Sure. This is sort of idealized, Spock-politics. Issues of irrationality and signaling are a whole other kettle of fish. They’ve also been extensively discussed on this site.
The thing is, a network of axioms, facts, and their implications is hard enough to understand. If we wanted to understand the differences between different people’s beliefs, on any subject, we’d need to tackle a very scary mathematical/computational problem.
I am aware that the mere mention of politics gets on your nerves. They are, however, a good example of a sort of belief that
Just about everybody has. Lots of salient examples available that everyone will recognize.
Differs a lot from person to person.
People (at least the smart and well-informed ones) spend time trying to reconcile and make coherent.
So you hate politics. What else do almost all people have opinions about, where the opinions vary, and people bother with implications and internal coherence?
No, I don’t hate politics. In fact, I enjoy discussing it if it’s done the right way; those things that get on my nerves, I simply ignore. With posts like this one, I see some potential for an interesting discussion, but for this to happen, it is necessary to clarify some misconceptions and make sure we stick to reality, not false idealizations and metaphysical fictions.
The trouble here is that analyzing the structure of people’s political beliefs while ignoring signaling and related considerations is like trying to analyze the structure of the atom nucleus while ignoring the strong interaction. It is simply too large a step away from reality to allow for any accurate discussion.
It’s easiest to see this if you just ask people to state some of the core principles underlying their political and ideological beliefs, and then do some Socratic questioning about their various implications. It’s very easy to get them into a self-contradiction, or to demonstrate that a straightforward deduction from these principles leads to something they’d never subscribe to. At the end, you’ll get a stream of annoyed and incoherent special pleading and rationalizations aimed to uphold the positions your interlocutor deems to be desirable and respectable, not a coherent logical structure where you might start locating the root of your disagreements.
Sure. This is sort of idealized, Spock-politics. Issues of irrationality and signaling are a whole other kettle of fish. They’ve also been extensively discussed on this site.
The thing is, a network of axioms, facts, and their implications is hard enough to understand. If we wanted to understand the differences between different people’s beliefs, on any subject, we’d need to tackle a very scary mathematical/computational problem.
I am aware that the mere mention of politics gets on your nerves. They are, however, a good example of a sort of belief that
Just about everybody has. Lots of salient examples available that everyone will recognize.
Differs a lot from person to person.
People (at least the smart and well-informed ones) spend time trying to reconcile and make coherent.
So you hate politics. What else do almost all people have opinions about, where the opinions vary, and people bother with implications and internal coherence?
No, I don’t hate politics. In fact, I enjoy discussing it if it’s done the right way; those things that get on my nerves, I simply ignore. With posts like this one, I see some potential for an interesting discussion, but for this to happen, it is necessary to clarify some misconceptions and make sure we stick to reality, not false idealizations and metaphysical fictions.
The trouble here is that analyzing the structure of people’s political beliefs while ignoring signaling and related considerations is like trying to analyze the structure of the atom nucleus while ignoring the strong interaction. It is simply too large a step away from reality to allow for any accurate discussion.
It’s easiest to see this if you just ask people to state some of the core principles underlying their political and ideological beliefs, and then do some Socratic questioning about their various implications. It’s very easy to get them into a self-contradiction, or to demonstrate that a straightforward deduction from these principles leads to something they’d never subscribe to. At the end, you’ll get a stream of annoyed and incoherent special pleading and rationalizations aimed to uphold the positions your interlocutor deems to be desirable and respectable, not a coherent logical structure where you might start locating the root of your disagreements.