Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions • Hacker News Board

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#131

Post by iainmerrick » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:01 AM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #82

scarmig wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of how a person votes, they're voting for a feel-good reason. Some people's identity gives them pleasure in voting for the candidate that rationally maximizes the Good, for some subjective measure of the good. These are the 'social preferences' Gellman talks about. Some people's identity gives them pleasure in the tribe, and they want to vote for the people like them and around them to fit in, especially s…

> Pretty much everyone has both tendencies, which are inherently in tension. This is cognitive dissonance. People don't like experiencing this, so they end up choosing to believe both in tribal politics and that their tribe is the rational one, which is the most convenient way to cut that Gordian knot. And in addition, the more and more fiercely we tribally associate, the less and less we want to do with the other tr…

Both you and the previous commenter seem to be talking about the polarization of politics as if it's an inevitable feature of human social interaction. But I think that's a little overly simplistic.

The current extreme polarization in the US is new and fairly unusual, in historical terms. It could be an inevitable phase that other counties will reach too, or it could just be a random artifact of the US's history and political system. Very few countries have a voting system that locks in the main two parties as strongly as the US, for example.

The idea that all politics is purely about tribal identity, and that "rationality" is a myth, would seem to suggest that we've never made any real social advances. But I'd count things like the outlawing of slavery as advances.

It reminds me of the extreme view of social structures in science (which Thomas Kuhn subscribed to, if I remember right), that all scientific "advances" and "revolutions" are just changes in fashion as one generation of scientists succeeds another. But each advance does in fact get us closer to the truth, even if we never quite reach it.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#132

Post by brownbat » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:06 AM UTC

btilly wrote: post #86

dnautics wrote: post #54

"For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan." These are both really tricky questions, because the questions described are derivatives of derivatives! The deficit is the time derivative of the debt; so it's possible that someone is hearing "did the debt rise during clinton" (wh…

They may seem to be really tricky questions, but they have really clear answers. Reagan was elected during an extreme inflationary period and it had dropped dramatically by the time he left office. Clinton started office with giant deficits and left office running a surplus.

Inflation rose under Reagan every year.

It also dropped every year. Just so happens it dropped by more.

So if you just ask "Did inflation rise under Reagan?" A very literal answer would be "yes, repeatedly, just not overall."

So you'd balk, "That's not the spirit of the question!"

But let's switch to the spirit of the question.

Suppose you know that Volcker's anti-inflation efforts are almost certainly the most decisive factor in the decline in inflation. Suppose you also know he was appointed to control inflation by Carter. And you know that Reagan later fired him for other effects of this work. So if we're going by the spirit of the question, it appears to the individual on the street to read, "Was Reagan the President most responsible for halting the inflation of the late 70s?"

Once we're reading charitably and trying to make the question as sensible as possible, even then the answer is still probably no. The most literal or the most charitable answer is no.

But, sure, asked to put money on it, most people would give the dumb answer too, because they'd assume anyone who asked such a poor question hadn't given the issue too much thought.

Ok, ok. Postscript and time out. This is obstinate sophistry for the fun of obstinate sophistry. I wasn't of voting age in the late 70s and early 80s, and don't have a strong partisan opinion on combatting stagflation. But you could run this same sort of game on almost any one of these questions. It's not a clean world of pure facts that people are mucking up with their perceptions. It's almost all perceptions on top of everything. In fact, there's even a selection bias in the questions they pick, which have muddy expositions like this. No one just asks "Did Nixon visit China?" or "Did Johnson succeed Lincoln?" Uncomplicated facts are uncomplicated. Complicated facts only appear simple when you're giving the standard answer.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#133

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:08 AM UTC

trome wrote: post #116

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you want to have some roads, how do you do it? a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so…

Eh, c in many cases includes govt built & maintained toll roads, cause as it turns out roadways can cost tens of billions to build. Makes rail look cheap in comparison!

Toll roads are very stupid. The cost of the road is building the road, not driving on it. Even the maintenance cost is predominantly weather-related. A toll road pays the same construction cost and then gets less use out of it because the tolls discourage people from using the road.

Tolls have the pricing wrong. There is no unit cost so the problem is apportioning the fixed cost. A platinum mine clearly derives more profit from the road than a potato farmer, so why should we charge per truck (tolls) rather than per dollar of profit (taxes)? All that does is price low-profit (i.e. more efficient) enterprises out of the market, which is exactly what we don't want.

In addition to that we already have a tax collection infrastructure which is not going away, but collecting tolls would require a redundant toll collection infrastructure on top of that.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#134

Post by kristopolous » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:09 AM UTC

rjbwork wrote: post #120

kristopolous wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C can be a problem. It's how the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about is structured. "C" is what leads to things like corporate bail outs. Parenti talked about this with Conrail in the 80s. It was a train system that was put in public trust because it couldn't make money in the 70s. Then after the public made it profitable, under Reagan, it was reprivatized - not because it didn't work, but bec…

But all those other countries you mentioned are also C, in a way bigger way. The US leans more towards B, in actuality, versus those other countries. Are you saying A is the solution?

Not really. If we can agree that people respond to incentives, then we should make sure the incentives of how we constitute civil society align with their purpose and that the purpose doesn't get perverted through gamesmanship.

For instance, arguably schools are primarily for education. So increasing the access to and quality of education is probably a decent goal.

For profit systems certainly have increased the access to, but arguably deceased the quality of, and arguably education is only incidental to the true project, which is profit.^1

It's this problem, where we entrust civic needs in private hands and hope the needs are satisfied incidentally.

The problem with communism is that it's somewhat the same thing. Instead of economic capital, they fight for political capital using a similar perversion of incentives.

I don't think there exists a Grand Unified Equation that works for all civic needs and I don't think that the best answers already exist.

Instead, I think it should be openly and honestly researched like all other sciences and leave the sportsmanship and team cheering world it currently occupies.

----

[1] For-Profit schools may have their place. I don't know much about auto mechanics or plumbing, but I can imagine a certified for-profit program would be a fine way to do this. I can also imagine them cutting costs, paying off inspections, and passing everyone so nobody stops paying the tuition. The goal is to not make ripping people off and cheating them out of an education such a profitable and incentivized thing to do.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#135

Post by bmelton » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #131

bmelton wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty much everyone has both tendencies, which are inherently in tension. This is cognitive dissonance. People don't like experiencing this, so they end up choosing to believe both in tribal politics and that their tribe is the rational one, which is the most convenient way to cut that Gordian knot. And in addition, the more and more fiercely we tribally associate, the less and less we want to do with the other tr…

Both you and the previous commenter seem to be talking about the polarization of politics as if it's an inevitable feature of human social interaction. But I think that's a little overly simplistic. The current extreme polarization in the US is new and fairly unusual, in historical terms. It could be an inevitable phase that other counties will reach too, or it could just be a random artifact of the US's history and…

I don't think it's at all inevitable, nor do I disbelieve that political polarization is new. That said, tribal clustering is as old as time.

Without getting into the whys and wherefores, my main concern is that as we eliminate some forms of tribal clustering (ethnic, gender, class, etc.) we are simply replacing them with other forms, namely political affiliation or wedge issues. Particularly, I'm concerned with tribal clustering on wedge issues that don't affect the quality of work a person might do.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#136

Post by nl » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:23 AM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #132

btilly wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may seem to be really tricky questions, but they have really clear answers. Reagan was elected during an extreme inflationary period and it had dropped dramatically by the time he left office. Clinton started office with giant deficits and left office running a surplus.

Inflation rose under Reagan every year. It also dropped every year. Just so happens it dropped by more. So if you just ask "Did inflation rise under Reagan?" A very literal answer would be "yes, repeatedly, just not overall." So you'd balk, "That's not the spirit of the question!" But let's switch to the spirit of the question. Suppose you know that Volcker's anti-inflation efforts are almost certainly the most decis…

> Inflation rose under Reagan every year.

> It also dropped every year.

What does this mean? Are you just making a pedantic point that some months had higher inflation rates than others or am I missing something?

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#137

Post by ncallaway » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:24 AM UTC

DougN7 wrote: post #72

smallnamespace wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero. That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise, forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires…

Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

Please raise my taxes! Please!

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#138

Post by smallnamespace » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:33 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #133

trome wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, c in many cases includes govt built & maintained toll roads, cause as it turns out roadways can cost tens of billions to build. Makes rail look cheap in comparison!

Toll roads are very stupid. The cost of the road is building the road, not driving on it. Even the maintenance cost is predominantly weather-related. A toll road pays the same construction cost and then gets less use out of it because the tolls discourage people from using the road. Tolls have the pricing wrong. There is no unit cost so the problem is apportioning the fixed cost. A platinum mine clearly derives more…

Congestion tolls are great -- they encourage better utilization of a scarce resource (the road at a certain point in time).

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#139

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:40 AM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #138

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toll roads are very stupid. The cost of the road is building the road, not driving on it. Even the maintenance cost is predominantly weather-related. A toll road pays the same construction cost and then gets less use out of it because the tolls discourage people from using the road. Tolls have the pricing wrong. There is no unit cost so the problem is apportioning the fixed cost. A platinum mine clearly derives more…

Congestion tolls are great -- they encourage better utilization of a scarce resource (the road at a certain point in time).

> Congestion tolls are great -- they encourage better utilization of a scarce resource (the road at a certain point in time).

Congestion tolls are the rich man's way of getting the government to build enough infrastructure for them without having to pay for enough infrastructure for everybody.

If there is congestion it's either because you don't have enough roads or because you don't have good enough mass transit which is dumping the load it should be carrying onto the roads.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#140

Post by kristopolous » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 1:56 AM UTC

lacampbell wrote: post #127

kristopolous wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well sure, but changing the economic system won't modify the fact that it's an island of 4 million people that's so far out on the periphery that it isn't even included on some world maps ( https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/ ). The same economic realities can be said about Hawaii.

It's two major islands, closer to 5 million people, and we have a sales tax ("goods and services" or GST) of 15% that applies to everything, even groceries or imported electronics. This of course largely hits the working class. The rich don't rely on getting income from generating real value here - income tax is far too high. The key to becoming wealthy is to invest in property and rent it out at exorbitant prices to…

Sorry, didn't know it was two islands ... shows my ignorance. I really don't know of New Zealands' economic structure. The argument I was trying to put forth is that there's a broader context that has exogenous influence upon any society and by extension, its economy.

I could have a broader discussion on taxation if you want, but I find it's important to establish, and agree, upon a number of facts before those can start being productive. It's a long haul conversation.