I agree broadly with this essay, but I specifically read a wide variety of political essays to change my belief. At this age, I don’t usually change 180 degrees, but rarely does a day go by that I don’t refine my views or temper them.
I even find my AI changes my mind on political topics. I say something and it corrects me with facts.
Over the course of my life my views have changed quite an bit and in no way was this a response to be more like my friends or family or any group.
It is a self-flattering illusion for humans to imagine ourselves as disinterested truth-seeking entities who weigh and balance all opposing perspectives and facts and THEN come to some sort of wise or at least well-founded conclusion.
We are all vulnerable, mortal embodied animals whose brains' first purposes are of course survival, reproduction, flourishing, having enough for tomorrow (maybe) and trying not to get killed or ostracised. For the vast majority of history our tribe meant both life and death and not being a member in good standing meant lesser opportunities for all these goods and a more precarious existence. We are deeply social animals and even our brains are social and constructed and connected by the other brains around it, first mom and dad and then everyone in our circles that we have to co-exist with. We are both highly competitive and highly cooperative and keeping an eye on tribal dogma helps both these things, as they all occur within our social worlds.
Opinions now are less like reasoned beliefs and more like the rocks that the two opposing tribes throw at each other in Kubrick's "2001" (maybe they're more like clumps of feces, as they usually don't intend to injure but just smear shit and befoul someone). They've just become another extension of the omnivorous omnipotent Self, the last god standing in the West, akin to lapel pins or other bangles meant to socially signal belief. Beliefs work as social markers and credentials, a peacock's plume to gain attention, cash and mates. But as they are not gained by reason, they're not defended by it either, they are defended in the daily war of all against all that we call modern discourse, which is akin to those Kubrick proto-humans screeching and banging their chests. Same apes, different technology.
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Hume
This whole essay is fascinating, particularly the brief reference to Socrates in the first footnote.
With greater leisure (and in more normal, less ideologically fraught times) I would love to have a debate about whether political philosophy--with its language of nomos, doxa, and the cave--better explains these psychological phenomenon than evolutionary biology.
There would be much to be said for each side. It would certainly be interesting.
> Science incentivizes truth. Politics incentives signals of loyalty.
Sounds good, except Lysenkoism & the *sharashka* system in the USSR demonstrated that politics can permeate the practice of science thoroughly, yet maintain a twisted commitment to empirical/scientific truth.
> Other things equal, it maximizes reproductive fitness.
Yes, but r/K selection theory says that wildly differing life strategies can bestow reproductive fitness through differentially enhanced reproductive rates.
communities on line become stronger for individuals than old style in person events, because they spend hours on line every day on line.
So people become more polarized with the group they hang with, and more likely to issue extreme polarizing comments to favor in-group and antagonize out-group.
There is no price for alienating out-groups, as there is in person, and this all drives opinions and values to become more and more in-group conforming, and polarizing to out-groups.
Everyone senses this, but nobody knows how it is working or what to do about it.
Rural working-class people in the U.S. don't support abolishing the police because they elect the local police chiefs and judges, that is not how it works in most other western countries.
I read in the 1980s that politics is 50% performative, and instantly nodded my head. I later upped that to 75%, and then reluctantly, wondering if that itself was a pose, went to 90%. I say humorously that it is probably 100%, I just won't admit it.
Yet people do change their stripes, even when it costs them heavily in some way. In my case it may not be identifying with a current tribe as much as with a long line of thinkers and cultural inheritance, and still just tribal in disguise, but I don't think so. A sea-change in thinking is usually gradual, with many places to get out of the boat. As with an impressionist, especially pointillist painting, we can look at each blob and say "It's only a dot. It's not a picture of anything." We can even make extended reference to the science of perception and how it is all filtered and vulnerable to manipulation. But the intended picture remains. So too with beliefs. Each though is only a blob or a dot, and we are unable to disprove that.
I agree broadly with this essay, but I specifically read a wide variety of political essays to change my belief. At this age, I don’t usually change 180 degrees, but rarely does a day go by that I don’t refine my views or temper them.
I even find my AI changes my mind on political topics. I say something and it corrects me with facts.
Over the course of my life my views have changed quite an bit and in no way was this a response to be more like my friends or family or any group.
It is a self-flattering illusion for humans to imagine ourselves as disinterested truth-seeking entities who weigh and balance all opposing perspectives and facts and THEN come to some sort of wise or at least well-founded conclusion.
We are all vulnerable, mortal embodied animals whose brains' first purposes are of course survival, reproduction, flourishing, having enough for tomorrow (maybe) and trying not to get killed or ostracised. For the vast majority of history our tribe meant both life and death and not being a member in good standing meant lesser opportunities for all these goods and a more precarious existence. We are deeply social animals and even our brains are social and constructed and connected by the other brains around it, first mom and dad and then everyone in our circles that we have to co-exist with. We are both highly competitive and highly cooperative and keeping an eye on tribal dogma helps both these things, as they all occur within our social worlds.
Opinions now are less like reasoned beliefs and more like the rocks that the two opposing tribes throw at each other in Kubrick's "2001" (maybe they're more like clumps of feces, as they usually don't intend to injure but just smear shit and befoul someone). They've just become another extension of the omnivorous omnipotent Self, the last god standing in the West, akin to lapel pins or other bangles meant to socially signal belief. Beliefs work as social markers and credentials, a peacock's plume to gain attention, cash and mates. But as they are not gained by reason, they're not defended by it either, they are defended in the daily war of all against all that we call modern discourse, which is akin to those Kubrick proto-humans screeching and banging their chests. Same apes, different technology.
“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Hume
This whole essay is fascinating, particularly the brief reference to Socrates in the first footnote.
With greater leisure (and in more normal, less ideologically fraught times) I would love to have a debate about whether political philosophy--with its language of nomos, doxa, and the cave--better explains these psychological phenomenon than evolutionary biology.
There would be much to be said for each side. It would certainly be interesting.
Fantastic article! I found it quite fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to write and to post this.
> Science incentivizes truth. Politics incentives signals of loyalty.
Sounds good, except Lysenkoism & the *sharashka* system in the USSR demonstrated that politics can permeate the practice of science thoroughly, yet maintain a twisted commitment to empirical/scientific truth.
> Other things equal, it maximizes reproductive fitness.
Yes, but r/K selection theory says that wildly differing life strategies can bestow reproductive fitness through differentially enhanced reproductive rates.
communities on line become stronger for individuals than old style in person events, because they spend hours on line every day on line.
So people become more polarized with the group they hang with, and more likely to issue extreme polarizing comments to favor in-group and antagonize out-group.
There is no price for alienating out-groups, as there is in person, and this all drives opinions and values to become more and more in-group conforming, and polarizing to out-groups.
Everyone senses this, but nobody knows how it is working or what to do about it.
Rural working-class people in the U.S. don't support abolishing the police because they elect the local police chiefs and judges, that is not how it works in most other western countries.
I read in the 1980s that politics is 50% performative, and instantly nodded my head. I later upped that to 75%, and then reluctantly, wondering if that itself was a pose, went to 90%. I say humorously that it is probably 100%, I just won't admit it.
Yet people do change their stripes, even when it costs them heavily in some way. In my case it may not be identifying with a current tribe as much as with a long line of thinkers and cultural inheritance, and still just tribal in disguise, but I don't think so. A sea-change in thinking is usually gradual, with many places to get out of the boat. As with an impressionist, especially pointillist painting, we can look at each blob and say "It's only a dot. It's not a picture of anything." We can even make extended reference to the science of perception and how it is all filtered and vulnerable to manipulation. But the intended picture remains. So too with beliefs. Each though is only a blob or a dot, and we are unable to disprove that.
And yet it moves.