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Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#71

Post by _dps »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #57
_dps wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. I think this is objectively wrong for the specific case of politics; unlike, say, analytical chemistry, politics has an active opinion on how each of us live our lives and can't be "left to the expert" (the latter being what the politic…

Counters to your counters: > 1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry? No, that couple doesn't have a valid opinion. How could they? They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. The threshold at which they can form a valid opinio…

I was tempted not to reply because I think we're just arguing over the many possible definitions of the word "valid", and that can quickly become uninteresting. Here's a stab at not being too much of a hair-splitter.

In a nutshell, it sounds like your definition of "valid" (and parent's) refer to some frame of objectively true facts and a commonly accepted value system. I agree that one would have to take such a definition in order to find intellectual value in a person's opinions on political matters.

My definition of validity (in the context of the previous comment) has to do with recognizing subjective individual value systems that must occasionally be trampled upon in order to have a functioning state. By their nature, political institutions touch your life whether you want them to do so or not.

So my view is that all people affected by a political institution have valid opinions on the actions of said institution, even if those opinions are not particularly well informed or even logical. If an institution forces something into (or out of) your life, I take the position that you have a valid voice with which to support or oppose that action, even if I might find that support or opposition to be unpersuasive from a logical or evidentiary frame of reference.

To close the loop of example/counter-example, I think your two counter-counter-examples demonstrate opinions of low intellectual validity, as they do not stem from a body of knowledge. However, I think they are fully politically valid, because I don't see any way to have a politically legitimate institution while invalidating the opinions of those whose individual values are violated by its actions.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#72

Post by [deleted] »

_dps wrote: post #71
dylangs1030 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counters to your counters: > 1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry? No, that couple doesn't have a valid opinion. How could they? They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. The threshold at which they can form a valid opinio…

I was tempted not to reply because I think we're just arguing over the many possible definitions of the word "valid", and that can quickly become uninteresting. Here's a stab at not being too much of a hair-splitter. In a nutshell, it sounds like your definition of "valid" (and parent's) refer to some frame of objectively true facts and a commonly accepted value system. I agree that one would have to take such a defi…

[deleted]

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#73

Post by Gormo »

Symmetry wrote: post #67
Gormo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. Politics isn't about objective facts. Politics deals with ought , not is . There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among p…

People need some notion of the current state of the world in order to have a meaningful opinion of how to change it. Most people think that income taxes on the rich ought to be raised and most people think that 33% is an ideal marginal tax rate for the rich, but the rich already pay more than 33% on their marginal income. Or there's the position that we ought to balance the budget by cutting foreign aid. Or the idea…

> People need some notion of the current state of the world in order to have a meaningful opinion of how to change it.

It goes without saying that if you want to get from here to there, you need to know where 'here' is. But I'm arguing that political debate is rarely about how to get from here to there, but rather is about which 'there' we should be heading for in the first place.

Do you think the commonplace opinions that you've described are the result of people misjudging circumstances, and drawing incorrect conclusions about them, or do you think they're not even evaluating circumstances, but merely projecting values onto the world?

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#74

Post by jdc »

Ixiaus wrote: post #25

First: notice how we are all expressing our opinions :) I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan. (NOTE: I'm not rigorously defining the word "governance" in this response, I can expand on my meaning further if people are interested) Paul G…

I think pg is using the word identity differently than you (or Jung) here. He doesn't attempt to explain the source of the "strong convictions" that drive political or religious beliefs. He simply observes the connection between the case where people think of themselves as a certain type of person and consequently will defend the associated beliefs regardless of evidence.

So there's something about peoples minds that makes it costly for them to accept certain facts. For a long time now, professing a certain belief with conviction has been a way of associating yourself with a certain group has had and continues to have direct implications on a person's physical well-being. Given acting is hard and cognitive-dissonance is nasty, actually adopting the belief makes sense.

A more precise way express the essay's thrust might be "don't get attached to your beliefs."

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#75

Post by Gormo »

dylangs1030 wrote: post #57
_dps wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. I think this is objectively wrong for the specific case of politics; unlike, say, analytical chemistry, politics has an active opinion on how each of us live our lives and can't be "left to the expert" (the latter being what the politic…

Counters to your counters: > 1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry? No, that couple doesn't have a valid opinion. How could they? They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. The threshold at which they can form a valid opinio…

> They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds.

Can you explain what these sentences mean in clearer language?

If you're saying what I think you're saying, then I think you may have it precisely backwards. Those individuals are the only credible experts on the particularities of their relationship, which has little, if anything, to do with the United States; from their perspective, it's the current legal status quo that lacks validity. (nb: there aren't actually "United States marriage laws" - the recent attempt to assert federal influence over the legal definition of marriage was ruled unconstitutional.)

Politics is about "ought", not "is", and understanding the nuances of established policy isn't a necessary precondition for proposing replacing it with some other policy.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#76

Post by Gormo »

leephillips wrote: post #41
_dps wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. I think this is objectively wrong for the specific case of politics; unlike, say, analytical chemistry, politics has an active opinion on how each of us live our lives and can't be "left to the expert" (the latter being what the politic…

I tend to agree with the GP. No matter how strong someone's opinions on, say, the US Iraq invasion are, they're not worth much if they're not grounded in some notion of world history since WWI. "Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry?" They have an interest in the marriage laws, but that doesn't make their opinions more interes…

Politics is about "ought", not "is", and policy is entirely about the interaction of people with divergent interests. Your point of view make it seem like there's some objective context for politics in the first place, but there isn't: the entire context in which politics takes place, the substance that defines it, and the objects it pursues are created by people and their interests. Having an interest is having an opinion.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#77

Post by mcgwiz »

In my opinion, he describes a basic mechanism of survival for cultures. Cultures that inspire such defensive "inability to think clearly" about the subject have increased survivability (social propagability).

But in order to survive, cultures must also change over time. I see the mechanism for this change as the individual's improvement of the culture for oneself, and then attempting to propagate it to insiders and outsiders. Triggers of this modification include conflicting experience, either direct or indirect via dialogue/argumentation with others.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#79

Post by Gormo »

clicks wrote: post #59
Gormo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. Politics isn't about objective facts. Politics deals with ought , not is . There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among p…

> There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among people pursuing different ends That is true only for a few set of issues, like abortion, immigration, etc. I'm socialistic-inclined and my neighbors are mostly republicans, I usually start conversations with them by saying "Look, we both want the same thing:…

But you're (a) making an assumption that the full set of end-goals that your neighbor desires aligns exactly with yours, and (b) speaking in very generalized terms about what those end-goals are, without making reference to details of questions that people might evaluate differently.

Your attempts to build common ground with your neighbor will approximate tautologies as the actual intersection of your respective value systems shrink. You can say "Look: we all want more good things and less bad things", but what are you actually proposing?

If I asked you and your neighbor a more particular question, i.e. "should the state intervene to ensure that the greatest amount of people in America are well-fed, well-educated, etc., in its own judgement", I might get different answers from you and your neighbors. If I asked you to define what constitutes "well-fed", "well-educated", etc., I'll likely get different answers. If I asked you whether it's desirable to allow top-down, universalized definitions of these terms to form the basis of public policy, I'll likely get different answers.

All of these are questions of desired ends, answered differently due to different hierarchies of values, and not due to divergent interpretations of empirical data.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#80

Post by dllthomas »

veidr wrote: post #8

> "Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion." I agree that this is how people tend to see it. But it isn't really true. Like JavaScript or auto mechanics or animal husbandry, there is indeed a threshold of expertise for expressing a meaningful opinion. The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their…

People's right to have their interests and values weighed in communal decision-making does not (in principle) deserve any "threshold of expertise" requirement. When discussions (quite necessarily) move into precisely how that translates into policy there quite definitely is a demand for expertise. Unfortunately, our systems don't do a very good job pulling those apart.
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