Politics is the Mind-Killer

People are certainly more biased in politics than in most other subjects. So yes, it helps to find ways to transfer our cognitive habits from other topics into politics. But as long as you don't "go native," politics should be rich source of bias examples to think about.

Like Eliezer, I would prefer if contemporary politics did not show up much here, and I do not identify with either political party. What I wonder though, is whether we would feel the same way if we did identify with one of the parties. Perhaps a Republican might, seeing as how the Republicans have not been looking as good recently while a Democrat would be happy for the latest mess their opponents are in to be highlighted. If the weblog lasted long enough perhaps both sides could become tired enough of their side being kicked while down to come to a gentleman's agreement. In Washington this could be described as "Bipartisanship: When the Stupid Party and the Evil Party get together to do something truly stupid and evil", as it not in the interests of the citizens for incumbents to be shielded from criticism, but provided no political figures are here it seems positive-sum for everyone.

I too would prefer for contemporary politics to show up here only very rarely.

Robin, I would still argue that one can, as much as possible, avoid taking potshots. It's the difference between writing a post which points out the flaws in having intelligent design taught in schools, versus giving in to the temptation to blame it on "the Republicans", or for that matter, "big government".

Yes, please, let's all avoid taking potshots, on politics or anything else.

First, in light of the new moderator status, I would like to commend this blog in its entirety for its novel and profound discussions of so many important topics.

Enough sarcasm...As per politics the mind killer: isn't there almost always a "greater truth" involved than any one issue? What gets ignored, emphasized, is a what serves that great truth, something you may have once fully understood where it came from, but now only know is true. Like why is the sky blue? I know it is, I know I once knew the physics why it is. But most importantly, I know it is true for a solid reason. Any cascading implications of these big truths are to be heeded appropriately.

The political metamorphisis from the professional scientist to a slogan-chanting zombie reminds us of the way religious biologists manage to carve reality into separate magisteria the second they step out of the lab. The question being, is there really a difference? Would a "grand unified theory of human cognitive bias" characterize political and religious bias as "two bullets from the same gun"? The presence of a God module serves as evidence that the religious bias is neuroanatomically distinct, and therefore likely to be independent psychologically. On the other hand, the obvious overlap between religious and political causes seems to suggest that the psychological underpinnings proceed from the same source.

There is no doubt that politics gets people fired up, which makes dispassionate reasoning about it hard. On the other hand, politics is important, which makes dispassionate reasoning about it important as well. There is nothing wrong with deciding that this particular blog will not focus on politics. But to the extent that we do want to talk about politics here, I don't think the trick of finding some neutral historical example to argue about is going to work. First, historical examples that are obscure enough not to arouse passions one way or the other are exactly those things that most people don't know much about. Second, it's usually pretty obvious which side in the "neutral" example corresponds to the arguer's preferred side in the contemporary example, so the arguer is likely to just adopt that position, and then claim to have derived it from first principles based on a neutral example. I agree that neutral exercises can have some usefulness as they might be helpful in uncovering subtle biases in people who are sincerely trying to avoid them, but it won't get rid of the flamers.

I see politics as unimportant. For most of us, our political opinions have essentially no impact on the world. Their main effect is in our personal lives, our interactions with friends and family. On that basis, one should choose a political position that facilitates such "local" goals. There is little point in trying to be correct and accurate on large-scale political matters, other than as a bias-stretching mental exercise on a par with doing Sudoku.

While trying to avoid bitter partisan sniping is probably a good thing, I think the goal of avoiding politics is naive. Everyone is enmeshed in politics, like it or not. To deny politics is a form of political ideology itself. There seems to be a strong libertarian bias to this crowd, for instance. Libertarians seek to replace politics with markets, but that is in itself a political goal.

Another sad truth: even if we disavow responsibility for the actions of our political leaders, others will hold us responsible for them, given that we are a democracy and all. See here for some thoughts on how we are forced into group identification whether we like it or not.

Politics is not optional and if you are interested in overcoming bias I suggest that it's better to acknowledge that fact than bury it.

So true. Politics is a mind killer. The time people spend on arguing politics is time that could be spent helping to make a difference in someone's life. That is where true power is!

Arguing about politics is helping people. If it makes sense that "a bad argument gets a counterargument, not a bullet," then it makes sense that frictions among people's political beliefs should be cooled by allowing everyone to state their case. Not necessarily on this site, but as a general matter, I don't think that talking about politics is either a mind-killer or time-wasting. For me personally it's a motivator both to understand more about the facts, so that I can present arguments; to understand more about other people, so I know why they disagree; and to understand more about myself, so that I can make sure that my convictions are solid. I actually believe that trying to find a way to influence politics to become more sensible is the most I can do to make a positive difference in the lives of other people.

I just stumbled upon this blog and this post, and couldn't agree more. Hal Finney's comment is particularly good (and amounts to prior art for my recently-released Proteanist Manifesto.)

I will be updating it to reflect Hal's priority.

Haggers Barlowe

Lately I've been thinking about "mind killing politics". I have come to the conclusion that this phenomenon is pretty much present to some degree in any kind of human communication where being wrong means you or your side lose status.

It is incorrect to assume that this bias can only occurs when the topic involves government, religion, liberalism/conservatism or any other "political" topics. Communicating with someone who has a different opinion than you is sufficient for the "mind killing politics" bias to start creeping in.

The pressure to commit "mind killing politics" type biases is proportional to how much status one or one's side has to lose for being wrong in any given disagreement. This doesn't mean the bias can't be mixed or combined with other biases.

I've also noticed six factors that can increase or decrease the pressure to be biased.

1)If you are talking to your friends or people close to you that you trust then the pressure to be right will be reduced because they are less likely to subtract status from you for being wrong. Talking to strangers will increase it.

2)Having an audience will increase the pressure to be right. That's because the loss of status for being wrong is multiplied by the number of people that see you lose(each weighted for how important it is for them to consider you as having a high status).

3)If someone is considered an 'expert', the pressure to be right will be enormous. Thats because experts have special status for being knowledgeable about a topic and getting answers about it right. Every mistake is seen as reducing that expertise and proportionatly reducing the status of the expert. Being wrong to someone considered a non expert is even more painful then being wrong to an expert.

4)It is very hard psychologically to disagree with authority figures or the group consensus. Therefore "mind killing politics" biases will be replaced by other biases when there is disagreement with authority figure or the group consensus but will be amplified against those considered outside the social group.

5)People will easily spot "mind killing politics" biases in the enemy side but will deny, not notice or rationalize the same biases in themselves.

6)And finally, "mind killing politics" biases can lead to agitation(ei. triggering of the fight or flight response) which will amplify biased thinking.

Belonging to a political party lets us be lazy as the decisions are made for us..."Liberals like frogs legs. Conservatives read stories about dairy. etc."

Belonging to a political party lets us have a sense of belonging. On the other side of the coin, it gives us the sense of rivalry. Humans need rivals as much as they need comradery. "My life would be so much easier if it wasn't for those darn so-and-sos."

Belonging to a political party fills our minds with much-needed obsessions. "My life would be so much easier if it wasn't for those darn so-and-sos," (murmurred during bothered and sweaty sleep).

Belonging to a political party lets us feel we have a secret everyone is trying to figure out. "Truth is such a burden on us elites."

Belonging to a political party gives us a sense that we are impacting the world. "My party will achieve peace in the world by trampling down all those who stand peace's way."

In Artificial Intelligence, and particularly in the domain of nonmonotonic reasoning, there's a standard problem: "All Quakers are pacifists. All Republicans are not pacifists. Nixon is a Quaker and a Republican. Is Nixon a pacifist?"

What on Earth was the point of choosing this as an example? To rouse the political emotions of the readers and distract them from the main question? To make Republicans feel unwelcome in courses on Artificial Intelligence and discourage them from entering the field?

This is great.

Are you aware that you, for instance, mention Stalin in a manner that many would find quite distracting?

Do you find it at odds with your position declared in this post?

So, here's a question: why was the form of the Nixon Diamond stated as it was, and why were no links given to either formal or informal discussions of it?

The original, as near as I can see, does not use the absolute categories (always) but prefers probability statements (usually, by and large) - and indeed, that seems to be the point of the diamond

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-nonmonotonic/

If people are using absolute categories hereabouts, they're making silly arguments. Are those arguments as silly as doing a long blue/green thought experiment and never linking to the passage from Gibbon (if it's available online) or at least telling us where we can read more about the real historical example and then going on to the example, if you must?

Oh my god. I knew nothing about this blog before a friend passed me the link. I didn't carefully study the logo.

Is this actually an official project of Oxford? Where with a blog from some random folks, I would be forgiving for misstatements from formal logic and obvious omissions in citation, I'd sort of expect more from an official project of not-someone-posting-in-their-underpants.

We do still believe being on the right and wrong side of a political argument is life and death. For some, death via inadequate medical services or life as in wealth preservation. Isn't it the perfect context to evaluate bias? What we see as threatening to us and having little experience with the other side of the argument?

I simply love your quote "As with chocolate cookies, not everything that feels pleasurable is good for you. And it certainly isn't good for our hapless readers who have to read through all the angry comments your blog post inspired. " This made me have a little chuckle to myself. No cookies and whey protein for me tonight lol I will feel to terrible!!

You write "The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death."

Is there any evidence for that? That sounds much like the typical sort of sociobiologistic hypothesis which sounds so convincing that no one really thinks about it and just nods in agreement. So, are there any papers, experiments, mathematical models to back it up?

I would rather more suggest a hypothesis that it was (and is) very favorable for humans in terms of fitness to belong to a certain group of people and stick to that group - whether that group is a sports team, a class at school or a political party.

Well, I wouldn't dare to disagree with the rest of your article. Just that choosing of a political party has nothing to do with actual politics, just with sticking to a group.

Politics is a tool of the rich to keep people from watching who takes profits to the banks.

Sample: We argue over minimum wage while corporate execs pocket millions.

Humanity is lost in politics - a friend rhetorically asks: "Have you ever seen a rich person feed a hungry dog?"

Not all is lost - technology will help surface abuse - sunshine in governments.

Question: Is this machine generated?

One obvious reason why this might be the case is that the various implicit norms surrounding political discourse actively encourage tribalism and cognitive dissonance ("Hey! He's a flipflopper!") more so than in other areas of discourse where some of these pressures are lacking or in some cases (such as academia, to some extent) deliberate effort has been expended to create counter-veiling norms to these trends. As long as political discourse involves politicians and politicians owe their careers to the exercises of obfuscation, pandering and appealing to vested interests it is doubtful this trend can be corrected. As a general rule you should examine your own attitudes and if you find your view entail that those of an opposing political conviction to yourself must be actively scheming to cause damage to the country (as opposed to simply being mistaken or biased) you have probably made a mistake somewhere.

Stephen Colbert said it well on his August 15, 2011 show:

PAWLENTY (video clip): I'm gonna be ending my campaign for president. What I brought forward was I thought a rational, established, credible, ...strong record of results... but I think the audience… was looking for something different.

COLBERT: Yes. They were not looking for "rational." Rationality is the third rail of American politics. For the love of God, we eat fried butter on a stick. Does that sound like the act of a rational person?

But try to resist getting in those good, solid digs if you can possibly avoid it.

In this case, you could say it was instrumentally wrong to insert the jab into the discussion, but that assumes that the solid digs served no other purpose, like demonstrating in group credentials.

I've got a real world example of this. Daniel Dennett was lecturing on competence without comprehension (I think). But if you followed out his logic a step or two, he would appear to be getting perilously close to advocating free market policies. The next slide in his presentation had the universal "prohibited" symbol of a red circle with a red slash across it, with "Milton Friedman" slashed through. In the talk, while he lauded Darwin and Turing for recognizing competence without comprehension, he curiously left Adam Smith, who preceded both, off his pantheon of theorists.

"Zombie Bill", Halloween special educational rock song.

Boy: Woof! You sure gotta climb a lot of steps to get to this Capitol Building here in Washington. But I wonder who that sad little scrap of paper is?

I'm a dead bill
Yes, I'm a dead bill
If you’re on my side you’ll get your mind killed.
Well, it was a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It was a long, long wait
And then I died in committee,
But I know I'll eat your brain someday
At least I hope and pray that I will,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Boy: Gee, Bill, you certainly have a lust to devour people’s brains.
Bill: Well, I’m a zombie. When I started, I wasn't even political, I was just a reasonable consideration. Some folks back home forgot that policy debates should not appear one-sided, so they called their local Congressman -
Boy: - and he said, "You're right, there oughta be a law”?
No! Then he decided to rename the bill that he had already decided to submit once both parties had promised him it wouldn’t pass.
Boy: You were renamed even though your content didn’t change?
Bill: That’s right! He was going to call me the “American Job Security Free Choice Accountability Reform Reinvestment Relief Act”.
Boy: And then he decided to just call you “William”, and your nickname became “Bill”?
Bill: No, after hearing his constituents’ opinions, he decided to call me the “Aumann's Rational Bayesian Utility Anti-Bias Act!” And I became a bill, and I’ll kill your mind even though my content has some merit.

I'm a dead bill
Yes, I'm a dead bill
And I got as far as Capitol Hill.
Well, I died stuck in committee
And I'll sit here and wait
Though no one will honestly discuss or debate
Whether they should let me be a law.
Of human minds I’ll eat up my fill,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Boy: Listen to those people arguing! Is all that discussion and debate about you?
Bill: Yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones. Most bills are entirely ignored. I hope they decide to take me seriously as one argument against an army, otherwise I may starve.
Boy: Starve?
Bill: Yeah, from not eating brains. Oooh, but they’re not updating incrementally! It looks like I'm gonna eat! Now I go to the House of Representatives; they talk about me.
Boy: When they talk, then what happens?
Bill: Then I go on various media and gorge myself on the minds of the audience.
Boy: Oh no!
Bill: Oh yes!

I'm a dead bill
Yes, I'm a dead bill
They’ll never vote for me on Capitol Hill
Well, I'm off to the White House
Where I'll wait in a line
As a speech applause light
And then on some brains I’ll dine
With luck they’ll try to argue facts away.
How I hope and pray that they will,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Boy: You mean even if everyone has enough information to know you shouldn’t and won’t become a law, people still sacrifice their brains to you?
Bill: Yes! They’re debating politics as if their opinion was influential and admitting being wrong was catastrophic, using heuristics that used to work in the ancestral environment. If the content described by my label becomes political…
Boy: By that time it's very likely that you'll devour lots of minds, whenever either your content or your label is mentioned. It's easy to eat a human mind, isn't it?
Bill: Yes!

And how I hope and I pray that I will,
For today I am a zombie bill.

Congressman: Your name has become a synonym for “good” among some people, Zombie Bill! Now people won’t be able to dispassionately consider your content ever again!
Bill: BRAINS!!!

An unstudied cognitive bias is what's really responsible for political irrationality. Less Wrong could tackle politics if it recognized and managed this form of irrationality, which I term opinion-belief confusion.

To understand some biases you must understand the biological function of the relevant practices. Belief is for action; opinion is for deliberation. Belief, per the Agreement Theorem, is usually highly sensitive to the beliefs of others; opinion abstracts from such influence.

Irrationality in politics is mostly a matter of being far too confident in one's opinions, and one fallacy is paramount in causing this error: treating mere opinions as though they were one's beliefs. This confusion arises because democracy tends to promote this form of epistemic arrogance. Tackling belief-opinion confusion would allow rational discussion of politics insofar as participants can accept that on most issues their beliefs and opinions will and should differ from each other. From this recognition, it follows that the discussion of political opinion should be conducted with the requisite tentativeness and intellectual humility.

I discuss the politically important opinion-belief-confusion fallacy at: "Two kinds of belief", "Is epistemic equality a fiction?", "The distinct functions of belief and opinion", "Pathologies of belief-opinion confusion", and "Explaining deliberation".

Evolutionary psychology doesn't condemn us to political irrationality. Hunter gatherers can make rational decisions as a group regarding matters of practical concern, for example, whether and where to move the camp. (But more anthropological detail would be helpful.)

x

x

If rational thinking is about understanding and seeing true reality, how can you avoid politics as a discussion issue? It is a social practice in which every person participates. A rational analysis can take into account that "people go funny in the head" and still result in well thought out conclusions.

If I had a solid dig I would praise myself for taking it to the twelfth round, however failing to land a knock out! Congratulations on co-moderator, Mind stimulating on the variant of discussions on "Politics is a mind killer". Bravo to the thinkers and reasonable theories and offsets. I found my self returning to the original test to determine if my mind was still on track! For the most part It (my mind) got sucked in by the variant, signed up and well I'll just keep my humor to my self! Here we go!

I'll try to defend politics. I would be grateful if you debate with me. I argue that values (a generalization of morality) are comprehensible. I, thus, agree with Eliezer in the methaetics sequence. But values are different in a crucial ways to external reallity. I think that external reallity is better to reach by rationality than values. I'll think that because of that the non-rational discurse of politics is a great action. I'll take this as an example of a problem I see in this page at analizing morality. Firstly, which is the difference between values and external reality that I recall? I'll call it "coherence", I'll say external reality is objectivily (inductivily) coherent, and values are objectively incoherent. What do I mean with "coherence"? You may describe a reality in a way such that you encompass a lot of your next observations. But you not always can act in a way such almost all your values you have are considered in the act. That is you can think coherently, you can't act coherently. And it's not a problem of not enough information, or your stupidity.

Let's take two examples: The ethical paradox of a train that is going to kill three people, but you can change it's way, so it kills one guy. Would you pull it? And if it was another number? I'd argue the problem is you valorate not killing personally, but you also feel responsible for the death of more people. But this values may not be rationally compatible.

The abortion problem. You may not kill another human being. But what's a human being? It's not defined a priori, but by society. At the same time, choice is important because there's a problem in telling a woman that because she has it biollogically she might not have a career (imagine a teen pregnancy), thus degradating her life -not that the child life might be great. There is adoption, etc. You may reach dozens of arguments and contraarguments in both sides. I'm not taking a posture here. I'm just illustrating a problem.

Now, I say you can think coherently but not act coherently, why I make the difference? Ok, I think reallity is definite. Something happens or doesn't happens, right? Let's do an experiment! etc. Suppose we were rational utility maximizers. Then, there would be an answer, right? It might be difficult to achieve, but there would be an answer. But we are not. So there's not a value that is strictly better than another one? Yes, there is. The value A is better than B if it includes the reason because B was good, and something more. But because you're human, and you just can'ty fly nor create life clapping your hands, you may not have a coherent action. I might throw philosophical and sociological concepts, but I think I made myself clear. What for then it exists athe polytics, if you can't do nothing? Because there is society.

And that's the point where I wanted to reach. In this page the individual rationality is greatly discovered. But there's not only the individual. Now, if you make a tiny parallelism, you can see that as a person may learn bayensianically, a society may learn the same way. It’s not too difficult to show it, it just mean that social progress exists, and I think you’d agree on that. No, “not being political” doesn’t exists. It just means that your policy is to keep social relationships the way they are. Because you let the individual change, but you don’t incentivize the society change as a whole. In my country this is called “conservative view”. So, sumarizing, I’m recalling one of the many times that a nonrational discurse is morally right. This case is when by defending yourself at the same time your opponent, you let the society to unravel posibilities to act. Politics is not war, politics is peaceful, is human. It’s almost impossible to appasionate about many ideologies because they are strongly incoherent between them. You may not be able to tax some people and not taxing at the same time. But the problem in not appasionate at something beyond reason is that you may not overcome the problems a society has, such as poverty, illness or uneducation. You would limit your solution to techical solutions, barring the possibility to societal solutions. Your country has houses without people and people without houses. That’s irrational. That’s a problem. There are others discurses, such as the artistic discurse that are great and respectful. But at the objective of not writing too long, I’ll stop here.

PS: I’m saying you may not use only rational arguments. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be open. Openness is more fundamental than rationallity.

Can we get a citation for "The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death."

I am just interested in how this was concluded. I have always been a little skeptical of evolutionary psychology type things, which, is what this sounds like.

it seems discussing politics is particularly difficult here because under the article "what do we mean by rationality," less wrong members generally reject a non-normative meaning of rationality. This presumes a rational answer, as a general matter, with respect to any particular issue, is necessarily a normative conclusion -- i.e. there is an ideal/correct answer. I appreciate the approach, but if the point of is the "think more clearly/correctly," how can we reject the possibility that there is no normative answer? This is particularly important as there is increasing uncertainty as to what the correct decision should be. Politics is a perfect example -- generally deals with policies in the FUTURE for which there is no good comparable.

The commentators all evaluate politics from the viewpoint of the decision makers -- and describe how our biases and such are too overwhelming to apply rationality to politics -- perhaps the flaw instead is trying to create distinct answers for issues that do not have one. Going "funny in he head" may be a sign that the chosen framework is inappropriate.

I'm not sure what the right way to ask for policy clarification is, so I'll try this.

In a recent discussion in comments, I was alerted to the 'standing agreement on LW not to discuss politics'. It was in a context I found perplexing (the question as to whether political theory is something worth keeping in philosophy departments) http://lesswrong.com/lw/frp/train_philosophers_with_pearl_and_kahneman_not/842a

There are a number of ways that I think rationality relates (mostly in a broad sense) to political theory. This is a common thread among philosophers, including some fairly contemporary and quite good ones.

I've started trying to participate in this forum partly because I wanted to bring them up here. I've gotten the impression from a friend who is involved in the community that these ideas are relatively unknown here but would be pertinent or at least interesting.

Is posting in this way off limits by some community norm? Or is discussion of political theory (as it relates to reason and rationality) ok as long as it is not deliberately inflammatory? (The latter seems to be the spirit of this post)

Thanks for any clarification.

In logic, most examples are from politics because the most salient examples of logical fallacies are from politics. So that's probably why the Nixon example was about politics, even though it wasn't necessary.

Very neat and thought provoking.

One of the most farcical instances of this tragedy is when people succeed in using biased and alienating political examples when they're trying to explain the how politics is the mind killer - for example, [Vox's recent post on How Politics makes us Stupid. (link goes to my blog post on the subject, which discusses the underlying Vox article.)

Is there anything else than politics to protect us against the emergence of an evil super AI?

Isn't contemporary political cynicism the real "Mind-Killer"?

I do believe this post uses a limited definition of politics, although quite legitimately. Most people tend to essentialize polititics, for example, a policy will be considered left/right wing because of its proponents rather than its content. However, discussing the internal rationality of a politico-philosophical system is interesting, but it implies a redefinition of politics as a cost-benefits analysis of the use of a particular model of reality for the purpose of construction of laws.

In such case, the "What about the Nazis" argument is no longer a problem, because you can prove that the politico-philosophical system of national socialism has some benefits (nazi Germany became a huge economical power) for a huge cost (genocide, war, nationalism, etc...).

Discussing a particular subject is therefore a problem, but discussing the models is interesting in a rational debate.

This assumes that a model of reality is necessary to build laws. I permit myself this assumption because a) laws are part of the system called the Law b) the Law cannot deal in specifics (there cannot be a law directed to a specific individual, or a list of specific individuals) c) therefore the Law is a model of the society as it should be. d) such a model cannot be constructed without knowledge of how society is, and why, and how it goes from one state to another. e) This knowledge itself must be a model to be usable.

Supporting evidence for this is in the news this week

You know the only thing worse than arguing about politics, is arguing why one shouldn't argue about politics.

Seriously though, while this post is/was important, I still think there should have been a request to not debate politics in this post's comment section, because you know, explaining why it's bad to debate politics in science blogs apparently wasn't enough.

SPAAAAAAAAAM

Hi,

I am a bit surprised that contemporary politics is kind of suppressed here (by FAQ). Well, I understand the reason that it is a controversial topic in society. I get that people tend to be biased in it. This is just because it is such a wide topic and lot of people have a political standpoint. I agree that it is probably better to train rationality on less known topics.

So, what is confusing me?

I think that there is another topic with a similar controversy level in society: Religion. I can see the analogy. In my view, arguing with a religious person is similar to arguing with a political "opponent". Both topics are very complex (from philosophical standpoints through world issues to daily life). There can be many misinterpretations, lot of uncertainty, and other problems.

Isn't the "Quaker Republican" example an argument against discussing religion as well? I think that the article could be simply modified. "A Christian may read your blog so be careful and do not address the philosophy as a whole piece", "you should rather discuss ancient religions", and so on.

Despite of it, I did not met a warning before promoting atheism here. Why?

I can see a correlation. By surveys, readers of the site mostly consider themselves as atheists but their political leanings are colorful (social democratic, liberal, libertarian). Yet, the causality is not so clear for me. What do you think? Would the site end up with a similar "rational" political consensus if political discussion went through?

"Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy."

I first read this article 6 years ago, back when I knew nothing about politics and had never had a political discussion with anyone before. I was incredibly puzzled by it. I thought, "Maybe that kind of black-and-white thinking and argumentation exists for people who become invested in trivial things like sports teams, but surely that's not really how most of society talks about something like politics. My friends are scientists. They know better than that."

Fast forward to 6 years later, today. I've learned that the article is painfully accurate. It doesn't matter whether my peer has a PhD in biology or a master's in chemistry. No matter what their apparent commitment to rational thinking, almost all of them denounce a political party in the US for (sometimes, they claim, singlehandedly) causing the failings of the entire country. 

I feel afraid to even express that sometimes I feel that views from the political party my peers hate seem reasonable. This is even when I don't agree with the ideas. Even when I don't claim that the other party is right. I'm afraid to even say, "this idea from the other political party might have a grain of truth to it" because their hatred is so strong and their reaction to such words from me is so immediate and negative. They claim to be open to other ideas, but as soon as they disagree, they start a long in-depth explanation of why the opposing ideas are completely wrong, sometimes without letting the speaker introducing the ideas even finish their sentence. Whereas in any other subject, my peers would praise me for considering other viewpoints and carefully weighing evidence, when it comes to politics, even considering the other side seems to actually feel treasonous to them. 

I feel saddened, remembering my skepticism from then. The world is not nearly as rational as I hoped it was when I was 6 years younger.

It's just a means to an end for most people. The end is solidarity and gaining social status and self-esteem within their solidarity circle. Are they really making any real impact through their participation? Even if they do "research," they are just extracting results that others have gathered. They don't actually have any access to the institutions directly related to those issues, whether it's CDC or DoD. If they did have a role in those institutions, they wouldn't be participating in layman discussion outside of their profession in the first place. Do you really see professional politicians or medical researchers directly engaging the public regarding their job or research on social media outside of a few instances of Reddit AMA?

Public layer of Politics is not rational in any way, its designed to be deceptive. In my opinion you cannot expect a rational political conversation as a voter. All the rational talks are happening behind the closed doors, while general public indulges into irrational political conversations.

Maybe its not ideal, but this is what it is in current state of the world. One way or another we will evolve through it. 

In war, this manifests as a Pascal's Mugging.

Is there a name for the following paradox:

Country A says "We have to fight Country B. Yes some people will die. But if we do nothing, Country B will attack us and 10 times more people will die!"

Country B says "We have to fight Country A. Yes some people will die. But if we do nothing, Country A will attack us and 10 times more people will die!"

Even though both countries seem to want as few deaths as possible, their actions combine (and escalate) to cause more deaths.

The more immediate reason for why politics is the mind-killer is because politics is still a matter of life and death today. Even if it weren't, so many people still believe it is and that causes them to act in hostile ways to protect themselves from each other. And that, ironically, causes politics to become a matter of life and death for real even if it weren't already.

To clarify in case that's not clear, people are angry at and scared of each other over RECENT traumatic experiences in their personal lives which they systematically inflicted upon each other across their political divides.

That's what makes it impossible to have an intelligent and coherent conversation with them about any people and ideas which they might consider "on the other side". 

It's not just genetic evolution, like the above post seems to imply. Changes in our ancestors' genomes influenced our ancestors' behavior, and so the environmental impact of our ancestors' behavior changed accordingly. The resulting changes in our ancestors' environments led to changes in the life experiences our ancestors went through in those environments. 

Or in other words, the environment evolves in tandem with the genes of species which live in it. Just because genes are easier to track and describe than environments doesn't mean they're more important than environments when it comes to explaining phenomena in human psychology like the "Politics is the Mindkiller" effect.

Also, to say that genetic evolution is the cause of our human neighbors' behavior around politics today is like saying that the Big Bang is the cause for the existence of our planet's Moon. Technically true, but since the Big Bang caused everything else in our universe too it's not really specific enough to be especially useful when it comes to explaining the origin of OUR planet's Moon in particular.

Likewise, the environmental experiences and genes of modern humanity's ancestors caused the behavior of all of modern humanity, but that doesn't make it especially useful for explaining why YOUR next-door neighbor in particular is failing to talk and think coherently about politics.

I've tried to explain all of these exact points to other rationalists and scientists many times, but your minds tended to go funny in the head and shut down, you stopped listening and you interrupted me whenever I've tried to say all of this, and reacted with extreme hostility when I've tried to continue explaining anyway.

Politics kills your minds just as easily as everyone else's despite your admirable efforts. It's just that the issues which are most political for you are different than other peoples'.

But how should one deal with the desire to publicly disagree with political speakers who are biased? I feel a big urge to criticize and maybe even shame people for wrong reasoning. I'd like to note that I often don't mind the conclusion they came to, but if the reasoning is vulgarly wrong, I really feel I want to tell them and everyone else they're an idiot.

What is the difference between studying Politics and studying History?

Some people with certain identities are actively politicized throughout history, not understanding politics and thus not understanding the memetics of the social world which has the power to enforce rules upon you is not advisable if you're a person with one such identity.

Should I attack the anti-trans legislature attacking many in my community today, in the year 2023? Should I defend the rights and freedoms of undocumented workers given their productivity per capita when adjusted for wages? Should I have participated in the 2014 protests against the Venezuelan government?

There are questions of values, the responses to these last two questions depend on ought statements, not ones which the study of natural sciences can answer as of yet unless you choose a particular Utility Function humanity should abide by like the sum of all nations GDP. "Should I defend x group of people as they are being critized with ideas born from the status quo?" is not a question with a universal answer. I believe all people provide equal value to the richness of our history; therefore I believe I have to defend communities with proportionally less financial power so long as they aren't harming other communities. What if I believe that world is a pure meritocracy instead? Wouldn't it be fair to not care about such groups if all they need to do is put a little effort? What about disabled people? Do they deserve less for being less able to function in a world without accomodations for us?

Politics is not just about ideological conflict, but also about the rules for collaboration we follow, and under the current globalized economy we decided to use mostly free market competition even with industries like insurance which suffer from problems like adverse selection.

As such I think there's room for deep intellectual inquiry in the realm of political science iff we decide to analyze things materially and not just ideologically and we decide to analyze and actually criticize the contents of people's ideas rather than the person.

"In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death." - this is a pretty strong statement to make with no evidence to back it up.

Your issue seems to be with tribalism, not politics.

I think the title could be a bit more specific like - "involving political party in science discussions might not be productive", or something similar.  If using the word "politics", it would be crucial to define what "politics" here mean or refer to. The reason I say this is "politics" might not be just about actual political party's power dynamics, but also includes general policy making, strategies, and history that aim to help individuals in the society, and many other aspects. These other types of things included in the word "politics" is crucial to consider when talking about many things (I think it is a little bit similar to precedents in law). 

(Otherwise, if this article is about not bringing things all to political party level, I agree. I have observed that many things in the US at least are debated over political party lines, and if a political party debates about A, people reversely attribute some general social topics A to "political values or ideology", which is false to me.)

A recent Veritasium video talks about how people having the same level of numeracy perform worse at mathematical reasoning problems if the problem statement involves politically charged topics.

 

There's something called plausible reasoning (or statistical inference) that is well explained in Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (by E.T. Jaynes). It's something that happens everyday in our minds when we try to evaluate the plausibility ("how probable is this") of a thing. For example, if I take the free coffee available at my work, I'm never 100% sure that it's coffee inside the pot. When I pour it in my glass, the liquid is brownish, so I get more confident, but I'm still not 100% sure it's coffee.

The same happens when we see a politician talking on TV. We often say "nah, he is a leftist I don't give a darn about what's he's gonna say".

Of course we could also have a conversation about whether these inferences save us time (and are indeed useful). In fact, one could argue that not hearing what the leftist is going to say, saves us time and this time can be allocated to another useful activity.

Note: I said leftist, but I could have said "right-wing", or "center". Please don't be offended!