Basically I’m trying to point out that things which you take as self-evident (e.g. finding common ground is good, wild policy swings are bad) are not necessarily so and the whole situation is quite complicated in reality. Consider, for example, whether you want to find common ground with tankies or, say, suicide bombers. Or take Eastern Europe around 1990 -- were the “policy swings” too wild?
You’re making claims which sound universal, but which look to me to have much more restricted applicability (say, in stable Western-style democracies with respect to large groups the views of which fall within the Overton window).
Also, one of the big issues is that not an insignificant number of people are unable to understand more complicated theories and approaches. In crude terms, they are too dumb for that. What should they do?
As to the quiz, I expect that “too few people took it” is likely to be a bigger problem for you than “someone took it multiple times”.
My analysis is more focused on the situation we have in the US today, with a still narrow (in the grand scheme) Overton window. I agree with you that in general there are failure modes, and the specific examples you bring (soviet collapse in ’90, tankies, etc). I’ll revise to make the claims sound less universal.
I agree that the “unable” / “too dumb” camp is problematic, but I think it’s a relatively small fraction compared to the “unwilling” camp, which just has no real incentive to be informed.
And I’ve dropped the account requirement on the quiz since you’re probably right. 100 data points at the moment, so pretty anecdotal but I’ll start looking at the data soon.
the “unwilling” camp, which just has no real incentive to be informed
Ah, an excellent word—“incentive”.
I agree that there are large swathes of people who use “hurray us, boo them” rhetoric purely to signal virtue and allegiance to their tribe. The issue is that they do this precisely because they have appropriate incentives—and providing them with additional information without changing the incentives is unlikely to do much.
In fact, stopping reciting the “our enemies are spawn of darkness” narrative is likely to be interpreted as a signal of disloyalty to the tribe with potentially dire social consequences.
Basically I’m trying to point out that things which you take as self-evident (e.g. finding common ground is good, wild policy swings are bad) are not necessarily so and the whole situation is quite complicated in reality. Consider, for example, whether you want to find common ground with tankies or, say, suicide bombers. Or take Eastern Europe around 1990 -- were the “policy swings” too wild?
You’re making claims which sound universal, but which look to me to have much more restricted applicability (say, in stable Western-style democracies with respect to large groups the views of which fall within the Overton window).
Also, one of the big issues is that not an insignificant number of people are unable to understand more complicated theories and approaches. In crude terms, they are too dumb for that. What should they do?
As to the quiz, I expect that “too few people took it” is likely to be a bigger problem for you than “someone took it multiple times”.
My analysis is more focused on the situation we have in the US today, with a still narrow (in the grand scheme) Overton window. I agree with you that in general there are failure modes, and the specific examples you bring (soviet collapse in ’90, tankies, etc). I’ll revise to make the claims sound less universal.
I agree that the “unable” / “too dumb” camp is problematic, but I think it’s a relatively small fraction compared to the “unwilling” camp, which just has no real incentive to be informed.
And I’ve dropped the account requirement on the quiz since you’re probably right. 100 data points at the moment, so pretty anecdotal but I’ll start looking at the data soon.
Ah, an excellent word—“incentive”.
I agree that there are large swathes of people who use “hurray us, boo them” rhetoric purely to signal virtue and allegiance to their tribe. The issue is that they do this precisely because they have appropriate incentives—and providing them with additional information without changing the incentives is unlikely to do much.
In fact, stopping reciting the “our enemies are spawn of darkness” narrative is likely to be interpreted as a signal of disloyalty to the tribe with potentially dire social consequences.
By the way, are you familiar with the Ideological Turing Test? It’s a related idea.