TL;DR: what actual useful outcomes are there of political discourse for people who don’t have political advocacy as an area of comparative advantage?
I think the ability to discuss politics clearly is one of the biggest successes of rationality, perhaps because politics breaks minds so thoroughly. It is ironic then, that it’s not obvious whether this is of any use whatsoever to the majority of us. I don’t believe that political advocacy is my area of comparative advantage, and with the general aspie nature of LWers I would assume this probably applies to most of us. Indeed, the main effect of thinking rationally about politics that I can’t stand non-rationalist politics anymore. Having the correct political views is of some small benefit, although since no general election has ever been won or lost by one vote, its very unlikely to change anything.
Are there other benefits to having accurate political views? Some people, largely on both the far left and the far right think that total social collapse is likely within a few decades. I think they might be partially right—for instance, in Europe previously fringe parties are becoming mainstream, both communists protesting against austerity and nationalists protesting against immigration. In Greece, actual neo-Nazis have won seats. If there is another financial crash happens (which again, I think is likely, quite probably before the end of the year) then as countries go totally bankrupt because they are still in debt from the last crash, we will see extremist parties getting into power, which probably make the situation worse (not that communism and nationalism will always cause disasters, but I don’t trust panicking electorates to vote in people who can do it properly, and if half the population goes right and half goes left this causes more problems like riots).
Anyway, I seem to have digressed, but my point is, if one can predict that society is going to collapse, would that be useful? Not really, as far as I can tell. Its more difficult to make money from a collapse than from a boom, and the timescales are too long anyway. If you hold the converse opinion, that the future will be ok, then the advice that leads to is simply “buy indexes” which is standard advice anyway.
If I decided that society is likely to collapse, is that useful because it gives me warning to get out while there is still time? Not really—only the really paranoid people think that things are going to get really bad in the immediate future. Even if I thought there was likely to be total collapse, and outcome so bad that I need to leave, as opposed to the far more likely outcome of general stagnation, the predictions are still decades in advance, and one does not need that much time to prepare to leave.
Is there some way politics could be useful applying to the way I interact with other people? Some people might say that its important to put aside subconscious prejudices everyone has. But, generally I would say that subconscious prejudices are just wrong on a probabilistic level—even if some characteristic does vary between group A and group B of people, one is far better off just measuring the characteristic directly, in most cases.
I think some of what I’ve written pattern-matches to being slightly crazy, but what I am trying to ask is whether there is any benefit to having accurate views about politics. Personally, I think I spend too much time thinking about politics because I find it interesting, and it feels like I’m doing something useful. But maybe this feeling of being useful is an illusion, and thinking about politics is no more useful than watching TV.
what I am trying to ask is whether there is any benefit to having accurate views about politics
I think it depends on how widely do you understand “politics” and how closely do you interact with power structures. Small businesses, for example, care a lot about local politics. On a certain level “Are cops my friends?” is a political question. If you have a choice of states or countries to live in, politics often matter. If you are in academia, politics matter.
On the other hand, yes, in the first world you can probably live a successful life without caring a whit about politics. I wouldn’t recommend this in the third world (including everything east of Germany).
thinking about politics is no more useful than watching TV
Thinking about something is always more useful than consuming content :-/
I think it depends on how widely do you understand “politics” and how closely do you interact with power structures.
I was more thinking about the ideological level, as opposed to office politics, for instance. The two are not entirely distinct—social justice movements are concerned with office politics, for instance. But I think to find out more about office politics I would want to think more about something like ‘the 48 laws of power’ rather than knowing more about ideology.
Thinking about something is always more useful than consuming content :-/
I think I would make an exception for really good content, but generally, yes this is a good point, and since politics is so hard to think about clearly, perhaps it is especially good for rationality training.
I think it is useful. And the usefulness may be hard to measure because it manifests in pitfalls that you didn’t fall into, ignorant decisions that you didn’t make, blights on your imagination that you didn’t have, prejudices that you didn’t express.
It’s like that when people do preventative work of any kind. Their work is often not recognized or noticed.
I don’t believe that political advocacy is my area of comparative advantage
On the other hand political advocacy for your particular interests is part of your comparative advantage because no one else is going to do it for you.
If [...] another financial crash happens (which again, I think is likely, quite probably before the end of the year)
A side note, but my immediate reaction to reading that was “that’s overconfidence”, though it’s quite possible I’m interpreting “financial crash” more grandly than you intended. If I define it — just to try to be more concrete, albeit still pretty fuzzy — as an event as bad as the 2007-8 financial crisis, I’d put a probability ≈5% on that happening by 2015′s end.
(Adding the conjunction that explicitly nationalist and/or communist parties gain power actually wouldn’t reduce my probability that much, because that already happens; see the Scottish Nationalist Party winning 56 of 59 Scottish seats in this year’s general election, and AKEL’s performance in Cyprus’s 2006 & 2008 elections.)
It may be worth noting that the SNP is quite unlike the far-right nationalist parties I think skeptical-lurker is worried about. They’re a party of the left rather than of the right, they aren’t outrageously far to the left (at least by European standards), and their “nationalism” is all about getting out of the UK rather than about keeping out immigrants, throwing out black people, and other such traditional policies of nationalist parties.
Indeed. (And my impression is that Demetris Christofias wasn’t much of a stereotypical communist as president of Cyprus, either; he seems to’ve concentrated on the dispute with Turkey.) I was trying to also illustrate another knotty aspect of rigorously operationalizing a broad political prediction like this: which precise kinds of nationalist/communist party gaining power would count as fulfilling the prediction?
A side note, but my immediate reaction to reading that was “that’s overconfidence”, though it’s quite possible I’m interpreting “financial crash” more grandly than you intended. If I define it — just to try to be more concrete, albeit still pretty fuzzy — as an event as bad as the 2007-8 financial crisis, I’d put a probability ≈5% on that happening by 2015′s end.
I’m basically claiming that I know better than the market, so I’m surprised you’re the first person to call me on it. Rigorous definitions are complicated by the fact that the 2007-8 financial crisis took about a year to bottom out—even if the next crash started right now, it (probably) wouldn’t bottom out by the end of the year. I’d say around 50% prob of a crash of similar impact as 2008 starting by the end of the year. Perhaps I should get a predictionbook account and register my unusual predictions.
Yes, predictions about nationalism/communism are simple extrapolations. I wish to emphasise that I don’t think this is necessary a disaster—the SNP are not your stereotypical nationalists, and are not a huge source of concern IMO, and Japan is an ethno-nationalist state which seems to be functioning perfectly fine.
I do find it surprising/worrying that the frontrunner for the leader of the opposition in the UK is a socialist talking about encouraging growth by printing money, leaving NATO, funding homoeopathy, legislating against toy soldiers, etc., and is mostly rejected by his own party for being too left-wing.
I’m basically claiming that I know better than the market, so I’m surprised you’re the first person to call me on it.
To be fair, I didn’t look at the markets either. I asked my gut for a reference class forecast (“How often might I expect this kind of crisis to come along in general...?”) while trying to remember my impressions of what economic commentators have said about potential bubbles & such. (I used this sort of tactic to guess rough, first-cut probability estimates in the Good Judgment Project, where I did OK.)
Rigorous definitions are complicated by the fact that the 2007-8 financial crisis took about a year to bottom out—even if the next crash started right now, it (probably) wouldn’t bottom out by the end of the year.
Yeah, that was part of the reason my probability was as low as it was. Actually, reflecting on it a tiny bit more rigorously, I’ll nudge it down further to maybe 3%, because I originally rounded “before the end of the year” to “half a year” in my head, but the rest of 2015 is more like a third of a year.
I’d say around 50% prob of a crash of similar impact as 2008 starting by the end of the year.
With a looser prediction window like “beginning by the end of 2015, but hitting bottom before the end of 2016”, I’d raise my “maybe 3%” to “maybe 12%”.
a socialist talking about [...] legislating against toy soldiers
I’d say around 50% prob of a crash of similar impact as 2008 starting by the end of the year.
The financial markets allow you to bet on such things. If you actually believe that 50% probability, you can place a bet in the markets at what would look to you like VERY favourable odds.
Would this involve shorting stocks? That seems dodgy, given that the default is for stock to rise. And if my probability distribution is about 50% crash, 40% surge upwards, 10% stability, then shorting isn’t a particularly good idea.
You can express quite complicated views in financial markets.
about 50% crash, 40% surge upwards, 10% stability
That distribution doesn’t look like “the default is for stock to rise” :-) Besides, a 2008-magnitude crash would probably drive the equity markets to what, half of their current value? You can’t expect a “surge upward” to give you symmetrical gains on the upside, so your expected distribution is very lopsided.
Let’s make things even simpler—you believe that in half a year we’ll end up in one of two states—either, with a 50% probability, the equity markets will crash to half price, or, with a 50% probability, the markets will stay the same or go up. If this is so, you can take a position in the markets which is guaranteed to make you money, either a lot (in the first case) or a little (in the second case). Guaranteed, that is, if the markets will do one of these two things.
That distribution doesn’t look like “the default is for stock to rise” :-)
Its not—stocks rising is the prior, this is my posterior.
If this is so, you can take a position in the markets which is guaranteed to make you money, either a lot (in the first case) or a little (in the second case).
Exactly what instruments would guarantee this return? A mixture of shorts and options?
The simplest would be a put spread. You would buy deep out of the money puts and write (sell) other OOM puts much closer to the current price. You will buy more deep OOM puts than sell shallow OOM puts, however because you will be buying cheap puts and selling expensive ones you will start with a positive balance. In the case of markets going nowhere or up, both sets of puts expire worthless and you keep your difference in premium (you earned a little money). In the case of the crash, both sets of puts expire in the money, but you are long more puts than you are short, so you make a lot of money.
TL;DR: what actual useful outcomes are there of political discourse for people who don’t have political advocacy as an area of comparative advantage?
I think the ability to discuss politics clearly is one of the biggest successes of rationality, perhaps because politics breaks minds so thoroughly. It is ironic then, that it’s not obvious whether this is of any use whatsoever to the majority of us. I don’t believe that political advocacy is my area of comparative advantage, and with the general aspie nature of LWers I would assume this probably applies to most of us. Indeed, the main effect of thinking rationally about politics that I can’t stand non-rationalist politics anymore. Having the correct political views is of some small benefit, although since no general election has ever been won or lost by one vote, its very unlikely to change anything.
Are there other benefits to having accurate political views? Some people, largely on both the far left and the far right think that total social collapse is likely within a few decades. I think they might be partially right—for instance, in Europe previously fringe parties are becoming mainstream, both communists protesting against austerity and nationalists protesting against immigration. In Greece, actual neo-Nazis have won seats. If there is another financial crash happens (which again, I think is likely, quite probably before the end of the year) then as countries go totally bankrupt because they are still in debt from the last crash, we will see extremist parties getting into power, which probably make the situation worse (not that communism and nationalism will always cause disasters, but I don’t trust panicking electorates to vote in people who can do it properly, and if half the population goes right and half goes left this causes more problems like riots).
Anyway, I seem to have digressed, but my point is, if one can predict that society is going to collapse, would that be useful? Not really, as far as I can tell. Its more difficult to make money from a collapse than from a boom, and the timescales are too long anyway. If you hold the converse opinion, that the future will be ok, then the advice that leads to is simply “buy indexes” which is standard advice anyway.
If I decided that society is likely to collapse, is that useful because it gives me warning to get out while there is still time? Not really—only the really paranoid people think that things are going to get really bad in the immediate future. Even if I thought there was likely to be total collapse, and outcome so bad that I need to leave, as opposed to the far more likely outcome of general stagnation, the predictions are still decades in advance, and one does not need that much time to prepare to leave.
Is there some way politics could be useful applying to the way I interact with other people? Some people might say that its important to put aside subconscious prejudices everyone has. But, generally I would say that subconscious prejudices are just wrong on a probabilistic level—even if some characteristic does vary between group A and group B of people, one is far better off just measuring the characteristic directly, in most cases.
I think some of what I’ve written pattern-matches to being slightly crazy, but what I am trying to ask is whether there is any benefit to having accurate views about politics. Personally, I think I spend too much time thinking about politics because I find it interesting, and it feels like I’m doing something useful. But maybe this feeling of being useful is an illusion, and thinking about politics is no more useful than watching TV.
I think it depends on how widely do you understand “politics” and how closely do you interact with power structures. Small businesses, for example, care a lot about local politics. On a certain level “Are cops my friends?” is a political question. If you have a choice of states or countries to live in, politics often matter. If you are in academia, politics matter.
On the other hand, yes, in the first world you can probably live a successful life without caring a whit about politics. I wouldn’t recommend this in the third world (including everything east of Germany).
Thinking about something is always more useful than consuming content :-/
I was more thinking about the ideological level, as opposed to office politics, for instance. The two are not entirely distinct—social justice movements are concerned with office politics, for instance. But I think to find out more about office politics I would want to think more about something like ‘the 48 laws of power’ rather than knowing more about ideology.
I think I would make an exception for really good content, but generally, yes this is a good point, and since politics is so hard to think about clearly, perhaps it is especially good for rationality training.
I think it is useful. And the usefulness may be hard to measure because it manifests in pitfalls that you didn’t fall into, ignorant decisions that you didn’t make, blights on your imagination that you didn’t have, prejudices that you didn’t express.
It’s like that when people do preventative work of any kind. Their work is often not recognized or noticed.
On the other hand political advocacy for your particular interests is part of your comparative advantage because no one else is going to do it for you.
A side note, but my immediate reaction to reading that was “that’s overconfidence”, though it’s quite possible I’m interpreting “financial crash” more grandly than you intended. If I define it — just to try to be more concrete, albeit still pretty fuzzy — as an event as bad as the 2007-8 financial crisis, I’d put a probability ≈5% on that happening by 2015′s end.
(Adding the conjunction that explicitly nationalist and/or communist parties gain power actually wouldn’t reduce my probability that much, because that already happens; see the Scottish Nationalist Party winning 56 of 59 Scottish seats in this year’s general election, and AKEL’s performance in Cyprus’s 2006 & 2008 elections.)
It may be worth noting that the SNP is quite unlike the far-right nationalist parties I think skeptical-lurker is worried about. They’re a party of the left rather than of the right, they aren’t outrageously far to the left (at least by European standards), and their “nationalism” is all about getting out of the UK rather than about keeping out immigrants, throwing out black people, and other such traditional policies of nationalist parties.
Indeed. (And my impression is that Demetris Christofias wasn’t much of a stereotypical communist as president of Cyprus, either; he seems to’ve concentrated on the dispute with Turkey.) I was trying to also illustrate another knotty aspect of rigorously operationalizing a broad political prediction like this: which precise kinds of nationalist/communist party gaining power would count as fulfilling the prediction?
I’m basically claiming that I know better than the market, so I’m surprised you’re the first person to call me on it. Rigorous definitions are complicated by the fact that the 2007-8 financial crisis took about a year to bottom out—even if the next crash started right now, it (probably) wouldn’t bottom out by the end of the year. I’d say around 50% prob of a crash of similar impact as 2008 starting by the end of the year. Perhaps I should get a predictionbook account and register my unusual predictions.
Yes, predictions about nationalism/communism are simple extrapolations. I wish to emphasise that I don’t think this is necessary a disaster—the SNP are not your stereotypical nationalists, and are not a huge source of concern IMO, and Japan is an ethno-nationalist state which seems to be functioning perfectly fine.
I do find it surprising/worrying that the frontrunner for the leader of the opposition in the UK is a socialist talking about encouraging growth by printing money, leaving NATO, funding homoeopathy, legislating against toy soldiers, etc., and is mostly rejected by his own party for being too left-wing.
To be fair, I didn’t look at the markets either. I asked my gut for a reference class forecast (“How often might I expect this kind of crisis to come along in general...?”) while trying to remember my impressions of what economic commentators have said about potential bubbles & such. (I used this sort of tactic to guess rough, first-cut probability estimates in the Good Judgment Project, where I did OK.)
Yeah, that was part of the reason my probability was as low as it was. Actually, reflecting on it a tiny bit more rigorously, I’ll nudge it down further to maybe 3%, because I originally rounded “before the end of the year” to “half a year” in my head, but the rest of 2015 is more like a third of a year.
With a looser prediction window like “beginning by the end of 2015, but hitting bottom before the end of 2016”, I’d raise my “maybe 3%” to “maybe 12%”.
I had to Google that one!
Edit to add: regardless of the probability disagreement, I did upvote you for elaborating.
The financial markets allow you to bet on such things. If you actually believe that 50% probability, you can place a bet in the markets at what would look to you like VERY favourable odds.
Would this involve shorting stocks? That seems dodgy, given that the default is for stock to rise. And if my probability distribution is about 50% crash, 40% surge upwards, 10% stability, then shorting isn’t a particularly good idea.
Or maybe its time to buy some bitcoin...
You can express quite complicated views in financial markets.
That distribution doesn’t look like “the default is for stock to rise” :-) Besides, a 2008-magnitude crash would probably drive the equity markets to what, half of their current value? You can’t expect a “surge upward” to give you symmetrical gains on the upside, so your expected distribution is very lopsided.
Let’s make things even simpler—you believe that in half a year we’ll end up in one of two states—either, with a 50% probability, the equity markets will crash to half price, or, with a 50% probability, the markets will stay the same or go up. If this is so, you can take a position in the markets which is guaranteed to make you money, either a lot (in the first case) or a little (in the second case). Guaranteed, that is, if the markets will do one of these two things.
Its not—stocks rising is the prior, this is my posterior.
Exactly what instruments would guarantee this return? A mixture of shorts and options?
The simplest would be a put spread. You would buy deep out of the money puts and write (sell) other OOM puts much closer to the current price. You will buy more deep OOM puts than sell shallow OOM puts, however because you will be buying cheap puts and selling expensive ones you will start with a positive balance. In the case of markets going nowhere or up, both sets of puts expire worthless and you keep your difference in premium (you earned a little money). In the case of the crash, both sets of puts expire in the money, but you are long more puts than you are short, so you make a lot of money.