Why People Are Irrational about Politics
spot.colorado.edu
spot.colorado.edu
Everybody want essentially the same things, to have their essential needs fulfilled : food, home, health, family, freedom
A minority divides the majority and acquires dominion and prosperity, achieving an effortless and comfortable life.
That minority has essentially created the initial Ponzi Scheme and they need division, wars and struggles so that they can maintain their dominion.
That force can be sold for a very high price to individuals, and corporations. In fact C.E.O.s have a fiduciary responsibility to exploit this power imbalance in any way they can, so their hands are a bit forced to play ball.
For instance, look at Duverger's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law), which says that the standard "one person one vote" voting system we use naturally tends to produce a two-party system. Beyond that, there are institutional tendencies towards compromise and centrism that will tend to make key parts of both parties similar to each other and drift towards each other, while roughly matching overall society sentiments, and emphasizing a handful of ideological differences that match/create those in society (with a feedback cycle). Put that together with standard political tactics like proposing an extreme position and "compromising" with what you wanted in the first place, and with the tendency of any system made up of people to perpetuate itself and give itself more power.
So it's entirely plausible that we'd naturally tend towards something like we have: a two-party system, with differences on some high-profile items that, common agreement between those parties on other issues (most notably on the self-perpetuation and growth of government and bureaucracy, even if in disagreement with substantial fractions of the public), near-impossibility of electing a third-party candidate, etc.
(Nit: You mean "first past the poll" or something, not "one person one vote")
No, everyone does not want "family", which I assume means a spouse and children. Family is not essential to life. So already we see a problem with any one person assuming any sort of unanimous positionality among every human. We don't even have to talk about how "freedom" is relative -- the factually false claim that "family [is an essential need]" is an easier point.
Social struggles are indeed engineered: by the rich, by men, by the more powerful nations, by white people. Slavery and white law in the U.S. existed (I'd like to add "exists" but that fact is less obvious to more people) and was an act of "engineering" -- I am personally not forgetting that and the fact of its effects continuing today, despite how OP seems to advocate that I do so. I will not forget that whiteness exists, as does gender, the monetary system, and the self-interests of nations like the U.S., Israel, the UK, etc, and neither should anybody. The purpose of division is security and extraction of resources -- from women, non-whites, and the poor and indigenous.
The idea that there is some kind of "correct" political position is absurd and grossly ignorant of what politics IS.
Example: Some people think there shouldn't be an income tax. Someone else thinks there should be. There is no such thing as a "correct" position, just a winning position.
“War is politics by other means,” as Carl von Clausewitz said.
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This is not philosophy, it's badly-cloaked theology. Like cavemen attributing the thunder to a god, except even worse because now we have the tools and the knowledge to know there is no such thing.
In areas that do not sway many votes, we might as well have an oligarchy: A lot of gain to a few often defeats a small loss to the many, even if the total loss actually exceeds the total gain. Then, whether a group can lobby for regulation depends on a variety of predictable factors. It's the whole reason right to work legislation destroys unions.
This is not new theory. The Logic of Collective Action by Olson covered this 50 years ago.
This is a chief reason why one group is for it and the other is against it. It's not that liberals don't think welfare fraud exists at all, they just don't think it's a big problem compared to the good such programs do. And it's not that conservatives don't think such programs do help some deserving poor people, they just hate the thought of some of their tax money going to someone mooching off the system.
I didn't downvote you, I do agree that you can't just say one or other thing is objectivley better. I think your example missed the mark though.
E.g. regarding to health. One approach (e.g. state funded, guaranteed health coverage for all) might give better overall health statistics for the whole population, even eradicating certain classes of diceases, etc.
But some people could still think of it as bad, because they don't just want "better health" for everybody, but better health for those that can afford it, and consider the others lazy and cheaters that deserve to not have health coverage.
Now, I'm on the first camp, but this is an illustrative example of how measuring results is not some kind of solution that ends the political debate.
That's great. They can continue to think that. But overall improved health stats is an objectively better position. I am aware that it doesn't end the debate, for precisely the reason discussed in the linked article: people are irrational.
It makes the argument (supported by copious research) that there are biological correlations of conservatism and liberalism with disgust reflex, taste in food and art, perceptual cues and threat response. I'm not convinced that they have the direction of causation settled but it is interesting research. Conservatives and Liberals literally see the world differently. No surprise that logic doesn't work to help either side sway the other.
This is probably the longest-running debate in human history, and he dismisses it completely with a link to his undergraduate paper on the subject.
Putting that aside, the problem with this argument is it doesn't allow for changing beliefs. If we are only driven by fitting in with our group, then no political views would ever change as they wouldn't ever reach critical mass.
Just look at the changing opinions of gay marriage. Political views absolutely do change over time, and they can change very quickly. Yet this paper is all about how that is impossible.
> I have witnessed few political conversions, so the most I can offer is speculation as to how one might occur.
I feel like this is an admission that the paper is entirely speculative.
If you follow the "opiate of the masses" theory then the bigger the spectacle the better people are fooled into thinking their votes matter etc resulting in theoretically less social unrest, and the more yelling and sloganeering about politics, the less demonstrating and violence.
Another way to look at it is something that is rational is by definition no longer political. We can't have a political discussion about that subroutines memory leak, or how to fix it. Perhaps its not possible to have a rational discussion about an irrational lifestyle subject, aka a political topic. If it were not a non-actionable non-relevant opinion based evidence free discussion topic, by definition it wouldn't be political. So worrying about politics being irrational is like worrying about cats being excessively feline-like. Its not a bug, is the definition of the topic.
People get passionate and irrational about a lot of themes, but politics seems to potentialize this and this article tries to discuss this topic. And the article makes a point of making a distinction about being irrational and having some preference or belief.
Karl Popper's "Science as Falsification" essay is very useful here.
And furthermore, many of the propecies are self-fulfilling. For example, if atheism were true, it is still the case that Jews around the world have never forgotten about Israel and Jerusalem and have at long last returned there.
You can also see this in technical fields. The Black-Scholes valuation model may or may not have been a good way to price derivatives, but once everyone started using it, it BECAME the best way to price derivatives because everyone used it.
My personal view, from reading Jonathan Bernstein's blog and his take from a Political Science view, is that people hold strong and weak political beliefs/preferences and people are rational about both, but apply different standards depending upon whether they are a strong or weak belief.
For example, a person may have a strong preference that abortion should be illegal. They would have thought about this issue a great deal and have rational reasons why they feel this way. However, the political party that is in favor of passing laws to restrict abortion is made up of constituents that are also in favor of less regulation of firearms and also capital punishment so the person who really cares about the abortion issue (their strong beliefs) may also take cues from the party elites about gun control and capital punishment (as weak political beliefs).
It may seem irrational/inconsistent for someone who argues about the sanctity of life when talking about abortion to also be in favor of capital punishment (which involves taking of lives) or gun control (which also can result in a number of deaths by firearms). However, if the person really cares about changing the laws on abortion and may not care as much about the other policy areas they are perfectly willing to go along with the position of the elites in the party/coalition and make these less rational arguments without too much dissonance since they don't actually care that much about the weaker beliefs.
So political change is both possible and rational. It can be effected either be getting a large number of people to care about this single issue (making it their strong belief) or getting party elites/actors convinced your position is the correct one and knowing that the other people in the coalition will take your side as long as you also go along with the beliefs that they value most.
Can you speak more about what literature you are aware of?
Many like the BBC documentary "The Century Of The Self", on the origins of modern PR. (Easy to find online.) Nowadays of course, the field is way more advanced.
Noam Chomsky's done well-known work in this area. His books are dry, but he gives enjoyable talks, zillions of which are on youtube. For example: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RPKH6BVcoM)
I would add, to understand propaganda's current direction, the work of Cass Sunstein (whose Wikipedia article also reads farcically) including "Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech" and "Nudge". The father of "liberal paternalism" and "choice architecture", the Wikipedia article is full of great nuggets: “in light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals.”
Cass Sunstein was the Administrator of the Obama Administration's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.