How to calibrate your political beliefs

Once you're in a position to actually influence policy, then maybe it makes sense to have opinions about policy.

How does anyone manage to acquire a position to actually influence policy? From what I can tell, people of my acquaintance who have done this, have begun with some opinions about policy ... and, indeed, have sought positions that accord with their preëxisting policy opinions.

Once you're in a position to actually influence policy, then maybe it makes sense to have opinions about policy.

TDT/UDT-type reasoning makes this a little less straightforward. The question isn't, "Am I personally in a position to influence policy?". The question is more like, "Consider the collection of people whose opinions on policy are logically correlated with my own. Are these people, in the aggregate, in a position to influence policy?".

Is this general advice that you would also give to someone who, say, expressed an interest in learning about quantum gravity, or do you think there something especially harmful about political beliefs?

Also, it seems there should be ways to combat privileging the question other than abstaining from political belief entirely. That seems like a rather radical (and somewhat defeatist) solution.

Having a sufficiently strong opinion about policy may influence your decision whether you try to get into a position to influence policy in the first place. There is more than one "power" hierarchy, you cannot just get more powerful in general and then equally influence any sort of policy. Sometimes you'll need to decide in advance.

Similar to a high school student discovering FAI and sufficiently caring to plan to get into a position to influence FAI research most efficiently.

Once you're in a position to actually influence policy, then maybe it makes sense to have opinions about policy.

I'm not sure that makes sense in a representative democracy.

Generally speaking, things tend to change when a significant majority of people first form a specific opinion about an issue, care about that issue a great deal, and communicate that in such a way as to both influence other voters and to influence the politicians. In that sense, everyone is in a position to influence policy in some small way.

I understand that from an economic viewpoint, it might not make sense to expend energy to form a proper opinion if you're going to have minimal influence over it, but if that attitude became widespread, would our form of government continue to function at all?

Conversely, if you're not in a position to actually influence policy, you're better off optimizing your political statements and beliefs by their social usefulness. Embracing the mindkill, in other words. If making fun of George W. Bush helps you be more popular in San Francisco or NYC, or making fun of Obama makes you more popular in %small_town, then why not?

Both strategies might end up producing the same outcome. Define a "Certified Political Belief" as a belief which satisfies the above standards. In my own case, I don't actually have any strong political beliefs (>90% confidence) which I would claim are Certified (except maybe "liberal democracy is a good thing").

In fact, a good exercise would be to take your strongest political beliefs, actually write down which academic articles you've read that support your position, and then go do a quick test (with a third-party referee) to see whether you're ideologically Turing-capable. This sounds like a good way to get feedback to help you calibrate.

It does make for boring company in certain circumstances, though, and having well-thought out political positions is high-status, despite the mindkilling involved.

Although, I suppose, if you didn't live in a community that engaged in political opinion status games, this would be the way to go.

Good point. Do you think the ideological Turing-capability requirement helps to mitigate this danger, and if so, how much does it help?

You can't accurately restate gibberish.

Good point. If someone appears to be emitting gibberish on a subject, but seems to be a reasonably functional member of society (i.e. is probably not floridly psychotic), and there's nothing about the structure of the subject that seems to license gibberish (e.g. a subject where dreams or psychedelic visions are treated as unquoted evidence) this may indicate that you simply don't understand that subject and should learn more before attempting to judge their statements.

For instance, I would expect that a person who had no higher math would consider correct statements in category theory to be indistinguishable from gibberish.

Academic papers are what get's published, not what's true. The difference is particularly pronounced for political topics.

Right, it's a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.

I would agree with you if the purity of the test were the goal, but my understanding is that the ideological turing test is a means to an end, that end being both people working together to steelman both sides of the debate. Once it has been established that each person fully understands the strongest version of both sides, a true debate can begin.

I've seen a number of disputes of fact on this matter. It's likely that these aren't usually true rejections of gay marriage, but I doubt all the people who express these concerns are straight-out lying. This article seems sincere for example.

• People agree that gay marriage will increase the number of same-sex couples raising children. Is having a pair of opposite-sex caretakers crucial for a child's well-being?

• Will allowing gay marriage increase the prevalence of open marriages?

• Will allowing gay marriage increase STD prevalence?

• Will allowing gay marriage decrease the rate of marriage overall?

I think that a person pretending to have a view X -- if they are able to do it well -- has a greater chance to become a leader than a person who really has the view X. The pretending person is more free to optimize for signalling. And the internet reduces some costs usually coming with real-life signalling, but our instincts are not calibrated to discount that.

If you learn to play the ideological turing test well, you know the "correct" (best for signalling) answers, and you can always use them. A real believer would at some moment diverge from the optimum path. Also a real believer would hesitate to lie to their own "tribe", while for a pretender everything is just a game. So at some critical moment the real believer will show their weakness, and the pretender can chide them for their lack of faith, getting higher status within the group. (Even if the smartest members of the group can see through this move and become suspicious, there will be a huge peer pressure on them.)

In real life people could be judged by their actions, for example how they live, who are they friends with, etc. It could be costly to avoid everything that sends a bad signal to the group, and to spend time mostly with other tribe members. But on internet, nobody knows what you do in the real life. And you can use a new identity for your group membership.

On the other hand, merely understanding the positions and arguments of the group may be not enough to pass the ideological turing test. Because group members can be recognized by more than just having the right ideology. You need to understand the jargon; understand and be able to make references to knowledge shared by group, which could be very large. Especially if you want to become (or pretend to be) a high-status member.

For example, if you pretend to be a Christian in a debate about abortion, and somewhere during the debate it shows that you never heard about e.g. Jesus walking on water, it becomes evidence that you are a fake Christian. Although walking on water is technically unrelated to abortions. So you can fail the test for an unrelated piece of data. There can be thousands of such pieces, and the group may use them to recognize their members. Learning all those pieces, that is a cost you can't completely avoid even online. (Good google skills may save the day sometimes, but won't protect you against the unknown unknowns.)

I recall vaguely reading about two economists (with different views) in a game where they would answer some questions as if they were each the other.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Also keep in mind that the system is sufficiently complicated that it won't always be easy to see that the cause of problem Y was change X.