I think your examples are terrible, and in part it’s because they’re political—but for a somewhat different reason than the one elaborated in Politics is the Mind-killer.
First, there’s the mismatch between the problem you’re addressing and the problem your examples illustrate. The problem you’re addressing is how to make sure your behavior changes to match your updated beliefs. In this problem, your beliefs have already updated due to the weight of the evidence, but for some reason (and your list of plausible reasons is compelling) your habitual behavior fails to reflect this change in your beliefs. However, both your examples aren’t about that at all—they’re about beliefs not changing in the face of the evidence. Josh Stieber’s fellow soldiers did not change their minds about whether they should be in Iraq. Your example actually appears to argue that they should have, if they behaved rationally—but whether or not it’s true, there’s no relevance to the problem your post addresses. At one point, you’re doing a sleight of hand of sorts (unintentionally, I’m sure):
One of Josh’s commanders wound up coming around to Josh’s point of view to the extent of being able to agree to disagree and give Josh a hug, but still kept ordering people to kill the locals. One wonders: what would it take to get the commander to change not just his mind, but his actions?
But the commander didn’t change his mind, not to the point that would necessitate changing his actions. He merely “agreed to disagree”. So there’s no one in the first example who’s failing to update their behavior following an update to their beliefs.
With the second example it’s even worse, because it’s more vague. I’m not sure who here is supposed to have updated their actions but didn’t—I think it’s the international food donors, and, in particular, “well-intentioned leaders who have reason to know that their policies are counterproductive but who are unable or unwilling to change their behavior to reflect that knowledge”. But the fact that their policies are counterproductive (granting that for the sake of the argument) is no evidence that they possess that knowledge, that they updated their beliefs accordingly. People do all kinds of counterproductive things all the time while maintaining their belief in their usefulness. To illustrate your problem, you need those food donors to have decided, under the weight of the evidence, that they’re doing the wrong thing, yet to persist in doing it. I don’t think you have anything like that in your example. Like the first one, it’s primarily about people not updating their beliefs when they ought to, in the face of the evidence.
Now, as examples of people not changing their minds when the evidence is compelling, your two examples are terrible—primarily because they’re political. And why this should be so is, I think, an interesting aside. It is not because using a political example tends to antagonize some of the readers needlessly—that by itself is true, and a good reason to avoid political examples while talking about rationality, but is only a minor factor here, to my mind. Much more important is this: the story of people failing to account for compelling evidence is by itself a familiar, ubiquitous, low-status specimen of political propaganda.
In fact, one of the most frequent arguments you encounter as you read political discussions is the argument that the other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology. To a first approximation, everyone believes that about everyone else. Take any well-divided political issue, and you’ll find people on both sides building up detailed stories that show what it is exactly that ought to convince any reasonable person, but fails to convince their opponents due to their ideological bias. Such stories are almost always wrong. Typically they do one or several of: (i) exaggerate the evidence or misrepresent its degree of uncertainty; (ii) ignore conflicting evidence to the other direction; (iii) tacitly assume a host of underlying convictions that are only obvious to your side; (iv) ignore any number of ways the other side could find to explain your evidence without changing their beliefs, not all of them contrived.
Because of these problems, it’s reasonable to treat the whole genre of political stories of the “they failed to think rationally” kind as low-status and corrupt. These stories are always preaching to the choir, and only to the choir. They should not, and typically do not, convince an independent rational observer, much less anyone from “the other side”. (The only exception is when such a story explicitly includes an explanation as to how it manages to avoid (i)-(iv) above. When such an explanation is compelling, the story may be saved. I think that happens very rarely).
I refrain from pointing out how (i)-(iv) apply particularly in the case of your first and second examples, because I think compiling such a list is easy enough, and avoiding an explicitly political discussion is a virtue.
“Josh Stieber’s fellow soldiers did not change their minds about whether they should be in Iraq.”
None of us has any idea whether or not they changes their minds about anything. A soldier can hold a fully-formed (and informed) negative opinion about the strategic efficacy of their mission, but still follow orders and complete that mission.
the story of people failing to account for compelling evidence is by itself a familiar, >ubiquitous, low-status specimen of political propaganda.
In fact, one of the most frequent arguments you encounter as you read political >discussions is the argument that the other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so >failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology. To a first >approximation, everyone believes that about everyone else.
It seems to me that many of the arguments made on this site based on or referring to the Politics is the Mind-Killer article are based on extrapolations from a single well-known highly-polarized (essentially) 2-party system, i.e. the USA.
I am from a country with many political parties. No party ever gets more than 50% of the votes, in fact it is rare for any party to get over 20% of the votes. The parties are always forced to form a coalition to make a majority government. This system is not without its flaws, and far be it from me to argue that it is superior to the American system.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that many of the failure modes of ‘politics’, as often described of this site, are actually failure modes of present-day American politics, and not of politics in general.
For example, I encounter the argument described above, that “other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology” very rarely, even in political discussions. Politicians saying such things would find it hard to negotiate with other politicians to form a government, and are mostly smart enough to not say such things. They would have no difficulty admitting that other politicians/parties behave differently simply because they have different goals (they represent the interests of a different set of voters), while still acting on almost the same set of evidence.
For example, I encounter the argument described above, that “other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology” very rarely, even in political discussions. Politicians saying such things would find it hard to negotiate with other politicians to form a government, and are mostly smart enough to not say such things. They would have no difficulty admitting that other politicians/parties behave differently simply because they have different goals (they represent the interests of a different set of voters), while still acting on almost the same set of evidence.
I would expect that some parties know that they will never form a coalition with certain other parties. If so, do these “incompatible pairs” show more inclination to accuse each other of ideological blindness?
It sounds like people within your country are pretty ideologically homogeneous. But you must differ ideologically from other countries. Your homogeneity leads me to expect that your country is relatively small. This, in turn, means that, relative to a larger country, you probably have less control over the policies of other countries, but those policies have a greater effect on your country’s interests. Does the “ideological blindness” explanation sometimes get invoked when talking about why people in other countries chose those policies? (For example, I have seen some people in European countries blame some of their economic problems on a world-wide economic meltdown caused by the free-market ideology of the United States.)
I would expect that some parties know that they will never form a coalition with certain
other parties. If so, do these “incompatible pairs” show more inclination to accuse
each other of ideological blindness?
There is a party that is shunned by most other parties because it is almost universally agreed upon to be a racist party (even by themselves in some cases). To a certain extent, the answer to your question is yes. Nevertheless, the present attempt to form a government involves negotiations between a somewhat right-wing separatist party in one part of the country (got almost 30% of the votes in that part) and a somewhat left-wing socialist (yes they call themselves socialists. It’s not an insult in Europe) party. The negotiations have been going on for many months, and many colourful analogies have been used (yesterday I heard the separatists compared to Hannibal, and the socialists to the Romans), but I have yet to hear either of them accuse the other of ideological blindness.
It sounds like people within your country are pretty ideologically homogeneous.
Perhaps the ideology here is closer to mono-modal than the ideology in the USA.
But is this ideological inhomogeneity in the USA a cause or a consequence of the political system? Politicians in a 2-party system have an incentive to polarize : it ensures they get a large amount of voters for their party, and then they just have to focus on the small amount of “swing voters” remaining in the center.
Your homogeneity leads me to expect that your country is relatively small.
True. I’m sure the Netherlands have a similar system. I don’t know what the largest country with a true many-party system is.
Does the “ideological blindness” explanation sometimes get invoked when talking about why people in other countries chose those policies?
But is this ideological inhomogeneity in the USA a cause or a consequence of the political system?
It’s a good question, and the polarizing effect of political parties certainly does work the way you describe.
That said, I do think the rural/urban divide in the US is a real split in terms of the kinds of public services and private contributions different communities value and expect, and the political parties have exacerbated that rather than created it.
Regardless, I agree with your main point about the polarizing effects of bicamerality.
Thanks for pointing out another perspective, there could be something to it. Which country are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?
(Note that I think politics is always a mind killer, however I usually think of the problem more in terms of social politics and moral wrangling in general than governmental politics specifically.)
This is an interesting theory and the two-party system may exacerbate the problem. Great Britain, however, has essentially a two party system (Clegg’s relatively new, barely relevant, ideologically indistinct party doesn’t really count) and they seem to have about the same level of rationality in their politics as most of multi-party Europe. As others suggested, I suspect the difference has much more to do with the United States cultural, economic and racial diversity than anything else. America is a single tribe to a far lesser extent than other countries- even our white majority, which is smaller than it is in most of Europe consists of four genetically and culturally distinct traditions (and that isn’t including Hispanic). This kind of diversity means that we have less in common to start from and have resolved fewer basic issues. We’ve never gotten around to European style social welfare for much the same reason- that kind of altruism isn’t supported for those outside of the tribe. We’re also large enough and wealthy enough to support more fractured news media environment- which lets people insulate themselves from opposing view points.
This does suggest that discussion of politics could be more successful on Less Wrong (given how much we all have in common) but having to work over the internet involves other difficulties.
I would be interested to see, however, whether the differing political climates influence the way people talk about politics. We could select some posters from Northern Europe and some posters from America. Have them discuss a series of emotional and controversial political issues. Have another group evaluate their comments (with the anti-kibitzer on) and grade them by degree of motivated cognition and mind-killing rhetoric. See if the Europeans do better.
The US is essentially a zero party system. Passing laws in the senate requires 2⁄3 of the votes with usually means that politicians from both parties have to support the legislation.
US politicians have no problem with having discussions in private. They all believe in doing realpolitik. It’s their public rhetoric that differs.
The US is essentially a zero party system. Passing laws in the senate requires 2⁄3 of the votes with usually means that politicians from both parties have to support the legislation.
Not true; laws can pass with as few as 1⁄2 of the votes (51). However, this is increased to 60 if the opposing side chooses to filibuster (which non-selectively blocks all legislation), and it’s increased to 2⁄3 if the President chooses to veto it. Use of the filibuster was rare before Obama came into office, at which point the Republican party adopted a policy of using it constantly.
Take any well-divided political issue, and you’ll find people on both sides building up detailed stories that show what it is exactly that ought to convince any reasonable person, but fails to convince their opponents due to their ideological bias. Such stories are almost always wrong. Typically they do one or several of: (i) exaggerate the evidence or misrepresent its degree of uncertainty; (ii) ignore conflicting evidence to the other direction; (iii) tacitly assume a host of underlying convictions that are only obvious to your side; (iv) ignore any number of ways the other side could find to explain your evidence without changing their beliefs, not all of them contrived.
A good analysis of what it is that makes politics (or at least American politics) a mind killer. In fact, worse than a mind killer. The habit of convincing yourself that those who disagree with you are subrational (and intellectually dishonest to boot) is the community killer—it is the first step in a rationalization of disenfranchisement.
Are there other subjects besides politics which lead to the same dehumanization of the people who disagree? I think so. One sees it frequently in theological disputes, pretty often in ethical disputes, and occasionally when discussing interactions between the sexes. But very rarely in discussions of the arts, music, spectator sports teams, grammar, and even nutritional practices—even though tribalism is common enough in these areas, no one tries to paint their opponents as either fools or knaves. Why the difference—is it just because these topics are less important than politics?
According to Aumann, we should be able to agree to disagree only if one of the following is the case:
We have different priors (or different fundamental values)
One of us is irrational
We don’t trust each other to report facts and beliefs truthfully
We just don’t talk enough.
So, if Aumann is to be believed, in those cases where we do talk enough, and in which we claim to share priors and fundamental values, disagreement is likely to turn nasty.
ETA: HT to Plasmon for pointing out the counter-intuitive fact that disagreement may be less nasty when divergence of fundamental values is acknowledged.
I don’t think the current state of American politics is a result of structural problems—it’s gotten a lot worse as far as I can tell in the past decade or so. I don’t know who started it, or who’s done the most to amplify matters, but I think Republicans and Democrats have become a lot more contemptuous of each other.
American politics has gotten steadily more partisan over the last several decades, mostly as a result of desegregation. While the south was under an apartheid regime many Republicans (“Rockefeller Republicans”) were to the left of Democrats (“Dixiecrats.”) This is no longer the case; every Democratic senator is to the left of every Republican senator—if you have strong politics yourself, the absolute distance looks small, but the lack of mixture is an undeniable fact. The decreased importance of regional party machines plays into this as well. Parties now function much more like coherent policy packages, so legislators have less allies outside of their own party.
While the south was under an apartheid regime many Republicans (“Rockefeller Republicans”) were to the left of Democrats (“Dixiecrats.”) This is no longer the case; every Democratic senator is to the left of every Republican senator
Desegregation isn’t irrelevant to what has happened to American politics- but this doesn’t have anything to do with where senators are on an arbitrary political spectrum. The particular manifestation of the left-right political spectrum you have in mind here is the invention of the post-segregation political climate. Pre-desegregation issues didn’t break down into positions corresponding to our current political spectrum.
Pre-desegregation issues didn’t break down into positions corresponding to our current political spectrum.
That’s probably a better way of phrasing it. Perhaps I should have said that great majority of variance in political opinion today can be explained with one eigenvector while pre-segregation it would have taken two. Either way, the greater level of ideological coherence is responsible, I think.
So, if Aumann is to be believed, in those cases where we do talk enough, and in which we claim to share priors and fundamental values, disagreement is likely to turn nasty.
it’s gotten a lot worse as far as I can tell in the past decade or so.
I agree it has gotten worse, though I would trace it back at least to the Bork nomination fight. So, if I want to stick to my AAT-based explanation of the facts, I need to claim either that we have only recently started claiming to have the same fundamental values, or that we are talking more.
I believe that there has been a convergence regarding claimed values, over that period, but the situation regarding communication is more complicated. Political activists (and they are exactly the people who have poisonous attitudes about the opposition) probably do communicate more, but they do so over completely distorted channels. Democrats learn about what Republicans are saying from the Daily Show, the Onion, and Pharyngula. Republican learn what Democrats are saying from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. I suppose the real question is why today’s activists seem to think that these channels are sufficient.
Perhaps people would always have preferred those kinds of channels, but in the past they just weren’t available.
Perhaps people would always have preferred those kinds of channels, but in the past they just weren’t available.
Talk radio’s been around for a while, and TV pundits only a little less so, so I’d hesitate to blame either one. The political blog scene might be more directly involved; it’s highly polarized, has excellent visibility among politically aware individuals, tends to be kind of incestuous, and coincides roughly with the 10-year timeframe we’re discussing.
I think existing structural problems were dramatically magnified by the modern media environment. The growth of politically involved evangelicalism is also relevant.
Except in American politics all of those are always the case. You just can’t agree to disagree when the outcome of the argument influences who gets to be in charge of how much people are taxed, how much people get through social welfare and who gets thrown in prison.
Lets not make the mistake of thinking political discourse is in anyway about trying convince your opponents to change your minds- it’s about trying to convince the small portion of the electorate that hasn’t made up its mind that your opponents can’t be trusted.
Actually… it’s a prisoners dilemma and that might explain why the problem is worse in the American system. Cooperating would be communicating and debating honestly to sort out who is right. Defecting means using lies, distortions and nefarious tactics to look better than your opponent. Cooperation would make both parties look better but either party increases their chances of victory by defecting. And if you think the other party is going to defect you have to defect or else you’ll lose. So the strategy of of Domination leads to both parties defecting, as in the prisoner’s dilemma.
But in a multi-party system you a) have other agents that can punish defectors by not forming coalitions with them and b) a means by which the electorate can punish defectors… they have someone else to vote for. So the game here is the prisoner’s dilemma with additional agents able and willing to punish defectors.
This actually seems like a sound structural analysis most of us could agree on- perhaps these kind of institutional questions can provide a rational foothold on political questions.
Your Prisoner’s Dilemma argument seems appealing—until you realize that electoral politics is an iterated game. The two players ought to be able to achieve an agreement. It is definitely not a zero-sum game. Both parties have a shared interest in keeping the country governable. They have apparently already discovered the virtues of Tit-for-Tat retaliation. Now if only the electorate were to provide a little added payoff to whichever side first makes an effort to be ‘nice’.
I once attended a business (soft skills) training seminar in which a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma was played. Two teams played PD against each other. But, within each team, it required a consensus decision (100% vote) to cause the team to cooperate. If any team member votes to defect, then the team as a whole must defect. The relevance to the question of civility between political parties should be obvious.
until you realize that electoral politics is an iterated game.
Only if you model each political party as the same entity over time. But Presidents are term-limited and losing in a general election often means a leadership change for the party. For some individual legislators the relevant time horizon is never more than two years away (and as in your training seminar, it only takes a few bad apples).
It is definitely not a zero-sum game. Both parties have a shared interested in keeping the country governable.
But this is a game-of-chicken-like incentive. They have incentive to swerve when the cars get too close, like maybe they’ll sit together for a speech after one of them is nearly killed in an assassination attempt; but that isn’t sufficient for general cooperation.
Now if only the electorate were to provide a little added payoff to whichever side first makes an effort to be ‘nice’.
Sure, it would be nice if defecting was counter productive- but the fact that the electorate always falls for the defection is what makes it a prisoner’s dilemma.
In any case, at this point both parties (though, I’d say the Republicans in particular) have pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future. When you use dehumanizing rhetoric to describe the opposition your allies will see compromise as treachery. In this case, you’ll face a well-funded primary challenge from your party’s ideological extreme. This can be useful if you want to be pre-committed into voting a particular way- but obviously it is extremely dangerous when used in a semi-iterated prisoner’s dilemma with certain high risks associated with D/D.
Every time I interact with you I think for a minute that you must be from Russia… heh.
Oh, I’m even more alien than that. I used to be a Republican!
Ha!
Though just to be clear since I might have gotten a downvote or two for the grandparent… I don’t mean to just be trashing Republicans. I think my claim that they are more pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future is justified by an objective consideration of the strength and organization of their class of activists and ideologues versus that of the Democrats. I don’t think it is mind-killing bias leading me to the conclusion that the Tea-party has had much greater success recently than the netroots or whatever you want to call the equivalent on the Left. I didn’t mean anything evaluative beyond that (I have my opinions but those probably are subject to bias).
(For the record I used to be a partisan, Left-wing Democrat. Now I’m vaguely aligned with that party but mostly for cultural and foreign policy reasons. Where I live, your vote doesn’t count if you’re not a Democrat. Ideologically I’m basically at the liberal-libertarian nexus.)
Why the difference—is it just because these topics are less important than politics?
That’s a really interesting question.
The Aumann analysis works well for politics. It works well for some theological questions, too: it’s a handy explanation for why schismatic branches of a religion often become mutually antagonistic, for example. It isn’t quite a complete description of antagonism when conformity with dogma is a fundamental value, but it’s easy to augment Aumann with that.
When it comes to cultural disagreements, though—arts, music, sports teams—there’s a tacit understanding that people’s priors are different. Appreciating that sort of thing isn’t just about the immediate experience; it can vary depending on who you’re trying to impress, and also on immutable products of upbringing and convenience. And people accept this. No one expects a resident of Oregon to be a Green Bay Packers fan, unless the Packers have been having a particularly good year—and even that comes with a status penalty associated with the expectation of future defection.
the story of people failing to account for compelling evidence is by itself a familiar, >ubiquitous, low-status specimen of political propaganda.
In fact, one of the most frequent arguments you encounter as you read political >discussions is the argument that the other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so >failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology. To a first >approximation, everyone believes that about everyone else.
It seems to me that many of the arguments made on this site based on or referring to the Politics is the Mind-Killer article are based on extrapolations from a single well-known highly-polarized (essentially) 2-party system, i.e. the USA.
I am from a country with many political parties. No party ever gets more than 50% of the votes, in fact it is rare for any party to get over 20% of the votes. The parties are always forced to form a coalition to make a majority government. This system is not without its flaws, and far be it from me to argue that it is superior to the American system.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that many of the failure modes of ‘politics’, as often described of this site, are actually failure modes of present-day American politics, and not of politics in general.
For example, I encounter the argument described above, that “other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology” very rarely, even in political discussions. Politicians saying such things would find it hard to negotiate with other politicians to form a government, and are mostly smart enough to not say such things. They would have no difficulty admitting that other politicians/parties behave differently simply because they have different goals (they represent the interests of a different set of voters), while still acting on almost the same set of evidence.
I think your examples are terrible, and in part it’s because they’re political—but for a somewhat different reason than the one elaborated in Politics is the Mind-killer.
First, there’s the mismatch between the problem you’re addressing and the problem your examples illustrate. The problem you’re addressing is how to make sure your behavior changes to match your updated beliefs. In this problem, your beliefs have already updated due to the weight of the evidence, but for some reason (and your list of plausible reasons is compelling) your habitual behavior fails to reflect this change in your beliefs. However, both your examples aren’t about that at all—they’re about beliefs not changing in the face of the evidence. Josh Stieber’s fellow soldiers did not change their minds about whether they should be in Iraq. Your example actually appears to argue that they should have, if they behaved rationally—but whether or not it’s true, there’s no relevance to the problem your post addresses. At one point, you’re doing a sleight of hand of sorts (unintentionally, I’m sure):
But the commander didn’t change his mind, not to the point that would necessitate changing his actions. He merely “agreed to disagree”. So there’s no one in the first example who’s failing to update their behavior following an update to their beliefs.
With the second example it’s even worse, because it’s more vague. I’m not sure who here is supposed to have updated their actions but didn’t—I think it’s the international food donors, and, in particular, “well-intentioned leaders who have reason to know that their policies are counterproductive but who are unable or unwilling to change their behavior to reflect that knowledge”. But the fact that their policies are counterproductive (granting that for the sake of the argument) is no evidence that they possess that knowledge, that they updated their beliefs accordingly. People do all kinds of counterproductive things all the time while maintaining their belief in their usefulness. To illustrate your problem, you need those food donors to have decided, under the weight of the evidence, that they’re doing the wrong thing, yet to persist in doing it. I don’t think you have anything like that in your example. Like the first one, it’s primarily about people not updating their beliefs when they ought to, in the face of the evidence.
Now, as examples of people not changing their minds when the evidence is compelling, your two examples are terrible—primarily because they’re political. And why this should be so is, I think, an interesting aside. It is not because using a political example tends to antagonize some of the readers needlessly—that by itself is true, and a good reason to avoid political examples while talking about rationality, but is only a minor factor here, to my mind. Much more important is this: the story of people failing to account for compelling evidence is by itself a familiar, ubiquitous, low-status specimen of political propaganda.
In fact, one of the most frequent arguments you encounter as you read political discussions is the argument that the other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology. To a first approximation, everyone believes that about everyone else. Take any well-divided political issue, and you’ll find people on both sides building up detailed stories that show what it is exactly that ought to convince any reasonable person, but fails to convince their opponents due to their ideological bias. Such stories are almost always wrong. Typically they do one or several of: (i) exaggerate the evidence or misrepresent its degree of uncertainty; (ii) ignore conflicting evidence to the other direction; (iii) tacitly assume a host of underlying convictions that are only obvious to your side; (iv) ignore any number of ways the other side could find to explain your evidence without changing their beliefs, not all of them contrived.
Because of these problems, it’s reasonable to treat the whole genre of political stories of the “they failed to think rationally” kind as low-status and corrupt. These stories are always preaching to the choir, and only to the choir. They should not, and typically do not, convince an independent rational observer, much less anyone from “the other side”. (The only exception is when such a story explicitly includes an explanation as to how it manages to avoid (i)-(iv) above. When such an explanation is compelling, the story may be saved. I think that happens very rarely).
I refrain from pointing out how (i)-(iv) apply particularly in the case of your first and second examples, because I think compiling such a list is easy enough, and avoiding an explicitly political discussion is a virtue.
“Josh Stieber’s fellow soldiers did not change their minds about whether they should be in Iraq.”
None of us has any idea whether or not they changes their minds about anything. A soldier can hold a fully-formed (and informed) negative opinion about the strategic efficacy of their mission, but still follow orders and complete that mission.
Consider rewriting this as a post?
It seems to me that many of the arguments made on this site based on or referring to the Politics is the Mind-Killer article are based on extrapolations from a single well-known highly-polarized (essentially) 2-party system, i.e. the USA.
I am from a country with many political parties. No party ever gets more than 50% of the votes, in fact it is rare for any party to get over 20% of the votes. The parties are always forced to form a coalition to make a majority government. This system is not without its flaws, and far be it from me to argue that it is superior to the American system.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that many of the failure modes of ‘politics’, as often described of this site, are actually failure modes of present-day American politics, and not of politics in general.
For example, I encounter the argument described above, that “other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology” very rarely, even in political discussions. Politicians saying such things would find it hard to negotiate with other politicians to form a government, and are mostly smart enough to not say such things. They would have no difficulty admitting that other politicians/parties behave differently simply because they have different goals (they represent the interests of a different set of voters), while still acting on almost the same set of evidence.
I would expect that some parties know that they will never form a coalition with certain other parties. If so, do these “incompatible pairs” show more inclination to accuse each other of ideological blindness?
It sounds like people within your country are pretty ideologically homogeneous. But you must differ ideologically from other countries. Your homogeneity leads me to expect that your country is relatively small. This, in turn, means that, relative to a larger country, you probably have less control over the policies of other countries, but those policies have a greater effect on your country’s interests. Does the “ideological blindness” explanation sometimes get invoked when talking about why people in other countries chose those policies? (For example, I have seen some people in European countries blame some of their economic problems on a world-wide economic meltdown caused by the free-market ideology of the United States.)
There is a party that is shunned by most other parties because it is almost universally agreed upon to be a racist party (even by themselves in some cases). To a certain extent, the answer to your question is yes. Nevertheless, the present attempt to form a government involves negotiations between a somewhat right-wing separatist party in one part of the country (got almost 30% of the votes in that part) and a somewhat left-wing socialist (yes they call themselves socialists. It’s not an insult in Europe) party. The negotiations have been going on for many months, and many colourful analogies have been used (yesterday I heard the separatists compared to Hannibal, and the socialists to the Romans), but I have yet to hear either of them accuse the other of ideological blindness.
Perhaps the ideology here is closer to mono-modal than the ideology in the USA. But is this ideological inhomogeneity in the USA a cause or a consequence of the political system? Politicians in a 2-party system have an incentive to polarize : it ensures they get a large amount of voters for their party, and then they just have to focus on the small amount of “swing voters” remaining in the center.
True. I’m sure the Netherlands have a similar system. I don’t know what the largest country with a true many-party system is.
Yes.
Doesn’t India have a many-party system? And since they’re the largest democracy, I think we’re done :P
This is true. Last 5 governments have been coalition governments.
It’s a good question, and the polarizing effect of political parties certainly does work the way you describe.
That said, I do think the rural/urban divide in the US is a real split in terms of the kinds of public services and private contributions different communities value and expect, and the political parties have exacerbated that rather than created it.
Regardless, I agree with your main point about the polarizing effects of bicamerality.
Some people in this country are more inclined to criticize certain failures to implement the free-market ideology.
Thanks for pointing out another perspective, there could be something to it. Which country are you from, if you don’t mind me asking?
(Note that I think politics is always a mind killer, however I usually think of the problem more in terms of social politics and moral wrangling in general than governmental politics specifically.)
Belgium
This is an interesting theory and the two-party system may exacerbate the problem. Great Britain, however, has essentially a two party system (Clegg’s relatively new, barely relevant, ideologically indistinct party doesn’t really count) and they seem to have about the same level of rationality in their politics as most of multi-party Europe. As others suggested, I suspect the difference has much more to do with the United States cultural, economic and racial diversity than anything else. America is a single tribe to a far lesser extent than other countries- even our white majority, which is smaller than it is in most of Europe consists of four genetically and culturally distinct traditions (and that isn’t including Hispanic). This kind of diversity means that we have less in common to start from and have resolved fewer basic issues. We’ve never gotten around to European style social welfare for much the same reason- that kind of altruism isn’t supported for those outside of the tribe. We’re also large enough and wealthy enough to support more fractured news media environment- which lets people insulate themselves from opposing view points.
This does suggest that discussion of politics could be more successful on Less Wrong (given how much we all have in common) but having to work over the internet involves other difficulties.
I would be interested to see, however, whether the differing political climates influence the way people talk about politics. We could select some posters from Northern Europe and some posters from America. Have them discuss a series of emotional and controversial political issues. Have another group evaluate their comments (with the anti-kibitzer on) and grade them by degree of motivated cognition and mind-killing rhetoric. See if the Europeans do better.
The US is essentially a zero party system. Passing laws in the senate requires 2⁄3 of the votes with usually means that politicians from both parties have to support the legislation.
US politicians have no problem with having discussions in private. They all believe in doing realpolitik. It’s their public rhetoric that differs.
Not true; laws can pass with as few as 1⁄2 of the votes (51). However, this is increased to 60 if the opposing side chooses to filibuster (which non-selectively blocks all legislation), and it’s increased to 2⁄3 if the President chooses to veto it. Use of the filibuster was rare before Obama came into office, at which point the Republican party adopted a policy of using it constantly.
Okay 60 isn’t 2⁄3 but it’s still the votes that you need to prevent a filibuster.
To prevent the opposing site from filibustering you need to be able to speak with them.
A good analysis of what it is that makes politics (or at least American politics) a mind killer. In fact, worse than a mind killer. The habit of convincing yourself that those who disagree with you are subrational (and intellectually dishonest to boot) is the community killer—it is the first step in a rationalization of disenfranchisement.
Are there other subjects besides politics which lead to the same dehumanization of the people who disagree? I think so. One sees it frequently in theological disputes, pretty often in ethical disputes, and occasionally when discussing interactions between the sexes. But very rarely in discussions of the arts, music, spectator sports teams, grammar, and even nutritional practices—even though tribalism is common enough in these areas, no one tries to paint their opponents as either fools or knaves. Why the difference—is it just because these topics are less important than politics?
According to Aumann, we should be able to agree to disagree only if one of the following is the case:
We have different priors (or different fundamental values)
One of us is irrational
We don’t trust each other to report facts and beliefs truthfully
We just don’t talk enough.
So, if Aumann is to be believed, in those cases where we do talk enough, and in which we claim to share priors and fundamental values, disagreement is likely to turn nasty.
ETA: HT to Plasmon for pointing out the counter-intuitive fact that disagreement may be less nasty when divergence of fundamental values is acknowledged.
I don’t think the current state of American politics is a result of structural problems—it’s gotten a lot worse as far as I can tell in the past decade or so. I don’t know who started it, or who’s done the most to amplify matters, but I think Republicans and Democrats have become a lot more contemptuous of each other.
American politics has gotten steadily more partisan over the last several decades, mostly as a result of desegregation. While the south was under an apartheid regime many Republicans (“Rockefeller Republicans”) were to the left of Democrats (“Dixiecrats.”) This is no longer the case; every Democratic senator is to the left of every Republican senator—if you have strong politics yourself, the absolute distance looks small, but the lack of mixture is an undeniable fact. The decreased importance of regional party machines plays into this as well. Parties now function much more like coherent policy packages, so legislators have less allies outside of their own party.
Desegregation isn’t irrelevant to what has happened to American politics- but this doesn’t have anything to do with where senators are on an arbitrary political spectrum. The particular manifestation of the left-right political spectrum you have in mind here is the invention of the post-segregation political climate. Pre-desegregation issues didn’t break down into positions corresponding to our current political spectrum.
That’s probably a better way of phrasing it. Perhaps I should have said that great majority of variance in political opinion today can be explained with one eigenvector while pre-segregation it would have taken two. Either way, the greater level of ideological coherence is responsible, I think.
I suspect that’s just nostalgia filter.
Hard to prove—I’m not nostalgic in general though. For example, I think food’s generally gotten a lot better since the 90s.
A lecture about political rhetoric which shows that the nastiness level can change over time—in particular, it goes into detail about shifts in which words got used in political discourse during the Nazi era.
I can tell you with certainty that Republicans and Democrats didn’t used to have nasty names (Rethuglicans, Libtards) for each other.
I agree it has gotten worse, though I would trace it back at least to the Bork nomination fight. So, if I want to stick to my AAT-based explanation of the facts, I need to claim either that we have only recently started claiming to have the same fundamental values, or that we are talking more.
I believe that there has been a convergence regarding claimed values, over that period, but the situation regarding communication is more complicated. Political activists (and they are exactly the people who have poisonous attitudes about the opposition) probably do communicate more, but they do so over completely distorted channels. Democrats learn about what Republicans are saying from the Daily Show, the Onion, and Pharyngula. Republican learn what Democrats are saying from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. I suppose the real question is why today’s activists seem to think that these channels are sufficient.
Perhaps people would always have preferred those kinds of channels, but in the past they just weren’t available.
Talk radio’s been around for a while, and TV pundits only a little less so, so I’d hesitate to blame either one. The political blog scene might be more directly involved; it’s highly polarized, has excellent visibility among politically aware individuals, tends to be kind of incestuous, and coincides roughly with the 10-year timeframe we’re discussing.
I think existing structural problems were dramatically magnified by the modern media environment. The growth of politically involved evangelicalism is also relevant.
Except in American politics all of those are always the case. You just can’t agree to disagree when the outcome of the argument influences who gets to be in charge of how much people are taxed, how much people get through social welfare and who gets thrown in prison.
Lets not make the mistake of thinking political discourse is in anyway about trying convince your opponents to change your minds- it’s about trying to convince the small portion of the electorate that hasn’t made up its mind that your opponents can’t be trusted.
Actually… it’s a prisoners dilemma and that might explain why the problem is worse in the American system. Cooperating would be communicating and debating honestly to sort out who is right. Defecting means using lies, distortions and nefarious tactics to look better than your opponent. Cooperation would make both parties look better but either party increases their chances of victory by defecting. And if you think the other party is going to defect you have to defect or else you’ll lose. So the strategy of of Domination leads to both parties defecting, as in the prisoner’s dilemma.
But in a multi-party system you a) have other agents that can punish defectors by not forming coalitions with them and b) a means by which the electorate can punish defectors… they have someone else to vote for. So the game here is the prisoner’s dilemma with additional agents able and willing to punish defectors.
This actually seems like a sound structural analysis most of us could agree on- perhaps these kind of institutional questions can provide a rational foothold on political questions.
Your Prisoner’s Dilemma argument seems appealing—until you realize that electoral politics is an iterated game. The two players ought to be able to achieve an agreement. It is definitely not a zero-sum game. Both parties have a shared interest in keeping the country governable. They have apparently already discovered the virtues of Tit-for-Tat retaliation. Now if only the electorate were to provide a little added payoff to whichever side first makes an effort to be ‘nice’.
I once attended a business (soft skills) training seminar in which a variant of the Prisoner’s Dilemma was played. Two teams played PD against each other. But, within each team, it required a consensus decision (100% vote) to cause the team to cooperate. If any team member votes to defect, then the team as a whole must defect. The relevance to the question of civility between political parties should be obvious.
Only if you model each political party as the same entity over time. But Presidents are term-limited and losing in a general election often means a leadership change for the party. For some individual legislators the relevant time horizon is never more than two years away (and as in your training seminar, it only takes a few bad apples).
But this is a game-of-chicken-like incentive. They have incentive to swerve when the cars get too close, like maybe they’ll sit together for a speech after one of them is nearly killed in an assassination attempt; but that isn’t sufficient for general cooperation.
Sure, it would be nice if defecting was counter productive- but the fact that the electorate always falls for the defection is what makes it a prisoner’s dilemma.
In any case, at this point both parties (though, I’d say the Republicans in particular) have pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future. When you use dehumanizing rhetoric to describe the opposition your allies will see compromise as treachery. In this case, you’ll face a well-funded primary challenge from your party’s ideological extreme. This can be useful if you want to be pre-committed into voting a particular way- but obviously it is extremely dangerous when used in a semi-iterated prisoner’s dilemma with certain high risks associated with D/D.
Every time I interact with you I think for a minute that you must be from Russia… heh.
Thx for that insight. I’ll try to use it in my continuing struggle to promote discounting of expected future utilities.
Oh, I’m even more alien than that. I used to be a Republican!
Ha!
Though just to be clear since I might have gotten a downvote or two for the grandparent… I don’t mean to just be trashing Republicans. I think my claim that they are more pre-committed to defecting for the foreseeable future is justified by an objective consideration of the strength and organization of their class of activists and ideologues versus that of the Democrats. I don’t think it is mind-killing bias leading me to the conclusion that the Tea-party has had much greater success recently than the netroots or whatever you want to call the equivalent on the Left. I didn’t mean anything evaluative beyond that (I have my opinions but those probably are subject to bias).
(For the record I used to be a partisan, Left-wing Democrat. Now I’m vaguely aligned with that party but mostly for cultural and foreign policy reasons. Where I live, your vote doesn’t count if you’re not a Democrat. Ideologically I’m basically at the liberal-libertarian nexus.)
That’s a really interesting question.
The Aumann analysis works well for politics. It works well for some theological questions, too: it’s a handy explanation for why schismatic branches of a religion often become mutually antagonistic, for example. It isn’t quite a complete description of antagonism when conformity with dogma is a fundamental value, but it’s easy to augment Aumann with that.
When it comes to cultural disagreements, though—arts, music, sports teams—there’s a tacit understanding that people’s priors are different. Appreciating that sort of thing isn’t just about the immediate experience; it can vary depending on who you’re trying to impress, and also on immutable products of upbringing and convenience. And people accept this. No one expects a resident of Oregon to be a Green Bay Packers fan, unless the Packers have been having a particularly good year—and even that comes with a status penalty associated with the expectation of future defection.
It seems to me that many of the arguments made on this site based on or referring to the Politics is the Mind-Killer article are based on extrapolations from a single well-known highly-polarized (essentially) 2-party system, i.e. the USA.
I am from a country with many political parties. No party ever gets more than 50% of the votes, in fact it is rare for any party to get over 20% of the votes. The parties are always forced to form a coalition to make a majority government. This system is not without its flaws, and far be it from me to argue that it is superior to the American system.
Nevertheless, it seems to me that many of the failure modes of ‘politics’, as often described of this site, are actually failure modes of present-day American politics, and not of politics in general.
For example, I encounter the argument described above, that “other side are ignoring obvious facts, and so failing to behave rationally, because they’re blinded by their ideology” very rarely, even in political discussions. Politicians saying such things would find it hard to negotiate with other politicians to form a government, and are mostly smart enough to not say such things. They would have no difficulty admitting that other politicians/parties behave differently simply because they have different goals (they represent the interests of a different set of voters), while still acting on almost the same set of evidence.