We say “politics is the mindkiller” but ti seems an seperate question why certain political topics are more ‘mindkillery’ than others.
Recent example that brought this to mind is the conflict going on in Gaza, its unusual in that my friends and acquaintances who are normally fairly moderate and willing to see both sides on political topics are splitting very heavily onto opposite sides, and refusing to see the others point of view.
Sometimes the political opinions can result in direct actions, but that is rather rare today. (I guess it is not like you and your friends are going to volunteer as soldiers for the opposite sides in Gaza.) The biggest “action” most people do is giving their vote. One vote of a few millions… perhaps our brains are not able to work with values like this, so we feel like our friends have at least 5% of the votes each.
But even when the “real” consequences of our opinions are close to zero, social consequences remain. As long as other people are polarized about some issue, you opinion about conflict in Gaza is essentialy a decision to join the “team Israel” or “team Palestine”. This choice is absolutely unrelated to the actual people killing each other in the desert. This choice is about whether Joe will consider you an ally, and Jane an enemy, or the other way. With high probability, neither Joe nor Jane are personally related to people killing each other in the desert, and their choices were also based on their preference to be in the same team with some other people. But having made their choice and joined a team, their monkey brains were reprogrammed to feel very emotional about this topic. (Of course their answer would be that X are good people suffering from Y’s evil actions—and if sometime some X hurts some Y, that’s just a self-defense or a deserved payback—and if you don’t see it the same way, well then there is something morally wrong about you.)
In some way, calculating the “mindkilling power” of a topic is like calculating a Page Rank of a web page. A web page has high Page Rank if many pages with high Page Rank link to it. And a topic is strongly mindkilling, if many people around you are strongly mindkilled about it. Somewhere it starts with someone having (or expecting to have) real consequences, but later it is mostly about the structure of social networks and relationships between the memes.
Yes. Forming a moral or political opinion about a conflict you cannot feasibly affect is like forming an opinion about a theory that you cannot feasibly test—it’s easy to form an opinion for bad reasons.
There’s also the (overlapping) question of how much the issue ties into peoples’ identity. See “Keep you identity Small” and most of EY’s stuff on politics, especially anything that mentions the blues and the greens.
Why is an opinion on Gaza more likely to become a part of someone’s (from Europe or America) identity than e.g. an opinion on Darfur?
For me it’s mostly the network effect. I care more, because people around me care more. I also care more because I have more information, but that again is because people around me care more. If people around me stopped talking about Gaza, it would be just as easy to forget as Darfur.
What keeps this topic alive, is the memetic chain: Gaza is linked to Israel, which is linked to Jews, which is linked to Nazis, which is linked to WW2 and its aftermath, which is linked to our contemporary politics. Also Jews are linked to Old Testament, which is linked to Christianity; in USA, Israel is linked to Religious Right; and the religion is again linked to politics. This all together gives Gaza a high “Page Rank”.
Darfur could get some “Page Rank” through the former colonies of European countries, but that link is much weaker and outdated.
The mindkilling emotions are not caused by the human suffering, but by pattern-matching it to the political situation around us. This triggers the feeling of “it could happen to me, too” and switches the brain to the battle mode.
This year the US gave roughly $3 billion to Israel, $500 million to Gaza and the West Bank, and $31 million to Sudan. I care about the conflict between the first two largely because my country funds it so heavily.
Excellent points. Another important memetic connection goes through the node “Muslims” (more specifically “Muslims vs another group that most Westerns consider culturally closer”); this connects to 9/11, the War on Terror, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Benghazi, Muhammed cartoons and free speech, and many other politically charged issues.
It seems like people sort of turn into utility monsters—if people around you have a strong opinion on a certain topic, you better have a strong opinion too, or else it won’t carry as much “force”.
As long as other people are polarized about some issue, you opinion about conflict in Gaza is essentialy a decision to join the “team Israel” or “team Palestine”. This choice is absolutely unrelated to the actual people killing each other in the desert. This choice is about whether Joe will consider you an ally, and Jane an enemy, or the other way. With high probability, neither Joe nor Jane are personally related to people killing each other in the desert, and their choices were also based on their preference to be in the same team with some other people.
Data point: you probably know I’m left-wing (in an eccentric way) - and yet, frankly, I’m very “pro-Israel” (although not fanatically so), and think that all the cool, nice, cosmopolitan, compassionate lefty people who protest “Zionist aggression” should go fuck themselves in regards to this particular issue. This includes e.g. Noam Chomsky, whom I otherwise respect highly. And I realize that this lands me in the same position as various far-right types whom I really dislike, yet I’m quite fine with it too.
Yes, I’m not neurotypical. However, you know that I can and do get kinda mind-killed on other political topics. So I’m not satisfied by your explanation.
I think what Viliam_Bur is trying to say in a rather complicated fashion is simply this: humans are tribal animals. Tribalism is perhaps the single biggest mind-killer, as you have just illustrated.
Am I correct in assuming that you identify yourself with the tribe called “Jews”? For me, who has no tribal dog in this particular fight, I can’t get too worked up about it, though if the conflict involved, say, Irish people, I’m sure I would feel rather differently. This is just a reality that we should all acknowledge: Our attempts to “overcome bias” with respect to tribalism are largely self-delusion, and perhaps even irrational.
Am I correct in assuming that you identify yourself with the tribe called “Jews”?
I might be identifying myself with the tribe “Nice polite intelligent occasionally badass people who live in a close-knit national community under a liberal democracy”, but I really couldn’t give a damn about their relation to the Jewish people I know, or to Jewish history, or to any such stuff. I just look at the (relative) here and now of the Middle East and what the people there seem to act like.
I don’t personally know anyone from Israel, I just find the Israeli nation massively more sympathetic than its hostile neighbours, observing from afar. I don’t know if you meant something like that or not.
I don’t personally know anyone from Israel, I just find the Israeli nation massively more sympathetic than its hostile neighbours, observing from afar.
I’m wondering if you can unpack what you find “massively more sympathetic” about them?
Then my explanation probably does not apply to you, at least in this specific topic. There are other ways people can get strong opinions on something, for example by having a personal experience, or by analogy with something else they already have strong opinions about (based on what you wrote, this would be my guess).
But I think that in a situation like FiftyTwo described, an average person who would happen to have their best friend(s) on one side of the topic, would most likely join them without hesitation.
Political issues are mindkillers because people tend to incorporate them into their personal identites; however, people often incorporate certain issues more strongly than others. A more general slogan might read “incorporating things into your personal sense of identity is the mindkiller”.
Well if there’s anything you can do to increase the level of mindkill in politics, it’s mix in religion. Are they less polarized on issues like, say, abortion?
I live in a fluffy liberal bubble where everyone is pretty much in favour of abortion rights (though in my country its less of an issue than the US anyway). On most topics theres a vague consensus and those who disagree are willing to accept its something reasonable people can disagree on, not an issue of good and evil.
We say “politics is the mindkiller” but ti seems an seperate question why certain political topics are more ‘mindkillery’ than others.
Recent example that brought this to mind is the conflict going on in Gaza, its unusual in that my friends and acquaintances who are normally fairly moderate and willing to see both sides on political topics are splitting very heavily onto opposite sides, and refusing to see the others point of view.
Sometimes the political opinions can result in direct actions, but that is rather rare today. (I guess it is not like you and your friends are going to volunteer as soldiers for the opposite sides in Gaza.) The biggest “action” most people do is giving their vote. One vote of a few millions… perhaps our brains are not able to work with values like this, so we feel like our friends have at least 5% of the votes each.
But even when the “real” consequences of our opinions are close to zero, social consequences remain. As long as other people are polarized about some issue, you opinion about conflict in Gaza is essentialy a decision to join the “team Israel” or “team Palestine”. This choice is absolutely unrelated to the actual people killing each other in the desert. This choice is about whether Joe will consider you an ally, and Jane an enemy, or the other way. With high probability, neither Joe nor Jane are personally related to people killing each other in the desert, and their choices were also based on their preference to be in the same team with some other people. But having made their choice and joined a team, their monkey brains were reprogrammed to feel very emotional about this topic. (Of course their answer would be that X are good people suffering from Y’s evil actions—and if sometime some X hurts some Y, that’s just a self-defense or a deserved payback—and if you don’t see it the same way, well then there is something morally wrong about you.)
In some way, calculating the “mindkilling power” of a topic is like calculating a Page Rank of a web page. A web page has high Page Rank if many pages with high Page Rank link to it. And a topic is strongly mindkilling, if many people around you are strongly mindkilled about it. Somewhere it starts with someone having (or expecting to have) real consequences, but later it is mostly about the structure of social networks and relationships between the memes.
Yes. Forming a moral or political opinion about a conflict you cannot feasibly affect is like forming an opinion about a theory that you cannot feasibly test—it’s easy to form an opinion for bad reasons.
There’s also the (overlapping) question of how much the issue ties into peoples’ identity. See “Keep you identity Small” and most of EY’s stuff on politics, especially anything that mentions the blues and the greens.
Why is an opinion on Gaza more likely to become a part of someone’s (from Europe or America) identity than e.g. an opinion on Darfur?
For me it’s mostly the network effect. I care more, because people around me care more. I also care more because I have more information, but that again is because people around me care more. If people around me stopped talking about Gaza, it would be just as easy to forget as Darfur.
What keeps this topic alive, is the memetic chain: Gaza is linked to Israel, which is linked to Jews, which is linked to Nazis, which is linked to WW2 and its aftermath, which is linked to our contemporary politics. Also Jews are linked to Old Testament, which is linked to Christianity; in USA, Israel is linked to Religious Right; and the religion is again linked to politics. This all together gives Gaza a high “Page Rank”.
Darfur could get some “Page Rank” through the former colonies of European countries, but that link is much weaker and outdated.
The mindkilling emotions are not caused by the human suffering, but by pattern-matching it to the political situation around us. This triggers the feeling of “it could happen to me, too” and switches the brain to the battle mode.
This year the US gave roughly $3 billion to Israel, $500 million to Gaza and the West Bank, and $31 million to Sudan. I care about the conflict between the first two largely because my country funds it so heavily.
Excellent points. Another important memetic connection goes through the node “Muslims” (more specifically “Muslims vs another group that most Westerns consider culturally closer”); this connects to 9/11, the War on Terror, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya and Benghazi, Muhammed cartoons and free speech, and many other politically charged issues.
In Europe, immigration is another one of those heavily charged issues connected to Muslims.
It seems like people sort of turn into utility monsters—if people around you have a strong opinion on a certain topic, you better have a strong opinion too, or else it won’t carry as much “force”.
Data point: you probably know I’m left-wing (in an eccentric way) - and yet, frankly, I’m very “pro-Israel” (although not fanatically so), and think that all the cool, nice, cosmopolitan, compassionate lefty people who protest “Zionist aggression” should go fuck themselves in regards to this particular issue. This includes e.g. Noam Chomsky, whom I otherwise respect highly. And I realize that this lands me in the same position as various far-right types whom I really dislike, yet I’m quite fine with it too.
Yes, I’m not neurotypical. However, you know that I can and do get kinda mind-killed on other political topics. So I’m not satisfied by your explanation.
I think what Viliam_Bur is trying to say in a rather complicated fashion is simply this: humans are tribal animals. Tribalism is perhaps the single biggest mind-killer, as you have just illustrated.
Am I correct in assuming that you identify yourself with the tribe called “Jews”? For me, who has no tribal dog in this particular fight, I can’t get too worked up about it, though if the conflict involved, say, Irish people, I’m sure I would feel rather differently. This is just a reality that we should all acknowledge: Our attempts to “overcome bias” with respect to tribalism are largely self-delusion, and perhaps even irrational.
I might be identifying myself with the tribe “Nice polite intelligent occasionally badass people who live in a close-knit national community under a liberal democracy”, but I really couldn’t give a damn about their relation to the Jewish people I know, or to Jewish history, or to any such stuff. I just look at the (relative) here and now of the Middle East and what the people there seem to act like.
I don’t personally know anyone from Israel, I just find the Israeli nation massively more sympathetic than its hostile neighbours, observing from afar. I don’t know if you meant something like that or not.
I’m wondering if you can unpack what you find “massively more sympathetic” about them?
Let’s not really get into this. This conversation is in danger of losing a meta level anyway.
Then my explanation probably does not apply to you, at least in this specific topic. There are other ways people can get strong opinions on something, for example by having a personal experience, or by analogy with something else they already have strong opinions about (based on what you wrote, this would be my guess).
But I think that in a situation like FiftyTwo described, an average person who would happen to have their best friend(s) on one side of the topic, would most likely join them without hesitation.
Maybe.
Political issues are mindkillers because people tend to incorporate them into their personal identites; however, people often incorporate certain issues more strongly than others. A more general slogan might read “incorporating things into your personal sense of identity is the mindkiller”.
Well if there’s anything you can do to increase the level of mindkill in politics, it’s mix in religion. Are they less polarized on issues like, say, abortion?
I live in a fluffy liberal bubble where everyone is pretty much in favour of abortion rights (though in my country its less of an issue than the US anyway). On most topics theres a vague consensus and those who disagree are willing to accept its something reasonable people can disagree on, not an issue of good and evil.