Comment by schoen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by schoen | Hacker News Reader

Trying to identify a few of the most ethically controversial premises:

* Government is ethically responsible for adverse results of acting to change society (or of limiting people's choices), but not for those of failing to do so.

* People's strongly-held hypothesis and intuitions about what might make society better are so unreliable that they're typically at least as likely to make society worse. True or reliable ideas of this kind are exceptionally rare and take a long time to develop.

* It isn't especially important for government to do what people in general think or say they want, because beliefs are so tenuous or unreliable or have so many unintended consequences.

Some ideas that might still be useful to people who reject some or all of those premises:

* Almost everyone believes that they are right and that their values will make things better, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

* Almost everyone believes that their own values and beliefs are well-supported or obvious, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

* Apparently well-thought-out political programs and proposals often fail or backfire in some way.

* (Not so explicit here, but sort of alluded to in passing, and found in similar writers) The ability to diagnose or describe a problem well isn't necessarily the same thing as the ability to propose a workable or effective solution to that problem.

Edit: compare David Simon's view at

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-ca...

> I'm not a Marxist in the sense that I don't think Marxism has a very specific clinical answer to what ails us economically. I think Marx was a much better diagnostician than he was a clinician. He was good at figuring out what was wrong or what could be wrong with capitalism if it wasn't attended to and much less credible when it comes to how you might solve that.

* Some problems could be extremely intractable or only solvable at very high cost. Some changes that lots of people agree are desirable might still be out of reach in some sense; some outcomes that lots of people agree are bad may be beyond those people's power to avert or mitigate very substantially, even if they passionately agree that those things are bad.

I think these two are the 'real' crux of the matter:

* Almost everyone believes that they are right and that their values will make things better, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

* Almost everyone believes that their own values and beliefs are well-supported or obvious, even people who strongly disagree with each other.

These two things are incredibly difficult for people to come to terms with. The corollary to these, which in fact leads to the real problems is:

* Almost everyone finds it extremely difficult to believe that those who hold beliefs or a belief system fundamentally at odds with their own could mean just as well, or even more challenging, be equally 'right' in the context of that system. That is, "there's more than one way to skin a cat".

I've been thinking about this lately, and one of the problems is that most politics and government can be boiled down to tribalist behaviour and gross generalization. Us vs. Them. I defend this solutions because they work and are the ones I've always have believed with my pears. The guy in front of me is wrong because (cherrypick some obvious and probably true examples) and doesn't have a clue. Government could better be performed if done similary to a doctor prescribing to a patient, today you need this treatment, but maybe in a year you have improved enough and you need a touch of the opposite one, and then we have to try something new with this other problem.

But current believes don't let politicians try this (I don't think they even believe it's possible), and even if they tried we voters wouldn't trust this kind of "changing sides".

If X policy worked so well till now, why I'm not going to apply it to every problem we have or imagine we have?

Of course it's more complex than this (as it's just a generalization) but I have not seen this said in too many places.

Historically, most governance switches between "business as usual" and "urgent crisis" without much gradient. This gives the appearance of stability most of the time as most of the political effort in the business as usual scenario is behind the scenes, trading horses, serving the high bidders, driving a wedge on an issue to create a new support base, or shutting down challengers. But when a crisis hits, everyone's plans go out the window and chaos ensues. When it finally settles, there is a new order and a new set of policy issues, not always for the better.

What we have at this moment, across many nations, is a set of crises that none of the existing governments have the resolve or imagination to solve. That's why the parties are tearing themselves up - they are realigning everything.

At ground level this manifests as partisan politics in part because the remnants of the old platforms are in do-or-die mode; with no stable middle to appeal to, they have to pick a place to move to, and it is going to be left or right of their old position.

> I've been thinking about this lately, and one of the problems is that most politics and government can be boiled down to tribalist behaviour and gross generalization. Us vs. Them.

The more I learn about history, and see how things like tribalism were the driving factor in many decisions, the more I see the same in our current world. I'm not going to get into politics, but: We have a tendency to look into the past and think "How did those crazy people ever behave that way?!?" and then turn around and do the same exact thing "But our world is different! Our enemies really are the bad guys this time!"

We really are just a group of big, technologically advanced tribes, fighting for perceived scarcity of resources. The scariest thing about learning history just how much nothing changes.

The scariest thing about learning history just how much nothing changes.

It's changed a lot. Several thousand years ago, we realized that having a king solves a lot of problems, such as tribal warfare, and squabbles between small groups of people. Pax Romana it might be called, although it was found on a smaller scale before that.

The Greeks appreciated the power of a monarch, but didn't like to be told what to do, and their emphasis on individual freedom eventually led to democracy like the Roman senate. Unfortunately, the roman senate couldn't handle changing demographics very well, and became indolent, corrupt, and useless, so a dictator was an improvement.

Throughout the middle ages, philosophers put a lot of thought into the idea of, "How to find the best monarch?"

Eventually the United States came up with an idea of how to balance the power of state with individual freedom, and put some procedures in place to handle demographic changes, learning from the Roman's failures.

Learning takes centuries, but it definitely happens. The improvements to the legal system since Sumerian times is notable as well.

I didn't mean to sound so pessimistic there, and I could have worded it better. I agree we have learned a lot. I think things have gotten much better. My day-to-day life is amazing compared to most of history.

But I stand by the statement in the area of: In many ways, we are just large tribes, fighting each other for stupid, selfish reasons. If you abstract things away enough, we may be different, but we still act the same.

That's kind of the essence of political science though, right? You have different people, with different desires....how can their differences be reconciled? There is no right or wrong here, just different preferences.

In theory yes. But the implementation of reconciling those differences a lot of right or wrong can happen. That's how wars, institutionalized bigotry, etc can happen.

Cf. G.K. Chesterton: "The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com