues", but it is also right that men be forced to put
| their lives on the line.
|
| No, in the first case it could be argued that men
| shouldn't have a say, and in the second it could be
| argued that women shouldn't have a say. In the first case
| women are (potentially/allegedly) negative affected, in
| the second (young) men.
|
| > Can you think of a female equivalent where females are
| ordered by the government to put themselves in harm's
| way?
|
| Anti-Abortion laws in the US would be such an example.
| techpineapple wrote:
| > This got me wondering... Thinking in reverse, are there
| any issues that you think should be decided by men only?
|
| Access to viagra?
| myrmidon wrote:
| This is a very interesting take, and I agree with your
| perspective.
|
| I think the "anti-woke" messaging was a particularly
| effective example, because in reality this means _completely_
| different things to many voters (some of those
| contradictory).
|
| Your nuclear position is interesting, and has become
| significantly more common over the last decade I feel.
| Personally, I disagree-- In my view, nuclear power is not on
| a trajectory where it is ever gonna be competitive (levelized
| cost) with renewable power. This will lead to renewables
| "ruining" electricity spot prices whenever they are available
| which is very bad for nuclear power economics. Nuclear power
| also shares basically the same drawback with renewables that
| it wants to be paired with peaker plants for dispatchability
| (instead of operating in load-following mode itself), but
| renewables basically just do it cheaper.
|
| At this point, it would basically take a miracle for me to
| believe in nuclear power again (a very cheap, safe, simple,
| clean, quick-to-build reactor design) but I don't see this
| happening any time soon (and honestly the exact same argument
| applies to fusion power even more strongly-- I think that is
| an interesting research direction that will never find major
| a application in power generation).
|
| I will concede however that nuclear power that was built
| 10-30 years ago (before renewables were really competitive)
| was and is helpful to reduce CO2 emissions.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > But I'm in a political coalition with people who think
| nuclear power is bad, that we need rent control, that we
| should defund the police, and so on.
|
| I don't think that's true though. I think you're just
| listening to the loudest voices.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Not even the loudest voices. Biden said "fund the police"
| at a State of the Union address. The people with the most
| power and influence within the left wing of US politics are
| not in support of defunding the police.
| mFixman wrote:
| Always remember that internet conversations are carried by a
| small group of antisocial losers, and a most of media articles
| complaining about society are specifically targeting that small
| but loud group.
|
| An average person has a lot more in common with you than with
| the imaginary protagonist of this blogpost, who is really smart
| and wants to show that everyone else is really dumb.
|
| Like other normal people, I discuss politics with friends; both
| with the ones I mostly agree with and the ones I mostly
| disagree with. We need to understand game theory and military
| strategy to have a useful conversation.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| You are right that you don't take part in tribalism, because
| you first have a value structure and then you looked critically
| at the political landscape and found where you have the largest
| overlap.
|
| But tribalism is absolutely an issue in the modern age with
| huge swathes of population falling into social media echo
| chambers. People first find their tribe, and then they define
| their own personality by the views of that tribe, not the other
| way around.
|
| Just look at all the people spewing "own the libs" or "maga
| fucktards". A significant portion of the population doesn't
| vote based on rational analysis, but by being part of a crowd.
| They don't even care or know what they vote for, as long as
| they are sticking it to people they perceive as enemies.
|
| I think this is basically the terminal/minimum of the modern
| social network algo optimization. Everything is maximally
| polarized, nobody is willing to engage in good faith discussion
| with people who hold different views. Everyone has a known
| enemy and known allies and they can be fed what they like to
| hear and thus continue being addicted.
|
| I don't know how to get out of this :(
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >By this reasoning it naturally follows that those of a certain
| "personality" will also share common beliefs, ideologies
|
| Is this not borne out in your own life experience? Because it
| sure is in mine.
| hobs wrote:
| The United States especially is having a face to face with
| tribalism - if you live here and you don't see it you are
| basically blind.
|
| We have parents posting that they are glad their child is dead
| instead of getting the measles vaccine, an entire pandemic that
| was ignored and downplayed, an election denied.
|
| These are all simple examples of tribalism - choosing the tribe
| over ones own self interest and well being. Most sane people
| don't offer their children up to Baal.
| douglee650 wrote:
| In the US, you vote for one party or the other. It reduces to
| tribalism, so why do the extra work to get to the reductive
| result?
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > align with a progressive, left-leaning ideology.
|
| Cooperation and scalability are two objectively good principles
| that our species can apply effectively... if and only if there
| is a genuine desire for cooperative, scalable, positive
| outcomes.
|
| If social/political discourse has degraded to the point that
| cooperative, scalable, positive outcomes are off the table,
| look to those who have taken control of the discourse.
| Propaganda undermines language itself.
|
| The difference between destructive behavior and constructive
| behaviour... has a bias.
| belorn wrote:
| Looking at it from a left-right one-dimensional space, the
| middle would be the non-tribal choice. The political spectrum
| is however not a one-dimensional space, and countries with
| multiple political parties, with center parties, can
| demonstrate that well in polls and self tests. It is perfectly
| possible for a single individual to be in 50% agreement with
| every single political party, from left, center and right,
| agreeing to the individual policies from each party that they
| find to be correct and disagreeing with policies they disagree
| with.
|
| As it happens, if I personally looks to what is important to
| me, I find that from the extremest left to the extremest right,
| the best political party get 60% support and the worst get 40%
| support. They all have some policies that I strongly support,
| and some policies that are terrible, and the middle of the gang
| is exactly the same.
|
| To take an example. I am in strong support of the green party
| when it comes to train and bike infrastructure, fishing
| policies, eliminating lead in hunting ammunition, getting rid
| of invasive species, and banning heavy fuel oil in shipping. I
| strongly disagree with their support of using natural gas as a
| transactional fuel in the energy grid in hopes of green
| hydrogen (a pipe dream), and their dismantling of nuclear
| power. I also strongly disagree with their political attempts
| to mix in the war in Gaza with environmentalism, as if taking
| up the flag for either side in that war has any relevance in
| nation/local politics on what is almost the other side of the
| world. That is one political party out of 8 that my country
| has, and the story is similar with all the rest.
| duckduckquaquak wrote:
| Looking at this as a non-American. American politics is seems
| very much tribe minded as an outsider,left vs right. And
| where someone stands largely can tell you about their views
| on a lot of other things. At least that's how it is portrayed
| in media. I know in practice a lot of people are more
| nuanced.
|
| Most countries have sometimes up to 10 political parties and
| what party/ies someone supports often does not say much about
| their views on different social issues. In the USA it seems
| you can't want a secure border and civil rights for minority
| groups.
| jl6 wrote:
| Tribalism is part metaphor, part euphemism. What it's really
| getting at is cult behavior. Agreeing with someone on a lot of
| things isn't tribal and isn't cult.
|
| The actual problems of "tribalism" are exactly those of cults:
| worship of a leader or ideology, zero tolerance for criticism,
| cutting you off from other support networks, conspiracies,
| narratives of doom, promises of salvation, framing enemies as
| degenerates and deplorables, claiming exclusive ownership of
| truth and morality...
|
| Red and blue alike have cult wings.
| calf wrote:
| Tribalism is just really bad pop-sociology, by people who
| can't be arsed to read and do their homework on a vast
| subject matter.
| subpixel wrote:
| The most visible example of tribalism is when groups fail to
| update their ideas and beliefs as facts start to come in. You
| can't escape the religious parallel.
|
| This occurs clear across the political spectrum, but a standout
| example is record-breaking levels of immigration in European
| countries like Sweden and Germany. Instead of realizing the
| policy failure and acting to fix it, the line becomes "it was
| the right thing to do, it was just done poorly."
| jmyeet wrote:
| Just in the last election cycle, we saw tribal Democratic
| voters try and silence those protesting the Biden
| administration and then immediately go "we have always been at
| war with Eurasia" and do the exact same thing for Kamala.
|
| And MAGA goes beyond being tribal: by any objective measure,
| it's a cult.
|
| Plus you see an awful lot of people who will criticize one side
| for doing one thing while supporting the other side for doing
| the exact same thing. Obama, for example, was the Deporter-in-
| Chief (~3 million deported), Biden continued the Trump policy
| of using Title 42 to deny asylum claims and Kamala proposed
| building the very same border wall that all Democrats protested
| when Trump proposed it in 2020.
|
| I'm a leftist and any leftist will have seen so many liberals
| who love progressive aesthetics but turn into a jack-booted
| fascist the second you want to address any of the underlying
| economic issues. For example, tell people "house prices need to
| come down" to solve any number of issues such as homelessness
| and see how they react.
|
| > The implication instead seems to be that unless you are
| somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal".
| That feels dismissive.
|
| On this, I 100% agree. There are several reasons why:
|
| 1. Intellectual laziness. People think they're "above the fray"
| by bothsidesing everything;
|
| 2. Ignorance. This is particularly an issue for Democratic
| voters in the US. Both Democrats and Republicans are
| neoliberals. US foreign policy is bipartisan. Full-throated
| support for capitalism is bipartisan. But a large segment of
| Democrats tell themselves they're good people for wearing a
| pride pin while at the same time thinking homeless people
| should die in the stree; or
|
| 3. Deception. This is particularly the case for Republicans who
| will try and center their positions by appealing to "common
| sense" and label Democrats, who are a center-right party, as
| "the far Left" or "the radical Left".
|
| So, yes, people do use "tribalism" as an epithet to silence
| legitimate criticisim but there is also tribalism.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Others, smarter than me, have gone into great detail about the
| underpinnings of left-leaning or right-leaning world views in
| people.
|
| People also change. Until 25 maybe 30,I was left leaning in
| many issues.
|
| Now I am mostly right aligned.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| I think there sadly exists an overlay in a lot of politics,
| basically tribalism, but I think the better phrasing is "teams"
| as in "team sports".
|
| You don't like a team for an ideological reason, usually
| physical closeness or some other arbitrary connection.
|
| For many, the team is the extent at which they analyze
| politics. You see this when conservatives will reference
| historical events in terms of the name of the political party.
| For example, it's relatively common to see someone say "Oh the
| Democrats are bad because during the Civil war they were on the
| side of slavery". Their analysis doesn't include the actual
| policy or ideology at hand, it's simply the team "Democrats".
| It doesn't matter to them if the flavor of policies that the
| early 20th century dems supported are similar or even the same
| as the policies modern Republicans support. Only the team.
|
| I think there exists multiple layers of "tribalism" or "team
| sports" in politics that effects people differently. The bottom
| layer is sadly "<Name of party> good, <name of other party>
| bad". I think at some point we must acknowledge that some
| people are simply stupid. If they think making an argument
| based on the politics of a party 100 years ago is convincing,
| they might just not have the facilities for critical thinking.
|
| A lot of those people are now @-ing grok on twitter to explain
| even the simplest of jokes.
| Isamu wrote:
| Thanks, I came here to say the same. Sports fandom is the
| better metaphor.
|
| It's lazy participation.
| moduspol wrote:
| > I'm not just glomming on to everything one "tribe" or another
| stands for ... one group actually reflects everything I
| believe.
|
| I don't think that's unreasonable, but if you're in the US, you
| should really re-evaluate if this is true just because there
| are several significant issues over which the parties have
| flipped over the past few decades (and more if you go back
| further).
|
| Obviously you didn't specify a party, but as one example: In
| the 1990s, the left wing party was where the free speech
| absolutists were. If you were a big "free speech" enthusiast
| back then and you still are now, then great! If your views have
| changed, that's fine, too, but there should be alarm bells
| going off in your head that your views changed along with the
| tribe.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I think tribalism is being thought of as a pejorative when it
| isn't. It merely is a phenomenon. What you describe above about
| yourself is pure tribalism of how you identify with the liberal
| tribe and could never even picture yourself as a member of
| other tribe. This is no different to me than a rabbi or priest
| talking about the tenets of their faith and how that leaves
| them no option but to be a member of that religion due to the
| moral underpinnings of those tenets that they believe in.
|
| Tribal politics happen when we take these various tribes in our
| society and essentially blind them to their biases to the point
| where they can't imagine at all why someone would even be in
| that other tribe. A complete loss of critical thinking ability
| emerges once it becomes us and them and not some of us and
| others of us, one species, no tribes, many ideas.
|
| Do you actually believe all liberals are good and can do no
| evil? Do you actually believe all conservatives are
| cartoonishly evil idiots? I'd hope you could see the nuance but
| your description makes it seem like there is one way but the
| highway. And the reflexive counter argument from the liberals
| is "but racism" but then again, explain the phenomenon of the
| black or latino Trump supporter? Clearly there is more nuance
| going on in what is sensible to people than what we can gleam
| out of the black and white painted descriptions from the
| thought leaders in our tribe.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Additional point: Politics and Ideologies have long tail effects,
| which makes arguing over them often an exercise in futility.
| We're arguing over the next footstep in a race that's got
| infinity left to run.
|
| Russia is/was a global powerhouse under (its version of)
| Communism.
|
| The US reached (essentially) global domination under Capitalsm.
|
| China is in line to be the next hegemony under an odd combination
| of Communism, Authoritarianism and (serving Western) Capitalism.
|
| Little old Germany wasn't far from conquering the world under
| what began as some form of Socialism.
|
| Any of the -isms can be argued against by mentioning -ism-
| subscribing regimes that have fallen. Where this falls down is
| that each regime has its own way of corrupting the ideals of the
| -ism to favour of those 'at the top' or 'with the power to
| decide'.
|
| Trickle-down (voodoo, for Ferris Bueller fans) economics seems to
| raise its head regularly despite not having a great track record
| for an entire population. I think the reason is that its popular
| with the powerful, so its track record with the population at
| large is a feature not a bug.
|
| Who is right? What does it mean to be right?
|
| What are the Acceptance Critiera?
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I had quick scan of the comments but I didn't see anybody else
| make the point, so here is my 2c.
|
| I believe the problem is the two party systems and how our
| government is set up, people vote for one tribe or the other.
| There is no _value_ to being educated on individual issues
| because ultimately you simply have to choose between 2 people who
| are affiliated with a party.
|
| How awesome would it be if individuals could vote on specific
| issues, perhaps only after proving they have a working knowledge
| of the subject matter.
| Crye wrote:
| Completely agree and it is an oversimplification when you graph
| people on even a 2-dimensional axis.
|
| In reality we all have beliefs that are formed by our "in
| groups". People have groups beliefs formed from their religion,
| work, hobbies, study, and internet consumption. These all form
| our views and then get flattened to a 2-party system.
|
| Unfortunately people can now form their identity solely on a
| political identity primarily due to social media.
| shw1n wrote:
| agreed, this would be ideal if maybe practically impossible
| JamisonM wrote:
| Is this an American thing? No one has _ever_ in my life asked me
| "Who did you vote for?"
|
| I have had plenty of people behave in a way that made it clear
| they assumed I agreed with them on political matters/issues that
| would have us voting the same way (sometimes correctly, sometimes
| incorrectly) but I have never been asked this question. Is it
| common or is it a contrivance in service of the article?
| tdeck wrote:
| My experience may not be representative, but I think it's very
| uncommon to outright ask "who did you vote for" in the US. It's
| more common (although many people still find it impolite or
| inappropriate in many situations) for someone to bring up an
| issue that is important to them and that strongly suggests a
| preference for one of our two viable political parties.
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| The only scenario where I believe people might directly ask
| "Who did you vote for?" is screening for dating. I don't know
| exactly how common it is, but I've heard multiple anecdotes
| about that being asked on dating apps or first dates, because
| they're not interested in dating someone who voted for Trump.
|
| Prior to Trump it wasn't really a thing, because both parties
| were still following the law and maintaining a functioning
| democracy, so people could date across party lines and just
| agree-to-disagree about taxes or whatever.
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| Telling people they don't have political views, that they only
| belong to a tribe, is a great way to lose friends.
| joeevans1000 wrote:
| > How can you prioritize limited resources with deadly
| consequences without understanding utilitarianism vs deontology
| (i.e. the trolly problem)?
|
| Can you explain this to me?
| paul_h wrote:
| I think you're right, it is harder to discuss politics as widely
| as we once did.
|
| That said, what do you think of money changing what is left/right
| and group/individual? The outcome of Citizens United to allow
| obscured spending to create seeming grass roots efforts on any
| topic that the monied want very effectively moving opinions.
| rukuu001 wrote:
| A good discussion. I've personally thought of political adherence
| similar to football teams. Fans are fans. That's it.
|
| Escaping that tribalism or fandom is important, but you need to
| hold fast to your own sense of morality along the way.
|
| Applying your own sense of right/wrong to political arguments and
| policies is a useful way to cut through the noise and distraction
| that accompanies political discourse.
| fareesh wrote:
| in my experience people who are on the political left are very
| rude and dismissive of any heterodox position as some moral sin
| cyberjerkXX wrote:
| I have friends all over the political spectrum. I've read
| political philosophy ranging from Hegel, Marx, Foucault, Butler,
| Crenshaw, Gentile, Locke, Rawls, Friedman, Mises, Rand, ect.. I
| find myself actively engaging in political discussion frequently
| with these friends. The only friend I've stopped talking over
| politics were black block during the antifa riots. I viewed his
| actions as ultimately misguided and dangerous. I ultimately
| forgave him and now we are friends who actively debate policy in
| good faith.
|
| It's easy to spot political tribalism - just reference the
| comments here. They ultimately misrepresent, and have never tried
| to understand, their opposition's political position. It's kind
| of sad because it allows them to be manipulated by propaganda and
| political powers much like my antifa friend.
| goatlover wrote:
| > It's easy to spot political tribalism - just reference the
| comments here. They ultimately misrepresent, and have never
| tried to understand, their opposition's political position.
|
| Can you explain the Trump administration's political aims this
| term? Because this sounds very much like both sides are the
| same, and I'm not seeing that at all with what Trump and Elon
| are trying to accomplish.
| goatlover wrote:
| I would have agreed with this article before Trump took office a
| 2nd time. I liked to think of myself as not belonging to a tribe,
| a moderate who didn't buy the propaganda from either side. But
| now I've seen what the Trump 2.0 looks like, and I've become
| convinced we're headed toward autocracy with a mix of techno-
| feudalism and Christian nationalism.
|
| I don't think you can maintain moderate views on that sort of
| situation without becoming complicit. Yes, Elon is up to no good.
| Trump is not the sort of person that should have this kind of
| power. Putin turned Russia into an autocracy. It's happened in
| other countries as well. There is a playbook for this, and the
| Trump administration is following their version of it. We don't
| have to go back to WW2 to make comparisons. Putin is not a good
| person, and Trump admires him.
|
| The problem with the reasonable independent thinker is that they
| are relatively powerless against autocratic takeover. You need to
| join a side that is resisting. Assuming you value democracy and
| it's institutions.
| jjani wrote:
| I can strongly sympathize. The image with the squares and circles
| hit home hard, from an early age, it's been pretty lonely.
| Depending on your environment it can be super hard to find others
| part of the 1%, so you really need to treasure them when you do
| find them.
|
| One point of criticism:
|
| The usage of the word "moderate". It seems PG's article is the
| one to blame here. The word "moderate" when used about politics
| means something to people in English. And given that meaning,
| saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate", is
| straight up wrong. What the article is really talking about is
| that independent thought leads to a set of beliefs that is
| unlikely to be a very good fit for any particular ideology, and
| therefore, political party. That's true! But that's not
| "moderate". That's.. diverse, pragmatic, non-ideological. Those
| words aren't ideal either, but "moderate" is definitely not it.
|
| The 99%/1% is also greatly overstated in a way. Firstly, it's
| definitely dependent on locale, culture, subculture, environment,
| as the writer already says themselves. More importantly, if you
| manage to somehow get people 1:1 in an environment where they
| feel safe, it turns out that many actually aren't that
| tribal/ideological after all, and they do actually have beliefs
| that span different mainstream tribes. But then that conversation
| finishes, and they go back to being a tribe member.
|
| I'm pretty sure there's plenty of experiments that directly show
| the above. That when you give people policy choices that are non-
| obvious (e.g. they've never thought about), and then make them
| vote on them, they'll often vote against their tribe. But if
| you'd beforehand tell them which tribe voted which way, they'll
| always vote with the tribe.
| juped wrote:
| There's a specific explanation saying that that's not what it's
| saying
| aryehof wrote:
| The first step "become truth-seeking", is problematic because the
| truth that can be found is often just opinion or propaganda,
| disguised as truth.
|
| Many a conspiracy believer will tell you they already have the
| truth (unlike unenlightened you).
|
| Better is to remain inquiring and skeptical in forming
| conclusions or beliefs.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I enjoy debating politics in the way that others enjoy playing
| chess or a friendly game of bowling. But when the other party
| gets wrapped around the axle, I don't debate with them anymore.
| Unfortunately, most seem to be in the latter camp.
| neilv wrote:
| > _It 's not that the average person is any less tribal up there,
| but because Silicon Valley contains such a high concentration of
| people testing ideas in the world, it selects for people that
| must regularly re-evaluate their biases or fail._
|
| Is this true?
| koopuluri wrote:
| based on my travels to many parts of the world, yes. being mis-
| aligned with reality has very real, negative, consequences when
| building companies, and therefore people here are forced to be
| more truth-seeking.
|
| (not all ofc - i would say this forcing function applies to <
| 1% of the population in SFBay, but that is still a far greater
| concentration than anywhere else i've seen).
|
| i find similar truth-seeking-ness in long-term investors.
| cultures that are more short-term oriented, and who have less
| feedback from the market, seem to deviate away from truth-
| seeking because the forcing function becomes weak: you aren't
| quickly penalized for being wrong.
| renewiltord wrote:
| To be honest, I enjoy discussing politics with my friends.
| They're all pretty good at discussing it. We have lots of common
| interests otherwise so it's easy to just step away and talk about
| other things in the group Slack instead.
| KingMob wrote:
| Oh, the irony of saying "Understand China-US relations without
| understanding communism vs capitalism", which clearly betrays how
| little they understand historical Marxist communism, and how far
| away modern China is from it (not to mention how far it's moved
| since Maoism).
|
| Not to mention there's a ton of work in psychology already
| covering much of what the author writes about.
|
| The author sounds like a pseudo-intellectual who thinks they can
| logic their way to human understanding through first principles,
| instead of doing any real work to understand the literature.
| Sadly, this is real common on HN.
| LordRatte wrote:
| This article seems to be saying that religions are tribal by
| nature because it's made up of humans, and humans are tribal by
| nature -- ok fair enough. But the subtext I'm getting is that
| people in religions are less self-aware of it than the author or
| the people they admire.
|
| People being more interested in comfortable beliefs rather than
| true beliefs has always been a concern throughout Biblical
| history. But that doesn't mean it never went unchallenged.
|
| For instance, regardless of what you think of the Bible, it's
| interesting that Isaiah has the following to say to Judah
| (emphasis mine) because it shows an ever-present problem with
| human nature. For they are a rebellious people,
| lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the
| Lord; *who say to the seers, "Do not see," and to the
| prophets, "Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us
| smooth things, prophesy illusions"*
|
| And before someone responds with a de jure objection to say that
| "the instruction of the Lord" is not looking for truth, I just
| want to make it clear that that is out of the scope of my point.
| My point is that, de facto, in the context, a religious text is
| agreeing that it is bad to "tribe-up and truth-out."
|
| Lastly, on a personal note, as a human Christian, I think I have
| the same biases to groupthink as any other person _because_ I am
| human. But because Christianity has a reputation, I have found
| that throughout my life, I 've had to work harder to really test
| ( _not_ validate) my beliefs because I am constantly being
| challenged and, ironically, often ended up more informed about
| both my beliefs and my interlocutors ' beliefs.
| shw1n wrote:
| Actually I think people in traditional organized religions like
| Christianity are on the whole _more_ self-aware than secular
| people who fall into the same religious behavior in random
| topics, because they acknowledge the "faith" component.
|
| Sort of summarized by the sentence here:
|
| "If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge
| their choice to remain in the bubble, that's totally fair. I
| respect it like I'd respect anyone who chooses to participate
| in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is
| falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."
| seydor wrote:
| politics (and the truth itself) have always been tribal. People
| discussed things and disagreed in public and that's how they
| managed to slightly influence each other.
|
| Avoiding to discuss politics is cowardly. It distances people
| from each other because they maintain a fake facade, and they
| express their true selves and beliefs only online.
| shw1n wrote:
| I actually encourage discussion in the essay, as long as people
| are well-intentioned or until you hit a point of dogma
|
| But if anyone is closed to the idea of an idea being wrong, no
| discussion can really be had
| crote wrote:
| If you can afford to not discuss politics with friends these
| days, you are in an incredibly privileged position.
|
| I don't enjoy discussing Vim vs Emacs, or Windows vs Linux, or
| Star Trek vs Star Wars, or the weather. Some people get _way_ too
| enthusiastic about it, to the point of religious fanaticism, but
| in the end it doesn 't really matter either way. I don't really
| care about the tribes, and in most cases nothing productive is
| going to come out of the discussion. If my friends are on the
| other "team", I can happily agree to disagree.
|
| I also wouldn't enjoy discussing whether the room should be
| filled with air or neurotoxin - but I can't afford not to. I'm
| sure the pro-neurotoxin people would be very nice to hang out
| with if we set our differences aside. Except for, you know, the
| whole "filling the room with neurotoxin" thing. If their side
| wins, it's going to _seriously_ ruin my day. I don 't really care
| about the how or the why or their tribes, the thing that matters
| is that they are trying to fill the room with neurotoxin. If I
| were to hang out with friends, it is quite important to know
| whether I could trust them with the air handling equipment.
|
| If you can afford not discussing politics, you're essentially
| saying that politics don't impact you. They are nothing more than
| a mild inconvenience, and friendships are too valuable to set
| aside over something as trivial as that. To you politics are
| nothing more than the weather: you might need to cancel your
| weekend hike because of heavy rain, but oh well.
|
| A lot of people don't have that luxury. For a lot of people,
| politics are _literally_ a matter of life and death. Ignoring it
| isn 't an option.
| ghosttaboo wrote:
| "An extremist is someone who won't change their mind and won't
| change the subject"
|
| Just ensure that emotions and Reddit aren't your source for
| political discussion - it's too easy to get pulled into an
| illogical extreme when you're listening to people PAID to
| polarize you.
| christkv wrote:
| It's such a cultural thing. My friend group contains people from
| all sides of the political spectrum and they bicker like crazy
| when we go out but they are still friends. It might be a Spanish
| culture thing though.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Curious how many comments say "it's not about tribalism, it's
| just the other side is _evil_ ". Ctrl+f for this very word on the
| page yields interesting results.
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Not me! (My comment is currently just above yours). We have all
| been victimized by the information space which has been
| polluted by increasingly unhinged vitriol, itself funded by
| Citizens United money and amplified by novel internet
| platforms. It is not a coincidence that virtually all pundits
| are lawyers, and PR firms probably have a lot of them too. They
| know how to zealously advocate for a client, and have applied
| those skills to the public sphere. It's worse than that,
| because outside of a courtroom they can lie, distort, and
| fabricate at will for their clients, with no judge to scold
| them. The average human adult cannot stew in this poison for a
| decade and not be harmed by it. My heart goes out to all those
| who's egos have been inflated, who's feelings of hatred and
| ill-will encouraged, not because they chose it, but because
| it's impossible to get away from it.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| It's disappointing to see.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| Way more than anyone should be comfortable with.
|
| _Looks through thread_
|
| Tribalism and purity tests abound.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Okay, I Ctrl+F'ed for "evil" and found... nobody calling anyone
| else evil (actions, not people, were described as evil by one
| commenter--the rest were discussing ethics in the abstract, not
| describing anyone or any action as evil).
|
| But let me present a possibility: what if one side really is
| doing evil things? If you were transported to literal Nazi
| Germany or the Stalinist USSR, where millions of people were
| being murdered by one party, would it be "tribalism" to call
| that party's actions evil? Or would it be an accurate
| description of murdering millions of people?
|
| Obviously we aren't at the point of "murdering millions of
| people" in the US yet, but I suspect a lot of this "enlightened
| centrism" which presents both sides as somehow just equally
| valid viewpoints would happily go all the way to watching
| millions get murdered and _still_ not be willing to call evil
| by its name.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > Okay, I Ctrl+F'ed for "evil" and found... nobody calling
| anyone else evil (actions, not people, were described as evil
| by one commenter--the rest were discussing ethics in the
| abstract, not describing anyone or any action as evil).
|
| I was mainly referring to dialogs like the one below. Not
| quite abstract. >> I think essentially
| tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand
| where they are coming from is more useful than applying
| purity tests to your friends and family. > It's
| more about watching people pivot towards unquestionable evil.
| "Empathy is a sin" is such a deep, dark line in the sand. I'm
| not going to just stand there and watch you cross it.
|
| > But let me present a possibility: what if one side really
| is doing evil things? If you were transported to literal Nazi
| Germany or the Stalinist USSR, where millions of people were
| being murdered by one party, would it be "tribalism" to call
| that party's actions evil?
|
| Amazing example. If you got magically transported to the
| "literal Nazi Germany" you would discover that the popular
| opinion at the time was to call "evil" the communists and the
| jews. If you spend a long time calling someone "evil" you
| gradually stop seeing them as people. This is how later on
| you don't notice when they're relocated into ditches and
| furnaces. Inhumane treatment doesn't raise the alarm when
| applied to non-humans. Check for instance what this SS
| veteran has to say [1].
|
| Tribalism is not whether you're allowed or not to call people
| evil. Tribalism is calling people evil not because they did
| something evil, but because they belong to the wrong group or
| sympathize with it.
|
| The original post does not advocate for "enlightened
| centrism", furthermore centrists are as prone to tribalism as
| anybody else. Applying blanket judgement is a very natural
| thing to do because it saves a hell lot of time and energy.
| Why argue about all the topics, why argue about all the
| individuals when you can just divide people in tribes and
| decide who's evil at the tribe level. Everyone does it to
| some extent. However if you overdo it, you may indeed find
| yourself in Nazi Germany.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/G6lN_VVaqdA?t=2811
| jajuuka wrote:
| Is it tribalism to say Hitler is evil? Recognizing a universal
| negative isn't tribalism. The view that all things are equal
| and nothing matters is more so of the nihilist tribe.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Saying that Hitler is evil is not tribalism, it's the exact
| opposite:
|
| 1) you're judging an individual and not a group
|
| 2) you're judging him for what he did not for who he was
| lucyjojo wrote:
| for the author, only the centrists, his own group, can display
| independent thinking.
|
| he assigns all virtues of the world to his group while others
| seems to be barely more than glorified barbarians.
|
| this is, at best, laughable... and honestly quite reductive and
| insulting.
|
| this seems to stem from the classic idea of "if everybody was
| informed and intelligent as i am we would all agree", which i
| thought had already been disproven long ago. people have
| different base assumptions. cultures are real things...
| individual differences matter too.
|
| he also treats ideologies as unified things which is historically
| false, meanwhile his personal particular set of idea is not an
| ideology but something akin to objective truth (for which he
| explicitly argues) or something adjacent to it. any semi-
| consistent (if that) set of ideas instantly becomes an ideology
| as soon as you share that set to a group. there are myriads of
| ideologies that pop-up and die every day... the ones with staying
| power obviously have accumulated some following but they are
| rarely all compassing; we have a word for those, cults.
|
| but first thing first, change country and you will get entirely
| different "centrists" with an entirely different set of ideas.
| there is no reason there would not be (in his own terms)
| "accidental" leftists and "accidental" right--ists???
|
| in a locked 2 party system like what you get in the united
| states, stuff will probably have a tendency to degenerate though.
| things are way more fluid in countries where you have more
| democratic choice. there is a lot of fear in the american mix,
| that doesn't work well with free-thinking.
| jrflowers wrote:
| > for the author, only the centrists, his own group, can
| display independent thinking.
|
| Yeah it's this.
|
| It's always funny to watch a centrist invent centrism and then
| declare that they alone have achieved the apotheosis of correct
| perfect opinions that breaks the shackles of being in a group,
| when in reality they've just joined the single largest
| political cohort of folks -- people that don't feel strongly
| enough about anything to begin to ponder the bare minimum
| effort it takes to affect literally any change (talking to
| other people about politics)
|
| It is the same thing as watching other people do things and
| then "inventing" sitting around and doing nothing. That's not
| an invention! Babies are born doing nothing!
| jrflowers wrote:
| Trying to imagine writing 3,000 words about how Paul Graham and I
| have ascended beyond tribes without realizing I'm just in a tribe
| with Paul Graham
| shw1n wrote:
| as I like to say, "I'm tribal against tribalists" :)
| jrflowers wrote:
| > as I like to say, "I'm tribal against tribalists" :)
|
| Buddy if you can sum up your entire political philosophy as
| disdain for outgroups I don't think you've quite achieved the
| liberation from the karmic wheel of suffering that is
| partisan politics that you wrote so many words about
| shw1n wrote:
| it was a joke, didn't think I'd have to explain but the key
| difference is I'm open to being convinced this view is
| wrong
| jrflowers wrote:
| You wrote three thousand words about how everyone that
| you know has wrong opinions and you have right nuanced
| opinions without actually sharing any of those right
| nuanced opinions. The sole topic of the essay is
| criticism of outgroups, it is the only thing that you
| wrote about
| th0ma5 wrote:
| I don't think you can separate the mechanics from the content.
| Usually people feeling pushback against their political ideas
| don't realize they are dumb ideas even if they are complex.
| slowhadoken wrote:
| I find this to be painfully true in the US. Most of the rational
| discussions I have about politics are with friends from other
| countries (Soviet Russia, China, Africa, etc).
| MatekCopatek wrote:
| I can agree with parts of this article, but I believe it's
| missing a large part of the puzzle.
|
| The author implicitly assumes that the constraints of our society
| are fixed and that it's therefore possible to determine which
| political systems are objectively better or worse. We should be
| doing that research (like astronomers trying to determine how the
| universe works) instead of religiously supporting ideological
| positions.
|
| I fundamentally disagree with that assumption. I think we behave
| the way we do in large part due to the ideological principles we
| were raised with. This can be confirmed by observing various
| closed-off societies sometimes operating on principles that seem
| completely bonkers to most of us.
|
| If you teach people capitalism/socialism, you build a
| capitalistic/socialistic system. It's impossible to live inside
| that system and objectively determine whether it's good or bad,
| let alone better or worse than other systems.
|
| So in that context, I believe following an ideology is _not_ the
| opposite of thinking for yourself, as the author puts it. It is a
| conscious decision based on morality. You decide what your values
| are and you find a political option that aligns with them.
|
| To be clear, that's still a very imperfect decision to make, many
| things can go wrong from that point on and I believe this is
| where the author is correct in many ways. We should reason about
| it constantly to make sure we're actually doing what we want to
| be doing and not just blindly repeating things.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| That seems overly reductive.
|
| > It's impossible to live inside that system and objectively
| determine whether it's good or bad, let alone better or worse
| than other systems.
|
| I mean, if someone says "Let's pollute the rivers!" and another
| person says "Let's not pollute the rivers!", that's a pretty
| clear cut objectively good and bad position. Or "Let's put
| people in prison if they jaywalk.", etc.
|
| That's not to say there are no positions that have a clear cut
| good or bad outcome that can be measured beforehand. For
| example, putting a tax on sugary drinks. Maybe it will work,
| maybe it won't, but you have no way of being sure beforehand,
| because you can't A/B test reality and the complexity of the
| system is such that you can't accurately predict human behavior
| at a large scale.
|
| But the existence of positions that don't have a clear answer
| that can be determined ahead of time doesn't mean there's no
| objective way to determine whether it's good or bad, just that
| we don't have the tooling to do so at this point in time.
| fergie wrote:
| (Article starts off be asserting that they don't talk politics
| with friends then proceeds to describe how to talk politics with
| friends?)
|
| Friends are people you should support and build up. You shouldn't
| try to make them feel bad by winning arguments with them. That
| said- a healthy society is only possible if individuals can
| exchange ideas about how to run things and then act collectively
| (aka "politics"). Sometimes people will have different interests
| and priorities, that lead to them having different ideas about
| stuff- most of the time this is totally fine.
|
| This basically comes down to respect and communication skills-
| but for god's sake people- keep on talking about "politics"!
| gsf_emergency_2 wrote:
| This gets more complicated when you replace "friend" with
| "spouse" (/partner) because there comes up the problem of
| consensuality in unavoidably unpleasant unavoidable decision-
| making..
|
| (Assuming one marries for "love")
| facile3232 wrote:
| Politics feels like an integral part of finding a partner
| nowadays. Which makes sense--values are important to agree
| upon.
| viraptor wrote:
| Really depends on the region. There's lots of
| opinions/ideas/directions/parties in many countries with
| lots of overlap. In the US... I'm not sure how
| relationships, that actually talk about things, can survive
| if partners have different party preferences.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The width of the spectrum of political views for 65% of
| people used to be relatively narrow.
|
| That's increasingly not the case.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Capitalism "Choice is good!"
|
| Politics "Not like that, not like that!"
|
| I don't believe that political views used to be narrow, I
| believe the political views you were allowed to actually
| express were much more narrow and everything else was
| repressed.
| galfarragem wrote:
| I believe having a partner with directly opposing political
| views is unsustainable. Partners with adjacent political
| views may be manageable, or even preferable to a fully
| aligned one, but those with directly opposing views are a
| constant source of drama and tension in your life. Political
| views often reflect deeply held values and beliefs.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Political views can change over time though. It can be
| unsustainable in the way of "one or both people moderates
| their political views".
| basisword wrote:
| >> those with directly opposing views are a constant source
| of drama and tension in your life
|
| I don't think this is true at all. The vast majority of
| people largely ignore politics, cast their vote, and move
| on with their lives. It's completely fine to have different
| political views if you both act like normal reasonable
| people. We see a lot of the 'kick, scream, and cry' types
| on both side in the media. In the real world, most people
| have more important things to be getting on with.
| diggan wrote:
| > It's completely fine to have different political views
| if you both act like normal reasonable people.
|
| Yes, this is true, you can have different political views
| and still be friends/lovers/partners/whatver.
|
| What parent said though was "directly opposing political
| views", which I'd also agree with is inviting trouble, as
| it'll leak out in constant tensions and frictions. Simple
| things like "We shouldn't drive as much as we currently
| do" can lead to heavy argumentation if the underlying
| reasoning cannot be understood by both parties.
|
| In real life, people might not speak about parties or
| political figures, but their everyday actions are driven
| by their values and beliefs, which also ends up reflected
| by who they vote for. Politics is everywhere, even where
| people don't speak of it directly.
| basisword wrote:
| >> We shouldn't drive as much as we can do
|
| I wouldn't consider this a political view. It's a
| lifestyle choice based on personal beliefs. Two people
| can be fully behind the idea we need to do something
| about climate change and have different ideas on how that
| should be done. And I think that's part of the problem in
| recent times - instead of politics being about the big
| ideas and how a country is run it's become about small
| personal choices. If a person has heavy arguments with a
| partner about how much/little they drive I would say
| they've got an issue with a need to control others,
| rather than just a strong political opinion.
| diggan wrote:
| > Two people can be fully behind the idea we need to do
| something about climate change and have different ideas
| on how that should be done
|
| I'm not sure if you purposefully ignore what I wrote
| directly after what you quoted, "if the underlying
| reasoning cannot be understood by both parties". If a
| partner would discuss things like this in real life, I'd
| say this partner might have an issue with discussing in
| good faith with others.
|
| My point was that it'll lead to friction if you disagree
| about what "big ideas" are worthwhile to try to implement
| or not.
| Jensson wrote:
| That will leave a large group of people without any
| partners, since men and women vote very differently.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Then so be it, if your views keep you from finding a
| partner then maybe you should start thinking about
| compromise rather than falling deeper into extremism.
|
| But, this is also why one political party in the US tends
| to vote against things like no fault divorce and other
| questionable policies regarding womens rights.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Note that various surveys report young women and young men
| diverging a lot more politically. Partly because women's
| rights have become so politicised.
| galfarragem wrote:
| This trend is certainly one aspect of the explanation for
| the decline in the number of long-term relationships.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It could also be the opposite causality. Because people
| aren't getting into intimate relationships as much
| (looking out for each other, caring deeply about an
| individual of the opposite gender), the two groups are
| naturally diverging into preferring "what's best for ME".
|
| I think the political split between genders is MUCH
| stronger for singles. It's kind of a trap actually.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| The other being that once women have largescale
| representation in the workforce, can open bank accounts
| and credit cards on their own, and can support themselves
| financially, one of the key pressures to marry is
| removed. Once there was no fault divorce and women did
| not need to _prove_ why they _needed_ to divorce, one of
| the key pressures to stay married is removed.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Perhaps important, republicans from state lawmakers up to
| the VP are interested in repealing no fault divorce laws.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| I am the opposite of surprised. How else are terrible,
| low-quality men going to trap women into a life of unpaid
| home labor if they can control their own finances,
| reproduction, and choice to enter or leave a marriage.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| As the gender gap in voting patterns widens, denying
| rights to women goes from not only being an ideological
| project of the right but a _political_ project as well.
| "We will win more elections if women have less social
| power" is not a good situation to be in.
| ryandrake wrote:
| And that's just what they'll openly admit to! Rest
| assured, they would absolutely not stop at no-fault
| divorce. They would undo all of the progress you
| mentioned, and likely more.
| Jensson wrote:
| That happened a long time ago though, much much longer
| ago than the number of relationships started to drop, so
| its unrelated.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| What do you mean by women's rights? The difference in
| support for abortion by sex is trivial.
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-
| opini...
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Seeing a _3 point difference_ in the support for abortion
| between men and women is *wild* to me.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Rest assured: Those 33% of women who say abortion should
| be "Illegal in all/most cases," would instantly carve out
| an exception for themselves if their own lives or
| livelihoods were in jeopardy from a pregnancy.
| 9rx wrote:
| Probably not abortion. While rights never happen in a
| vacuum, it is usually framed as a matter of fetus rights.
|
| How about a woman's right to equal employment
| opportunity? 67% of women are in favour of DEI, while
| most men (57%) take the opposing view.
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-
| american...
|
| The primary political parties are definitely catering to
| those sides.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Also white/black, straight/gay, poor/wealthy etc.
|
| We can find hundreds of dividing lines if we insist.
| tekla wrote:
| Ah yes, one sex is diverging to the other side because they
| are wrong on MY pet issue. (This is not grounded in
| reality)
| moolcool wrote:
| > Partly because women's rights have become so politicised.
|
| That's a hand-wavy way of saying that a core pillar of one
| of your parties is to take away the rights of an entire
| gender.
|
| Imagine describing 1940s Germany and saying "Ethnicity has
| become so politicized these days. I'm just interested in
| nationalizing the auto industry"
| gosub100 wrote:
| That would only be true if words weren't perverted for
| political leverage. Sexist used to mean "women can't do
| that" now sexist means "a woman experienced an unpleasant
| thing, and it carries more significance because of her
| gender, and if you dare dispute this you can expect to be
| cancelled".
| moolcool wrote:
| I don't know if you're a news buff, but they're actually
| actively saying "women can't do that".
| Jensson wrote:
| That doesn't contradict what he said though, he didn't
| say the old sexists are no longer called sexist, he said
| the definition had expanded to cover many more than
| before.
| moolcool wrote:
| Why even say it then? What's the point of countering
| "Well, the definition has expanded so much", when the
| thing you're talking about conforms to the old
| definition?
| gosub100 wrote:
| I said it because it's a dirty trick used by one side to
| make people think there's a crisis. When are you going to
| declare the problem solved? When every single living
| breathing human being conforms to your world view? Your
| argument is that someone, somewhere, said something
| terrible. Why even say it then? If course some people out
| of 8bn will have extremist views or utterances. Is that
| really a surprise?
| wat10000 wrote:
| How about "women can't get certain medical procedures"?
| Or "women can't vote"? Multiple prominent Republicans
| have floated reducing or eliminating women's right to
| vote.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >Partly because women's rights have become so politicised.
|
| What is the womans suffrage movement?
|
| I may be extrapolating on a single statement too far, but I
| do feel that you are missing a huge chunk of history
| regarding all the rights women (at least regarding the US)
| did not have.
|
| Womans rights have been political for the last 200 years if
| not longer.
| jajko wrote:
| Marrying purely for "love" and ignoring core values, mindset
| compatibility, what they want in life and so on is a recipe
| for disaster, or at least some deep regrets down the line. I
| haven't seen nor heard about a single success story a decade
| or two down the line. Whom to marry is probably the most
| important decision in our lives. One of reasons why marrying
| early is too risky - people still massively change till at
| least 25-30, it cal still work but chances are smaller.
|
| Its a typical junior mistake to marry for love/lust and not
| think a bit on top of that, in this case I blame parents who
| don't have some hard talks with their kids explaining them
| not-so-rosy parts of adult existence. Like initial enormous
| physical attraction wanes over time, kids crush most of
| remaining, and what still remains are 2 people and how they
| treat relationship and each other with that lust tuned down
| eventually to 0, under various, often not so nice situations.
| But our parent's generation didn't figure it all out, in
| contrary the amount of actually nice relationships in higher
| ages ain't that high.
|
| I didn't have such prep talk neither, nor do I know anybody
| who had, and had to figure it all on my own via rough trials
| and failures till finally figuring myself and women out, and
| then happy marriage (so far, hard knock on the wood). Its
| like expecting everybody to be sophisticated engineer,
| learning them to count on fingers and throwing them out and
| good luck, I am sure you'll figure it out eventually. Some
| do, some don't. Most don't I'd say.
| HPsquared wrote:
| This is the sort of thing they should teach in schools.
| English literature is a good venue for it.
| diggan wrote:
| > Whom to marry is probably the most important decision in
| our lives.
|
| That's putting way too much pressure on it. Find someone
| you feel like you could spend the rest of your life with?
| Marry them, see what happens. If you get a divorce, so be
| it, it's not the end of the world and there is plenty of
| others out there, even if you're "damaged goods" or
| whatever your worry is.
|
| I feel like the pressure people put around marriage it what
| makes it so damaging in the first place, people feeling
| like they have to marry in the first place, or if they're
| married, they need to try to stick together more than some
| couple who isn't married, and so on.
|
| Just make a decision and learn from your mistakes in case
| you fuck up, it really isn't more complicated than that.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > That's putting way too much pressure on it. Find
| someone you feel like you could spend the rest of your
| life with? Marry them, see what happens. If you get a
| divorce, so be it, it's not the end of the world
|
| This is quite bad advice, because divorce can be
| devastating financially.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'm going to assume you're a man and probably have a
| little less experience here than the average woman does.
|
| This said, I am a man too, but a large part of my career
| was supporting lawyers and court systems, including
| family court systems.
|
| _Choosing the wrong partner is one of the biggest risks
| you take in your life, especially for a woman_. This is
| one of those things that can easily lead to you being
| bankrupt with nothing. This can lead to you being abused
| or raped. You can end up with a child that you did not
| want to have. You can end up dead.
|
| With states pushing to revoke things like no fault
| divorce (and women being the primary initiators of
| divorce) it's not hard see the traps women lived in the
| past coming back.
|
| Then add the strongly religious connotations marriage has
| in the US and you quickly see why this is a rollercoaster
| that emotions and politics are not going to be removed
| from.
| shw1n wrote:
| yep the purpose of the essay was to:
|
| 1) show the situations in which politics can't be discussed
| productively (dogmatic ideologies)
|
| 2) show how to avoid being dogmatic yourself
|
| I absolutely encourage people to discuss politics productively
| fergie wrote:
| It was a good essay- thanks for writing it :)
| elliotec wrote:
| Not the best title if that's your message
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, I know a lot of people in the US who simply don't
| _want_ to discuss politics at social events these days.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Which means the only input they get is ever polarised
| extreme feeds online, from social media algorithms and
| straight up paid adverts.
| lukan wrote:
| No, it can also mean they get too much extreme input from
| the people in reality.
|
| There are lot's of people who won't stop, when you push
| the wrong button (speaking a wrong word).
| HPsquared wrote:
| People tend to moderate themselves and compromise a lot
| more in real conversations.
|
| It's like all those videos of dogs barking angrily at
| each other through a closed gate, then suddenly becoming
| quiet and peaceful, their whole body language changing,
| when the gate is opened.
| lukan wrote:
| For sure people are more restrained in real life, than
| online, but the consequences can also be more severe if
| extreme positions meet offline.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Better than ruining real life relationships over
| politics. The only important impact most people have over
| politics is when they vote. Discussing politics has
| massive downsides and trivial benefits.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| There might be very little alignment of political
| opinions within one's circle of friends, and any
| discussion would turn into an unpleasant discussion with
| the risk of ending the group of friends forever.
|
| For most people, very few friendships form with an
| expectation of political agreement: activists met at a
| common protest or campaign, generic regulars of a popular
| political party or union, old style secret societies, and
| so on.
| frantathefranta wrote:
| I think people can aim to meet politically aligned people
| at non-political events/places. I met most of my friends
| in venues that "members of the opposite tribe" just don't
| frequent. And I feel like it goes for both sides.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah. There are exceptions. People can also have multiple
| circles. And it's not as if political opinions within a
| group are really uniform. But there does tend to be a
| certain degree of uniformity within many groups of
| friends.
| pharrington wrote:
| Are you speaking from experience when you say discussing
| politics has massive downsides for your real life
| relationships? And if so, may I ask what happened?
| ghaff wrote:
| I really don't care. And honestly people I'll tend to be
| socializing with are at least somewhat similar in
| political opinions. Just not interested in discussing
| political outrages at a social gathering.
|
| If you insist on talking politics when the host or other
| guests don't want to you're a rude idiot.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Your country really needs more political parties.
| dudefeliciano wrote:
| that's always been the case, politics and religion are
| taboo
| pixl97 wrote:
| Of course they are, people get angry when they have to
| rationalize why they want to genocide some group of
| people different from them in mixed company.
| cauch wrote:
| For me, "avoid being dogmatic yourself" is failing to bring
| home one very important point to avoid being dogmatic:
| understand that you are equally susceptible from the
| mistakes/misunderstandings that you blame others for.
|
| An example in this article is the following part
|
| > my angle ... becomes that of opposing their tribalism.
| Unfortunately ... most people just view me as the opposite of
| their own tribe
|
| But this part totally fails self-reflection: it talks about
| your "conservative friends" and your "liberal friends". They
| are labelled "conservative" or "liberal". How does the author
| know that the interlocutor did not act exactly like the
| author: the interlocutor brought a subject, from their point
| of view their position on it where pretty neutral and
| sensible, the author reacts by playing the devil's advocate.
| They therefore see the author as the "conservative" or
| "liberal" person, and if they follow the author's strategy,
| they will play the devil's advocate. And then, THE AUTHOR
| fails to realize they don't actually care about the
| conclusion.
|
| The lazy answer is: I'm smarter than them, I can tell when
| it's the case or not. Or: the subject I bring are not
| political, they are just common sense and sensible position,
| but they sometimes bring something I disagree with, and this
| is not common sense and sensible position.
|
| In both case, it's weak and does not acknowledge the
| possibilities that you may have done the same mistakes as
| them from time to time (either classifying a "moderate" as
| "far" just because they were doing the devil's advocate, or
| presenting opinions that are not "trivially moderate" from
| the eyes of your interlocutor). It's a detail, but because of
| that, I'm not sure the author is as "non dogmatic" as they
| think they are: they are saying what everybody is saying. The
| large majority of people don't say "I'm dogmatic and my
| opinions are crazy" (if they believe their opinions are
| crazy, then it means they don't believe in their opinions and
| it is not really their opinions).
| InfinityByTen wrote:
| Absolutely. While I am a person who would avoid politics in
| most contexts myself, I couldn't help but feel
| uncomfortable with this attitude in this write up.
|
| If you see others as being "insufficiently equipped" to
| handle nuance, "because it's hard" or "because they are too
| resistant" is a judgement I prefer not to pass on others.
|
| > "Because if a desire to seek truth isn't there"
|
| Who defines the truth? As much as I understand there is a
| need to draw a line somewhere, I also believe that everyone
| has a right to their truth. And that's my truth. I let
| everyone have their perspective and don't see a need to
| impose mine or look down upon them if they don't agree to
| mine, this included :)
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| If everyone has their own truth, then how could you know
| that to be the case? You'd have to appeal to something
| outside of "your truth" to make that judgement. Meaning,
| if it were even possible (or coherent) for there to be
| such a thing as "your truth", then you couldn't know it
| to be the case. It simply would be "the truth" as far as
| you are concerned. You can't step outside yourself. There
| is no "objective POV".
|
| These sorts of claims are as incoherent as the equally
| intellectually jejune skeptical positions ("there is no
| truth" or "we cannot know the truth" or variations
| thereof). It's rare to see anyone outside of first year
| philosophy students make them.
|
| Why can't you just say we have disagreements about what
| the truth is?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| People are entitled to their perspective of course, but
| it is a hindrance to discussion when people conflate
| their perspective with truth.
| decompiled_dev wrote:
| I think of truth like p. Some people say its 3, others
| 3.14, others 3.1415
|
| There is a trade off between energy expended vs accuracy
| needed vs accurately communicating, but the de-referenced
| concept is not a matter of human perspective.
| Coordinating truth is why we have standards and protocols
| to build on.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I'm having a real hard time with this one lately.
|
| The major mistake/misunderstanding I see now is thinking
| that a stupid, vindictive asshole who failed upwards would
| be a good person to run the country.
|
| I don't think I'm susceptible to that. I've never viewed
| _anyone_ the way a lot of these people view Donald Trump. I
| can't imagine I ever will. Is it a failure of imagination
| or is something really different between us?
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Trump may be a bad leader but he'd still be just one type
| of bad leader. I'm not trying to fully relativize Trump
| either, they're not all equally bad.
|
| I agree with Slavoj Zizek's take on Trump's appeal and
| why a lot of criticism of him seems to either have no
| effect or increases his fan appeal: As a general rule,
| people relate to others by identifying with their
| weaknesses, not only or not even primarily with their
| strengths. You aren't susceptible to his appeal because
| you're of a different class or background which has
| different sets of strengths/weaknesses which make it hard
| for you to relate to Trump.
|
| The weaknesses Trump has - his stubborn ignorance, his
| impulsiveness, his might-makes-right mentality and
| disdain for rules, his vindictiveness - are deeply shared
| with his fans. They will forgive his sins because it is
| their sins too. For example when Trump is attacked for an
| impulsive comment, they relate to the risk that they
| could also be cancelled for some comment that is seen as
| racist or sexist or something. His policy framework is
| made of the kind of simple ideas you'll find in a pub, I
| once heard Trump described as "the average guy from
| Queens" and it made a lot of sense to me. "Nobody knew
| healthcare was so complicated", "We're going to build a
| wall".
|
| I belong more to a white collar, professional class. I
| probably have a blindspot on the weaknesses and sins more
| endemic to my group, ones that I share with the figures I
| find appealing. If I had to guess I'd say it's something
| like an ideological/theoretical zeal, bureaucratic
| dysfunction, and an exclusionary judginess. When a
| politician unveils some theoretically elegant project and
| it largely fails and runs over budget and gets mired in
| bureaucratic hell, I'm maybe too quick to forgive that as
| it's a relatable sin.
| wat10000 wrote:
| In short, people like the dumb jerk because they are also
| dumb jerks? I can't say I disagree, but I don't think
| that's what cauch's comment was going for.
| cauch wrote:
| It is a problem that some many people thinks that a
| presidential election is to vote for the guy they relate
| to and not a competent manager. I guess they are so used
| to vote for the prom king and the reality tv show
| candidate that they don't realise that the point is not
| to vote for the person they like.
|
| Similarly, it is worrisome that people vote for what will
| profit the most for them instead of what is the more just
| and fair (sometimes even voting against your own profit).
| It leads to stupid situations, for example where idiots
| are for protectionist measures whatever the consequences
| on other countries, but at the same time are angry when
| people in another country are voting for protectionist
| measures that affect theirs negatively. It is quite clear
| with the Trump supporter: they are furious if someone
| else treats them like they treat others, and seems to not
| even realise the absurdity.
|
| It is really hard to live in a society with people like
| that: it just creates lose-lose situations for everyone.
| shw1n wrote:
| this is actually in the footnotes and addressed by the
| "thinking in bets" section
|
| "[9] Fully understanding I can be the one in the wrong --
| however, when this is the case, the person explaining is
| usually able to:
|
| understand my argument convey their disagreement in good
| faith without circular reasoning or rhetorical tricks"
|
| "There's a 40% chance this succeeds because of A, 25%
| chance of B, 10% of X, and 5% something we haven't thought
| of"
| cauch wrote:
| The footnote is basically saying "I can tell when it's
| the case or not", which is in fact exactly my problem.
| That is not the answer that I'm expecting from someone
| who has self-reflection.
|
| For example: "understand my argument" is assuming that
| the argument is obviously correct. When someone presents
| to you an incorrect argument, 1) this person thinks the
| argument is correct (otherwise they will not present that
| argument), 2) you will not answer by saying "I've
| understood", you will argue. From their point of view,
| you are the one failing to understand. Now the question
| is: how many time this person was you? How many time you
| presented a bad argument and then blamed the interlocutor
| for "not understanding" when they don't accept a faulty
| argument?
|
| Same with "circular reasoning or rhetorical trick": when
| I disagree, it is always very easy to convince myself
| that there is a problem in the interlocutor logic.
| Especially if I failed to understand or misunderstood the
| argument. I would even say that for all discussions that
| are not trivial, there are always elements that can be
| seen as circular or rhetorical trick.
| sevensor wrote:
| I find the most productive political discussions are about
| history. Most people don't know any history at all, so a
| willingness to discuss the reason we have the Third
| Amendment, or the lasting effects of King Leopold's dominion
| in Africa, or the Peleponnesian War, makes for a good
| discussion, and the distance makes people less emotionally
| tied to their positions and more willing to accept nuance. If
| we find we disagree, this also gives us social cover to
| pretend the topic isn't intensely relevant to the present
| day.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Also, present day politics is in many cases determined by
| history.
| sevensor wrote:
| Exactly! What makes history relevant is that we are still
| living in it.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Maybe the long peace within the US changed things, but in
| most countries and especially in Europe discussing history
| in a room with more than 2 nationalities is a good recipe
| to sow dissent.
| sevensor wrote:
| Good point. I live in the US and I wouldn't start with
| the American civil war. Talk about other people's
| history. I'll trade you the American Civil War for the
| Franco Prussian War.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The American Civil War is a great place to start. You can
| very quickly assess where somebody's head is at and move
| on quickly.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That depends on what your purpose is having a
| conversation is in the first place
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean it is a good filter to understand someone with.
| When I moved from the midwest to the south as a teenager
| and learned there are still plenty of people that were
| unhappy the south lost the civil war and want to remedy
| that you begin to understand there are some people that
| are deeply entrenched in their views and you have to make
| a judgement on how much time you're going to spend
| dealing with that.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think entrenchment is a description of both sides, has
| neither I really willing to budge. I think the critical I
| think the critical criteria is how much you have to deal
| with it at all. Is it an interesting conversation that
| you can have once in awhile, or something that gets
| inserted into every conversation.
|
| I think the civil war is interesting and nuanced topic to
| interrogate once in awhile, and can usually find some
| points of agreement with most people.
|
| The legal, moral, and philosophical questions around it
| are fascinating. For example, how do you reconcile
| people's right to self-determination with a desire to
| carry out abhorrent actions. Historically speaking, the
| civil war and failures of reconstruction are probably the
| single most defining aspect of modern American political
| life.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > learned there are still plenty of people that were
| unhappy the south lost the civil war and want to remedy
| that
|
| Did you peel that back to the next layer? Did they want
| to reintroduce slavery? Or did they want independence
| from a distant government?
|
| I knew folks in the South who thought some of the
| craziest racist things and probably would've been OK with
| slavery (I did hear them promote segregation).
|
| At the same time, the vast majority folks I knew who
| defended the Civil War or wanted secession didn't want
| slavery or segregation, but local (and often less)
| government. Did they misunderstand the role of slavery in
| the Southern secession? Usually. Does that change their
| _current intent_? No.
|
| The latter group (which was much larger) should be
| engaged with on the issue of local government and
| secession, especially in the context of folks in Blue
| States who've been rattling about secession under Trump.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I've sent you a line on LinkedIn.
| cle wrote:
| Some of the best convos I've had are with ideologues, it just
| requires authentic empathy and effort, which means letting go
| of moral presuppositions and being willing to really _listen_
| to them without injecting your own judgments & opinions. If
| people subconsciously think you're trying to do that, it'll
| trigger their defense mechanisms and the convo will instantly
| shut down (or devolve into chaos).
|
| People love to talk about what they think is important, but
| NOT when they think they're being setup or playing into
| someone else's hand.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Being friends with someone doesn't mean we both should agree on
| everything. It also doesn't mean we should try to avoid
| discussing whatever. If we agree on something, good. If someone
| is changing his opinion bases on a talk and arguments, good. If
| not, also good.
|
| I am friend with someone because I like that someone and I
| enjoy meeting him and talking to him, doing things together.
|
| That doesn't mean agreeing on everything. And doesn't mean
| being afraid of speaking.
|
| If someone quits, being my friend because we have different
| opinions on X, so be it. I am not like that. I won't break a
| friendship because someone thinks differently.
| d0mine wrote:
| What is the point of discussing politics? (not rhetorical).
| What physical changes in the world do you expect afterwards?
| You won't undo indoctrination. It just upsets people.
| klabb3 wrote:
| You can't talk politics without first overcoming tribalism,
| so I suggest you start there, since in the US that is sadly
| the state of things.
|
| If you start by talking about which sports team is better you
| will also cause these reactions. But politics should not be
| sports. It's harmless to support a sports team that makes bad
| choices. Politics has real impact on people's lives. It's
| important to have exit criteria for alignments and
| affiliations with groups, to the extent they're necessary.
|
| > What physical changes in the world do you expect
| afterwards?
|
| Just like voting, it has no effect in the small. You discuss
| to form and exchange opinions and ideas that become part of
| the whole. The benefits are in the aggregates. Thus it's
| important that it has some other incentive. Where I'm from
| it's not very tribalist, so we get the pleasure from thinking
| and discussing problems even without having an expectation
| that it will change policy. That wouldn't work in the US
| outside very specific groups that understand the rules of
| engagement and the point of the game. But the discussions
| themselves are similar in vibe to board games or puzzles,
| that it's somewhat fun even though it's entirely useless (in
| the small).
| johnisgood wrote:
| I discuss politics with my communist friend, as an anarcho-
| capitalist. It never leads to a fight.
|
| I think curiosity and a desire to learn goes a long way.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Sharing my views here because they don't seem to be reflected in
| the comments yet.
|
| I agree that politics are overwhelmingly tribal and resemble
| religion a lot (the "you believe in god, right?" analogy hits
| home).
|
| I also used to be strictly anti-religious because religions tell
| lies and are anti-intellectual. I was against tribalism and in
| favor of rigorous debates on every topic.
|
| I gradually changed my views though, and this happened not
| because I started to deny science but rather because I tried to
| apply it to deeper levels of reasoning. Basically I stopped
| seeing systems of beliefs (be it politics or religions) as
| independent entities of their own but rather as derivatives of
| the [ever changing] environment.
|
| I now think that stable systems of beliefs exist not because they
| are true or false, or good or evil, but because in the past they
| helped their bearers to survive. The ones that failed at that
| task ceased to exist themselves because beliefs can't live
| outside of people's heads. That's the ultimate and objective
| test, provided by the nature itself. I don't think you can get
| more scientific in your ranking of beliefs.
|
| Based on this I came to respect both Christianity and Islam
| because they did such a good job at that. I still dislike Islam
| though: it's against my tribe, but more on that below. My point
| here is that you can respect your adversaires and recognize they
| are good at something. E.g even now Islam is better at
| maintaining its numbers than some other cultures.
|
| Within this framework tribalism is not bad but likely necessary.
| I think that the approach of "we are the good tribe, we see
| ourselves as different from other tribes, we want our tribe to
| survive, if necessary by exterminating other tribes" results in
| more stable societies than "we are rigorous intellectuals who
| can't agree on anything". It's beneficial for everyone to have a
| rigorous faction within the society but I doubt that this faction
| can survive on their own.
|
| And besides, expecting the majority of population to debate
| everything is just unrealistic. It takes a lot of time and energy
| and I feel that most of people would rather spend that energy at
| work and with their families. Kind of like of people just "side"
| with the Apple or Android tribes, instead of building their own
| OS from sources. You see the phone as an utility, not as a goal.
| You just pick the one that works well for others, along with its
| benefits and inevitably with its flaws too. The grave
| consequences of picking a bad system of beliefs (and more
| importantly not changing it when the environment changes) are of
| course much different from that of a phone, but you can still
| describe both within the same framework, just very far away on
| the same scale.
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| Agreed, cognition and philosophy are technologies, tools. They
| shape what we can extract from them.
|
| Thus the problem is not political but philosophical, how would
| we decide what to do when we cant decide what is worth more. We
| are stuck in a local maximum, with Reality as the fitness
| function :p
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| I think humanity as a whole (not individual tribes) is quite
| good at getting out of local maxima in the past 2000 years.
|
| Stable socioeconomic systems that in isolation could've
| existed for millennia are constantly getting crushed by their
| slightly more effective neighbors. When they're not crushed
| from the outside, they get consumed from within. In the end
| the better economy wins most of the time.
| noobermin wrote:
| This article is this xkcd in article form:
|
| https://xkcd.com/610/
|
| When you say people are "tribal," while as a fact perhaps has
| _some_ truth, you 're essentially saying you don't believe in
| democracy--which is a common sentiment these days. It ironically
| is a thought terminating cliche evidentiary of a _bias_ ; it
| necessarily implies you can ignore people's political instincts
| and impulses which requires a particular disposition (bias)
| towards others around you.
|
| I know what social scientists say about tribalism but
| interpretation of those kinds of research is not meant for
| individuals you know personally. Individuals are not
| distributions, they're people. That is, they have agency, with a
| right to their own opinions that ought to be engaged with
| seriously and sincerely. Some people _may_ not think too deeply
| and just hone to a particular opinion just by fiat. In my life,
| that really isn 't anywhere near "most" people I come in contact
| with or talk to as the article puts it. Most people in my life
| just don't think too deeply about these things, that's it. It's a
| lot less mundane than "people are sheeple" and more like "people
| don't care" or at least "people only really care about X" where X
| might be something like their own job or life.
| cess11 wrote:
| Wild how this person starts off with 'I don't like collective
| thought and action' and lands in 'so I joined a gambling addicted
| cult using discrete math from high school and advocates for it
| with pop culture tropes'.
|
| The audacity to discard millennia of history and philosophy with
| 'no one's got time for that' and substituting it with a crude
| gambling scheme is just astounding. QAnon for the well-off, a
| cognitive technique to get out of having to deal with systemic
| injustice because 'sometimes rentiers also feel bad so there is
| actually suffering on both sides'.
|
| In a way it's similar to some forms of antisemitism, antisemitism
| as "der Sozialismus der dummen Kerle", noticing some superficial
| conditions but instead of following through to develop a
| worldview copping out and getting an obsession with a simple,
| consistently applied reasoning. The jews did you nasty because
| you're not one of them. You did a bad bet because you were
| controlled by your tribe, unlike me, the enlightened high
| schooler who isn't loyal to anyone but myself.
|
| Like antisemitism it's the position of a loser refusing to join
| forces with other people to try and cause systemic change based
| on their common material interests. Yes, I see that the banks are
| exploiting us, but no, I won't join your 'tribe', instead I'm
| going to make tables detailing the ancestry of the bankers. Yes,
| I see that were going down the drain but instead of joining your
| movement to put pressure on people in power I'm going to spend
| the evening making a flowchart and cherry pick some statistics
| and then give money to a cult that agrees with this approach.
|
| If you meet someone like this, you should absolutely engage with
| them on contemporary, political issues. As soon as you get them
| to agree that something is bad, tell them to come to a meeting,
| be it a union, dinner, protest, whatever. Insist, don't take a no
| for an answer. Make it a challenge, whatever it takes. If it
| doesn't work the first time, try again next time you meet. These
| people need help and empathy, and to be among people at least
| sometimes when they're away from their screens.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I always try to stay informed, rationalize well and always try to
| find arguments for both sides of a theory. I act like a detective
| in search of the truth or a mathematician confronted with a new
| conjecture or theory. I try to dig until I can see whether the
| theory has solid chances to be true or not. I try to make the
| process as fast as possible, because I don't like to
| procrastinate or lose time. Most of the time is fine if I know
| something has 60% chances of being true and I don't need 99.99%
| because I can back off and review the theory if I am wrong.
|
| That being said, I don't pick a party solely on what I believe is
| the truth. I also try to see whether my interests align well with
| that party.
|
| As for discussing politics with friends, most of my experience is
| the same as the author's. I started having a dislike for very
| long lawyer-like discussions and arguments that lead nowhere. I
| kind of detect fast if my discussion partner is seeking the
| truth, he is proceeding with an archeology or detective like
| mindset and proceed accordingly.
| cmitsakis wrote:
| I agree that "tribalism" exists. I'd add that sometimes political
| disagreements are actually differences in morality. And there is
| no way you can persuade someone to change their moral beliefs.
| Everyone accepts their moral beliefs as "axioms". But I still
| believe it's worth discussing politics in order to learn what
| kind of person someone is and their morality.
| sidkshatriya wrote:
| You should not discuss politics with friends.
|
| You _should_ however discuss politics with _close_ friends --
| they probably got close to you because you both share a worldview
| or they like hearing your worldview (even if it differs from
| yours).
|
| Closeness means more sharing. That always comes with risks and
| rewards.
| i5heu wrote:
| I can not be friends with someone that votes for ppl that try to
| literally erase me.
|
| If these ppl come into power i have to leave my country and i
| would rather not have to do it.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| Like the author, I tend towards being a function that returns the
| opposite of what the other person believes, rather than having a
| fixed political opinion. Mostly I lack the confidence to claim
| that this way or that way is the Right Way To Do Things -- and
| I'm fascinated (and envious, and also appalled) by those who do.
|
| But on this I differ:
|
| >Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong and you
| will quite literally make my week.
|
| I don't think I believe this at all. It's certainly not true of
| myself -- I aspire to it, but my ego is much too fragile. I have
| spent much time and effort carefully checking the small set of
| core principles that I do feel justified in calling "correct",
| and the _reason_ for that is precisely to avoid the unpleasant
| surprise of discovering that they are demonstrably wrong after
| all.
| techterrier wrote:
| I'm looking forward to going back to the days when political
| disagreements were more along the lines of 'I think __TAX__
| should be x%, rather than x+y%'
| Nursie wrote:
| I often talk politics with friends, mostly because we all like to
| moan about the state of things.
|
| Maybe this doesn't translate to the US, but in the UK (and the
| largely British friend-group I have here in Australia) in my
| bubble we don't tend to strongly identify with any political
| party or politician, rather we tend to look down at the self-
| serving and/or myopic weirdos in parliament and decry their
| short-sighted, uninformed policy-making whichever side they're
| on. And I'm not trying to claim some great enlightened
| intellectual position for myself here - I think it's probably
| more common than not.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The "all as bad as each other" approach. That itself is a
| political view, a rather dangerous one as it's open to be
| easily manipulated.
| Nursie wrote:
| That certainly isn't a claim or a point in my post.
|
| There are better and worse politicians and parties,
| certainly, and your vote and who gets power does matter. They
| certainly aren't all as bad as each other but neither are any
| of them heroes or gods, and identifying strongly with a
| particular party is _weird_.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I completely disagree with this. A friend is someone who I can
| disagree politically with and still be friends with. I extend the
| tribe to political views that aren't too extreme (fascists,
| extreme populists, violent revolutionary socialists,
| islamists...), so 90% of the people I can probably be friends
| with or have family relations with. And it has happened probably
| about 1-2 times in my lifetime that I even e.g. un-friended
| someone on social media because of views that I wouldn't tolerate
| because they fell outside the "normal politics tribe".
|
| And again, that's because I'm lucky enough to not live in the US.
| I'd unfriend a red hat on FB in a heartbeat. I'd probably break
| connections with a family member over it too. I'd have problems
| even having a professional relationship with my US colleagues if
| I had found out they had a red hat in a social media post. But I
| don't see the problem with this at all tbh.
| jwmoz wrote:
| Something I have observed also, and why I'd consider myself a
| sort of pragmatic centrist.
| ta1243 wrote:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/centrist-dad
| rimbo789 wrote:
| The problem with this view is it treats politics as having the
| same stakes for everyone.
|
| When one side is arguing for the death of a group, or that women
| shouldn't have rights and be kept as sex slaves, the stakes are
| much different.
|
| You do not in fact have to be friends with fascists.
| thrance wrote:
| I couldn't fathom _not_ discussing politics with friends.
| Political life is an integral part of modern... well, life. And
| to the contrary, if there ever existed people you might have good
| faith conversations with, it should be your friends and family.
| If not, can you really call them so?
| Nemrod67 wrote:
| On average people are incapable of holding a moral position
| through to the end.
|
| - Bad parenting is bad, we should have a permit for it --> are
| you ready to get denied the right to try having kids?
|
| - Thou shalt not kill --> except those really bad people I don't
| like!
|
| - Stealing is bad --> except when you're "starving"
|
| Our perception of good and evil are multifaceted, with most of it
| happening in our background cognition.
|
| There is a strange "mirror" stopping people from exchanging once
| a rift has opened. Someone else posited that it might be a fight
| or flight reaction.
|
| I posit that our cognition is based on negation, and thus the
| shape of our tool impact our results.
| batch12 wrote:
| Maybe. Killing or stealing for a reason doesn't make the action
| morally good, just less morally bad than the outcome it was
| intended to prevent. I've never heard the first parenting
| example.
| 8jef wrote:
| Tribalism really is the thing one has to individually overcome in
| order to gain some perspective, then maybe adhere to free
| thinking, before blooming as a free doer.
|
| For me, it always was a voluntarily long and sinuous and silly
| and lonely path. It had to be.
|
| An uncertain path as well, and one that was totally worth all the
| trouble it brought my way.
|
| And as seducing as it is, the reality of crossing path with
| fellow free thinking/doing individuals always felt like falling
| for some other tribe.
|
| Because in the end, that's what we do. While not following, we
| often become leaders of followers. How could it be otherwise is
| the only question left to answer.
| mbeex wrote:
| Left/Right: First thing - add more axes. The most used standard
| example from politics or economics is liberalism/libertarism (not
| diving into the subtleties of definitions, their history, usage
| in different parts of the world, etc.). Look for more such axes,
| leave the political conceptual world behind.
|
| After that, try Principal Component Analysis and look, what
| remains from these dimensions and the labels describing them.
| Think up names for the Eigenvectors / new axes. Investigate
| further. For example, look where people are concentrating in this
| high-dimensional space.
| ghosttaboo wrote:
| Maybe tribalism is ok in some respects, and maybe we should
| increase it.
|
| For example, it would be fine if the people in the other tribe to
| do what they want - as long as when the taxes becomes too high,
| the beaurocracy stifling, the crime rampant, and they have to
| deal with issues they assumed other people would sacrifice for in
| order for them to feel good - as long as when it inevitably
| breaks down, they don't come to MY area learning nothing and try
| to replicate what they left.
|
| That is a worldwide problem actually.
| sharpshadow wrote:
| I've got strict rules on not discussing politics generally and I
| would even pretend to not know about things or only barely and
| not having any position. I do jump deep into topic with strangers
| for fun or build up slowly. Never would I share political views
| with my workplace and partner, I give them the freedom to keep
| theirs believes without altering them with the "truth", if people
| are simple let them be. I also let anybody have their position
| especially family members and would be much less eager to tell
| them more. It's mostly a blessing not having went down the rabbit
| hole and I don't want to tamper with it. I like to argue with the
| opposite extrem position for fun.
| mattlondon wrote:
| This paints a very binary picture. Either you are in or out. Part
| of this tribe, or this other tribe (ignorantly or not). The
| article seems to imply that people can't have opinions on
| political policies unless they are _fully_ informed on not only
| global affairs but also philosophy and psychology.
|
| I think reality is different - I don't think there are any
| absolutes that require "knowledge" of e.g. philosophy to get the
| "right" answer in politics. Instead the right answer (at least in
| western democracies) is what the people want, even if they are
| not fully informed.
|
| I view it very much akin to trial by jury - there are highly
| informed and experienced judges, barristers, solicitors etc but
| ultimately it is down to the laymen in the jury to make a
| decision that they see as just. They might reach the "wrong"
| decision from the perspective of people who are fully informed on
| the legal processes and the law of the land etc, but that doesn't
| matter because it is the jury that makes the decision.
|
| So it is for the electorate too.
|
| I have no experience of voting in the US but it appears that a
| two-party system really stokes the "us Vs them" vibes. The only
| alternative you have is to totally switch sides. At least in
| European democracies there is often a plurality of parties to
| vote for. I've personally moved between the main 3 parties (and
| there are probably at least another 1 or 2 other minority parties
| that have different trajectories...) in the UK as my personal
| situation has changed over the years, and I think that is a
| _very_ normal thing here.
| thrwaway438 wrote:
| I would note that trial by jury means a jury of your peers is
| being forced to become informed on a subject [if parties are
| arguing the facts of the case in good faith].
|
| They are then rendering a judgement [in good faith].
| mattlondon wrote:
| On the facts of the case yes. But they are not expected to
| become experts in case law or legal precedent and history and
| philosophy etc.
|
| When I have had to do jury service we have explicitly been
| told _not_ to research _anything_ about the case outside of
| the court room. Everything the jury bases their decisions on
| should only be what was discussed in the court room, and on
| your own lived experience.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Agreed, this article feels like ego stroking. Especially with
| language like "truth seeking". It creates this fantasy that
| there is this level of consciousness that we can evolve to
| where we achieve complete knowledge of all subjects. There is a
| reason we have a democracy with multiple groups and multiple
| departments. Because no one person has all the answers or is
| right. We all bring our unique experiences and expertise
| together to create a better whole. At least that's the idea.
| infecto wrote:
| > Bay Area ... finding a community of truth-seeking people
|
| I don't know if I would entirely classify the Bay Area as truth
| seeking people. It's eclectic but it definitely felt just as
| polarizing as living in other parts of the country, but perhaps
| it's better defined as moving to live with more like minded
| people.
| jachee wrote:
| Must be nice.
|
| Only the favored majority have the privilege of deciding not to
| talk about politics.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Most people don't want to graduate from tribalism.
|
| Even if you personally want to, others will still judge you based
| on it. And honestly, there's often enough people out there for
| you to pick a social circle that aligns with your own interests
| at least on fundamental issues.
|
| As for the people that you don't choose to be around, e.g. at
| work, probably read the room first.
| paxys wrote:
| When did discussing politics with your community become a bad
| thing? In fact that's the _primary_ place you should talk
| politics, share new ideas and hone your views. If more people did
| this they wouldn 't be getting radicalized by online bots.
| incomingpain wrote:
| Discussing politics was fine up until John stewart era.
|
| His comedy is about playing an out of context short clip, make
| funny face, cheap insult, and laugh track.
|
| But how that plays out in political discussions is that 1 side
| wont have discussions and just repeats cheap insults. Which
| results in Trump getting into power.
|
| Better yet, this 1 side who cant discuss politics then
| constantly hides away. Leaving their viewpoint unexpressed and
| further losing position.
| solatic wrote:
| Author thinks they are the lone person stuck in the middle
| between two tribes, but actually they are part of a third tribe
| that fallaciously believes that it is possible to write better
| policy, if only we took the time to study reality more and listen
| to more people and apply more reason etc. In short, Author
| distinguishes between the two established tribes (in which people
| make a very limited emotional engagement with the issues) and
| their tribe (in which people make a stronger emotional
| engagement). This is a fallacy because: * It is
| not reasonable to expect most people to make strong emotional
| investments into voting choices that have little direct effect on
| their lives, and indeed we have a representative democracy rather
| than a direct democracy to recognize that reality *
| Reality is far, far more complicated than can be summarized in
| journalism or articles; many researchers spend their entire
| careers attempting to learn deeply about *one* area, let alone
| many areas; much pertinent information is non-public. Policies
| that are effective in one community are completely counter-
| productive in another. Believing that you are The Exception and
| that you Know The Right Way To Run The Country because you "do
| your research" is the height of hubris.
|
| People will seek out good leadership. People will switch leaders
| when their current leadership fails to make them happy. Good
| leaders defer to experts, each in their own domain, who may make
| imperfect decisions and other mistakes but nonetheless make well-
| intentioned efforts to improve over time and pass on their
| knowledge so that future generations can learn from their
| mistakes. All else is natural variance due to human imperfection.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Wow, great article.
|
| I've lost respect for so many people because they couldn't temper
| their political views. I wish more articles of this kind were
| published.
| readingnews wrote:
| >> be able to understand and empathize with the various (and
| often opposing) groups involved in a topic
|
| Interestingly, I have seen Elon (DOGE) and others outside of
| politics (that mega-church leader) telling the public (dare I
| say, their followers) that one of the main problems with America
| is empathy, and that we need to _stop_ empathizing with others.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| Interesting. From what I've seen, the lack of empathy is the
| root of most of the political problems in the US.
|
| If people put the welfare of others first, for example,
| taxpayer funded universal healthcare wouldn't even be something
| that was debated, it would be implemented with as much fuss as
| we have over painting lane markers on streets. But Americans
| care less for their fellow American than most other countries
| out there it seems.
|
| How would removing what little empathy that there is improve
| matters?
| tastyface wrote:
| To them, removing empathy allows doing "what needs to be
| done," like sending undesirables to a desolate work camp in a
| foreign country without any legal recourse.
|
| See also: "the sin of empathy." https://www.reddit.com/r/Salt
| LakeCity/comments/1i942hf/ogden...
|
| Peel apart the layers and at the root of it all is white male
| supremacy -- by any means necessary.
| roenxi wrote:
| An interesting blog post that would probably do well to look into
| something like Rob Kegan's theories of adult development [0] and
| looking up some stats on how many people fit into each category.
| People actually categorise fairly well into a model where ~66% of
| the population simply don't understand the concept of independent
| thought and rely heavily on social signalling to work out what is
| true.
|
| That model explains an absurd number of social dynamics and a big
| chunk of politics - which is mostly people with a high level of
| adult development socially signalling to the masses what they are
| meant to be doing.
|
| The important observation is that it isn't _intellectual honesty_
| that is the problem or truth-seeking the solution. It is actually
| whether someone is capable of identifying that truth != popular
| opinion. People who form their opinions by social osmosis can
| still be intellectually honest if they land in the right sort of
| community, but they fall apart under social pressure.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#The_Evolving_Self
| niemandhier wrote:
| I actively practice not discussing politics but intentionally
| being member of groups of different political affiliation.
|
| I can only encourage everybody to do the same.
|
| People usually know if you are a ,,filthy liberal" or a ,,closet
| fascist" anyways and my experience shows that just knowing you
| will draw them away from the political extremes.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The article misses one pretty huge thing: up until maybe 10-15
| years ago, politics was - mostly - differences around theories of
| economy, where both sides had valuable arguments for and against
| them. Out of that, you could cut compromises and work bi-
| partisan.
|
| Now? It's _by far_ not among differences in economic policies any
| more. The differences are much more fundamental: the rights of
| LGBT people to exist, the rights of women to have a life outside
| of breeding children, minorities having the same rights as the
| majority. The questions that form the divide are binary in
| nature, not a spectrum any more. When differences become
| existential in nature, reconciliation is impossible - either you
| grant the universal freedoms to everyone or you do not.
| MaxGripe wrote:
| HN is definitely a tribe of Biden and Harris. Any more
| conservative opinions expressed here are immediately met with
| downvotes.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i truly desperately beg of you to recognize that this is an
| extremely reductive and idiotic viewpoint that does not reflect
| reality
| talkingtab wrote:
| The crucial question is what is "politics"? Are personalities
| politics? No. Are parties? No. Are inflammatory issues about
| race, sex or gender or political correctness or immigration? No!
|
| Here is politics:
|
| Are common American citizens able to afford and obtain reasonable
| health care?
|
| Are common Americans paid a living wage? Can one person earn
| enough to have a family?
|
| Do our children have a reasonable opportunity to grow, have a
| productive life and have a family if they want one?
|
| Is the financial situation getting better for Americans or is the
| difference between earnings and expenditures growing larger.
| (Hint do we use code words like 'inflation' instead of calling it
| like it is).
|
| A functioning democracy _requires_ that the common people are
| enable to formulate and enact laws that they believe are in their
| best interests. Do the majority of the laws enacted in all the
| states meet this requirement?
|
| A functioning democracy _requires_ that the common people are
| able to use the law and courts to right wrongs. Are the common
| people able to use /afford access to the courts when wrongs are
| committed.
|
| Do the common news media act as a forum for the common concerns
| and issues of the People. (Here's looking at you NYT).
|
| Cuo Bono? If the laws passed are not in the interests of the
| People, and the courts are not accessible by People, who
| benefits? If the news media are not a forum for the interests of
| the People, whose interests do they represent. (Here's looking at
| you Jeff Bezos).
|
| If advertising funds our primary sources of news, whose interests
| are represented.
|
| Those are simply things you should discuss with your friends.
| They are questions not answers. This is not rocket science.
| cle wrote:
| These are real problems. But they are also loaded questions, if
| someone asked me these at a party I would view them as looking
| for confirmation, and not seeking truth. There's nothing wrong
| with that, but the author's goal is curiosity and truth
| seeking, and I'm skeptical that most of these questions align
| with that goal.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| I always wondered, what those Pinkerton man thought, when
| they attacked union members with machine guns for their
| masters in the guilded age.
| rpd9803 wrote:
| They thought "Well, I guess this makes me one of those
| people for whom "Not talking about politics with Friends"
| becomes a core tenent to my personal philosophy."
| analog31 wrote:
| They thought that the union members were criminals.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Without the ability to realize that it's politics that
| defines what a criminal is.
| exoverito wrote:
| The original argument put forth by capitalists was that
| unionized workers were effectively engaging in economic
| sabotage by striking and blockading factories.
|
| That said the Pinkertons were basically mercenaries akin to
| organized crime, so probably viewed things in terms of
| might makes right.
| sylos wrote:
| Unfortunately they're thinking the same thing today.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The strawmanning of arguments from both sides is so intense
| that most people lay in a bed composed entirely of strawman
| arguments. I firmly blame the media above all for this, but
| individuals carry a burden to for not trying to remake their
| bed.
|
| It took me 15 years to to remake my bed into somewhat
| rational arguments, and still I find lots of hay in there.
| Generally both sides, or all sides really, want the same
| things and disagree on how to get there. And the truth is
| _there is almost never an obvious or clear way to get there_.
| It 's fractal pros and cons all the way down.
| matwood wrote:
| > but individuals carry a burden to for not trying to
| remake their bed
|
| In what way? I turn on Fox sometimes and it's not that it's
| slanted, but it's just a stream of lies and BS. I've
| watched a bunch of Trump's speeches and in addition to
| being incoherent, he says the same lies and BS all the way
| down. Yesterday's tariff speech was a great example.
|
| I don't consider myself progressive (though the MAGA right
| would think me so), but where do I go to try and 'remake
| [my] bed'?
| ablob wrote:
| I think what's meant is that you need to be open to
| changing your opinion and manner of approach to things.
| To stay with the analogy: when you "remake" your bed and
| it ends up the same, chances are that you didn't try to
| improve on its design.
|
| By turning on Fox sometimes (provided it's not your main
| source) you might already not fall into the category of
| people not trying to remake their bed.
| freejazz wrote:
| Wait, we're designing bedding now? Not just remaking our
| beds? What a strained analogy that when you 'remake' your
| bed and it's the 'same' (why would it be different?) then
| you didn't improve the _design_?? Even more shocking is
| that you ran with this as opposed to realizing that these
| were warning signs that either your fundamental argument
| is ridiculous, or your analogy is.
| nomdep wrote:
| Well, the first thing is to realize CNN is also just a
| stream of lies and BS. Every media news organization in
| the world has become (they always were?) pure garbage.
|
| Listening to first-hand sources is the way, I guess, but
| also remembering they can be lying as well, so be
| vigilant.
| MrMcCall wrote:
| It's true, because all the upper levels of _ALL_ large
| media organizations have been infiltrated by big-moneyed
| conservatives.
|
| CNN and NBC weren't always as bad as they are now, but
| their descent has been obvious and dramatic.
|
| Some of them still employ democrats to some minimal
| extent, such as Jamelle Bouie at the NYT, but that's
| merely subterfuge, lest their bent be glaringly obvious.
|
| If someone can name a large organization that is an
| exception to my first paragraph, I would be happy to
| learn of them.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| CNN has always been propaganda
|
| https://youtu.be/rWtwjDhgN3Q
|
| https://youtu.be/NlcSiYulhos
| goatlover wrote:
| > Generally both sides, or all sides really, want the same
| things and disagree on how to get there.
|
| No, that is just not true. For example, do you think Putin
| and his supporters wanted a functioning democracy in Russia
| and independent Ukraine? No, they wanted someone
| functioning as a dictator to restore Russia's cold war
| territory and influence, and they wanted to undermine
| western democracies that stood in their way.
|
| History does not support your claim that everyone wants the
| same things. Some people want power and strong man to take
| over the government. We see that with the Trump
| administration. The religious conservatives want to use
| that to make America a Christian nation. The billionaire
| libertarians want to use it to deregulate their industries
| and run the government like a corporation. And Trump wants
| to act unilaterally to bring about his vision of being seen
| as some great figure. They have illiberal aims.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm speaking about the collectives, not the individuals.
| There are always deranged individuals and some of them,
| many of them, manage to get in power. But the ideological
| collectives all have pretty much the same core goals.
| Needs met, population happy.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| What's your threshold where an "individual" becomes a
| "collective"? Certainly billionaire libertarians,
| religious conservatives, Putin and his supporters and the
| Trump administration (along with the judges he's
| appointed, the people in congress and state governments
| who ran on his platform and the 10s of millions of
| Americans who voted for them) are not individuals...
|
| They also very obviously want different things compared
| to others.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Shy of a few fringe groups, I am not aware of any large
| suffering & death collectives. Every large collective is
| trying to achieve a better life for it's adherents, and
| is always welcoming to those who want to join. Christains
| might see living is the light of Jesus as the ideal life,
| and while not for everyone, you should at least be able
| to understand why they feel that way (as opposed to a
| religion of self inflicted torture).
|
| Remember the goal here is not to become sympathetic to
| Trump, or Putin, or Sanders, or Netanyahu, or Islam. The
| goal is to have an accurate understanding of them, so
| that when you form arguments against them, you are
| actually attacking bedrock and not just straw.
| goatlover wrote:
| > Christains might see living is the light of Jesus as
| the ideal life, and while not for everyone, you should at
| least be able to understand why they feel that way (as
| opposed to a religion of self inflicted torture).
|
| Yes, but also we've seen how they've behaved in the past
| when they had vast political power in Europe. And we see
| what the goals of the Heritage Foundation is with Project
| 2025. There have always been a decent number of
| conservative Christians who want prayer, the bible and
| ten commandments in school. Who don't want legal abortion
| or gay marriage. And the more power they have, the more
| they would restrict. They also tend to believe in a lot
| of conspiracy theories, like the Democratic Party being
| controlled by satanists and communists, who have also
| infiltrated the "Deep State".
|
| So you can imagine how those beliefs play out with enough
| political power.
| slt2021 wrote:
| politics, especially international geopolitics is a zero-
| sum game. The game of competition for limited resources and
| markets. Because resources are limited, the pie is fixed,
| and this makes it zero sum game.
|
| Although there is a way to frame political alliances as a
| win-win when two parties increase their share at a cost of
| some other third party losing theirs.
|
| Because of that, the arguments will always be straw-man,
| because people want to win resources, not to argue in good
| faith.
|
| Any political issue can be framed in terms of zero sum
| game, if you look at the whole picture
| goatlover wrote:
| That's not how economics works. The pie is not fixed, it
| tends to grow over time as there's more trade between
| countries and their economies get bigger. The global
| economic pie has increased a massive amount over the past
| century.
| slt2021 wrote:
| the trade has increased because jobs have been offshored,
| corporations have been running labor cost arbitrage and
| making a profit from a difference in labor cost in US vs
| elsewhere
| freeone3000 wrote:
| And as with most arbitrages, costs have lowered as a
| result. It means a piece of technology with thousands of
| individual parts can be in your hand for $200. Labor
| efficiency differences have resulted in an explosion of
| value-for-dollar for the American consumer.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| This is incorrect. There are few physical resources that
| we have reached the limit of, such that one entity's gain
| is necessarily another's loss. There are also a great
| many things of value that aren't simply raw resources,
| for which the pie will never be fixed, because the pie is
| made by humans and can be made bigger or smaller.
|
| This zero-sum narrative is only true in a world of no
| growth, where all resources are being fully utilized to
| maximum effect. That is very far from the world we live
| in, where there is enormous room for additional
| extraction, creation, and efficient utilization of
| resources.
| slt2021 wrote:
| the zero sum will always be true because of the
| fundamental law of physics: Law of preservation of
| energy.
|
| Everything in the economy thats worth producing/consuming
| costs energy and labor. Energy and labor is not free.
|
| You may be conflating win-win with debt-based growth,
| where economy can grow at the cost of running fiscal
| deficit and accumulating debt. Sure the economy and
| market can grow, but the debt will also grow and the
| inflation will cancel out the nominal growth
| hnaccount_rng wrote:
| We use about 1 part in 10000 of the sun's energy deposit
| on earth... No, we are _really_ far away from
| preservation of energy being a limiting problem
| slt2021 wrote:
| yes, the only way to increase economy without stealing
| from someone else is technological advancement and
| efficiency improvements (which amounts to R&D spend =
| $$$$)
| alwa wrote:
| I guess I can interpret the strongest form of your
| argument to suggest that resources and markets have a
| specific level of economically relevant supply at any
| specific time, which I suppose is an empirical claim
| that's true. I feel like recent days' trade policy
| earthquakes might operate along a similar line of
| reasoning: there's only so much, "they've" been getting
| better off, which means they've been "taking" from the
| US, so the US is taking back.
|
| In the same sense it's true that there are only so many
| bushels of seed corn left after the winter. At the
| moment, we can squabble over how to divide the fixed
| supply. I could take all the corn, eat half, keep the
| rest for myself to plant this season. Or, if I've already
| got enough to plant all my land, and you've got more land
| and nothing else to do, I could invest some of my
| leftover corn with you and we can all have double the
| harvest in a few months... when the supply will have
| dramatically expanded, assuming I don't treat it as a
| zero-sum game right now. Or I could focus on "winning"
| right now, and we'll both be poorer after the harvest
| than we would have been otherwise.
|
| While I agree that you _could_ frame most any political
| issue in zero-sum terms, I feel like the blind spot is
| the same: it tallies the score based on assumptions fixed
| in time, and it takes a pessimistic view of cooperative
| potential, of humans' power to influence the constraints
| themselves.
| slt2021 wrote:
| the zero sum will always be true because of the
| fundamental law of physics: Law of preservation of energy
| / Law of preservation of matter.
|
| Everything in the economy thats worth producing/consuming
| costs energy and labor. Energy and labor is not free.
|
| Any free lunch one can have in the economy is only
| possible in nominal terms, when your economy/market
| grows, but your sovereign debt and fiscal deficit also
| grows and in real terms, after inflation there is no real
| growth.
|
| if you look at the core, the bottom of the economics it
| is just pure physics: The flow and exchange of energy and
| materials, labor and capital. The fight is over a
| distribution of the flows between various factions
| paulsutter wrote:
| Actually they make great conversion. Preface with, "Why is
| neither party talking about..." and you'll find that most
| people agree.
| immibis wrote:
| Then lead them to the understanding that both parties are
| right-wing? (support the current economic system, support
| mass-murdering brown people overseas, support embezzling
| for personal gain as long as they don't get caught, etc)
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| > support embezzling for personal gain as long as they
| don't get caught
|
| If you think this is a strictly right-wing characteristic
| you are hopelessly partisan.
| immibis wrote:
| Notice that I said both parties do it.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The ironic thing to me is that the author essentially makes
| this the main point right from the get go:
|
| > The insidious nature of this question comes from the false
| representation as earnest, intellectual discourse. Many who
| ask it may truly believe they're engaging earnestly, but
| their responses quickly reveal an angle more akin to
| religious police.
|
| As you point out, nearly all of talkingtab's questions are
| loaded. At the very least, talkingtab essentially says
| _outright_ what they expect the "correct" answer to be, e.g
| I'm baffled why talkingtab seems to think "inflation" is a
| "code word". I speak English, and inflation _is_ "telling it
| like it is" based on the simple definition of the word.
|
| As another example, for this question:
|
| > Are common Americans paid a living wage? Can one person
| earn enough to have a family?
|
| What happens if a response is "No, I don't believe that
| cashiers at McDonald's deserve to be paid a 'living wage',
| because I don't believe that job is intended to support a
| family on its own"? To emphasize, I'm not saying what the
| "right" answer is, but I _do_ believe reasonable people can
| disagree over what constitutes a living wage and which jobs
| deserve to be paid it.
|
| If anything, talkingtab's post just highlights to me the
| author's specific point about political "tribes" vs political
| views, and if anything has convinced me more that the
| author's view is spot on here.
| keybored wrote:
| My read is that talkingtab's agenda here is to focus the
| conversation on what politics is. Rather than being this
| thing you discuss with people (or not) it's about injustice
| against the majority. So why does that get brought up?
| Because with the OP it's easy to end up concluding that
| politics to the average person is something you choose to
| idly or deliberately or max-brainpower chatter with other
| people about. Then it can be easily thought that it's just
| about differing policy positions. But talkingtab is saying
| that it's more confrontational than that.
|
| So why are the questions "loaded"? Because as you can see
| with your own eyes, they have their own political agenda.
| Part of politics is defining what the the agenda should be
| --and what should be considered political.
|
| As you can imagine, people who think they are arguing or
| fighting on behalf of people making a living wage etc. want
| to put that message out there. They are not discussing
| abstract concepts or competing in some open-mindedness
| competition or some rationality contest. It matters to
| them.
|
| > If anything, talkingtab's post just highlights to me the
| author's specific point about political "tribes" vs
| political views, and if anything has convinced me more that
| the author's view is spot on here.
|
| You are even more convinced. Yet there is nothing here that
| suggests that talkingtab is tribal in the sense of what the
| OP is talking about. None. Is this received opinion or
| opinion born from studying like a monk for 10 years? You
| don't know.
|
| You also say that talkingtab is presenting what the
| "correct" answer is. Yes, according to them. Again, is it
| really tribalism? Or is it conviction as well as the
| polemic tone of the whole comment? And having conviction
| doesn't mean that you cannot _conceive_ of people having
| other opinions, or being intellectually unable to present
| counter-arguments to their own position. Again, no proof of
| tribalism is presented.
|
| And this focus on tribalism presupposes that the _end goal_
| is to find your tone. Alternatively you can look at their
| arguments. Maybe they want to change the flaws they
| perceive in the world.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the author essentially makes this the main point right
| from the get go_
|
| Then find better friends. The author is essentially
| complaining about the quality of his friends.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Ah, yes, those pesky humans and their cognitive biases...
| keybored wrote:
| They are both real problems and loaded questions. Okay.
| Ostensibly the point of politics is to solve problems that
| people have. That will lead to people putting forth what they
| think the problems are. We simply don't have time to theorize
| every concievable _potential_ problem and then, one by one,
| painstakingly (with our minds wide open like an open brain
| surgery) consider whether they are in fact problems that
| people have.
|
| All of these pointed questions can also be disputed.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Are common American citizens able to afford and obtain
| reasonable health care?
|
| "Should common American citizens" ... is a question.
|
| This already implies a country's citizens having access to
| health care without financial barriers is a good idea already
| :)
|
| [Note that I'm in the EU, I have access to affordable health
| care by default and I like it that way. But I don't think
| everyone in the US thinks like that. Or even understands what
| it means.]
| dagw wrote:
| _" Should common American citizens" ... is a question_
|
| "How should..." is the really important and interesting
| question. Even when everybody answers yes, which most people
| do, to the "should" question they will often completely
| disagree on the "how should" question.
| geodel wrote:
| Agree.
|
| It is same thing with higher ed. _Everyone should have
| college degree_ . Now even without everyone having it but
| just 3-4 times then before means there are tons of graduates
| without jobs, low paying jobs commensurate to years in
| education and heavy load of debt.
|
| The question from start had to be _Should everyone get a
| college degree?_
|
| Define all kinds of privilege/benefits as rights. And then
| move on to ask innocent questions as _Is even asking for our
| rights politics?_
| nottorp wrote:
| Uh oh. Last paragraph is leading :)
| iteria wrote:
| > The crucial question is what is "politics"? Are personalities
| politics? No. Are parties? No. Are inflammatory issues about
| race, sex or gender or political correctness or immigration?
| No!
|
| What an easy answer when you not part of the disadvantaged
| demographic. Some problems apply almost exclusively to a single
| demographic. Not asking the cultural questions is like thinking
| that segregation was perfectly okay because everyone had access
| to everything you'd need. Just not in the small space.
|
| Urban problems are not rural problems even when they look like
| the same problem. Why there is a food desert in Nowhere,
| SomeState is not going to be anything like the reason there is
| a good desert in Urbanville, Somestate. So while everyone
| definitely deserves the ability to acquire food pretending that
| subgroups don't exist means you can't actually solve their
| struggle. If you apply a blanket solution it doesn't help
| everyone.
|
| It is beyond disingenuous to pretend that different kinds of
| people don't feel the impact of culture and regulation
| differently and in ways they either can't themselves or can't
| at all change. To take that stance, shows that one is on the
| default demographic that is always considered before anyone
| else.
| Jensson wrote:
| > It is beyond disingenuous to pretend that different kinds
| of people don't feel the impact of culture and regulation
| differently
|
| But that is why you shouldn't talk about it at parties,
| because people experience it so differently it is likely to
| lead to conflict and bad times.
|
| Saying you need to talk about it since it is important is
| like teaching math at parties because it is important, it
| will just irritate people since they are there to enjoy
| themselves not get lectured.
| klank wrote:
| Unlike your math example, if serious harm or death is at
| stake, I don't mind if it leads to conflict and bad times.
| Avoidance because "it might be a bad time", to me, feels
| like a lack of appreciation for what is at stake in these
| conversations.
| mock-possum wrote:
| > The crucial question is what is "politics"? ... Are
| inflammatory issues about race, sex or gender or political
| correctness or immigration? No!
|
| When people talk about privilege, this is it - being able to
| dictate which issues are 'politics,' and being able to dismiss
| my rights as 'not politics.'
|
| Do I have a right to work? To live? To own property? To marry
| the one I love? To have sex with the people I'm attracted to?
| To raise a child with my partner? To choose my own identity and
| to live my own life?
|
| A white cishet man takes all those rights for granted - why
| shouldn't I? Why should my struggle to obtain those same rights
| be dismissed as 'inflammatory issues about sex or gender or
| political correctness' and therefore 'not politics?'
|
| Are you married? Would you like to be? Do you ever worry about
| how you'll be treated when you go to work, or make a purchase
| at the store? What's it like to go grocery shopping, or car
| shopping, or touring places to live? What's it like apply to
| and interview for jobs? Does you boss look like you? How do
| your parents feel about you? How do your neighbors greet you
| when they see you? What's your relationship like with your
| landlord?
|
| You're really telling me that none of that is worth
| 'politicking' over?
|
| _that_ attitude is exactly why things are not going well right
| now - because we are pretending that of we look away, equality
| and justice will take care of itself.
| ajsicnckckxnx wrote:
| Politics is simply figuring out who's on your team. It's why
| our current billionaires are so big on immigration and divisive
| rhetoric. Small groups have used this tactic for thousands of
| years to rule over larger groups.
|
| In a good society you would know and have a favorable view of
| our wealthiest (kings in all but name) people. They wouldn't be
| afraid and hide their wealth (Bezos, musk, etc are not the top)
| because there wouldn't be an immoral wealth gap.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Those are good questions for sure and could lead to some
| interesting discussions, but (and maybe my generally left-
| leaning bias is showing by saying this) they're questions that
| are in many ways self-evident. For example, it's hard to argue
| that health care should only be affordable for the rich and
| that everyone else should just die in the streets.
|
| There's other issues that are much less clear and, in my
| experience, more likely to shift from discussions and debates
| into strife and arguments:
|
| - Should private citizens be allowed to own firearms? Should
| they be allowed to carry them on the streets?
|
| - What do we do about meth and opiates on our streets? What do
| we do about the associated property and violent interpersonal
| crime?
|
| - Should we start building more nuclear power plants to cut
| down on our greenhouse gas emissions?
|
| And locally:
|
| - The city is expanding to the west. What should this
| neighbourhood look like?
|
| These, I believe, are squarely in the realm of "politics" and
| unless you're having the discussion in an ideological bubble
| are likely to be much hotter-button issues.
| gosub100 wrote:
| - should private citizens be able to own their own property?
| Or should the government jump in an take what they think is
| "fair" so they can redistribute it to others?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Is this a trick question about tax or an 'are you a
| communist?' question?
|
| Outside the extremes edge cases (billionaires), I'd be
| surprised if any significant portion of the population
| thought owning stuff a problem.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| > I'd be surprised if any significant portion of the
| population thought owning stuff a problem.
|
| Except for Real Estate...there's a not-insignificant
| group of people who thing that the idea of owning
| multiple homes and renting them out should not be
| allowed.
| nradov wrote:
| There's a lot of nuance in the healthcare access and
| affordability issue. In developed countries at least there's
| a pretty broad consensus that if someone is having a medical
| emergency then they should receive treatment regardless of
| ability to pay. But beyond that it gets sticky and there are
| hard choices that no one likes to discuss. Resources are
| finite but demand is effectively infinite, so one way or
| another there has to be some form of rationing. Like if a
| poor patient is dying of cancer and a drug could extend their
| life by 3 months at a cost of $100K then should society be
| obligated to pay? This is inherently a political question
| with no obvious correct answer.
| nixonaddiction wrote:
| "healthcare should be for everyone" is a great claim to make.
| but then the question is implementation. how will you get rid
| of the current system and replace it with a more equitable
| one? people are generally hesitant to make changes unless
| things are really bad. i like to think of this in terms of
| chemical bonds - people are bonded to their current systems,
| and wont break those bonds unless they are under enough
| stress that bond breakage is favorable. and once you start
| arguing for destruction of the current system, the morality
| gets fuzzy. do you support accelerationism, or a more gradual
| change? and then once you are in the weeds of implementing a
| fairer healthcare system, things are just genuinely terrible.
| i am very uninvolved in the healthcare system, but you need
| organizational structures, supply chain, etc. someone
| somewhere will probably try and be selfish about things which
| will make everything harder. structures will have to be built
| to deal with legal minutia. and meanwhile there are all these
| other preexisting systems used to the former system that
| struggle to make the switch instantaneously? every question
| is complicated and awful once you think about implementation.
| nothing is ever self evident. imo!
| brightlancer wrote:
| > "healthcare should be for everyone" is a great claim to
| make. but then the question is implementation. how will you
| get rid of the current system and replace it with a more
| equitable one?
|
| And as importantly, what does "more equitable" or "fairer"
| mean? More broadly, how do people define "better"?
|
| In the US, a major issue is that The D and The R have
| radically different ideas of what those words mean, even
| though they agree on the high level objectives like
| "healthcare should be for everyone".
| grandempire wrote:
| "Hello friend, thanks so much for coming over. I just wanted to
| start by asking you what do you think are the preconditions for
| having a functioning democracy"
| CooCooCaCha wrote:
| Politics is decision making in groups.
|
| Every group of people is a political unit and anything that
| affects decision making is political. Your office is a
| political unit, your family is a political unit, etc.
|
| So if a racial issue is affecting the decisions we make then
| yes it's political.
| wat10000 wrote:
| "What is politics" is entirely contextual.
|
| I start talking about my wife's work. That's just personal
| family stuff, right? Not if there's someone there who's a
| hardcore women-should-stay-home sort.
|
| Or maybe everyone is ok with women having jobs, but my wife's
| work has been substantially impacted by the recent DOGE
| nonsense. Something as simple as "she has to go to the office
| on Monday" becomes political if there's a Trump supporter
| present.
|
| Let's just talk shit about our cars. Oops, what brand of car
| you own is now political.
|
| "My parents are going to come visit" sorry, turns out that the
| ability of foreigners to enter the country without fear of
| being detained for weeks for no good reason is political.
| atoav wrote:
| On top of that if you strictly want avoid political topics, be
| aware that there are forces who profit from making topics
| "political" that probably shouldn't be.
|
| So when someone else decides which topics are politicized and
| you want to avoid political discussions -- congrats you just
| let others decide about which topics you are willing to
| discuss.
|
| My opinion is that most topics have a political dimension
| anyways, also because most topics have a economic dimension. Or
| phrased differently: Everything is political.
|
| When discussing politics with friends the "how" is probably
| much more important than the "if". Most people do not have a
| vetted political opinion, they just have a strong vibe that
| they can't really reason about. They aligned with some sources
| and read/watch news they _like_ to hear and that forms their
| image of the world. They never really tried to form a logically
| coherent worldview that is backed by facts instead of pre-
| filtered annecdotes that may or may not have happened in that
| way.
|
| With this as the starting point a healthy political discourse
| isn't possible. You can't argue against someones vibes.
|
| But that doesn't mean good/interesting political discourse
| isn't possible. It just means that if someone lets the
| politicians turn them into a vibe-based party-before-issue
| follower that uncritically believes most of what politicians
| say, they can no longer think or discuss the topics that impact
| them with others on a reasonable level. And this is why topics
| get politicized in the first way.
|
| And no-one is immune to this, especially not you guys over
| there with that two-party system. But we all need to remember
| that towing the line of a political party means they no longer
| represent us, but we represent them. Mental flexibility
| translates to voter agency and our democracies hinge on voters
| being well informed and not throwing their agency away.
|
| TL;DR: Not discussing politics and blindly towing the party
| line is like throwing your own agency away.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| >A functioning democracy requires that the common people are
| able to use the law and courts to right wrongs. Are the common
| people able to use/afford access to the courts when wrongs are
| committed.
|
| Having recently been completely railroaded and betrayed by the
| court system I can tell you. No. I literally had all my
| evidence thrown out with no explanation from the Judge other
| than "I don't think this is relevant" in regards to several
| different topics that I had made an organized report on.
| Meanwhile the corporate defense provided unorganized
| meaningless piles of documentation that would takes months to
| go over and it was left as "evidence" I do mean meaningless,
| several hundred pages were literally blank white pages
| submitted as evidence. I guess the crappy software they use to
| do discovery generated lots of white space in between snippits
| of info.
|
| The court had decided before the trial that by default a person
| is wrong and a corporation is right.
| klank wrote:
| > The crucial question is what is "politics"? Are personalities
| politics? No. Are parties? No. Are inflammatory issues about
| race, sex or gender or political correctness or immigration?
| No!
|
| I don't personally agree with how quick you are able to write
| those things off as not being political. Would you mind
| providing a bit more explanation of how you are able to arrive
| at such confident No's?
|
| Perhaps you consider political to be an intrinsic quality of a
| thing rather than a descriptor of how a thing is used/intended?
| I fall into the latter camp, and thus am very open to consider
| almost anything and everything political. Much like art.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| Literally none of this is politics, its governance. Politics is
| the human word for the chimplike "who gets to be the boss"
| games we play. No matter how well your society is running there
| will always be politics, put 20 people on a tropical island
| with no problems and 4 weeks later half of em will want to kill
| the other half - thats politics
| anon6362 wrote:
| The problem is the property political class, which includes
| both parties a-la Gore Vidal, seeks to dismiss, gaslight, and
| distract from these problems and instead make them pseudo-wedge
| issues or political footballs. One side is stuck on remaking
| reality as a shared, fantastical mirage, and the other
| complains about the delusion with stern words but agrees to it
| anyhow. Neither is concerned with addressing the core problem:
| big money buying all 3 branches of govt, and John McCain found
| that out the hard way that ethics don't win votes because
| enough Americans' manufactured consent to condone lawlessness,
| authoritarianism, radical deregulation, and privatization.
|
| Either a Constitutional Convention 2.0 needs to happen to undo
| the damage like the repeal of the Tillman Act and the
| disastrous Citizens' United, or Americans needs to voluntarily
| do away with popularity contests by instead picking public
| administrators with limited power by sortition from amongst
| professional societies for a limited term of say 4 years once.
| zepolen wrote:
| Great post, I agree with all your points regarding what is
| politics except that a functioning democracy should rely on
| common people, I think it should rely on the valuable people.
|
| Common man democracy just lowers the decision making process to
| majority of idiots of the country that are easily manipulated.
| Worse yet, in its current form, it essentially causes the flip
| flopping mess because of the lack of long term vision and
| focus, something the common man doesn't want to deal with.
|
| One man one vote in general makes no sense either. Why should a
| homeless or fresh immigrant's vote have the same impact as
| someone that has lived and paid taxes in a country for decades?
| How about...you get a vote weight equal to the amount of
| investment/taxes you have made in that country over the course
| of your life. Provide more for the community, have more to
| lose, get more say on policy.
|
| Give incentive to the society value providers to remain and
| society detractors to leave.
|
| Add to this that the current Democracy system is fundamentally
| flawed, most of those systems are exploitable anyway, it makes
| zero sense to change things up when a great leader is doing
| well. Having an arbitrary rule that they must step down because
| they can only serve for x time makes no sense. If it ain't
| broke don't fix it. Same goes the other way, where bad leaders
| can remain in power using war mechanisms.
|
| The core problems today with society is not the left right or
| whatever, it's that people are lazy, selfish, manipulative,
| different, it's hard to find a system that works that can make
| everyone happy.
|
| Are you willing to risk personal death or decrease your value
| for the greater good of the nation as a leader or citizen?
| That's the standard that all citizens and especially
| politicians should be held to. There are examples of this in
| the past, usually when a revolution happens. One might say it's
| happening in the US right now.
|
| For certain one solution would be to remove people as much as
| possible from the equation, remove all incentive to abuse the
| system. The dictatorship and laws of a country should provide
| negative motivation for someone to cheat and should _reward_
| people providing _value_ to society.
|
| It's not easy, no matter how well a system is designed, people
| will find a way to cheat it, Bitcoin is a great example of
| this, not accounting for the banking industry buying the
| ecosystem and shitcoins diluting the entire system.
|
| AI is not there yet, I don't think it ever could be, it's been
| trained on existing flawed ideas which have been further gimped
| in the interest of 'security'. It has no original thought,
| can't even draw a full glass of wine.
| 0xBDB wrote:
| There are a lot of questions that are upstream of yours. Or at
| least, that illustrate why your questions are aggressively
| framed in a specific ideological directions and it's possible
| to frame them in the other direction.
|
| If common American citizens can't afford health care, do other
| American citizens have an obligation to provide it? There is a
| word for a system where people are obligated to provide their
| labor to others. Does that word apply to a system where
| everyone gets free healthcare?
|
| Do common Americans provide enough value to earn the wages they
| make now, especially the ones making a legislatively mandated
| minimum wage? How many fewer can actually earn an arbitrary
| increased number? Do people deserve things they didn't earn?
| What's the non-mystical explanation for that, if so?
|
| Why aren't we having children? They can't have a productive
| life without having a life.
|
| Is the difference between earnings and expenditures growing
| larger because Americans are unwilling to pay one another? If
| we are, why is that? (Actually I'll cheat a little on this one
| and provide a correct answer: the entire increased gap here is
| explained by housing. So the questions becomes: why aren't
| Americans willing to let strangers live closer to them? Might
| there be some risk or self-interest there? Are people obligated
| to act against their interests? Why, how, and by whom are they
| obligated?)
|
| Which is better, democracy or a stable and prosperous society?
| Might they be mutually exclusive? What's holy about the popular
| vote, especially for morons? Even if we keep democracy, does a
| functional democracy require some form of IQ tests as a
| condition of the franchise?
|
| Is the purpose of courts to write wrongs or interpret the law?
| Does separation of powers require courts to refrain from
| writing wrongs if the legislature has passed laws that are
| wrong? If not, does the lack of separation of powers place any
| limit at all on the courts' ability to right wrongs? How about
| when the courts are controlled by people whose concept of wrong
| is different than yours? Doesn't a functioning democracy
| require the concept of right and wrong to be decided by what
| are literally called the political branches, the legislative
| and executive?
|
| Are the news media obligated to produce content in the
| interests of the people? Are _you_ then obligated to produce
| content in the interests of the people? What 's the difference
| between you writing in a public forum and a journalist? If
| there is a difference, should you therefore not enjoy freedom
| of the press? What if you, say, advocate for the courts to
| ignore separation of powers to do what is right? What if we the
| people decide that is not in our interests? How will you be
| punished for this transgression?
|
| In actuality, I would probably give the same answers to many of
| these questions that you would. But the point is that there is
| no "just asking questions, man". Questions have premises and
| assumptions. If you, like me, don't like the ones in this
| question set, don't assume people will be comfortable if you're
| just askin' yours. I wouldn't be. And if people _are_ all
| comfortable with you just askin ' yours, ask yourself whether
| you have friends or conformation bias with echo chamber.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| In my circle of family and friends, no one strays too far from
| the center, so I don't find it particularly difficult to navigate
| disagreement. We've gotten more carried away arguing about
| completely banal happenings. However, I sense not everyone else
| feels the same way.
|
| What tends to happen at dinners or whatever is that some
| outspoken person (socially conservative on a pet issue)
| monopolizes conversation, and a couple of others keep mum because
| they don't like confrontation/arguing. The others don't care.
|
| I am guilty of this in one particular case. I have a friend who
| describes himself as a classical Liberal, and when the subject
| comes up about pit bulls or the like, will say that "the problem
| is with the owners not the breed". What am I going to do, take
| out my crap phone and try to use data like a blunt instrument? I
| don't care enough to start an argument over it.
| TexanFeller wrote:
| I don't talk politics much when I'm first getting to know someone
| because our country is so polarized that they automatically
| assume you are one of two extreme groups. Most people's political
| beliefs are similar to religious beliefs, they have them because
| their parents/community had those beliefs or they attend a
| certain church(MSNBC, Fox News, etc.) that consistently
| reinforces their beliefs instead of encouraging critical thought
| about their positions. This also leads to overly moralizing
| political affiliation, you're "one of them" and "a bad person",
| not a thinking person whose beliefs can be changed with
| facts/discussion.
|
| I think the solution is tolerance. Whatever your politics are
| they don't typically affect me personally. I have a few friends
| that are far further right than Ben Shapiro and a couple that are
| far more left than Bernie Sanders and want literal Communism.
| They range from extreme authoritarian to extreme libertarian or
| various flavors of anarchist. Some want to ban guns entirely and
| some want personal ownership of bazookas. Diversity! I often
| enjoy hearing their thoughts and we have all been able to change
| each others' minds on a few issues. People's minds do change, but
| it's a slow process.
|
| That said, politics is a burden to me in some relationships. It's
| hard to have a calm rational discussion when my family member
| says "The muslims are walking across the Gulf of Mexico and
| setting up terror cells in Texas". They actually believe we're
| experiencing terrorist attacks and its just not being reported. I
| guess my limit for a comfortable discussion is some level of
| contact with reality.
| ubermonkey wrote:
| This is "both-sides-ism" of the worst sort. It's exactly the sort
| of navel-gazey pablum that gives technical people a bad name.
|
| The author doesn't recognize that it's not "politics" today.
| Politics is disagreeing on how to fund road improvements. When
| one party wants to _dismantle the state_ , remove protections for
| marginalized groups, disavow alliances, engage in absurd
| imperialism, and flagrantly disregard _the rule of law_ , we're
| not talking about mere "politics" anymore.
|
| This is "both-sides-ism" of the worst sort. And it gives one the
| impression that the author is fine being friends with people who
| hole absolutely horrible beliefs, as long as he doesn't have to
| know about them.
| pjdesno wrote:
| Frankly it sounds like someone who voted for Trump and wants to
| avoid having people criticize him for it, dressing up his "stop
| picking on me" schtick with pseudo-intellectual rationalizations.
|
| You can't ignore politics when it's actively destroying your
| country - it's just not possible, and trying to ignore it is not
| the moral or ethical choice.
| nasmorn wrote:
| If you voted for trump I cannot take any pseudo
| intellectualization of that choice at face value. Unless you
| are an anarchist and truly hope the federal government implodes
| and you don't mind the cost of that. I am a mostly left
| European and I'd rather have Cheney as president. And I do
| think Cheney is probably the worst kind of human being but he
| is probably not totally disjoint from reality.
| moolcool wrote:
| TL;DR: He doesn't discuss politics with his friends because he
| thinks he's more rational than them.
| ixtli wrote:
| instead of writing this exact thing i found the first comment
| from the bottom which said it for me. these people are coping.
| articles like this read to me as a person good at writing long
| form whos trying to convince themselves their cowardice and
| inflated self image-driven decision not to curate their social
| circles is actually ok and not horribly damaging to our
| society.
| nottorp wrote:
| If you don't talk politics with friends, who are you going to
| talk to about that?
|
| Probably nobody.
|
| Who will win the elections then? The forces whose supporters do
| talk politics with friends.
| boxed wrote:
| > Who will win the elections then? The forces whose supporters
| do talk politics with friends.
|
| Well.. who go around reinforcing team allegiances, not people
| who talk politics. That's a pretty big distinction imo.
| nottorp wrote:
| That's some US cultural thing, i think. Possibly because you
| only have two real political options.
|
| If we're philosophising, the isolated suburb life style
| precludes having a friend group and forces humans - because
| they need to belong - into tribal allegiances towards larger
| groups: political, sports fans, some church, Rust, "AI"...
| boxed wrote:
| It's a human thing. In Rome it was chariot teams. Suburbia
| isn't to blame.
| quuxplusone wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| > Being informed is tough. To have an informed view on any given
| issue, one needs to:
|
| > Understand economics, game theory, philosophy, sales, business,
| military strategy, geopolitics, sociology, history, and more.
|
| > Be able to understand and empathize with the various (and often
| opposing) groups involved in a topic.
|
| > Detect and ignore their own bias.
|
| > How can you prioritize limited resources with deadly
| consequences without understanding utilitarianism vs deontology
| (i.e. the trolley problem)?
|
| > Understand China-US relations without understanding communism
| vs capitalism, the fear of tyranny vs the threat of invasion, or
| how and where computer chips are made? [etc.]
|
| From Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" (1986):
|
| > Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone
| to talk without knowing what he is talking about. [...] People
| are frequently impelled -- whether by their own propensities or
| by the demands of others -- to speak extensively about matters of
| which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances
| arise from the widespread conviction that it is the
| responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about
| everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct
| of his country's affairs. The lack of any significant connection
| between a person's opinions and his apprehension of reality will
| be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it
| his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate
| events and conditions in all parts of the world.
|
| TFA implicitly assumes that the only options are "belong to a
| political tribe where someone else is responsible for justifying
| your actions" or "become a perfect estimator and Effectively
| Altruistic so you can truthfully justify your actions" (the
| latter, coincidentally, indistinguishable to an outside observer
| from your joining the Gray Tribe). But surely he's omitting to
| discuss (and perhaps edging toward an example of) the Frankfurt
| option: "justify your own actions by coming up with some
| bullshit."
| ge96 wrote:
| Oh man yeah, you're vibing and all of a sudden "you like who?!!!"
| vorbits wrote:
| Nice article, the comments in here also reinforced the title.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| A lot of the comments in this thread show how difficult it can be
| to talk about politics. So many strawmen arguments and ad
| hominims.
| havblue wrote:
| My personal strategies... 1. I try to be indirect on what I think
| and just describe why some people think one opinion versus
| another. So I try not to convince people. 2. I try to stick to
| "is this going to work?" Style arguments when I do state my
| opinion. I acknowledge when my preferred party does or says
| something I disagree with. 3. I avoid getting bogged down with
| "do you agree with x y z??" Controversies that may be anecdotal
| and I'm not opinionated or familiar with. So I try not to argue
| the outage of the day.
|
| This generally keeps me from arguing with relatives and in-laws,
| and on this site. So usually I can discuss differences without
| things going crazy.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| We must distinguish between policy and principle.
|
| In a society where there is agreement on basic principles, public
| debates will focus mainly on policy. Policy, while less abstract
| than principle, is in a certain sense less tractable in a manner
| analogous to how mathematical proofs are more abstract yet more
| tractable than verifying empirical claims, like knowing whether
| there are an infinite number of primes versus whether there's a
| teapot orbiting the earth.
|
| Good policy requires a more conspicuous application of
| _prudential judgement_ , which entails the integration of
| information and opinion of varying trustworthiness to make a best
| effort decision, which is something a person must learn and
| develop.
|
| But one thing that is characteristic about our political
| predicament is not disagreement over policy per se, but the
| reasons for our disagreement. Two people sharing the same
| principles can still disagree about policy, and because they
| share the same principles, a debate over policy is manageable,
| because the basic parameters circumscribe the debated subject
| matter. However, if you look closely to the policy disagreements
| we're seeing, it is clear people are talking past one another.
| Something _deeper_ , unspoken, is at issue. That is because the
| agreement on matters of principle is shrinking. This is why some
| view today's disagreement in terms of religious warfare, because
| in a sense it is.
|
| As I've written many times in comments on HN, "religion" is
| effectively just a synonym for "worldview". Many people have ad
| hoc and incoherent or strangely specific or even parochial
| intuitions of what religion is, but understood as a bona fide or
| coherent category, it is essentially just another word for
| worldview. Everyone has one, however implicit, so it isn't a
| question of _whether_ you "have a religion", but _which_. You
| may not realize that you are subject to a worldview, just as the
| proverbial fish that has never left the ocean doesn 't know what
| water is, but it's there influencing your decisions and the
| course of your life.
|
| In the US and much of the West, this has generally meant
| liberalism. And we're all liberals. The right and the left? Both
| liberal. The conflict between them is less Hindu vs. Muslim and
| more Pharisee vs. Sadducee. But as time progresses, as the
| internal tensions of liberalism unfold within the human psyche
| and within society across time, as liberalism crashes in slow
| motion because of this dynamic, as the proverbial idols enter
| their twilight, the conflict can only deepen. And it won't be a
| left-right split per se.
|
| Some miscellaneous remarks...
|
| 1. The author makes similar observations w.r.t. religion. For
| example, he notes that "[d]espite organized religion dropping in
| attendance, religious patterns of behavior are still everywhere,
| just adapted to a secular world." Absolutely. _And this includes
| Silicon Valley ideology_ , which is just a variation of
| Americanism. You see plenty of "religious patterns of behavior"
| in SV (though I sense we are past the heyday of peak salvific SV
| eschatology; maybe it just has a different character now,
| unvarnished and naked).
|
| 2. The author's view of religion is nonetheless tendentious and
| rooted in stereotype and trope. For example, the history of
| martyrdom in the Catholic Church alone demonstrates that "going
| along to get along" or mob mentality are opposed to the Christian
| view of truth above all else. God Himself is taken to be the
| Truth, and Christ the incarnation of the Logos. The authentic
| Christian ethic, despite the dishwater often passing as
| Christianity, is morally austere in this regard, hence preferring
| to die for the truth (literally, as in "red martyrdom", or by
| suffering injustice, so-called "white martyrdom") than to betray
| it. Lying is _categorically_ impermissible. Life is to be found
| only in the truth; only spiritual death is to be found in lies.
| Better for the body to die than the soul to die.
|
| The notion that religion is about group cohesion even at the
| expense of the truth is certainly not a feature of Catholicism,
| but a common human tendency that it attacks, even if individual
| Catholics or groups of Catholics behave otherwise (again, a
| common human tendency). There is no authentic unity or authentic
| love outside of the truth. You cannot love what you do not know,
| and a society united in a lie is deficient in unity to the degree
| that the "unity" is rooted in the lie.
| whatever1 wrote:
| People do not change opinions because someone told them to. It
| has to be a result of a narrative with personal experiences.
| Which is why FAFO is still a big thing.
|
| Hence, any effort trying to convince friends that blue is not
| green it is not gonna work. Sorry.
| sys32768 wrote:
| I think the bigger problem is the tribal ape brains have been
| programmed by history's most sophisticated propaganda engines
| 24/7.
| efitz wrote:
| I have often observed something about how we build software; I
| just realized that my observations are of a more fundamental
| human problem.
|
| First, people are not good at defining problems. They may
| describe the problem that they want to solve in terms of an
| outcome, but often times the outcome that they want also includes
| some aspect that benefits them personally that is separate from
| the problem that they are describing.
|
| Second, people are not good at separating problem from
| implementation. in fact, people are horrible at this. I think
| people have a very difficult time envisioning that the problem
| and the existing solution implementation (which itself might be
| making the problem worse) are separate things. so most people
| rarely consider and often actively oppose, radically different
| solutions.
|
| In the political sphere, ideology Influences how one frames the
| problem that one wants to solve, and limits the universe of
| acceptable solutions. This exemplifies the two points that I
| raised above.
|
| For example, when talking about healthcare policy, the two main
| "sides" in the US, both have ideologies that define outcomes in
| terms of consumer access to medical services, and which constrain
| allowable implementations to something that resembles insurance,
| with key differences being about who pays and what is covered and
| how much coverage one gets.
|
| Just for the purposes of elaborating on my premise, I would point
| out that not all healthcare delivery systems in the world are
| designed around the insurance model, And that such a model
| includes vested interests, regulatory capture, and often
| incentivizes many participants to optimize in ways that don't
| forward the implicit goal of making more people more healthy.
|
| Please don't reply with your opinions on my imperfect example; I
| don't want to have a healthcare policy discussion. I just wanted
| to provide an example my main points about how humans approach
| political problem-solving.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Second, people are not good at separating problem from
| implementation. in fact, people are horrible at this. I think
| people have a very difficult time envisioning that the problem
| and the existing solution implementation (which itself might be
| making the problem worse) are separate things. so most people
| rarely consider and often actively oppose, radically different
| solutions._
|
| I'm bouncing back and forth on this. One thing I've learned
| over nearly two decades of programming, is that problems often
| are _not_ separate from implementation - the one often defines
| or shapes the other to a large degree. Moreover, often enough
| _it 's not worth it_ to aim for clean separation - that's the
| road to becoming an "architecture astronaut".
|
| I've also noticed this generalizes outside of programming. The
| key insight being, when people accuse "techies" of being "know-
| it-alls" and coming up with simplistic solutions (or my pet
| peeve of a term, "technological solutions to social problems"),
| what they're complaining about is _generalizations_ - the kind
| you get when you focus on the abstract problem and forget about
| implementation details. This is particularly notable when one
| then tries to transfer a general solution /framework from one
| problem space to another, because whether or not it applies is
| largely determined _by implementation details_.
|
| An example: understanding exponential growth and connecting it
| with basic virology is good. Applying that model to virological
| problems is okay - but the devil's in the details. Transferring
| that model to something else by means of analogy? Well, that
| _very much depends on which assumptions you borrowed from
| virology_ , and it's helpful to be aware of those assumptions
| (implementation details) in the first place.
|
| Seen plenty of that on every side of argument during COVID.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| People aren't good at defining problems when it comes to
| political views because - as far as I can tell - nearly
| everyone has zero interest in actually solving the issue, or
| putting in work to do so.
|
| They want someone else to do the hard work and play Monday
| morning quarterback. To extend the sportsball metaphor, the
| football team is doing the actual work and they're just
| spectators rooting for their team.
|
| No one wants to do work without being compensated, and
| virtually no one is being compensated to actually solve these
| problems. Politicians are there to get re-elected first and
| anything else second. Charitable organizations pay little to
| nothing, and get the kind of personnel that are OK with that.
|
| At this point, there's so much tribalism wrapped around policy
| issues that it might be impossible to get anyone to try to
| objectively solve the issue. And all too often, there is no
| viable way to A/B test the solution and people have to hope
| that their solution works best, which is... Not a great way to
| get great results.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Why I don't discuss politics with Hacker News (6,000 comments)
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > Often when someone asks "who did you vote for", what they're
| actually doing is verifying your adherence to group culture,
|
| They are just checking to which group you belong, not verifying
| your adherence? It does not seem like a question you ask someone
| whose you know politics already.
|
| But yes still is a problem
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Because you gonna lose them if you don't agree
| pdpi wrote:
| This is such a wild perspective to me. I can't imagine
| considering somebody a friend while simultaneously not feeling
| comfortable discussing politics with them.
| mapt wrote:
| Cut a "rationalist centrist moderate" and a fascist who doesn't
| want to get cancelled because he still needs VC funding and
| Linkedin connections bleeds.
|
| US politics has been increasingly polarized into positions
| congruent with facts and policy and our traditional ideals, and
| positions associated with a general stance of grievance, with an
| insistent selfishness, with anti-empathy, anti-intellectualism,
| with "palingenetic ultranationalism". This has been a test of
| your ideals, of your humanity. It wasn't very hard.
|
| Yes, there is often a lot of nuanced truth in the middle of any
| argument. But less now, in politics, than in a long, long time.
| Only a very particular sort of person walks into a liberated
| Auschwitz and starts shouting "Both sides are too extreme and I'm
| better than them!" from the rooftops.
|
| Speaking as somebody who spent a lot of time there: A lot of the
| tropes in the "rationalist" community are inherently
| conservative-pointing, and it's a general prerequisite for
| participating there that you have a coherent base of progressive
| terminal ideals and an attitude suited towards introspection and
| iteration of your beliefs. Because otherwise you go from zero to
| Nietzschean ubermensch to Nazi ubermensch to Musk/Thiel
| brownshirt in no time, having weaponized everything present there
| to support your priors and idly expand your confidence.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Right. The only sort of person who could write something like
| this is a person who is not affected (or percieves themselves to
| not be affected) by "politics."
| Tade0 wrote:
| > And even with all this knowledge, can you empathize with both
| sides of common issues -- the poor renter vs struggling landlord?
| The tired worker vs underwater business owner? Rich vs poor,
| immigrant vs legacy, parent vs child -- the list goes on
|
| To me having just _two_ sides is a uniquely American way of
| thinking.
|
| Between the renter and landlord there's the homeowner, between
| the tired worker and business owner there's the public
| sector/NGO/huge corporation worker/freelancer, rich and poor are
| relative terms which lie on a scale anyway.
|
| Conflicts that actually have only two parties involved are rare
| and the very first thing one should do to be able to talk
| politics, is give up on the notion.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Adherence to tribal views is how you end up with the space
| shuttle Columbia crash.
| drewcoo wrote:
| The author believes he is better than his friends and probably
| irritates friends when talking politics but can rationalize his
| way out of the problem while still blaming his friends.
|
| What a jerk.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| The next time I need to describe my disdain for "rationalists",
| I'll just be able to link this blog post for being entirely
| vacuous while patting itself on the back
| earksiinni wrote:
| > After seven years in San Diego, my wife and I have decided to
| uproot our family and move to the Bay Area. While there were many
| factors (a new job opportunity, family), a significant reason was
| finding a community of truth-seeking people.
|
| Funny. The lack of truth-seeking and truth-telling is one of the
| chief reasons I moved away from the Bay Area.
| trevor-e wrote:
| You can't say that and then not share where you moved to. Now
| I'm curious. I don't live in the Bay Area so not defending it
| in any way.
| LinuxAmbulance wrote:
| You'll find unquestioning dogmatism everywhere you go
| unfortunately.
|
| For what it's worth, the odds for rationally evaluating
| political ideas tend to go up around folks that have gone to
| universities that are known for some decent level of
| intellectual rigor.
|
| Still not great though, some of the most dogmatic people I've
| met in my life were professors and undergrads. But those that
| were the opposite more than made up for that.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| It sounds like you're describing what I know as trait
| openness?
|
| Discussion of new ideas is an "openness" thing.
|
| Funnily enough personality traits are a strong predictor for
| political preference. Personality traits are also a predictor
| of career choices.
| shw1n wrote:
| curious where you moved?
|
| I completely understand it could not have what we're looking
| for, which is why this was only one component among larger ones
| (family + new job)
| ComposedPattern wrote:
| I think there should be a new rule that any time someone writes
| an article bragging about how he's+ a badass independent thinker
| just like Paul Graham and Eliezer Yudkowsky, he must in the same
| article identify his major disagreements with Paul Graham and
| Elizer Yudkowsky. Because to me the authors of these articles
| seem exactly as tribal as mainstream political and religious
| groups, they just care about different things. Yeah, I shouldn't
| be able to guess your views on sex from your views on taxes, but
| I also shouldn't be able to guess your views on wokeness from
| your views on AI safety. Yet I can make both predictions with
| about equal accuracy.
|
| + I have yet to see an article like this written by a woman.
| tristor wrote:
| I really resonated with this blog article, and ended up reaching
| out to Ashwin on LinkedIn to connect. This is probably the most
| concise and clear description I've read of the problem, and I
| think sometimes recognizing the problem and really understanding
| is the first step to turning things around.
|
| Like Ashwin, I don't believe that this is "fixable", in so much
| that humanity as a whole has a tendency towards tribalism that's
| innate to being human, and this is part of what allowed societies
| and civilizations to form, as much as it carries the downsides of
| interrupting reasoning and creating the conditions for warfare.
| Rather, I try to seek out people who are able to reason and have
| discussions.
|
| I definitely appreciated reading this, as it felt very relatable
| in a way that most things do not.
| runjake wrote:
| I'm not even sure what politics is anymore. I'm largely not on
| social media, so I am generally late to what's taboo or a hot
| button topic, like Tesla automobiles and SpaceX, or anything else
| connected to a billionaire.
|
| In 2025, but before the Tesla burnings made the news, I was
| having some chitchat about possibly purchasing a Tesla as my next
| car, at which point, I got a tirade of anger mentioning words
| like "Nazi", "fascism" and so on. I was completely taken aback.
|
| I realize we Americans are probably undergoing the results of
| some adversarial nation-state psychological operations[1], but we
| really need to chill out.
|
| _1. Coincidentally, most of my social media "usage" is
| identifying sock puppet accounts and their adversarial psyops
| campaigns._
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| (US Centric opinion comment) in the wake of moving away from
| religions to more secular societies, it's shocking how much folks
| have simply switched from religions like Christianity et. al. to
| Republican or Democrat or Left or Right etc.
|
| What I'd consider healthy exploratory debate is now treated like
| heresy punishable by metaphorical death.(eg cancellation)
|
| That's why I often stay my tongue and let people believe I'm on
| their side. Frankly it's not worth the consequences and I'll let
| them live in their delusions because giving feedback is too
| dangerous nowadays.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| This is the only sane way to operate nowadays.
| lazyeye wrote:
| What percentage of the comments here fall exactly in line with
| the tribal groupthink the article was about? 90% 95% 98%?
| SebFender wrote:
| That's the biggest problem these days - people don't talk about
| much meaningful - but they do chat and spend ridiculous amounts
| of time on socials
| dangjc wrote:
| We often reach for black and white thinking which makes political
| discussions difficult. Both sides do it, and it stunts our
| empathy for why people vote the way they do.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| Empathy for why people vote the way they do has to be balanced
| with empathy for those harmed by horrible voting decisions.
| dangjc wrote:
| There are horrible consequences and people are suffering,
| totally. So then what? How do we get others to understand the
| impacts and start to change their mind?
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| For all of the author's bloviating and self-congratulating navel
| gazing, the article manages to largely overlook values, the only
| mention of them being to dismissively reduce them to irrational
| tribalism.
|
| In truth, values and ethics are fundamental to effectively
| discussing politics. After all, all political decisions are
| ultimately about how we want to shape the world that we as humans
| live in. There can be no agreement about economic policy without
| a shared understanding of the ultimate goal of an economy. No
| agreement about foreign relations without a shared understanding
| of the role of nations as representatives for groups of humans,
| and how we believe one group of humans should interact with
| another group of humans through the lens of nations.
|
| For the last 20 years at least, the leadership of the two main
| political parties in the US have largely invested in messaging
| around the values that they represent. The policies are different
| too, but over time we've gone from a world where there were at
| least some cases where the two parties had different policies for
| how to reach the same goals, and into a world where the parties
| policies are aiming to realize fundamentally different visions of
| the world, based on fundamentally different values.
|
| In this world, asking "who did you vote for" isn't a matter of
| tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are
| your values". If you discover that someone has completely
| different values from you, then discussing policy isn't going to
| be useful anyway, because there's no way you'll agree on a single
| policy when you have different fundamental values.
| shw1n wrote:
| I reject this idea, someone voting for the "least worst
| candidate" does not wholly endorse everything they stand for
|
| As someone said in this thread, in the US two-party system,
| coalitions are formed _before_ the vote vs after in other
| countries
|
| The whole purpose of this piece is to precisely encourage
| pointed discussion about values directly and skip the proxying
| rfgmendoza wrote:
| "someone voting for the "least worst candidate" does not
| wholly endorse everything they stand for"
|
| yes but somebody voting for the "most worst candidate" is not
| somebody who's values should be trusted
| darth_avocado wrote:
| The very idea of "least worst" is very subjective. In their
| eyes, if they disagree with you, it is who's values should
| not be trusted.
| shw1n wrote:
| and if someone opposite the aisle from you believes the
| same thing about you, there's zero chance to flip them
|
| with direct discussion about values, it's possible
|
| basically all comes down to "are you open to the chance
| you're wrong"
|
| you could view that chance as low as 0.001%, but it
| shouldn't be 0
| sn9 wrote:
| People frequently have a gap between their values and
| their politics, and talking about both can reveal the
| cognitive dissonance.
|
| If they engage with politics as tribalism, and you talk
| to them about a policy their tribe implemented that
| conflicts with their values, this is useful.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > I reject this idea, someone voting for the "least worst
| candidate" does not wholly endorse everything they stand for
|
| The thing about values is that they don't just capture the
| notion of what we thing is right or wrong, but also which
| things we value over other things. In an extreme case, two
| people can agree on 10 out of 10 different ideals or ethical
| stances and still have different values and support different
| parties because of how they rank those things.
|
| In that case who you think is the "least worst" is also a
| reflection of values, as is declaring both sides to be the
| same, or opting out altogether. They all represent both what
| things you value and how much you value them.
| shw1n wrote:
| > In that case who you think is the "least worst" is also a
| reflection of values
|
| _perceived_ values -- if someone has the same values and
| rankings as you, but was exposed to different information,
| then with this logic you 'll never be able to find out or
| flip them
|
| as I said to the other commenter, basically all comes down
| to "are you open to the chance you're wrong"
|
| you could view that chance as low as 0.001%, but it
| shouldn't be 0
| dwallin wrote:
| I would say that the partial counterpoint to that is, for most
| people their values are also largely tribe based, in that their
| values are not purely fixed, but rather tend to adapt to
| loosely track the tribal consensus. Very few are the ones
| willing to stick to their convictions under pressure.
|
| There are clearly some (many?) shared average axiomatic values
| that seem to be common between very different
| cultures/religions (although individuals vary much more
| significantly), but it's much easier to obsess on the places we
| differ.
|
| Where I strongly disagree is the idea that groups with
| different fundamental values can't necessarily find common
| policy ground. A good example is Basic Income, where you can
| find agreement between groups on opposite sides that both
| embrace the idea, but for very different value-driven reasons.
| In many cases, you can also agree to disagree, and just keep
| your collective hands out of it (eg. separation of religion and
| state).
| mindslight wrote:
| > _In this world, asking "who did you vote for" isn't a matter
| of tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what
| are your values"._
|
| Only if you ascertain the (inverse of the) mapping of values ->
| vote correctly, and it's definitively _not_ what the parties or
| the tribes themselves profess.
|
| For myself [0], I sympathize with many of the issues Trump ran
| on while finding most of the Democratic platform cloying and
| hollow. But I value effective policy, being accountable to
| intellectual criticism, and a generally open society far far
| more. (And at this point in my life, a healthy dose of straight
| up actual conservatism, too!)
|
| [0] and while it might seem needlessly inflammatory to include
| this here, I think it's unavoidable that people are going to be
| trying to read partisan implications from abstract comments
| regardless.
| ryanackley wrote:
| I consider this type of thinking to be a form of tribalism
| because you're essentially saying there are two tribes. Each
| tribe has specific values.
|
| A person's values are not a dichotomy (i.e. republican or
| democrat). You simply cannot put people into two buckets that
| define their overarching moral compass.
|
| A person can be transphobic but support abortion so they have
| always voted Democrat...or hate everything about Republican
| values except they got burned by Obamacare so they vote
| Republican. There is virtually an infinite level of nuance that
| can be a deciding factor in why someone votes for someone.
| Spivak wrote:
| > transphobic but support abortion so they have always voted
| Democrat
|
| This is the NYT if you want a high-profile example of this
| existing in the real world.
|
| I worked with a guy who was a goldmine of odd but sincerely
| held political opinions that subverted the usual narratives.
| He was (I guess still is) gay but believed that trans people
| shouldn't serve in the military because he saw that they
| didn't get the treatment they needed. He wanted everyone to
| have guns as a protection against crooked cops-- he was from
| a small town. He was against single-payer healthcare because
| he thought the government would use it as a political weapon.
| He was was in theory anti-union because he thought union
| benefits should just be turned into labor protections for
| everyone instead of just being for union jobs and supported
| them only as a stopgap. He was pro-solar/wind and had an
| electric car not for any environmental reason but because he
| didn't want to be reliant on the greedy power company.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i mean, his views don't sound too odd. he sounds like a
| communist who's got a dim view of reform or socialism as a
| means to communism.
| roarcher wrote:
| To me that just sounds like someone who arrives at his
| political views by thinking rather than blindly adopting
| whatever his peers believe. It's only odd because it's
| (sadly) rare these days.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Realpolitiks...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik
| calf wrote:
| Tribalism is just bad sociology, that's where the nuance is
| missing.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _person can be transphobic but support abortion so they
| have always voted Democrat_
|
| The term you're looking for is political coherence, _i.e._
| the degree to which you can predict a person 's views based
| on knowing their view on one issue. Political elites tend to
| be _highly_ coherent. If you know a Congressperson 's views
| on guns, you probably know them on abortion and corporate
| taxes.
|
| In the real world, however, votes tend _not_ to be
| politically coherent. Instead, what we see in a hyperpartisan
| polity, is that a diverse set of views collapses _after_ an
| issue achieves partisan identity status. Talking about a
| thing through a partisan lens is what causes the partisan
| collapse. Hence the effects of mass and then social media on
| the quality of our discussions.
|
| (And I agree with OP that the author's "I'm above politics"
| stance is naively immature.)
| archon1410 wrote:
| > Political elites tend to be highly coherent
|
| Coherence might not the word you're looking for. The
| policies of political parties and groups are born out of
| historical circumstances and the diverse coalitions they
| represent. Political elites are "coherent" in the sense
| that you can expect them to consistently follow the party
| line, and thus infer all of their views just by knowing one
| of their views.
|
| The party line, i.e. platform of the Democratic and
| Republican parties, or any other large political party in
| the world, is, by itself, _nothing_ coherent though. Many
| of their policies and claims do not make any more sense
| besides each other than they would make against each other.
| Realignments on issues are pretty common across the world.
| What is left-wing in one part of the world at one point of
| time might be rightist across space and time.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This is a difference in the subject of coherence.
|
| Logical coherence refers to the variation and predictive
| power of the reasoning.
|
| Coherence can also be used to describe the variability
| and predictability of positions or states themselves.
|
| If you measure the characteristics of some photons in a
| coherent laser, you know what the other photons are
| doing. They are predictable using a model.
|
| Logic is a poor predictive model for politics. Tribe
| identification is a strong predictive model for politics
| nickff wrote:
| Even the language that the different parties use is targeted at
| certain sets of values; Arnold Kling wrote this short book on
| the subject ("The Three Languages of Politics"):
| https://cdn.cato.org/libertarianismdotorg/books/ThreeLanguag...
|
| "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt is another, more nuanced
| (and complicated), but extremely interesting take on the
| subject of how values drive political affiliation.
| brightlancer wrote:
| Framing has always been used in political debate just to
| target certain values; what may have changed (or not) is as a
| deliberate tactic to keep people divided: folks who do not
| speak the same language cannot communicate.
|
| On a lot of issues, I think 80% of folks are in 80% of
| agreement, but the partisans (whether politicians or
| activists) are framing the issue to prevent that consensus,
| because the partisans want something in the 20% that 80% of
| folks don't agree with.
| nickff wrote:
| Kling and Haidt would agree with your respective
| paragraphs, though they do add a lot of color, and their
| books are worth reading.
| brightlancer wrote:
| I've listened to Haidt speak about it and his book is in
| my tall stack to read; I don't think I'd heard of King
| but I grabbed the PDF. Thank you.
| eastbound wrote:
| > it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are your
| values". If you discover that someone has completely different
| values from you
|
| No, it's a prejudice. People have a very short analysis and are
| generally not ready for their beliefs to be discussed.
|
| Most people believe the definition of left is "good" and right
| is "bad". Like, they literally believe this is how people
| identify their side. "Oh yes you're rightwing, that's because
| you don't mind being selfish, self-serving, evil even. That's
| your conception of the world."
|
| Not at all. I'm social, _therefore_ I am right-wing. I care
| about women's rights, _therefore_ I am right-wing. I want poor
| people to get help, _therefore_ I am right-wing. The left wing
| has a pro-immigration "at all cost" policy and it means women
| are raped. It's systematic and part of what authors aren't
| jailed for. The left has a pro-poor policy and therefore
| poverty develops while leftwing electoralites have unsanctioned
| lavish parties with the commons' money (lavish parties ala
| Weinstein for which metoo stories surface a dozen years later).
|
| Leftists can't fathom that I have literally the same pro-women
| anti-poverty values as they have. If anything, leftists judge
| (and pre-emptively sanction!) people on prejudice.
| nadir_ishiguro wrote:
| You kinda seem selfish, self-serving - evil, even.
| goatlover wrote:
| I'm not a leftist. Your leader and his allies are a danger to
| democracy. I don't get this from the Democratic Party, or
| ANTIFA, or Bernie Sanders. I get it from paying attention to
| what Trump and his administration have been doing.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > In truth, values and ethics are fundamental to effectively
| discussing politics.
|
| People generally haven't formed strong opinions on most issues,
| and defer to party or a leader they like for the remaining.
| They'll still happily argue about it for the post part,
| unfortunately.
|
| You can see this effect after some elections where people "fall
| in line" with their party's new presidential candidate on some
| issue.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| > People generally haven't formed strong opinions on most
| issues, and defer to party or a leader they like for the
| remaining.
|
| I call this "politics as religion".
|
| Remember you cannot reason someone out of a position they
| never reasoned themselves into. Route around the damage and
| make them irrelevant.
| cj wrote:
| > "who did you vote for" isn't a matter of tribalism, but it is
| a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are your values"
|
| You should test this hypothesis by talking to someone for 10
| minutes, then guessing who they voted for.
|
| My hypothesis is you wouldn't do better than 50/50.
| J5892 wrote:
| I was talking to a very drunk Republican girl the other day.
| We were having a small argument about why we would send
| medical support to Africa for AIDS. Her argument was
| something about fixing America first (I was also drunk).
|
| I asked if she regretted her vote for Trump after several
| people she knew lost their government contracting jobs, and
| she said "No, fuck that guy, I didn't vote for him."
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| "If p then q" does not imply "If q then p."
|
| Besides, there's a ton of easy ways to beat 50/50 odds
| without explicitly asking who they voted for. You can ask
| whether they graduated from college, and that will get you to
| something like 55/45 or 60/40. If they're white and they did
| not graduate from college, or if they're not white and they
| did graduate from college, your odds of guessing right are
| something like 2:1.
|
| Studies have also found (somewhat weak) correlations between
| some of the Big Five personality traits and political
| identification: people who score highly on conscientiousness
| are more likely to be right-leaning, while people who score
| highly on openness to experience are more likely to be left-
| leaning.
| cj wrote:
| > "If p then q" does not imply "If q then p."
|
| My original comment is challenging whether "p then q" is
| valid in the first place by asking if the inverse would be
| true as a thought experiment. (Neither is true IMO)
|
| Just because someone has certain values doesn't mean they
| vote a certain way.
|
| Just because they vote a certain way doesn't mean they have
| certain values.
|
| "p" (who you voted for) and "q" (your values) are largely
| independent for a large percentage of voters.
| MajimasEyepatch wrote:
| My point is that the validity and soundness of the
| inverse proposition has no bearing on the validity and
| soundness of the original proposition, so you've proposed
| a meaningless experiment.
|
| I also think that your hypothesis that voting and values
| are not connected is false, but that's a separate issue.
| bandofthehawk wrote:
| The is a really good, IMO, Saturday Night Live skit about
| this where the contestants try to guess Republican or not of
| various people. Some of the bits do a great job of pointing
| out how some of the values people claim to believe in are
| only applied selectivity when it benefits their side.
| crackrook wrote:
| The hypothesis is that knowing a person's voting activity
| helps one to predict that individual's values. I don't think
| the parent is claiming that the values that might be revealed
| by a 10 minute conversation are a predictor for voting
| activity. I think there's a distinction, since people can -
| and, in my perspective, often do - misrepresent or
| misidentify their true values in their conversations with
| strangers. I am assuming that people act on their true
| values, not necessarily those that they advertise, when they
| fill out ballots.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > leadership of the two main political parties in the US have
| largely invested in messaging around the values that they
| represent
|
| I'd say they invest in messaging around the values they want
| voters to believe they represent.
|
| i.e., marketing and ensuing reality diverge regularly with
| politicians, regardless of affiliation.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > For the last 20 years at least, the leadership of the two
| main political parties in the US have largely invested in
| messaging around the values that they represent.
|
| Except that the "values" each promotes are often inconsistent
| with other "values" they promote, sometimes to the point of
| absurd irrationality, e.g. marijuana vs tobacco or alcohol.
|
| And other "values" are completely independent, but correlate so
| highly that "tribalism" is a much better explainer, e.g.
| abortion and guns.
|
| > and into a world where the parties policies are aiming to
| realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on
| fundamentally different values.
|
| That's not new.
|
| On a very high level, the two major parties do want everyone to
| be healthy, wealthy and wise -- the issue is that they disagree
| on what those words mean, and what should be sacrificed (and by
| whom) to achieve it, which means the two major parties have
| always had very different visions of the future.
|
| > If you discover that someone has completely different values
| from you, then discussing policy isn't going to be useful
| anyway, because there's no way you'll agree on a single policy
| when you have different fundamental values.
|
| And that right there is a call to tribalism: Don't bother with
| Those People, They Have Different Values, They Aren't Like Us.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > Don't bother with Those People, They Have Different Values,
| They Aren't Like Us
|
| I didn't say that you shouldn't bother with people. I said
| that discussing _policy_ is not useful if you don't agree on
| _values_. It's the wrong level of abstraction. To put it in a
| plain analogy: discussing the best route to get to your
| destination isn't useful if you don't agree on where you are
| going.
|
| If you want to engage with someone with different values,
| then the values are where you need to start. If you want to
| engage with someone on the best way to get somewhere, you
| need to start by making sure you both agree on where you want
| to go.
| wand3r wrote:
| This makes 0 sense. Democrat and Republican "values", to the
| extent they are even real, no way represent the full spectrum
| of values one can have.
|
| Further, the Democratic party has a 27% approval rating and the
| Republican party had like 47% and I bet its falling. So even
| within your narrow framework this is a bad proxy because both
| are clearly unpopular.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Values are largely posturing. Push comes to shove most people
| don't really care about what they say they care about. Tribal
| heuristics of trust are way more important.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| The two sides dont actually have different values, they have
| small wedge issues that unscrupulous individuals/groups over-
| exaggerate for their own gain. Im center left but still see
| myself in Trump supporters, were basically the same people who
| basically want to live our lives
| zkid18 wrote:
| I think the assumption that political parties represent two
| completely distinct sets of values is overly simplistic. In
| reality, there's a significant amount of overlap between them--
| what often differs is the style of messaging and the framing of
| ideas.
|
| Personally, I find it hard to fully identify with either the
| left or the right. I share beliefs and values from both sides,
| depending on the issue. This makes it difficult to adopt a
| clear-cut political label, and I think that's true for many
| people.
|
| Politics today often feels more like a battle of narratives
| than a clash of core principles / values.
|
| p.s. my perspective is non-US one.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| > The policies are different too, but over time we've gone from
| a world where there were at least some cases where the two
| parties had different policies for how to reach the same goals,
| and into a world where the parties policies are aiming to
| realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on
| fundamentally different values.
|
| What difference do the parties have? They are both the
| 'corporate party' maximizing shareholder profit at all costs
| including killing brown people overseas or murdering Americans
| at home if they cant pay for healthcare.
| benlivengood wrote:
| > For the last 20 years at least, the leadership of the two
| main political parties in the US have largely invested in
| messaging around the values that they represent.
|
| The largest two U.S. parties have been heavily minmaxing the
| propaganda they release to divide districts on the most
| effective issues they can convert into election wins. Their
| values are "get elected to office" but the propaganda can't be
| so straightforward because there aren't a lot of voters who are
| easily converted by that directness.
|
| Voters have values; political parties and candidates have
| propaganda. Game theoretically the winning move is to compete
| on comparative advantage of an issue within a voting district;
| because (for example) Democratic voters are split on the death
| penalty it's a very useless propaganda point for the party as a
| whole [0]; sticking to one side or the other would lose more
| elections than it would win. Note that this is very different
| from ranking the importance of _values_ and focusing on the
| most impactful to real people; the (implicit) hope is that by
| focusing on effective propaganda issues then some values may be
| preserved through the election process. In practice politicians
| also horse-trade for future party political capital in
| preference to espoused values.
|
| One fundamental problem is that without a parliamentary style
| of government where coalitions are required to form a
| functioning legislature the usefulness of values in elections
| is greatly diminished. If I may say, the Republican party has
| done the best at shedding the illusion and explicitly
| transferring power to the party itself to enforce the values
| held by one man, which is the ultimate game-theoretically
| strong position for a political party. Disconnecting the
| ultimate value-judged outcomes of elections from the political
| machinations that win them has been incredibly damaging to
| democracy.
|
| [0] https://www.salon.com/2024/08/31/the-end-of-the-abolition-
| er...
| rzz3 wrote:
| > In this world, asking "who did you vote for" isn't a matter
| of tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what
| are your values".
|
| I strongly disagree. In this duopoly of a political system,
| most people on both sides are just picking the lesser of two
| evils. Meanwhile, we are creating an alarmingly decisive
| political society by choosing not to associate with those who
| vote differently than us. Perhaps most importantly, we lose the
| opportunity to actually shift the political positions of others
| (and ourselves) by not engaging in healthy and non-judgmental
| political discussions with our friends and neighbors,
| ultimately increasing polarization even further.
|
| Not everyone is voting based on their values--some are simply
| voting their wallets or the special interests they align with.
| Someone who is pro-choice, pro-LGBT, and pro-immigration may
| very well vote Republican because they work in the US
| Automotive industry, and so do their friends and families and
| people who they care most about. It doesn't necessarily mean
| their core values are different than yours, but instead maybe
| simply just their priorities.
| rebeccaskinner wrote:
| > pro-choice, pro-LGBT, and pro-immigration may very well
| vote Republican because they work in the US Automotive
| industry, and so do their friends and families and people who
| they care most about.
|
| What you care most about is a statement of values.
| greycol wrote:
| Sure but if you're so reductionist then you'd also be
| arguing that slaves were making a statement about their
| values and how they viewed slavery because the majority
| didn't immediately escape or die trying. It would be
| disingenuous to say or even imply from that statement that
| their value system was pro slavery though.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > the parties policies are aiming to realize fundamentally
| different visions of the world, based on fundamentally
| different values
|
| This is an incorrect and cynical statement. I understand why
| you feel this way (for one thing, it's the exact type of
| language coming out of many of each party's idealists) but it's
| simply false.
|
| One party supports gun rights while the other supports gun
| control. Those aren't values. Democrats want to pursue safety
| from guns. Republicans want to pursue safety from tyranny. Both
| sides care about personal safety.
|
| Abortion rights is about personal liberty. Gun rights are also
| about personal liberty. Both sides care about personal liberty.
|
| The competing talking points aren't always conveniently about
| the same issue though. For Democrats their border policies are
| about compassion and human rights. For Republicans their border
| policies are about domestic prosperity.
|
| Do Republicans care about human rights? Yes. Do Democrats care
| about domestic prosperity? Yes. To pretend otherwise is to
| willfully push apart the tribes in your own mind, and to
| trivialize the perspective of the opposition.
|
| The real problem is the one you are contributing to: the
| unwillingness to empathize. Empathy is the only way to come to
| a compromise. With a little empathy you might even find that
| you have to compromise _less_ because you might actually
| convince someone of your argument, for once.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| bingo!
| Miraste wrote:
| Abortion rights is about religion-as clear a difference in
| values as one can have.
| dbingham wrote:
| This was true a decade ago. It is no longer true.
|
| The modern Trump controlled Republican party is not a party
| that cares about personal liberties. It is a fascist,
| authoritarian project that is toying with straight up Nazism.
| They are explicitly pulling from the Nazi playbook in their
| language and strategy of attack on the rule of law. Someone
| who supports that party is supporting a completely different
| set of values from someone who opposes it.
|
| That said, that party is also backed by a powerful and
| effective propaganda machine that has successfully pulled the
| wool over many people's eyes such that they don't fully
| realize what it is they are supporting.
| cylinder714 wrote:
| The left has called _every_ Republican presidential
| candidate a Nazi /fascist/authoritarian since Ronald
| Reagan.
| toofy wrote:
| this is far too broad of a generalization. just like it
| would be too broad of a generalization to declare all
| conservatives to be maga.
|
| if we're to believe trump he declares people to be
| "extreme leftists" who are clearly not even leftists.
|
| so i find it highly unlikely that the entirety of "the
| left" called every republican presidential candidate
| these things.
| goatlover wrote:
| Doesn't matter what the left said previously, what
| matters is that the Trump Administration is behaving in
| an autocratic manner. Godwin's law has been abused online
| since forever, but you can just draw a comparison with
| Putin's ascent to autocratic rule in Russia.
| daanlo wrote:
| Imho opinion, what you are describing are republicans of the
| past. As parent says, there used to be shared values. Two of
| the shared valued were peaceful transition of power and
| respect for the rule of law / division of power between
| executive, legislative and judiciary.
|
| Imho the values of MAGA republicans are clearly distinct from
| GWB republicans (even if it may be precisely the same
| voters). Specifically the two values described above are no
| longer shared values.
|
| I believe there are more, but for the two values above we
| have irrevocable proof.
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| > what you are describing are republicans of the past
|
| I know it seems that way but it has always seemed that way.
| Republicans talk about Democrats of the past (southern
| Democrats). Democrats talk about Republicans of the past
| (Lincoln). This feeling isn't new.
|
| > Two of the shared valued were peaceful transition of
| power and respect for the rule of law / division of power
| between executive, legislative and judiciary.
|
| Re: peaceful transition of power the Republicans insist
| (whether true or not) that January 6th _was_ peaceful. The
| value is still there. Re: the rule of law, Republicans
| claim they are abiding by the law. (Are they not?) The
| value is still there. Division of power is certainly coming
| under question with the actions of DOGE, but I don 't think
| the mere existence of DOGE is evidence that Republicans
| don't value the division of power. Some of these things
| aren't immediately obvious to everyone, especially if they
| are determined to be _legal_ (whether we like the law or
| not).
|
| We must resist the urge to demonize and dehumanize the
| opposition. That is exactly what is happening: even with
| our comments and upvotes we are collectively deciding that
| the opposition is out of their minds and are increasingly a
| foe to be vanquished. That is, frankly, stupidity of the
| masses.
| telchior wrote:
| If someone changes and begins to continually insists that
| something plainly untrue is true, does that mean that
| they possibly still have the values they used to? How
| long do you continue defending the "well, maybe..." case?
|
| Throw out the Jan 6th example, it's now ancient history.
| As a party, Republicans are, at this very instant,
| claiming that judges are acting illegally for... using
| their constitutionally mandated legal powers.
| Simultaneously, but separately, the party apparatus is
| repeating on a daily basis a new conspiracy theory that
| the judges they don't like are being controlled by some
| nefarious power.
|
| And it's a very, very well established playbook. We have
| many examples of countries that dismantled their systems
| of transition of power and division of power starting
| with the courts. It's a move that could pretty much make
| it into a "For Dummies" book.
|
| "The value is still there." I can't see it. But maybe I'm
| too focused on judging on the entire scope of action and
| speech, rather than a very narrow bit of speech that
| isn't at all reflected in actions.
| popalchemist wrote:
| While you broadly make a great point, there are psychological
| dimensions to take into consideration. Some people's
| personalities are more inclined toward tribalistic thinking
| and will extend their capacity for empathy only toward their
| own in-group, while others are capable of expanding the "in-
| group" to include all of humanity. So while it may be true to
| say that Republicans care about human rights, it is more
| accurate to say they care about their OWN human rights, and
| not the rights of people outside their in-group.
|
| If you want to remove the political labeling from this
| statement, about 30% of the population "thinks" (or, rather,
| does not think, but acts) this way, and it is important to
| realize that the motivating factor differs between them and
| the other type of human, who cares about people _in the
| abstract._
| erlich wrote:
| > to realize fundamentally different visions of the world,
| based on fundamentally different values
|
| I think your use of the word "world" is telling.
|
| Trump, the Republicans, and the global right are focused on
| their citizens.
|
| The Democrats and the global left are more focused on the world
| and their role in it.
|
| It's no longer just two approaches on how we can have the
| strongest economy. Each party has a weighting for how much to
| consider every issue across the world.
|
| For example, there are people who would be happy with less
| growth, lower income, but more action on climate change.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| That's why I love claiming to be a third-party voter so much.
| It breaks their brains and their response informs whether or
| not they are worthy of my respect.
| TwoNineFive wrote:
| Your need to insult the author proved his point.
| norir wrote:
| Does the author really believe anyone can transcend tribalism?
| nixonaddiction wrote:
| im a nuance enjoyer when it comes to politics too but i wouldnt
| say i know adequate amounts about economics, politics, game
| theory, etc. i might know slightly more about my preferred fields
| than the average person, but im still woefully incompetent. so im
| always hesitant to lay judgement. especially because politics is
| such a complex system. its difficult to make the probabilities
| the author speaks of unless you make a bunch of assumptions.
| which is terrible and miserable. things get even worse when you
| think about things at a global vs local political level, which
| are just completely different in dynamics.
|
| i hate rationalists because it's like. you cant logically reason
| your way out of this one buddy. the system is far too complex for
| rationalism to work. sometimes its easier to just align with the
| groupthink and focus on other things you deem more important.
| hanging out with friends vs spending all day in your room
| teaching yourself about tribal relations in central africa so you
| can have your own unique opinions on us foreign policy.
| rexpop wrote:
| I feel like "tribal relations in central Africa" is a defeatist
| exaggeration of the requisite nuance necessary to engage
| meaningfully with socioeconomic power dynamics in one's own
| society. It's an extremist viewpoint, and unworthy of a "nuance
| enjoyer."
|
| Remember the Pareto Principle! The principal aspect of Central
| African Politics is probably, still, colonialism/imperialism
| and the game of _Hungry, Hungry Hippos_ played between US
| /Russia/China.
|
| Do you really need to grok the unique reactions to neo-
| colonialism in every affected African, South American, and
| Asian country to form a principled, independent outlook?
| smoothbenny wrote:
| Right wingers love inventing new ways to say the same tired bs.
| Tbf I stopped reading somewhere between "wither the struggling
| landlord" and "demonstrating consistency in your worldview makes
| you a sheep" but did I really need to see any more?
| munificent wrote:
| _> By far, relationships determine the happiness of ones life,
| and relationships are not beholden to truth. In fact, they are
| very commonly built on the opposite. Whether a boss ' reprimands
| are deserved or not, employees bond over a common enemy. Entire
| groups form on the basis of beliefs, false or otherwise. We have
| a word for this: "religion"._
|
| _> Despite organized religion dropping in attendance, religious
| patterns of behavior are still everywhere, just adapted to a
| secular world. Health, exercise, politics, work, self-improvement
| -- these are all things I 've seen friends employ their religious
| muscle into, across all spectrums and political aisles. And as we
| get older, I'm seeing more and more of my supposedly-secular
| friends engage in such behavior._
|
| I have a hypothesis that all humans are compelled to indulge in a
| certain amount of magical thinking. We seem to be hard-wired to
| believe there is more underlying metaphysical order and pattern
| to the universe than there actually is.
|
| I presume this is evolutionarily advantageous because it's better
| to assume you have more agency and ability to predict than you
| actually do. Over-assuming leads to occasional disappointment and
| frustration when things don't work out, but under-assuming leads
| to having less impact than you actually could have.
|
| If that hypothesis is true, then probably the best thing for
| society is to provide cultural structures that let us indulge
| than impulse in non-harmful ways, instead of, say, giving it to
| religions that also tell us to murder gay people.
|
| Sort of like how sports function as a safe pressure release valve
| for the compulsion towards competition and violence.
| shw1n wrote:
| > If that hypothesis is true, then probably the best thing for
| society is to provide cultural structures that let us indulge
| than impulse in non-harmful ways, instead of, say, giving it to
| religions that also tell us to murder gay people.
|
| I agree with this take a lot, and actually tried to imagine
| what Religion 2.0 could be based on this premise
| keybored wrote:
| I was predicting within the first 500 words that the author was
| someone who symphatized with Rationalism. But how could this be?
| How could someone's approach to rationality, so-called, be so
| correlated with their approach to politics?[1] Couldn't people of
| many different backgrounds come to the same conclusion and my
| guess just have a small chance of being right?[2] Is it because
| of tribalism? No. The philosophy leads to a cluster of opinions.
| Just following its internal logic.
|
| Apply that to other people and you'll see how the article might
| be wrong.
|
| [1] It's not just the approach. There are a dozen things that are
| stated axiomatically which are not.
|
| [2] Okay, okay. Being this website there is a SC bias already.
| alfor wrote:
| A tribe is a collective brain. That work when people put truth
| first (Christianity) As the root of our culture fade out, we tilt
| toward satanism instead (serving self) Thus the tribes and
| institutions can no longer be trusted, everything fall appart,
| everyone lie all the time to serve the current advantages.
|
| I would say discard people and institutions that lie to you,
| shame them. We don't have the time and brain power to find the
| truth in every decision.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Author says SF Bay Area is truth seeking, but that's far from
| truth.
|
| More like, it's truth seeking within its echo chamber.
| pphysch wrote:
| > A reader might fairly ask what my tribe is. I'm not sure.
|
| Oh brother. Self-awareness about your political conditioning and
| biases should be step 1.
|
| Being unaware of your (intellectual) tribe implies a lack of
| good-faith understanding about other tribes.
|
| "What's water?" says the young fish.
| worik wrote:
| The writer does not discuss politics with their friends because
| they do not respect them
| abbadadda wrote:
| I was really enjoying the article until I realized there is zero
| attribution to the book _Thinking in Bets_, which IMO this is
| obviously heavily influenced by.
| abbadadda wrote:
| But there IS this?
|
| > [13] Not a reference to the book, which I haven't read --
| this is just a phrase I use
|
| Seems to me an unwillingness to cite / give proper attribution
| to Annie Duke and the book, which is super weird? At any rate
| I'd highly recommend the book.
| emursebrian wrote:
| The author specifically said he didn't ready the book.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| I find it easy to discuss politics with friends. The hard part is
| listening, being open to persuasion yourself. Walzing into a
| discussion believing the other ones are stupid people with simple
| arguments rooted in misunderstandings -- yeah, that won't fly.
|
| You can smell it in the article. it's right there. The author
| thinks he's intellectually superior and arrived at his opinion
| though a pure intellectual pursuit, where the stupid conversation
| partners can't follow.
|
| I completely understand how you're not having fruitful
| discussions.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| Ah, another apt time to mention one of my favorite papers,
| Michael Huemer's _In Praise of Passivity_.
| https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/passivity.htm
|
| Basically it argues the most moral thing in a democracy is to do
| nothing at all. You simply can never make a truly well informed
| decision over such a complex system, not even with several
| lifetimes of dedicated work towards it.
|
| Generally speaking I don't take anyone's political opinion
| seriously unless they have read and have a cogent response to
| this paper. I'll gladly just let them yap away and think I agree
| with them, regardless of my actual views. It's sort of like not
| taking philosophers seriously unless they've considered the
| question of solipsism first.
| eximius wrote:
| "Things are hard, so don't try"?
|
| Seems like it's just advocating for cowardice hiding behind
| moral grandstanding.
| tristor wrote:
| > It's sort of like not taking philosophers seriously unless
| they've considered the question of solipsism first.
|
| Solipsism only makes sense if you completely reject the concept
| of objective reality. It's mostly sophistry. The lack of being
| able to prove that reality exists beyond your own perceptions
| is not sufficient to prove that it does not, nor to make that
| assertion. See also "Simulation Theory".
| BrickFingers wrote:
| This hits too close to home.
|
| A while back I realized that most news stations have a clear bias
| and eventually started to dive deeper on stories I was interested
| in.
|
| I try to look into the source material when possible and found
| time and time again that the 'news' either left out key details
| or completely misrepresented the source material.
|
| I never bring up politics, but friends will often repeat news
| stories and occasionally I'll bring up key facts that weren't
| reported on.
|
| This has never changed anyone's opinion. Usually all it does is
| make the other person upset or they bring up another story to
| reaffirm their currently held belief.
|
| Thankfully my relationships are strong enough that I haven't lost
| any friends over this, but it's incredibly isolating. Feels like
| brainwashing on a massive scale.
|
| That's not to say that the news isn't to be trusted at all, some
| things are as reported. But, often times this isn't the case and
| it's more important than ever to think critically and not take
| news stories at face value. The division is mostly manufactured
| and I believe at our core most of us want the same things.
| ZpJuUuNaQ5 wrote:
| >Most people don't have political views, they have political
| tribes
|
| Agree with this. Also, I do believe most people are appallingly
| stupid (I might not not be an exception either), cruel and easy
| to manipulate, and as a result are incapable of making rational
| decisions that benefit society as a whole. I try to never ever
| discuss politics with anyone, it's one of the most damaging and
| useless activities there is.
|
| Usually, interactions with people on (arguably) political issues
| just leave me stupefied - no, I don't think people born in
| certain geographical locations are subhuman because of decisions
| of their current government; no, I don't hate nor wish death and
| suffering to anyone; no, I don't think the war is necessary and I
| don't want anyone to be blown to bits by a drone; no, I don't
| think artificial lines on a map ("countries") define who is wrong
| and who is right and worth throwing your only life away for; no,
| I don't think decisions of the government reflect the opinion of
| the entire population of that country; yes, I do think people I
| disagree with are real human beings with capabilities of sense,
| emotion, and thought just like I am; and the list goes on and on.
| Anyway, most people have a very different idea on the
| aforementioned examples. I don't care about the replies, just
| wanted to offload this filth off my head somewhat.
| JackYoustra wrote:
| No compromise with fascism!
| javier_e06 wrote:
| Friendship is more of an ideal.
|
| https://www.wilde-online.info/the-devoted-friend.html
| twothreeone wrote:
| I hear this soooo often. If you can't talk to friends about your
| honest opinions without being respectful to one another and also
| being willing to listen to their reasoning and opinions, what
| kind of friendship is that?
| anon6362 wrote:
| "Unbiased" aggregators like Ground News, MSM, and the right
| blogosphere like Joe Rogan are doing their best to normalize
| dragging the Overton window to the right with haste. Progressives
| have a handful of obscure, disconnected, largely-unknown
| reputable sources with a wasteland of as many or more former
| progressives and once-promising journalist and journalist-
| adjacent personalities.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| _well played .. I mean posted_
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| > I think there are two main reasons, the first being the sheer
| intellectual difficulty of crafting an informed political view
| leads people to tribalism out of convenience.
|
| What's the difference between tribalism and deferring to experts
| on complex subjects, e.g. climate change? I have a deep
| skepticism of people who think they can personally reason through
| any complex topic from first principles. It shows a lack of
| humility and self-awareness. Nobody has the time to build that
| kind of expertise in every domain, and there is wisdom in
| deferring to the hard won experience of others. But the type to
| think they can reason through everything seems like the type to
| call this "tribal politics."
| erlich wrote:
| Political discussions for me are like programming. I enjoy them
| because I like finding bugs in people's logic like I do in
| programming.
|
| I find a lot of people's political arguments wouldn't compile
| because of basic logic errors, and I try to point this out. But
| not many people are interested in this kind of analysis, they
| instead prefer the tribalist point-scoring like the OP mentions.
|
| I dream of a world where political debates can be syntax-checked.
| I'm sure you could do it with AI today.
|
| But in the end its all about feelings.
|
| I can't describe how many times I will just go along with
| someone's passionate ranting on something I disagree with and egg
| them along because its makes them happy. This is tribalism. I
| will disagree with the group, and if you saw me you'd think I was
| the strongest supporter, but I actually vehemently disagree with
| everything.
|
| There are very few people it's worth having a real discussion
| with these days.
|
| I don't change my opinion of people for what they think, but it's
| very rare to find people who reciprocate this.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| I think one of biggest problems the American voter has is two
| fold: 1. We have turned politicians into celebrities/heroes. ALL
| politicians are just like most of us: they are flawed and
| incomplete individuals who desperately try to hide their flaws.
| (Under normal circumstances, this isn't so bad. However, to be an
| elected official with all that power, it's fraud at the very
| least.
|
| 2. Once elected, we refuse to hold the politicians we elected to
| almost any accountability. (This is very hard to do, no doubt,
| because of the way the laws have been manipulated to stop this
| very accountability.)
|
| As for religion in politics: I'm a devoted Christian who is sane
| enough to know that not everyone will believe the same as I do. I
| have one vote on election day, to manipulate other people's vote
| by having my candidate changing laws to thwart the constitution
| is theft and immoral. (As difficult as it is to say, Christians
| today should read 2 Peter Ch2, taking it to heart. Stop only
| glossing over the cheerful faith verses and start reading the
| one's that call for accountability.)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-03 23:01 UTC)