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Comment by Arainach | Hacker News Reader

This article is a long-winded philosophical musing that misses the core point:

You can only not care about politics if you are incredibly priviliged. Period.

If one of the main parties running wants to prevent you from marrying the person you love, you can't just be apolitical. If one of the parties running wants to allow police to disproportionally harass, arrest, and kill people who look like you, you can't just be apolitical. If you're poor, struggling to pay your bills, and one of the parties wants to add new hoops to jump through to claim any welfare or healthcare, you can't just be apolitical.

If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical.

The only way to truly "not care" about politics is both to be very privileged and very selfish.

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Furthermore, if you live on earth, and one of the main parties wants to let the planet warm uncontrollably... you might think you can not care, but you'll probably dislike the consequences in 30 years.

This seems backwards -- anecdotally, it feels like the most politically active people I know are doing quite well for themselves. In contrast, those who are working harder to make ends meet seem more likely to be apolitical.

There is some data to back this up: https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf

Only the most privileged people have any reason to really care about politics, because only the most privileged have political power.

The less privileged you are, the less point caring about politics. The least privileged have no political power at all. The less privileged are affected by political decisions but they don’t care about the politics per se, instead they care about how the effects of politics touch their lives (through laws, policy or practice.)

Edit: In a democracy it is our responsibility to care about politics. However, it is a tragedy of the commons in that as an individual, time spent on politics is probably mostly wasted, given the amount of political power we control as an individual (assuming that political knowledge doesn’t give you much other benefit). A large percentage of the world’s population has even less power than the right to vote or otherwise be politically involved.

Privileged people always cared about politics. That is how you stay privileged. Regardless of context and type of society - whether it is mini society of a company or state or some group. You gain and keep privileges by engaging in politics.

Eh, just because you'd benefit from something that can only be achieved politically, doesn't mean you have to do the work.

This is a classic free-rider situation. I mean, I'd like house prices to be lower by increasing the supply in high demand areas. But I haven't actually done anything towards that.

I am interested to discover from my karma change whether the following opinion is an unpopular one; it certainly is becoming increasingly unspeakable in the sense of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html.

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I think you're drawing a false dichotomy here, especially with "If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical.".

One could be consumed with agony about all the things you mention, and still believe that it is better to focus on other things. The mere fact that a problem exists doesn't mean you must drop everything else to go and fix it, especially such a large and intractable problem as "a third of the population unfathomably has a worldview totally incompatible with my own". You may instead choose to solve a different problem where you think you have an actual chance of making progress.

For example, I am of the LessWrong school, and I consider one of the greatest sources of suffering to be the fact that people die; but I am not reskilling into the field of human longevity, and I don't think (?) society would excoriate me for that. And since I have chosen not to work on that particular infinite well of suffering, I have to not care about it so much, for the sake of my own sanity and my ability to work on other things. If mere knowledge of the existence of an infinite well of suffering obliges you to expend huge amounts of effort on fixing it, woe betide you when you discover another one! If you want to put everything you have into solving one of the problems, then you simply have to weep, put aside the others, and try not to let the constant agony affect your efforts in the place where you think you can actually help.

It certainly sucks hard that many people have their country's political decisions thrust in their faces every hour of every day. Come to that, 58mm people die every year, which is an overwhelming tragedy that most people manage to ignore most of the time so that they can actually get anything done. But I have the choice of investing effort into fixing only a very limited number of problems, and I do not judge someone who runs the numbers and thinks they can do more good by not pouring all their effort into the impossible ones. I stress again that politics really is extremely hard (just look at the US election results to see how much popular support there is for both of the two highly incompatible sides of the USA election).

You are building false dichotomy between being apolitical and "drop everything else to go and fix it".

Well, in that case could you better define "apolitical"? For example, could you give some indication towards a maximal level of political inactivity you would accept before someone becomes evil? I literally don't know how to answer that question, especially if "not being political is political", the self-referential nature of which makes it rather difficult to know.

1.) Typical definition of apolitical is: not interested or involved in politics. Or, having aversion to politics.

There is large gap between that and "dropping everything rushing to fix everything, being activist".

2.) "not being political is political" refers to the fact that even if you are completely apathetic, your apathy has political consequences - favors this or that political side. Which is why some people are strongly promoting apathy and others are strongly opposing it.

3.) All of this is standard English. Performative "I don't understand common English words and expressions" is effort and is also part of politics.

I promise it's not performative. I am part of another Internet community where "apolitical" means "is not ringing round door to door trying to persuade people to vote in a certain way", and of course I have a strong aversion to politics in that sense. Aside from anything else, it seems highly arrogant to expect that I am somehow so much more right than the other half of the population, in the field of politics which I have no special understanding of at all. I'm not promoting apathy; I am recognising that I have no reason to believe I'm more right than everyone else here, so I will contribute my vote and I will try to understand things, but I won't try and persuade others. On the other hand, I will try and persuade others in areas where I do feel that I have unusually good knowledge.

I really am highly uncertain about what people generally expect these days from words like "apolitical", especially because I perceive this as being one of the areas where there is very strong social pressure to Not Seem Like An Arsehole and so there is no clarification in the downward direction. I think the meaning of these words has been changing quite rapidly, even over the last five years or so.

Being apolitical is an attitude, not an outcome. It is not actually possible to be apolitical in outcome. All your choice of doing or not doing have political impact. That's just the nature of existing with others.

When discussing the attitude, the question is about how much you care. If you are apolitical, you don't care enough about other people's political issues to put any active effort behind or against it. You can pretend to care, like I really care about gay rights, but don't have time to help. That only means you care more about other things, and not enough about gay rights. Someone might challenge your pretentions here, for example, they could say well isn't there anything you can do if you do care? Donate? Make sure you vote for people who support gay rights? Retweet pro gay rights information? Put a sign up on your lawn? Or just tell others in casual conversations why you think gay rights is important, etc.

But if you did any of this, you'd be political, not apolitical. So you'd need to say, actually I don't care about gay rights, and I'm not going to do anything about it. Only then are you truly apolitical to the issue of gay rights. But that choice will have a political impact either for or against gay rights, so while your attitude is apolitical, your inaction still is.

> I perceive this as being one of the areas where there is very strong social pressure to Not Seem Like An Arsehole and so there is no clarification in the downward direction

This is just you being now personally affected by a political matter. As more and more group interactions make you feel like an Arsehole about the topic of being apolitical, you begin to suffer personally. This in turn will motivate you to stop being apolitical on this very issue, and here you are actively commenting about it and trying to influence other's opinion of it. And this is where certain people are saying, you cannot be apolitical if you arn't privileged. As soon as the current politics start to affect you personally in a negative way, your intrinsic motivation to become politically active goes up. Now you're commenting, because it affects you only slightly, if it became a huge problem you might start knocking door to door about it.

> Being apolitical is an attitude, not an outcome.

Crux successfully found, thanks! In all the interactions I can remember where this has come up, this has not been made clear to me, because people usually equivocate between attitude and action, or are unclear which of the two they are referring to. Even in the original comment, I think I misunderstood what was being said:

> If one of the main parties running wants to prevent you from marrying the person you love, you can't just be apolitical.

I interpreted this as "you are compelled to act"; apparently in fact it means the much more obviously-correct "you can't avoid having a political opinion".

> "If you have any empathy and care about any people in those positions, you can't just be apolitical."

I always assumed apolitical implied having apathy, which is the opposite of empathy. Thus this statement seems logically coherent to me. If you have empathy about something, how can you be apathetic towards it? That's contradictory.

I've always taken it to mean "not acting politically"; possibly I take it this way because I'm a consequentialist.

This is the problem when we use words! To me, "to be political" means "to act politically", and definitely not "to hold political views"; so "to be apolitical" means "to act without regard to politics". Possibly I'm just using a different definition from everyone else.

Oxford English: "not interested or involved in politics". Even that is ambiguous; does it mean "at least one of 'uninterested in politics' or 'uninvolved in politics'", or does it mean "neither interested nor involved in politics"?

The problem is that in a democracy, you cannot "not act politically". Even holding political views will influence what you tell others, and who you vote for or if you choose not to vote. All that is acting politically, since you're participating in the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power.

So I take it being apolitical in a democracy is akin to saying you support the majority who voted.

That's because you can't act without regards to politics, you are forced to abide by the political rules and laws, and even your choice to not vote is a choice for the majority who voted.

So like, the most apolitical thing you could do would be never talk politics, never let any of your value judgment known to others about any topic, and randomly cast a vote at every elections.

> So I take it being apolitical in a democracy is akin to saying you support the majority who voted.

I'm not sure that's true. After all, in a normal decade the majority political party changes at least once, in both the USA and the UK. With or without my action, I really don't know who would win an election that was called right this instant in the UK; I really don't know which side I'm supporting by not undertaking political activity right now. The default state of affairs without my action is not "continue as we currently are indefinitely"; the default is "every few years, change the government"!

I do vote; voting is the system we have collectively landed on for aggregating preferences across the population, and I do have preferences. But if I did not vote (and am therefore implicitly "voting for" the majority), I don't see how that could be reasonably viewed as a political act, because I don't know who I'm "voting" for as I do it!

> After all, in a normal decade the majority political party changes at least once

Ya, but that's because the majority of who votes changes over time, or changes who they vote for over time.

That means for any given elections, if you don't vote, you're voting for whoever the majority of voters will vote for.

This is still a clear choice in some sense. Just imagine a scenario, I'm going to order pizza and ask you what toppings you want, you say: "I'll have whatever you'll have." This is you casting your support for my choice of toppings, even though you do not know what toppings you're supporting. I can make it more complicated too, imagine there's two other persons and you say: "I'll have whatever you three decide to have." Now you're supporting whatever means me and the other two persons have for deciding, if that's a majority's vote, then that will be what you're siding with.

So not voting is the act of siding with the winner of the vote, in the sense it isn't a neutral position. Sure not voting does not actually require any physical action, like you don't have to deregister yourself or anything, you could just stay still until it's done. But it is an act in the sense of having it influence the outcome of the elections.

The only way to be neutral would be to vote, but pick at random the choice. That would still impact a given election, but over the aggregate of elections over time it should approximate neutrality.

So now everyone who didn't vote in USA sided with Biden and are therefore empathetic individuals caring about BLM, gay rights, the poor etc? Doesn't seem like Arainach's point works then.

In practice they did side with the majority who voted, but in attitude that doesn't mean they are empathetic. In some other thread of convo I explain that being apolitical is an attitude, not an outcome. Your attitude can be apathetic towards political causes, but the outcome of your apathy will still be political in supporting the majority who voted.

Oh, by the way - talking about politics is definitely something I avoid. I grew up in a culture that was strongly in favour of being friends with people who are different from you, and this is one of the ways I try and achieve that (I have at least one friendship which I think would end if we started talking about politics, unless I were extremely careful and chose the right moment and so on). My friends generally know roughly what political directions I lean in, but I know a couple of things: I probably won't be able to change someone's mind on a political issue, and it's nevertheless important to have friends who have different politics from my own.

In fact, my general uncertainty regarding political action has largely stemmed from that sort of thing. For example, I personally know people who are rabidly in favour of Trump and people who are rabidly against him, and I know those people are all reasonable in other regards. This is what makes me so unsure that I'm right: of course I have an opinion, but I personally know reasonable people who differ. I really do not know whether a given political action is right; reasonable people can clearly be wrong about politics, even granting that I am a reasonable person! This is why voting is good in principle (though not necessarily in current implementation): it allows us to aggregate the knowledge and opinions of many uncertain participants.

To what extent is it worth risking a friendship by acting? That's something else on which otherwise-reasonable people genuinely differ - some will say "if a person holds evil views then you should expunge them from your life", and some will say "we are more alike than we are unalike". Of course, if a friendship is nice and solid, with good truth-seeking norms around discussing controversial things, then that kind of conversation is much less risky and so I'd be much more likely to hold it; but good epistemological norms aren't something I can impose on others (it takes two to tango). The safest way to do something I am quite confident is right (maintain friendships with people who are unlike me) is to avoid discussing politics. There is clear value in at least dropping hints of my own politics, so that my friends who disagree can realise that they have a friend who disagrees; but I fear that in some cases there is a rather tenuous social contract in place, which will pop like a bubble under excessive scrutiny.

This is the only policy I have yet found which is immune to [scissor statements](https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/): to recognise such statements as being scissors, on which reasonable people may reasonably differ, and to mutually agree to avoid them unless you're in a particularly hygienic epistemological environment.

I think it's quite healthy to agree to disagree with certain people. We all need to learn to coexist. If both parties can agree to disagree, then a compromise is found which actually makes both parties happy. In a sense, this is an agreement in and of itself. You could even posit this is one of the fundamental ideas behind multi-culturalism. Now I'd say this is different from hiding your values. If you're afraid to speak to your friend, because you think they will turn on you if they knew you didn't align with their views, that is not a friend and you should probably get rid of this person from your life as they are a liability. But not trying to force others to think like you is definitely a good quality, forcing anything on anyone in my value judgement is mostly bad.

Now, I'll say generally though, it is hard to be friends with someone who's values goes against your own. For example, if I'm pro-life and you are not. Or if you favour white people over black and I am black. Or if you are anti-gay and I am gay. There is no easy resolution here, compromise isn't a real option. If people only hold these diverging values as opinion, but don't take actions on them, it could still work, but as soon as someone takes actions on them, it'll create a conflict that the person with the opposite value set cannot easily ignore, especially if they are the target of the act.

That's why in some way, any country needs to align on value set or risk falling appart. Thus discussing why we each hold our values, and trying to unify people's value over time through education, conversation, discussion, is a healthy activity in my opinion.

Sometimes people hold values because of other values. Like I might value peace and law abiding attitudes, and therefore hate black people, because I am afraid they promote crime. Untangling these and making people realize that they might have the wrong data leading them to the wrong inferences can help.

And so, this is why I personally value "liberal values" above all else. And I believe these are the axioms of any peaceful, prosperous and free society. Because the liberal values are a set of values that win over all others, which are designed for peaceful coexistence of people, even those of diverging values, beliefs and opinions. But while you can diverge in all other aspects, you can't diverge on the value of liberal values, that is, if you don't value peaceful and harmonious win/win coexistence with others above all else, well you cannot achieve it.

I live in Sweden where those things aren't issues, is me being apolitical selfish? Or do I have to care about Americans shooting and abusing each other to not be selfish?

Or just not (yet) aware of how privileged you are.

And yet, the point you’re making is itself entirely political (just pointing that out). Many would disagree on the premise that it’s not the government’s job to be involved in any of those things. And that’s just as valid as your viewpoint.

Also: downvoting something only because you disagree with it doesn’t help anyone. In fact, it’s one step on a path towards more oppression, not less.

The person you're replying is arguing that in practice it isn't "OK", because if "OK" means that you can peacefully live your life as you please, but others are actively engaged in preventing you from doing so, you're forced to care about politics, because others make it not OK for you. Thus only if you are "privileged", meaning that people are letting you be free and giving you your fair share of the resources, can you in practice choose to "not care", since the politics don't affect you negatively.

Also note that politics means: "the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations between individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status" and implies nothing about having or not a "Government". That depends very much on the political system itself.

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