
A new theory about political polarization - samizdis
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-theory-political-polarization.html
======
tusharchoudhary
Political science seems to be going through a phase of questioning the
rationality of voters.

The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political
parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment theory
of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to their
donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small. In the
current political climate -- while it seems that the explanatory power of
emotions seems to have gone up, it isn't clear why.

This sounds very similar to the debate in economics around Efficient market
hypothesis[3] and the emergence of behavioral economists.

While it is seems easy to attribute things to emotion, we might miss other
explanatory variables underneath. A great sound-bite from Thomas Ferguson who
first proposed [2]: "The electorate is not too stupid or too tired to control
the political system. It is merely too poor."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition)
[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-
market_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis)

~~~
nordsieck
> The two major theories of public choice -- Median Voter theory[1] (political
> parties take positions that appeal to the median voter) and Investment
> theory of Party Competition[2] (parties take positions most beneficial to
> their donors), both assume emotions (irrationality) of voters to be small.
> In the current political climate -- while it seems that the explanatory
> power of emotions seems to have gone up, it isn't clear why.

I read an interesting political science piece[1] about the fall of
professional (i.e. corrupt) politicians and the rise of amateur (i.e.
ideological) politicians.

The claim is largely that voters started to care more about politicians
implementing their favorite policies than being the recipient of trickle-down
graft. They started choosing zealots who (at least seem to) have
uncompromising stances on issues which won't change later in their term for
some reason. Needless to say, these sorts of politicians don't tend to be the
moderate, nuanced type.

___

1\. I wish I could find it, but it's lost in the mists of the internet.

~~~
ChainOfFools
Perhapa shorter messages reach more targets' emotional activation potential
with better propagation fidelity and much less energetic commitment per
impression?

Mass media is increasingly a battle of bottlenecked channel management and
rationally persuasive content simply doesn't survive this infrastructure
without being ground down into smooth, bite sized harangues.

And if you are going to get massed support for an issue, emotional persuasion
content suffers much less from propagation distortion because it's distorted
to begin with.

~~~
dane-pgp
Or, to put it another way, and at the risk of taking this discussion out of
the abstract, "Lock her up!" only has to work as a tribal shibboleth, not as
an actually deliverable policy (especially if your voters have already given
up on the idea that politicians actually mean what they say).

~~~
Tiltowait--
Reality Winner was sentenced to federal prison for far less than Hillary
Clinton did. She mishandled a single classified document while Hillary
mishandled many, including top secret.

She's not in prison because the US has one justice system for us and another
for establishment elites. Billionaires pay millionaires to tell the middle
class that the poor are the problem. Punch up and fight the ruling class
criminals.

~~~
michaelmrose
We have had an increasingly hostile reaction to members of intelligence
leaking to the media for decades especially where it has caused notable
embarrassment. I am actually glad that Winner leaked but there is little doubt
she intended to break the law.

This is manifestly different from Hillary Clinton keeping email on a private
server something other politicians have done without incident or controversy.
She clearly intended to receive email more conveniently rather than intending
to break the law.

>News reports by NBC and CNN indicated that the emails discussed "innocuous"
matters already available in the public domain. For example, the CIA drone
program has been widely discussed in the public domain since the early 2000s;
however, the very existence of the program is technically classified, so
sharing a newspaper article that mentions it would constitute a security
breach according to the CIA

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy)

------
notafraudster
In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in
the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense
of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning
more closely to partisan camps.

Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after
illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court
system ruled she must. Davis, like most southerners until recently, was a
registered Democrat. Until about the year 2000, virtually every southern
government was majority Democratic, in some cases supermajority Democratic.
The people in those parties often voted for Republican presidential candidates
and were as conservative as the Republican Party, but due to inertia, they
registered as Democrats. This has largely been eroded over the last 20 years.
The result is that even if no one switches their opinions on anything,
conservative Democrats now identify as Republicans. There are a number of
inertial reasons to stick with a party that has left you behind, or to
cynically join a party for a meal ticket. So, some of the apparent "era of
good feelings" \-- confluence between parties -- actually occurred because a
big part of today's Republicans were "mistakenly" registered as Democrats. If
any other region becomes one-party dominated for a long time, you'll see the
reverse. The reverse is true in Hawai'i, where many erstwhile Republicans
would today be simply more conservative Democrats, because the Republican
party is extinct there.

There is also a belief that voters are better able to attach positions to
parties. For example, if I told you that one party in the US generally favors
higher taxes and higher services, and one party generally favors lower taxes
and lower services, could you match the party labels to the descriptions,
imperfect as they are? There is a general belief that people are better at
this than they once were.

Finally, the increase in correlations between issues positions. For example,
today we largely view Republicans as a rural party and Democrats as an urban
party. That was not true 30 years ago. Prior to the politicization of
abortion, there were constituencies that were pro-life and voted for the
Democrats (Catholics being a huge such group). Now abortion is neatly aligned
across party lines: there are almost no pro-choice Republicans and almost no
pro-life Democrats. Ditto immigration -- which used to be cross-cutting when
the union left viewed it as a threat to working conditions but now is
primarily conceived along the dimension of racial conservatism. If I tell you
someone loves guns, you have a pretty good chance of guessing their position
on immigration, healthcare, and school prayer, even though outwardly those
four issues do not need to be attached to one another.

Finally, within congress, two institutional reforms have contributed to
across-party polarization: first, banning earmarks. It used to be that if I
wanted corn subsidies and you did not, I would add an amendment to my bill to
fund the navy base in your district. We then both vote yes. Killing earmarks
may have reduced waste and corruption, but it also reduced a procedural tool
used to secure inter-party agreement on contentious bills by offering
concessions to the other party. It's like "suing for peace". Second, the
"Hastert Rule", a rule that the Republican party adopted to never advance any
bill that does not have majority Republican support. It used to be that, say,
Republican leadership might advance a bill that had 40% Republican support and
80% Democratic support when those totals add up to more than 50% of the
overall congress. By committing not to "roll" their own party, the Hastert
rule virtually guarantees that votes that would internally divide parties and
thus reveal ideological heterogeneity within the party are less likely to
happen in favour of votes that divide across parties.

Why am I mentioning these trends? They contribute to a phenomenon that many
political scientists (here I am thinking Tausanovitch and Warshaw, but others
as well) have noted: you can perceive polarization (increasing distances
between the two parties) without anyone adopting more extreme views. Rather,
polarization can emerge from how party labels map to issues and how
institutions surface issues to vote on. This doesn't mean no views are
changing or become more extreme, but it does mean we should resist estimators
that have a simplistic appeal to our gut feeling that things have become more
extreme.

Some of this is discussed in the linked article, obliquely, but I think the
article suffers from being written by non-political scientists trying to think
about a political science problem from first principles rather than engaging
with the existing literature. Reinventing the wheel can sometimes be helpful
and sometimes is not.

~~~
ep103
Of the explanations you have given here, most of them appear to be good
things. Voters learning more about and becoming more aware of the actions of
their representative parties.

Except the hastert rule.

The hastert rule appears to be uniformly evil, and would appear to be an
underlying reason for all of the other trends you've described in your post.
Because it makes it impossible to govern, except in an extremely polarized
manner. Leading to all of the other changes you've described.

~~~
afiori
> the hastert rule.

Rather I am surprised to discover that the speaker has so much power in
suppressing proposed legislation. How are member of Congress called lawmakers
if they are not allowed to propose laws?

~~~
Majromax
They are allowed to propose laws (and amendments to bills). However, the House
and Senate leadership has control over the voting schedule.

There are still ways around it (e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discharge_petition)),
but they are not particularly fast and the legislative calendar is crowded.
Worse yet, these measures also stick it to leadership – a plucky
Representative has to not just want something, but want it badly enough to
embarrass the rest of their party. That’s rare.

------
SI_Rob
How about, polarization is highly compressive and humans have limited time and
mental resources to devote to the many competing concerns they encounter.

Those issues that they sense are important in some broad abstract game of
value creation and control, but that don't have an obvious impact on their
immediate sense of agency or leverage, get heavily and "lossily" compressed
into extreme min-max caricatures or silhouettes as a heuristic compromise
between the infinite nuance/complexity rabbit-hole of rigorous intellectual
honesty and very finite human capacity for attention.

------
raz32dust
Disappointed to not see any mention of ranked choice voting. I think the
winner takes all system leads to a two-party duopoly and makes it difficult
for intermediate positions to win.

P.S: Yes, I know Australia has ranked choice and they also have problems. Of
course it's not a panacea, there are other problems like the role of money in
politics. But it will be better than what we have today, and should reduce
polarization considerably over time IMO.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
Harvard Business Review podcast had an interesting take on this which
suggested that the party-aligned primary system was the main cause. They
applied Porter's 5 Forces to politics and suggested ranked choice voting would
be one of the main ways to break to duopoly.

[https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five-
forces...](https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five-forces-to-
fix-u-s-politics)

~~~
raz32dust
It makes sense right? It's so ridiculous to see Biden and Bernie battle it out
in "Stage 1", and then only one of them gets to go against Trump. Instead of
Biden, Bernie and Trump and everyone else just run together in a race as it
should really be. We might have even had a better person on the Republican
side in this case.

~~~
birdyrooster
Maybe every four years we switch between FPTP and RC

------
andrewla
> The ever-deepening rift between the political left- and right-wing has long
> been puzzling theorists in political science and opinion dynamics

I feel like people who make this claims are in one of two camps. One is the
camp that just wants to ignore that the 60s or 70s even happened, to refuse to
acknowledge that the polarization we see now is extremely mild in comparison.

The other camp believes that we can measure the polarization using some insane
metrics that purport to indicate how polarized society is, but really just
measure the opinion of the people collecting the metrics through increasingly
inane measures, like literal telephone polling that attempts to extrapolate
from "people who use landlines routinely and either are willing to answer
unknown caller calls or don't have caller id" to "all people".

The latter camp is extremely insidious and I implore you to remember the last
time someone used metrics to prove something clearly false and assume that
everyone is doing the same thing, just Gell-Mann amnesia is preventing you
from seeing it.

------
jjk166
People are polarized because they don't like being not polarized isn't really
a theory, it's a tautology.

~~~
twiceaday
My wife has a cup that she got as a gift from somebody she cares about. It's
not a very good looking cup, it can't be microwaved, and it has to be hand-
washed. She never uses it, it just sits in the closet. She has this cup not
because she wants it but because she can't come to terms with not wanting it,
with getting rid of it. Maybe you can vaguely summarize the situation as her
wanting this cup, but that misses a lot of nuance.

~~~
jjk166
I concur, you wife not-not wanting the cup is not a satisfying explanation for
why she keeps the cup. Likewise not-not wanting to be polarized is not a
satisfying explanation for why people are polarized.

~~~
tunesmith
Still not a tautology though; not-not wanting does not mean wanting.

~~~
jjk166
Only because in your example wanting != wanting, which is an unfortunate
consequence of the language not having a good word to differentiate between
the desire to possess something and the desire not to be rid of it.

-(-A) == A, when A == A, is a tautology though.

~~~
tunesmith
Still not true, for instance if A is "proven". If A is not not proven, it
doesn't mean it is proven; it can still be a hypothesis. And yet, proven ==
proven.

~~~
jlokier
> If A is not not proven, it doesn't mean it is proven; it can still be a
> hypothesis.

Are you sure?

It seems to me if A is not not-proven, it is surely proven.

If A is still just a hypothesis, then it _is_ not-proven, and isn't not not
proven.

------
headsupernova
Great discussion of this topic on the media criticism podcast Citations Needed
last week. "How 'Polarization' Discourse Flattens Power Dynamics and Says
Nothing" [https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-112-how-
polar...](https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-112-how-polarization-
discourse-flattens-power-dynamics-and-says-nothing)

------
idrios
I like this article a lot and would like to see it expanded upon further.
Based on their visuals and explanation (without seeing equations) it looks
like they've modelled an individual's political alignment based on a number of
orthogonal issues and based on how they see their peers. So if there were 3
issues (examples used were marijuana legalization, gay marriage and income
tax) then there are 4 forces acting on each person - marijuana legalization,
gay marriage, income tax, and pressure from peers.

But their model could be expanded to account for people who are single issue
extremists (e.g. a dot that isn't pulled to other dots but _does_ pull other
dots towards it), randomness or irrationallity (dots suddenly jumping,
possibly to be pulled back or possibly not), and in general more variance in
the weight of the force for each individual.

Side note: Is there a field of political science that builds and works off of
statistical models similar to how they did in this article? I know that
basically the entire field of economics does this, but what about political
science?

~~~
xh-dude
There are plenty of thoroughly competent, talented, quantitatively oriented
PoliSci researchers. Relative to other social sciences it can be less
straightforward to be productive with quantitative methods ... there are cases
where quant methods shine, the field needs more of it IMO, but the field can’t
be reduced to that kind of scholarship alone.

------
seph-reed
Balance is a good beginner philosophy, but adults need to do better. Most
things are orthogonal, nothing really balances it out, and it appears from
this article that peoples obsession with balance is also a self destructive
obsession with opposites.

At this point, any time the word balance comes up as an answer, my mind jumps
towards "paradox" as a means to nip that fallacy in the bud.

------
motohagiography
The article seems to map how the differences effect the overlapping issues in
peoples existing ontologies. We're all aware that abortion exists and
generally have an opinion about whether it is an individual and social good,
which would fall into this ontology mapping. We are not all aware of
discrimination, since it's noticed mainly by the people who experience it -
which would be a gap between ontologies that has more to do with polarization
than how people view the same object.

Polarization itself is the resistance to understanding. It isn't a rational
phenomenon. We could use quantitative polarization models as post-hoc
explanatory metaphors, but as a model with predictive power, I think literary
narrative depictions will still provide more foresight. There is very little
new under the sun.

The question from me would be, what might these models credibly predict that
reasoning through with tools from psychology, history, economics, or even game
theories could not provide in a more reliable and accurate way?

------
tehjoker
This is the kind of stuff when you get when you don't know anything about
historical materialism.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism)

Historical materialism is the idea that politics comes from changes in the
material conditions of a population. When people need something and aren't
getting it, then they meet others in the same situation and compare notes,
then you get a political formation.

The United States is refusing to adapt to the needs of the bottom strata of
society, and as they learn they can't change the system by voting or
protesting, more and more radical steps are taken until the goals of the
majority of people will be achieved. The refusal of the government to give
even an inch is causing this to happen. Just look at the Bernie Sanders
campaign that was talking about state funded medical care for all people, how
popular it was and is, and how the DNC merc'd it.

Then we had a pandemic happen that showed definitively how beneficial that
policy would be, and the state still refuses to lift a finger to help anyone
other than the business community with the exception of a paltry one time
$1200 and some unemployment benefits. It took pushing to get Joe Biden to even
call for free testing let alone free care!

Edit: To be clear, my objection to this paper is that even though it is
authored by physicists, people who should have a clear understanding of
materialism (!!) they merely build computer models of ideas, and in that they
are merely pontificating on liberal idealism. Their models will be flawed
because ideas only "catch" when they find fertile soil. That soil is material
reality.

~~~
ChainOfFools
Isn't this just Marxism with all the Marxist theory about class struggle
rephrased into plain conflict theory language and de-jargonified?

~~~
tehjoker
Yes. It's much more understandable that way (and I don't have a useless
Marxist academic position to justify). Frankly, I find it rather difficult to
disagree with the premise of historical materialism.

You can disagree with Marx's conclusions about which factors were important,
but the basic assumption seems solid. The major exception that comes to mind
where ideas might dominate material need is a situation present in the US
today where the media so dominantly control narrative, they have been able to
mostly squeeze other ideas out of the discourse. This is sort of like fighting
entropy, possible, but requires extra energies to do.

I hadn't heard of conflict theory before, so thanks for the tip.

------
ChainOfFools
interesting to note that the guy who coined the word 'sociology' (Comte)
originally wanted to call his theory 'Social Physics,' but his rivals had
already claimed that term for different theories.

------
elicash
Is there a link to read this anywhere? The one I found in the article was
broken.

There's really no way to evaluate this argument on the basis of this article.
Do we need to wait until it's published tomorrow?

~~~
samizdis
[http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/23/3/5.html](http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/23/3/5.html)

------
sova
Politics is much more nuanced than Left and Right. Plus, a person can have
multiple identities depending the question to vote on. So, while it's
interesting to correlate emotion with voting outcomes, it still assumes that
Far Left and Far Right are different people, instead of schizophrenic blobs as
they actually are. At least that is an alternative way of looking at it. This
assumes people are consistent in their personal views, and I find that to be a
very dubious claim.

------
doctoboggan
This article made me think of the graphics in this piece from WaPo:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/23/a-stu...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/23/a-stunning-
visualization-of-our-divided-congress/)

Ever since coming across that visualization a few years ago I've been thinking
about it. I wonder what the endgame is.

------
jkingsbery
So, they built a model for polarization. I read through the article a couple
times, but maybe I missed it - I don't see what predication this model makes
that can be useful or can test it.

The article also implies that being on a political team is the only reason for
polarization. Maybe that's a big part of it, but it seems to me that ignoring
incompatible world views is uncharitable to all involved, and almost certainly
a way to increase misunderstanding.

------
take_a_breath
A recent HBR IdeaCast episode on political polarization. They viewed our
political climate through the lens of industry competition and came to many
similar conclusions.

[1] [https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five-
forces...](https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/06/applying-porters-five-forces-to-
fix-u-s-politics)

------
jedharris
The paper doesn't help to answer: Why now? The model it proposes would have
produced high polarization any time, but polarization is much higher now than
40 years ago...

If the model could help us analyze the dynamics of polarization it would be
helpful. As a static analysis it is just a fairly obvious application of
cognitive dissonance.

------
pbuzbee
Wait But Why has been releasing a long series of posts on the current
polarized era. I've found them insightful:
[https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-
us.html](https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/08/story-of-us.html)

------
crazygringo
This is interesting mathematically... but false empirically.

The forces behind modern political polarization are extremely well-known and
well-documented in political science, and they are:

1) The awareness by political parties that extreme views motivate extreme
voters to vote, more than moderate views motivate moderate voters to vote,
therefore parties and candidates are being pushed further away from the center
than decades ago

2) Political primaries are now democratic, so less centrist candidates are
being selected than from when candidates were selected by party leadership

3) The awareness by the media that politically polarized coverage is more
popular than centrist/balanced coverage, thus the rise of right-wing and left-
wing news

It really is that simple. Potential solutions include making voting mandatory
(like Australia and many other countries) so extreme views aren't used to
drive turnout, various strategies like eliminating primaries and using ranked
voting for elections instead (allowing multiple candidates from all parties),
and well there isn't really much we can do about the media, but if parties and
candidates aren't pushing the polarization as much, the media probably won't
as much either.

~~~
Tiltowait--
> Political primaries are now democratic, so less centrist candidates are
> being selected than from when candidates were selected by party leadership

That's not true at all. At least on the Democrat side. The party chooses the
nominee, not the people.

"The DNC, led by Wasserman Schultz, Admitted In Court they Rigged Primaries
Against Sanders"

>A Federal Judge dismissed the lawsuit after DNC attorneys argued that the DNC
would be well within their rights to rig primaries and select their own
candidate.

[http://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-
wass...](http://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-
schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/)

"DNC Lawyers Argue No Liability: Neutrality Is Merely a ‘Political Promise'"

[https://observer.com/2016/10/dnc-lawyers-argue-no-
liability-...](https://observer.com/2016/10/dnc-lawyers-argue-no-liability-
neutrality-is-merely-a-promise/)

~~~
crazygringo
That's quibbling over details, or the exception that proves the rule.

Candidate selection used to be a backroom affair. Now it's an open democratic
process.

Party leadership obviously has their favorites, and can certainly try to push
voters a certain way. But at the end of the day, people are still voting in
primaries. Yes there are superdelegates too, like there's also an electoral
college.

But political primaries are based on voting by the people now. They weren't
before. That's the point.

~~~
afiori
> the exception that proves the rule.

Off-topic: I was presented with the argument that this sentence should be
taken to mean "this is the exception that shows the rule [as in law] is
needed" rather than "this is the exception that the rule [as in
inference/deduction] is correct".

I have not looked into whether this interpretation is historically true, but
it makes much more sense.

------
js8
Just started reading Mark Blyth's Angrynomics, which talks about this topic a
lot. I really recommend it to everyone, it's short, and it's an excellent
synthesis of psychology and political economy.

------
dr_dshiv
Somehow these remind me of Ising machines, where our neighbors align us and
heat randomly flips us. Except we recoil at the extremism of the extremes to
settle further into our current position.

------
dqpb
I think disinformation has an information-theoretic advantage over factual
information when consumed by someone who can't tell which is which.

------
ed25519FUUU
> _It ultimately ends in total polarization, " illustrates co-author David
> Garcia_

Actually, I think it's more likely to end with violent conflict between the
groups.

The horsheshoe theory simply won't die[1]. At this point in time the extremes
have more in common with one another than they do with the center.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#:~:text=In%20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory#:~:text=In%20political%20science%20and%20popular,a%20horseshoe%20are%20close%20together).

~~~
082349872349872
One might hope that a common enemy (say, a virus with no known vaccine) would
act to reduce polarisation in a society.

~~~
theLastVoice
It has done that in most societies across the world.

Except in one country that is heading into elections this year.

~~~
jonny_eh
I'd put more of the blame on the leader with no interest in uniting a nation
under threat.

~~~
pstuart
Who also doesn't want to mess up his face makeup with a mask.

------
acarrera94
Interesting article. Any fans of A Conflict of Visions? That tends to be the
theory that makes the most sense to me.

------
c3534l
This is trivial to the point of tautology.

------
rayiner
> It ultimately ends in total polarization," illustrates co-author David
> Garcia (CSH and MedUni Vienna). Not only do people categorically favor or
> oppose single issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and nuclear energy.
> "If they are pro-choice, they are at the same time highly likely to be for
> gay marriage, against the use of nuclear energy, for the legalization of
> marijuana, and so on," says Garcia. The possible variety of combinations of
> different opinions is reduced to the traditional left-right split.

This is an interesting observation, because while we think of all these things
as related ideologically, they aren’t necessarily. For example, both Denmark
and New Zealand have liberal new Prime Ministers who are women, pro-LGBT, pro-
welfare state, and quite strongly anti-immigration. (New Zealand’s PM, Jacinda
Ardern, has received very positive media coverage in the U.S., but is part of
a ruling coalition with the “New Zealand First” Party, such that her deputy PM
is an anti-immigration right-winger.) So the issues on which the “left” and
“right” have formed coalitions aren’t necessarily ideological but are to some
extent the artifact of history.

~~~
commandlinefan
> we think of all these things as related ideologically, they aren’t
> necessarily.

I have to fight this tendency in myself: I'm as anti-liberal as they come, but
I do happen to agree with a handful of "liberal" positions such as abortion,
drug legalization and immigration. But from time to time I catch myself
disagreeing with the messenger so much I almost forget I actually agree with
the message.

~~~
throwaway6274
How strange, as I’m the opposite. I’m about as anti-conservative as they come:
UBI, legalize almost everything, universal healthcare and insurance, but I’m
extremely against abortion.

~~~
jawns
You are in an unenviable position, because the Democratic Party has all but
said that you can't be both a Democrat and pro-life.

There is a minor party called the American Solidarity Party that is a little
more of a mix, similar to Christian democratic parties in Europe. They oppose
abortion and the death penalty but support universal health care,
environmental protections, stricter regulation of financial markets, etc.

~~~
throwaway6274
> You are in an unenviable position

Yep, it doesn’t seem to be a common position, for sure.

I have heard of the American Solidarity Party and like some of their
viewpoints, but I think that any consenting adults should be able to have a
relationship (and the corresponding legal benefits). I also don’t like the
religious motivations behind many of the arguments of the ASP; my views
against abortion are secular in nature, and I think the religious arguments
probably hurt the pro-life movement as a whole.

------
narrator
I think what broke the political dialog in this country is the whole hearted
embrace of the association fallacy[1]. For example. I was talking with someone
about COVID-19 and why it could have been released from a lab accidentally.
The person I was talking with then accused me of believing in conspiracy
theories. I then said many prominent people such as Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo
said this theory is credible. She then said that those are Trump supporters
and "you know what those people are like." I said, no what? and then she said
"They're like Timothy Mcvae" they are extremists. Implying that I was like
Timothy Mcvae for believing ideas that Trump supporters also held.

I then, to show her the flaw in her reasoning, played guilt by association
with her. That people denying this are parroting CCP propaganda and the CCP
does all this horrible stuff. Why do you support all that horrible stuff? She
got very emotional and burst into tears at the accussation.

I then explained the association fallacy, we made up and moved to other topics
of conversation. However, this is a good percentage of arguments on reddit and
most political forums and mainstream news. The association fallacy over and
over and over again.

Nobody wants to have an information producing argument they just want to find
out what team you're on by comparing your beliefs to "bad people" and "good
people" and seeing which one you match the most with and then accusing you of
being them.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy)

~~~
fzeroracer
I'm not sure why it matters if prominent people believe in what is ostensibly
a conspiracy theory. Alex Jones was prominent, but that doesn't mean chemicals
in the water are turning frogs gay for example. In fact you should be placing
more scrutiny on prominent people (politicians especially) for pushing such a
thing, because usually they have an agenda they're trying to push.

The fact that you chose to accuse someone of denying such a thing as parroting
CCP propaganda indicates either your story is entirely fake or you're just an
asshole.

~~~
narrator
"The fact that you chose to accuse someone of denying such a thing as
parroting CCP propaganda indicates either your story is entirely fake or
you're just an asshole."

I was using her reasoning to make a ludicrous argument similar to the one she
made to show her the flaw in the argument and her method of reasoning. I don't
actually believe that and made it clear to her when I explained the
association fallacy. The only way to argue against someone using a fallacious
arguing technique, which can be used to prove anything, is to use that arguing
technique to prove the opposite or something ridiculous.

~~~
fzeroracer
I mean, you countered her reasoning by committing multiple fallacies of your
own. You strawmanned her ('That people denying this are parroting CCP
propaganda and the CCP does all this horrible stuff.') and did an appeal to
authority ('I then said many prominent people such as Tom Cotton and Mike
Pompeo said this theory is credible'). You did so in a way that was enough to
make her cry by your own admission.

~~~
narrator
Whenever I see a person use a fallacy I immediately use that fallacy against
them. When she said the thing was a "conspiracy theory" that's essentially an
appeal to authority that no one in authority believes that argument. When she
compared me to a terrorist, that's an association fallacy, so I used that
argument. Arguing against a fallacious reasoner is pointless, the only thing
you can do is instruct them in proper reasoning.

------
badrabbit
The otherside are villains,not their ideas but the people themselves. I am not
going to say that view is incorrect but it is incompaible with the
preservation of a democracy.

For example, I have a hard time accepting a neo-nazi should be allowed to live
when capital punishment is a thing. I wouldn't kill a neo-nazi because I don't
think capital punishment is the right way, but I still think it should be
considered a very serious crime. Things like free speech should not be used to
tolerate nazi or confederate flags and a nazi salute should get you prison
time, just like in Germany. I think both with privacy and free speech, Germans
have learned a good lesson after the nazis.

Either way, it is incompatible with democracy for me to think millions of my
fellow citizens should be free. So, my opinion is, polarization is normal,
polarized views like white supremacy and leftist anti-religion propaganda (you
have no idea how much restraint it takes to not act violently against someone
blatantly mocking and disrespecting your religion!) are themselves wrong. It's
not the polarizarion that's wrong,it's just a symptom. The problem is we have
too many people (self included) that were not raised to be decent human beings
who know to be ashamed when they do wrong. At the very least treat other
people the way you want to be treated, you know: don't hate on people because
of the melanin content in their skin because you wouldn't want to be treated
that way, don't open up satanic "churches" just to hate on religious people or
prove a point because you would feel completley outraged and hurt if someone
did that to you, don't lock up kids in cages sleeping on concrete without
basic hygeine because you wouldn't want someone to treat your children that
way because of your crimes! Even if you think your views are right, doing
right and being decent is not optional if you want your rights and the society
you live in to remain intact. Polarization is a result of population wide
flaws in the people's character as a whole (and do not for one second think
this is american problem or americans special this way). I for example need to
be more accepting of neonazis,xenophobes, anti-religious people's basic human
rights. I am pointing finger at myself as well. Everyone needs to reevaluate
their views to confirm with principles of basic decency without which any
democracy will fail.

------
buboard
I find such studies rather shallow, just explaining away a phenomenon without
looking deeper for causes. I dont think the level of political animosity that
the USA seems to have now has been seen before, maybe ever. In no other
country have people massively defied death in the way americans do today. When
people stop valuing their lives , it seems rather like a change in psychology.
Maybe it's not even a political phenomenon, but an extreme expression of
underlying psychological issues in individuals that express themselves
macroscopically in an irrational way.

~~~
moate
" I dont think the level of political animosity that the USA seems to have now
has been seen before, maybe ever."

Wait til you find out about what happened from 1775–1783 or 1861-1865. It's
gonna blow your mind dude!

