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Maybe one counter indication of tribalism is how often you disagree with your "tribe". I'm fairly left leaning too, but I also find myself disagreeing with a lot of left leaning policies or talking points. Maybe that's a good sign.

It's only a good sign if they're able to speak out, and aren't terrified of expressing their dissent in public.

Both the left and the right seem captured by a small minority of radicals, using social media echo chambers/purity spirals to shut down often-quite-reasonable disagreement. And we're clearly past the point at which we can just ignore 'social media politics', given how much it seems to have led to the current state of things in the US.

At the risk of sounding pessimistic, and as someone who also identifies himself as leftist: If the end result is voting between black/white binary choices, and that act of voting is itself one of the most important self-expression, does the fact that I disagree with them in a few points matter?

>does the fact that I disagree with them in a few points matter?

Perhaps not, but you're also lending legitimacy to a system that is abusing you.

But this isn't a board game that you can quit and go home. You are subject to your government rules regardless of if you participate or not. So it is probably better to try and get political representation that you agree with 60% of the time, rather than one you agree with 5% of the time.

Even better is to try and get a democracy than to live life by the whims of a dictator. Getting to choose your favourite dictator is of little consolation.

> and that act of voting is itself one of the most important self-expression

That's what lobbyists want you to believe, at least. It makes their job a lot easier if they are the only ones carrying out democracy.

You need to select someone trustworthy enough to not botch your message, sure, but usually all political parties put up people who are trustworthy enough. What is much more important is your expression to the hired after they are on the job. That is the only way they are going to know what you are thinking. They are not mind readers, surprisingly.

Arguing with leftists all the time is the sure sign that you're a leftist.

(seriously, this is a significant asymmetry between the two that has been there for at least a century. There isn't one lockstep leftism, there's thousands of micro factions arguing about most things)

why do you think the political right is any different?

the right is good at presenting a facade of cohesion. those differences are better-hidden from view until the common enemies of the right are destroyed and they need to begin eating each other.

this is exactly it, from here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html

This essay feels shallow and dismissive to me. The sentiment is that you can't be a smart, independent thinker whilst going too far left or right. As with many of his essays, my take is that PG - who lives a highly privileged life - is basing this opinion on the caricature of reality that he gleans from the media and internet forums. It's easy to think what he thinks when the only representation you see of the far left is mindless "woke"ism.

Firstly, does he think that Marx was dumb? And leading left-wing figures like AOC, Sanders, Varoufakis, Zinn, or Zizek? No, for all you might disagree with them, they're smart and independent. They did not acquire their opinions in bulk. I even admit that right-wing figures like Shapiro, Bannon etc... are smart and independent, even though I think they're snakes.

Secondly, the essay overstates the degree of uniformity within the far left and right. Have you not seen the animosity between anarchists and Trotskyites? They only agree insofar as believing we can do better than capitalism. And those on the far right who have a global free market ideology will be at odds with those who want to restrict movement and apply protectionist tariffs.

[EDITED TO ADD] Thirdly, he presupposes that the distinction between right and left is purely one of logical competence. This is captured by him saying "both sides are equally wrong". But personal values also drive the polarisation. Those on the right tend to highly value tradition, loyalty, and family. Those on the left tend to highly value universal welfare and the environment. It's not really possible to label these "right" or "wrong", they are expressions of our fundamental desires for ourselves and the world. If you start from different axioms, you'll tend to get different corollaries even if perfect logic is applied.

It's the technocratic or perhaps "enlightened centrist" tribe. There's similar vibe in the post, and even though there's some introspection about the author's own tribe, he doesn't seem to question whether his political thinking could be tribal.

It's indeed typical for this tribe to off-hand dismiss thinking that they deem somehow "ideological" without even really trying to figure out what the thinking is. Also a lot of self-congratulation, exceptionalism and motivated reasoning is exhibited, but these are typical features of any tribe.

I actually wonder this constantly, hence the footnotes about wondering what my tribe is, accounting for being wrong in probabilities, and even the purpose of this post:

finding people that can spot mistakes in my thinking

You are describing the problem of getting a picture of a party or movement from media and without interacting with them.

That could explain the second issue I describe. Maybe the first. But I do not think he has such an excuse for the third.

Ye sure the third point is a attempt to differentiate left and right on a fundamental level.

If I were to do that, I would say something like "pull the ladder up behind you or tear it down before you" with a comical touch. I don't think it is possible to keep such descriptions short or stringent.

At the risk of sounding very arrogant, I've found this incredibly obvious even when I was just 18 years old. Decades have passed, plenty of my beliefs have changed, but this one hasn't.

The chance that one "ideology", whether it's liberalism, conservatism, anarchism , fascism or any-ism is always the right answer to every single societal question, is 0. It's comparable to the idea of exactly 1 of the (tens of) thousands of religions being the true one, correct in everything, with all of the others being wrong.

And this extends to politics. Where I'm from, the political landscape is very different from the US, with at least 5+ different parties that support different policies in various ways. At the same time, it's similar - there isn't a single one that approaches things on a case-by-case basis, each of them being ideology-based.

> So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.

Absolutely, "centrism" is an ideology in itself. This is also why the usage of the word "moderate" in the article and by PG is very unfortunate. That word too comes with a whole lot of baggage, and saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word, is straight up wrong. We need a different word, but I'm not great at coining those. "pragmatic" is the best one I can come up with. I can feel a "pragmatism is an ideology!" coming, but "the ideology of not looking at things from an ideological perspective" is entirely different from anything else. I'm sure the bright minds here can give better words.

> In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.

Very much so. And as the article points out, this is unfortunately a very lonely experience, so it's completely logical that most don't opt for this, instead choosing the warmth of a dogmatic community.

Funny that you say pragmatic, because that’s exactly the word I tend to use when describing my own political beliefs. The best that I have come up with is “pragmatic with a propensity for…” and a few sub-categories that more accurately define what I’d like to see politically happen.

For example - preventionism. It seems to me that many issues could be avoided or eliminated entirely if we tried to prevent them from happening in the first place, rather than choosing between two actions, both with unavoidable negative consequences.

Another is aesthetics. For some reason, the simple desire to make public spaces more beautiful is not really a policy position adopted by any political group, at least in a primary way.

And so maybe the solution is an issue-based political system in which votes and resources go toward specific issues and not parties. (Or work toward eliminating those issues in the first place.)

Some states such as California have a non-partisan ballot proposition where citizens can vote directly on issues. It generally works fine, although it's not clear whether the net impact has really been positive.

On the one hand it defeated affirmative action repeatedly in one of the most left wing states, on the other proposition 13 created a class of landed gentry and permanently screwed the state’s tax base.

PG has two different terms for it in his essay: unintentional moderates vs intentional moderates

https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html

That's what represents the two circled areas in the graph, though I realize if people don't have that context it could be confusing

added an explanation to clear things up

fwiw, I don't think that's arrogant, I've met plenty of high schoolers that understand this concept

I didn't think that was confusing, your article pointed it out fine and clearly. However it doesn't address my point. "(Un)intentional" is solely a qualifier regarding the intentionality behind becoming a moderate, not the "moderate" part itself, which is what I'm arguing against. Independent thought doesn't necessarily lead to a moderate position. It leads to a position that almost certainly isn't perfectly aligned with a single -ism ideology. In fact, many of the individual beliefs held may well be considered the opposite, "extreme" in the sense of the Overton window (which is what "moderate" is really about).

Hmm maybe I'm misunderstanding, but each red dot represents the average of a collection of views

The idea behind PG's article (as I understand it) is that "the left" and "right" have some degree of arbitrary positions they support, so the chances of any individual independently coming up a set of positions that perfectly matches is extremely low.

But individual positions could very well be scattered across the spectrum, some very left, some very right, but together would likely average out to near the middle

> saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word, is straight up wrong

Agreed. Independent thought usually leads to one being moderate when that person is already living a comfortable life.

>In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.

That doesn't stop them from voting a straight red or blue ticket every time if that's what they've been indoctrinated to do.

We've all encountered some old man who by all accounts should be a republican. They own a small business, have conservative social views, like their guns, minimize taxes, etc, etc. But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they learned to do back in the 1960s. And on the other side is the stereotypical southern white woman who believes in every social thing the democratic party has but still votes red because she was raised in a religious household and came of age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to christians.

Sure, but to be fair, we’re talking about political discussions and not strictly voting behavior. It seems like a given to me that most voting behavior is only a vague approximation of what people actually think and want.

This is such a great contrast:

> But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they learned to do back in the 1960s.

and

> but still votes red because she was raised in a religious household and came of age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to christians.

There's no explanation for why the old man votes "blue" other than he learned it in the 60s. OTOH, the woman votes "red" because "she was raised in a religious household" and started voting when The Right was "peddling to christians".

"peddling" -- that's a pretty negative term.

I don't know if it's ironic or demonstrative that an article about how difficult it can be to have political conversations produces a comment thread with such biased viewpoints.

You don't have to consider yourself part of a tribe. Others will consider you anyway.

You are a man or a woman, young or old, Asian, White, Black, Latino, straight, gay, rich, poor slim, fat, etc.

The technical terms for the first few in that list are sexism, ageism and racism. While it is true people do that, it is considered a bad idea because it doesn't capture reality in a productive and meaningful way. And doesn't seem relevant to keiferski's comment.

The aim should be that people have to voluntarily associate with their tribe. It might be the hermit tribe where all the hermits sign up to be alone together.

To be fair, I've rarely seen a group fighting itself more than the progressive left. If tribalism truly exists, it exists mostly on the right.

Right but that’s because there are more micro interests on the left. It’s still tribal though. If I start to bring up deregulation of building housing, there will be a strong immediate backlash by certain factions on the left. I see it more that there is little room for discussion, within these different groups there are only binary options and if you are with them on all talking points, well you are the enemy.

Emotional investment is a subtly different issue to package-deal opinions.

> If I start to bring up deregulation of building housing, there will be a strong immediate backlash by certain factions on the left.

I do suspect that if you what the deregulation actually meant to both left and right people you'd find two (probably overlapping) camps aligned on NIMBY and Housing prices go up as your largest groups.

Structural and safety engineers regardless of political affiliation will tell you why deregulation of some standards is a bad idea.

You’ve hit the nail on the head. The platforms of political parties are amalgamations of specific interests and agendas, and not necessarily a cohesive world view born of an aligned set of principles. Most (all) political parties have positions that conflict logically, spiritually, or practically. Yes, that includes your preferred party on the right or left.

So anyone who’s views align perfectly with a party are probably just parroting what they’ve heard because no sensible individual would arrive at that set of values naturally on their own; it would - and does - take some serious mental gymnastics to hold these contradictory values in your head.

You're correct. Most people's views (i.e. moderates) are ideologically inconsistent with party-line. The loud X/bsky types refuse to decouple, and will double down even if the facts are wrong. Mind you on social media blue-tribe is much further left than the Democratic party.