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Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#11

Post by aylons »

[deleted] wrote: post #7

[deleted]

Too bad you stopped reading. Just after this paragraph:

> Some clustering of logically unrelated beliefs could be explained cognitively—for instance, by the hypothesis that some people tend to be good, in general, at getting to the truth (perhaps because they are intelligent, knowledgeable, etc.) So suppose that it is true both that affirmative action is just and that abortion is morally permissible. These issues are logically unrelated to each other; however, if some people are in general good at getting to the truth, then those who believe one of these propositions would be more likely to believe the other.

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#12

Post by dreamdu5t »

aylons wrote: post #8
dreamdu5t wrote: post #4

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"…

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

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

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#14

Post by Natsu »

michaelkeenan wrote: post #6
dreamdu5t wrote: post #4

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"…

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

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

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#15

Post by Liver »

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.

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#16

Post by oldmanjay »

aylons wrote: post #8
dreamdu5t wrote: post #4

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"…

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

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

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#17

Post by larsiusprime »

[deleted] wrote: post #7

[deleted]

"This is where I stopped reading" is supposed to be some kind of intellectual badge of honor? "I found what appears to be a point I disagree with, and rather than reading on to see if my disagreement was addressed, I started looking for the comment button."

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#18

Post by golemotron »

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.

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#19

Post by VLM »

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.

Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

#20

Post by michaelkeenan »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #10
michaelkeenan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

I don't know how to continue this discussion, because I don't see the part in section 3 where he talks about voter preferences directly coinciding with candidate preferences, nor the part where he says preferences are static. Paul Graham says[1] people should quote the thing they disagree with before they argue against it, and I think that would help here.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

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