Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Post by thatcat » Mon, May 11, 2015, 5:54 AM UTC

nikdaheratik wrote: post #60

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/pref…

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.

Post by zurn » Tue, May 12, 2015, 4:49 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #51

bovermyer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ce…

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 tenden…

Is there reason to think that the two-party system emerged accidentally from the voting system?

(Nit: You mean "first past the poll" or something, not "one person one vote")

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