

On Political Belief - nbashaw
http://nbashaw.tumblr.com/post/11598657577/on-political-belief

======
Gormo
When I'm trying to solve reasoning problems with other people, and each of us
has a different concept of what constitutes then desired en state, the
arguments tend to become very similar to political disagreements, in both the
observable interactions and in the subjective way my brain 'feels' during the
conversation.

The author of the article believes that political discourse is a process
that's intended to "come up with a solution to a problem". This is itself an
ideological position: not everyone holds this technocratic viewpoint. If we
construe the purpose of the political process as one that's intended to
reconcile people who hold competing value systems but who must productively
coexist in proximity to each other, then recognizing ideology as the
appropriate basis of political discourse _is_ the most rational first step.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Very good point. Still, politics is not (only) a philosophical discussion -
policy must be made, and it's reasonable to try for an effective policy with
minimal bad side effects.

Consider the US' Prohibition. Even taking it as a given that the majority of
the voters wanted to see alcohol banned [1], it's hard to see it as anything
but a disaster.

I'd say there are more modern examples, too.

[1] Yes, this is debatable. Not the point, though.

~~~
Gormo
But in order to try for an effective policy, we have to have a consensus on
what that policy is meant to achieve. If there's a persistent disagreement
here, we're at an impasse.

Sure we can look at the _unintended_ consequences of policies like prohibition
(which is still a very current example, with its disastrous effects still
readily evident), but when the disputes extend to the _intended_ consequences,
or when people resolve the tradeoff of primary result vs. deleterious side
effects in opposing ways, the debate is irresolvable.

I think the highly polarized political climate is itself a deleterious side
effect of the meta-policy of political centralization: the more people you try
to cover under a single policy, the more conflict and 'gridlock' there will
inevitably be. This, of course, is a strong argument for addressing policy
questions as the smallest appropriate level; perhaps those who want to create
economies of scale for their political projects are creating disproportionate
diseconomies of scale.

------
maratd
> In fact, neuroscientists have recently discovered that the part of our
> brains we use when making decisions about politics is totally different from
> the part we use when trying to solve reasoning problems.

It's called caching. Just like it makes no sense for your server to constantly
re-generate the same thing over and over again, it makes no sense for your
brain to re-evaluate the same thing over and over again. That's what ideology
is. The article gets to it, but only at the very end.

> After all, the biggest problem with democracies tends to be the voters.

No, the biggest problem with democracies tend to be a select number of people
who think they know better than the voters and start making decisions for
them. That's when democracies turn into bureaucracies.

~~~
jbooth
I'd submit that it's less like caching than it is rooting for your favorite
sport team.

In the current context, how else to explain liberals justifying Obama's
policies WRT the financial sector, or Republicans vilifying his healthcare
bill? Ask both groups of people about those policies 4 years ago, in the
absence of names and faces, and you'd get very different answers. And don't
even get me started on "I'm either ok with or stridently oppose deficit
spending".

That's the opposite of caching, it's tribe-based fist-pumping.

~~~
espeed
That's why Tim Russert's Red States/Blue States map
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states>) is so significant
-- it exacerbated the us vs. them mentality and created a deeper visual divide
throughout the country. It is so effective because sports has already
conditioned us to think this way.

The us vs. them mentality enables parties to get away with bundling "good"
policies with "bad" because Republican voters will go along with the
Republican party line even though they may not agree with all of the
positions, likewise with Democrats.

The parties cycle every few years so the "good" stuff that doesn't pass and
the "bad" stuff that gets pushed through is blamed on the other side. This
wouldn't be so pervasive if we would focus on individual issues and not
parties.

~~~
jbooth
_We_ are already conditioned to think that way, tribal unity means you beat
the other tribe.

I'd say that the networks certainly exacerbate it by treating it as a sport,
though. There's room for honest disagreement within a tribe, but we shouldn't
be two tribes.

------
bluekeybox
Somewhat tangential, but there is a relatively influential theory in
evolutionary biology
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellian_intelligence>) which states that
high intelligence in primates and specifically humans arose as a direct
consequence of living in large groups where reproductive fitness was strongly
linked to social status. Living in such groups necessitated political
maneuvering and caused an "arms race" of increasingly sophisticated tactics
used by the group members to gain status. This theory also claims that living
in such groups had a far bigger impact on the development of intelligence than
toolmaking did and resulted in each of us possessing a theory of mind and
being capable of introspection.

What I thought was interesting is that if political decision-making is
performed by an area in the brain that is completely separate from, for
example, problem-solving, then this fact doesn't play very well with the above
theory.

~~~
maratd
> What I thought was interesting is that if political decision-making is
> performed by an area in the brain that is completely separate from, for
> example, problem-solving, then this fact doesn't play very well with the
> above theory.

It's meaningless to perform a study on adults. By the time we're adults, our
views are more or less set. At that point, your brain is simply retrieving an
already established pattern and there's no need to store it in the same place
where it was constructed. Doing a study on adolescents would be more
meaningful. Or perhaps confronting people with an issue they have never
encountered before and forcing them to pick a side.

------
loup-vaillant
Strongly related: <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Politics_is_the_Mind-Killer>

Maybe after you read this, technical problem and political ones will start to
feel the same.

------
viggity
"After all, the biggest problem with democracies tends to be the voters."

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms
that have been tried from time to time. \- Winston Churchill

