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A new theory about political polarization

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Re: A new theory about political polarization

#101

Post by Super_Jambo »

notafraudster wrote: post #81
Faark wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this seems to have an unstated prerequisite: The US two party system where voting for a third party actively damages your own interest. It's not perfectly solved in other countries, but having more "evils" to choose from is a good start. Obviously politicians have have little incentive to change the process they already had to master to gain power though in the first place.

I agree that countries with more than two parties have more opportunities to create majority winning coalitions that cut across painful cleavages. In a three party system (for simplicity I'll do equal sized parties) there are four majority coalitions: all three parties, or each of the three two-party coalitions. This is very good for healing wounds and building bridges and very bad for stability (because there is a m…

What, why is the presidency two party in nature? Any transferable vote system would change this surely?

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#102

Post by baddox »

notafraudster wrote: post #57

In political science, the conventional view is that polarization observed in the US is not a product of the two camps drifting further apart (in the sense of having more extreme views), it's the product of issue divisions aligning more closely to partisan camps. Consider Kim Davis. Kim Davis was a county clerk who went to jail after illegally refusing to issue a same-sex marriage certificate after the court system ru…

> For example, if I told you that one party in the US generally favors higher taxes and higher services, and one party generally favors lower taxes and lower services, could you match the party labels to the descriptions, imperfect as they are?

I think there's the obvious answer that most people would give, but I don't think there's great evidence that the policies implemented by the parties strongly matches the conventional wisdom here.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#103

Post by clairity »

woodandsteel wrote: post #90
clairity wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the whole concept of party polarization is a non-sequitur to what's important, and that's how closely our representatives represent our collective interest balanced against the forward-thinking good of the nation. the labels are clearly holding us back, but we dearly want to fit in (be in the party) and be perceived as being in the right, no matter what's good, truthful, moral, generous, patriotic, etc. the wisdom of…

The problem is that voters often disagree greatly, and the only positive way forward is a compromise, but strong partisan and ideological polarization makes that impossible.

but that's more of a problem of leadership, courage, and ultimately fairness. parties are not designed to fix that problem, and we've let the system devolve into this mess so that politicians can concentrate power in the smallest agreeable number of entities (two).

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#106

Post by woodandsteel »

clairity wrote: post #103
woodandsteel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that voters often disagree greatly, and the only positive way forward is a compromise, but strong partisan and ideological polarization makes that impossible.

but that's more of a problem of leadership, courage, and ultimately fairness. parties are not designed to fix that problem, and we've let the system devolve into this mess so that politicians can concentrate power in the smallest agreeable number of entities (two).

The problem is that when parties are highly polarized, politicians who want to be the sort of leaders you are talking about can't get into leadership positions and often are voted out at the primary election stage.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#107

Post by tunesmith »

Tiltowait-- wrote: post #82
crazygringo wrote: post #75

This is interesting mathematically... but false empirically. The forces behind modern political polarization are extremely well-known and well-documented in political science, and they are: 1) The awareness by political parties that extreme views motivate extreme voters to vote, more than moderate views motivate moderate voters to vote, therefore parties and candidates are being pushed further away from the center th…

> Political primaries are now democratic, so less centrist candidates are being selected than from when candidates were selected by party leadership That's not true at all. At least on the Democrat side. The party chooses the nominee, not the people. "The DNC, led by Wasserman Schultz, Admitted In Court they Rigged Primaries Against Sanders" >A Federal Judge dismissed the lawsuit after DNC attorneys argued that the D…

Isn't that a gross misstatement of the ruling? I'm not even a lawyer and it seems to be saying that when making a motion to dismiss, you assume the plaintiff's argument is true and then see if the case has merit.

So the ruling saying "even if the argument is hypothetically true, we can dismiss the case" is not the same as saying, "the argument is true".

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#108

Post by Spooky23 »

Super_Jambo wrote: post #101
notafraudster wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that countries with more than two parties have more opportunities to create majority winning coalitions that cut across painful cleavages. In a three party system (for simplicity I'll do equal sized parties) there are four majority coalitions: all three parties, or each of the three two-party coalitions. This is very good for healing wounds and building bridges and very bad for stability (because there is a m…

What, why is the presidency two party in nature? Any transferable vote system would change this surely?

It adds alot of complexity with the questionable benefit of driving more extremism.

Re: A new theory about political polarization

#109

Post by narrator »

fzeroracer wrote: post #72
narrator wrote: post #59

I think what broke the political dialog in this country is the whole hearted embrace of the association fallacy[1]. For example. I was talking with someone about COVID-19 and why it could have been released from a lab accidentally. The person I was talking with then accused me of believing in conspiracy theories. I then said many prominent people such as Tom Cotton and Mike Pompeo said this theory is credible. She th…

I'm not sure why it matters if prominent people believe in what is ostensibly a conspiracy theory. Alex Jones was prominent, but that doesn't mean chemicals in the water are turning frogs gay for example. In fact you should be placing more scrutiny on prominent people (politicians especially) for pushing such a thing, because usually they have an agenda they're trying to push. The fact that you chose to accuse someon…

"The fact that you chose to accuse someone of denying such a thing as parroting CCP propaganda indicates either your story is entirely fake or you're just an asshole."

I was using her reasoning to make a ludicrous argument similar to the one she made to show her the flaw in the argument and her method of reasoning. I don't actually believe that and made it clear to her when I explained the association fallacy. The only way to argue against someone using a fallacious arguing technique, which can be used to prove anything, is to use that arguing technique to prove the opposite or something ridiculous.

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