Why People Are Irrational about Politics

http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/irrationality.htm

by aylons • 11 years ago

44 48 11 years ago

spot.colorado.edu

dreamdu5t3• 11 years ago

It's not that people are irrational. People have different prefences. There are winners and losers in politics, and peoples' preferences are often mutually exclusive.

The idea that there is some kind of "correct" political position is absurd and grossly ignorant of what politics IS.

Example: Some people think there shouldn't be an income tax. Someone else thinks there should be. There is no such thing as a "correct" position, just a winning position.

“War is politics by other means,” as Carl von Clausewitz said.

michaelkeenan4• 11 years ago

What do you think of the points he brings up in section 3, where he addresses this?

dreamdu5t3• 11 years ago

It's wrong. He ignores that political candidates have their own preferences and strawmans that voter's preferences directly coincide with candidate preferences. He also strawmans that preferences are static and coincide with some sort of fundamental values.

Natsu• 11 years ago

That's a very interesting section. There's a citation on "There are three reasons why I disagree with this explanation. The first is that value questions are objective, and moral anti-realism is completely unjustified" which cites http://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/objectiv.htm

A page which does not, at present, exist -

The requested URL /~huemer/objectiv.htm was not found on this server. Apache Server at spot.colorado.edu Port 80

aylons2• 11 years ago

Did you read the article? There is whole section (3) on why simply having different preferences does not explain irrationality in politics.

dreamdu5t3• 11 years ago

Voter preferences affect votes - not political platforms. Political platforms espoused by candidates are reflective of the candidates preferences - not the voters.

oldmanjay• 11 years ago

I never hit the section that satisfactorily explained that there is irrationality. I just found a lot of circular logic and bare assertion.

sjtrny4• 11 years ago

There is no "correct" position. But there are positions that are objectively better if you measure outcomes like health, education, safety, prosperity etc etc.

refurb2• 11 years ago

Can you give an example? It seems like the biggest problem with economics, for example, is that no one can say for sure what the outcome would be. Spending more money during a recession, for example, works only some of the time.

TulliusCicero• 11 years ago

They are not, in fact 'objectively' better, because the degree to which you prioritize each of those things differs based on each person's values. Take welfare, for instance. Social welfare programs help the vulnerable, and undoubtedly some non-zero percentage of people are taking advantage of said programs wrongly. In the US, people who are liberal are more interested in the former, and people who are conservative are more interested in the latter.

This is a chief reason why one group is for it and the other is against it. It's not that liberals don't think welfare fraud exists at all, they just don't think it's a big problem compared to the good such programs do. And it's not that conservatives don't think such programs do help some deserving poor people, they just hate the thought of some of their tax money going to someone mooching off the system.

coldtea• 11 years ago

They are objectively better only if you agree 1) on the relative importance of those aspects, and 2) on how to measure success.

E.g. regarding to health. One approach (e.g. state funded, guaranteed health coverage for all) might give better overall health statistics for the whole population, even eradicating certain classes of diceases, etc.

But some people could still think of it as bad, because they don't just want "better health" for everybody, but better health for those that can afford it, and consider the others lazy and cheaters that deserve to not have health coverage.

Now, I'm on the first camp, but this is an illustrative example of how measuring results is not some kind of solution that ends the political debate.

calibraxis2• 11 years ago

Weird, this gives false choices. (Or I've missed the discussion of propaganda.) Massively-funded propaganda specifically promotes things like "Beliefs as self-image constructors" and "Beliefs as tools of social bonding".

xnull2guest2• 11 years ago

Now propaganda makes it onto mass social media campaigns. Techniques include propagandizing "nudging" 'social influencers' who are hubs of social bonding and information. The US is known to use celebrities in their Twitter campaigns targeting the Middle East.

Can you speak more about what literature you are aware of?

calibraxis2• 11 years ago

Bernays' 1928 book "Propaganda" is an entertaining intro. He's considered the father of modern public relations. It reads like satire, except he was serious. (http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html)

Many like the BBC documentary "The Century Of The Self", on the origins of modern PR. (Easy to find online.) Nowadays of course, the field is way more advanced.

Noam Chomsky's done well-known work in this area. His books are dry, but he gives enjoyable talks, zillions of which are on youtube. For example: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RPKH6BVcoM)

Liver• 11 years ago

Let's face it, political parties are designed to divide the people. Why that ? Because political power like every power seeks its own limits. It looks to increase its own power. In a (so-called) democracy, government negociates the boundaries of its own power with the people. One way to get more power for the governement is to weaken the people by dividing them. Now you see the people divided in many different ways with engineered and/or mythical social struggles : poors vs rich, women vs men, young vs old, native vs foreigner, religious vs non-religious, black vs white, gay vs heterosexual etc...

Everybody want essentially the same things, to have their essential needs fulfilled : food, home, health, family, freedom

A minority divides the majority and acquires dominion and prosperity, achieving an effortless and comfortable life.

That minority has essentially created the initial Ponzi Scheme and they need division, wars and struggles so that they can maintain their dominion.

bovermyer• 11 years ago

This implies that government, in and of itself, is a conspiracy to perpetuate consolidation of power. That's enough of a broad generalization that I can't take it seriously - while it may be true for some forms of organization, I don't think we have enough data (or the right KIND of data) to actually make a call like that, let alone claim that political parties in particular are defined by power orchestration by a central entity.

escherize2• 11 years ago

A central entity is not necessary to the argument. It's not a conspiracy for the consolidation of power, it's the Monopoly of the Use of Force in a Geographic Region.

That force can be sold for a very high price to individuals, and corporations. In fact C.E.O.s have a fiduciary responsibility to exploit this power imbalance in any way they can, so their hands are a bit forced to play ball.

JoshTriplett• 11 years ago

It's entirely possible for this kind of thing to fall out as a natural consequence of a set of constraints and institutions, without any central planning or conspiracy.

For instance, look at Duverger's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law), which says that the standard "one person one vote" voting system we use naturally tends to produce a two-party system. Beyond that, there are institutional tendencies towards compromise and centrism that will tend to make key parts of both parties similar to each other and drift towards each other, while roughly matching overall society sentiments, and emphasizing a handful of ideological differences that match/create those in society (with a feedback cycle). Put that together with standard political tactics like proposing an extreme position and "compromising" with what you wanted in the first place, and with the tendency of any system made up of people to perpetuate itself and give itself more power.

So it's entirely plausible that we'd naturally tend towards something like we have: a two-party system, with differences on some high-profile items that, common agreement between those parties on other issues (most notably on the self-perpetuation and growth of government and bureaucracy, even if in disagreement with substantial fractions of the public), near-impossibility of electing a third-party candidate, etc.

escherize2• 11 years ago

I'd continue the argument to include a discussion about the monopoly on the use of force, and the use of morality by the minority to subjugate the majority.

_bfhp• 11 years ago

Everybody want essentially the same things, to have their essential needs fulfilled : food, home, health, family, freedom

No, everyone does not want "family", which I assume means a spouse and children. Family is not essential to life. So already we see a problem with any one person assuming any sort of unanimous positionality among every human. We don't even have to talk about how "freedom" is relative -- the factually false claim that "family [is an essential need]" is an easier point.

Social struggles are indeed engineered: by the rich, by men, by the more powerful nations, by white people. Slavery and white law in the U.S. existed (I'd like to add "exists" but that fact is less obvious to more people) and was an act of "engineering" -- I am personally not forgetting that and the fact of its effects continuing today, despite how OP seems to advocate that I do so. I will not forget that whiteness exists, as does gender, the monetary system, and the self-interests of nations like the U.S., Israel, the UK, etc, and neither should anybody. The purpose of division is security and extraction of resources -- from women, non-whites, and the poor and indigenous.

golemotron• 11 years ago

The best thing I've read about political differences is the book Predisposed http://www.amazon.com/Predisposed-Liberals-Conservatives-Pol...

It makes the argument (supported by copious research) that there are biological correlations of conservatism and liberalism with disgust reflex, taste in food and art, perceptual cues and threat response. I'm not convinced that they have the direction of causation settled but it is interesting research. Conservatives and Liberals literally see the world differently. No surprise that logic doesn't work to help either side sway the other.

lexcorvus• 11 years ago

This sort of research only makes sense if you use an expansive definition of "liberal" and "conservative". From a historical perspective, it makes hardly any sense at all. For example, Englishmen in 1590 presumably split into "liberal" and "conservative" camps as defined by such research, and yet essentially everyone was ridiculously reactionary by modern standards, in that most people were monarchists who supported the personal rule of a queen. This suggests that the liberal/conservative divide, while real, need not necessarily bleed into politics. It's democracy, of course, that changed the game.

VLM• 11 years ago

Is irrationality in politics a bad thing? The article seems to assume so, I'm not so convinced.

If you follow the "opiate of the masses" theory then the bigger the spectacle the better people are fooled into thinking their votes matter etc resulting in theoretically less social unrest, and the more yelling and sloganeering about politics, the less demonstrating and violence.

Another way to look at it is something that is rational is by definition no longer political. We can't have a political discussion about that subroutines memory leak, or how to fix it. Perhaps its not possible to have a rational discussion about an irrational lifestyle subject, aka a political topic. If it were not a non-actionable non-relevant opinion based evidence free discussion topic, by definition it wouldn't be political. So worrying about politics being irrational is like worrying about cats being excessively feline-like. Its not a bug, is the definition of the topic.

aylons2• 11 years ago

You can't have a political discussion about subroutines memory leak because this is not about politics. But surely people get irrational about technical topics, from programming languages to the last gadget. I see these discussions all the time, even on HN.

People get passionate and irrational about a lot of themes, but politics seems to potentialize this and this article tries to discuss this topic. And the article makes a point of making a distinction about being irrational and having some preference or belief.

EGreg2• 11 years ago

Because people selectively cherry-pick facts to support the narratives they are invested in, and in doing so become more invested. Both narratives can be supported using data, provided one interprets the data in a certain way. Same with religions. Very rarely does a slam dunk case appear totally disproving one particular explanatory narrative.

Karl Popper's "Science as Falsification" essay is very useful here.

And furthermore, many of the propecies are self-fulfilling. For example, if atheism were true, it is still the case that Jews around the world have never forgotten about Israel and Jerusalem and have at long last returned there.

You can also see this in technical fields. The Black-Scholes valuation model may or may not have been a good way to price derivatives, but once everyone started using it, it BECAME the best way to price derivatives because everyone used it.

WalterBright• 11 years ago

Doesn't this imply that all political opinions and regimes are essentially equivalent?

EGreg2• 11 years ago

sjtrny4• 11 years ago

No mention of believing what your parents told you to believe (consciously or otherwise). This seems to be the biggest factor among people I know.

refurb2• 11 years ago

Or the idea that you rebel against whatever politics your parents held. Conservative parents? I'm a liberal! Liberal parents? I'm a conservative!

nostromo• 11 years ago

There are three reasons why I disagree with this explanation. The first is that value questions are objective, and moral anti-realism is completely unjustified.

This is probably the longest-running debate in human history, and he dismisses it completely with a link to his undergraduate paper on the subject.

Putting that aside, the problem with this argument is it doesn't allow for changing beliefs. If we are only driven by fitting in with our group, then no political views would ever change as they wouldn't ever reach critical mass.

Just look at the changing opinions of gay marriage. Political views absolutely do change over time, and they can change very quickly. Yet this paper is all about how that is impossible.

I have witnessed few political conversions, so the most I can offer is speculation as to how one might occur.

I feel like this is an admission that the paper is entirely speculative.

ThomPete• 11 years ago

The change happen because circumstances change and so you change the groups you belong to. But I agree there are other factors too.

ilaksh2• 11 years ago

Looks like we have a political disagreement. Beliefs can change, but they usually do not change quickly or easily. That's why we call them beliefs.

TheGRS• 11 years ago

I believe OP was referring more to the hockey stick model of wide-spread change in political beliefs. It is a very, very long road toward a change in the public's perception of some issue, such as equal rights or gay marriage, but there often seems to be some tipping point where the minority view becomes the majority in a very short amount of time. Also see legalization of marijuana, prohibition and women's suffrage.

ilaksh2• 11 years ago

Human rationality is a myth.

nikdaheratik• 11 years ago

I'll give the OP points for ambition, but I believe the article leans too much on Psychology for explanations rather than Political Science. This makes sense, if you are looking for the conclusion that people are irrational, but I don't find this satisfactory.

My personal view, from reading Jonathan Bernstein's blog and his take from a Political Science view, is that people hold strong and weak political beliefs/preferences and people are rational about both, but apply different standards depending upon whether they are a strong or weak belief.

For example, a person may have a strong preference that abortion should be illegal. They would have thought about this issue a great deal and have rational reasons why they feel this way. However, the political party that is in favor of passing laws to restrict abortion is made up of constituents that are also in favor of less regulation of firearms and also capital punishment so the person who really cares about the abortion issue (their strong beliefs) may also take cues from the party elites about gun control and capital punishment (as weak political beliefs).

It may seem irrational/inconsistent for someone who argues about the sanctity of life when talking about abortion to also be in favor of capital punishment (which involves taking of lives) or gun control (which also can result in a number of deaths by firearms). However, if the person really cares about changing the laws on abortion and may not care as much about the other policy areas they are perfectly willing to go along with the position of the elites in the party/coalition and make these less rational arguments without too much dissonance since they don't actually care that much about the weaker beliefs.

So political change is both possible and rational. It can be effected either be getting a large number of people to care about this single issue (making it their strong belief) or getting party elites/actors convinced your position is the correct one and knowing that the other people in the coalition will take your side as long as you also go along with the beliefs that they value most.

thatcat• 11 years ago

Using the word belief makes it sound like we're discussing religion here rather than politics. A belief is an attitude toward the likely truth of something. It isn't possible to literally believe in guns or abortions, one can only have opinions regarding their proper usage. This is likely why OP finds political discussions irrational - he is investigating political "beliefs" and when it becomes a debate of Truth by believers rather a debate about the best policy for the context from people with varying perspectives and opinions then of course nothing can be conceded; beliefs are fixed by faith while opinions can vary considerably.

Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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