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.
Same here. So I agree with you. I was making a broad claim about the function of political beliefs--but you are right: we also have at least a slight desire for truth, and that can cause us to search for alternative sources and to update our beliefs, even our ideological beliefs.
But the right isn't just the mirror image of the left. You can just think of people you know to see that, or you can rely on social studies data which shows right wing people understand the left far more than the other way around. And there are many other asymmetries.
Until it's recognized that left and right aren't duals, political analysis like this will always miss the mark. Right wing people, for example, clearly have a much more open mind and are more willing to be convinced by arguments than the left, because a lot of them started out being left wing when they were younger! Travel in the opposite direction though is very rare indeed.
The literature on this is voluminous and contradictory, but I generally assume, as a heuristic, symmetry between left and right. That does not, of course, mean that they are the same. But it is a useful starting point.
It would be fun but laborious to collect all relevant beliefs by political orientation and then to assess their truth value. I would not feel confident betting on either left or right. Interesting empirical question, though.
I used to have the same heuristic but in recent years have been forced to give it up. Too much evidence is accumulating that left and right are fundamentally different in ways that aren't inverses of each other.
Judging truth of arbitrary beliefs is hard, but there are studies that show unequal levels of understanding of each other, which do seem robust. They ask people to answer a survey pretending to be someone on a different point of the political spectrum and compare vs ground truth of the same survey when people aren't asked to pretend. The nice thing about this method is it's independent of any specific topic, or even what's "really" true.
What they show is that right wing people can emulate left wing people successfully but not the other way around. That's a fundamental asymmetry, as it tests theory of mind. Modeling other people correctly is such a foundational mental skill that failure to do it causes many other asymmetries.
You see this in action when leftists misdiagnose why people disagree with them, e.g. assuming opponents must have been bought off, or ascribing bizarre motivations like voting against an expansion of social housing because it's unaffordable implies "they must hate homeless people". You see these broken explanations even when they talk amongst themselves, so it's not just a bullying tactic, they genuinely are deeply confused about how other people think.
There are other interesting studies that show major gaps or weaknesses in left wing mental processes, like much higher rates of mental illness.
When the basics are so wildly asymmetric like this, I find it easier to just lose the assumption of symmetry entirely. It's a fresh perspective that helps.
Take climate change, a topic I just published an article on with predictable results. Your "everything is tribalism" model predicts this:
> Participants engaged in political discourse thus often act like partisan lawyers, rather than scientists attempting to ferret out the truth. They learn the claims and nomenclature of their tribe. They cite the sources their tribe approves of. And they consult alternative sources only to anticipate arguments they might be forced to rebut.
This isn't what we see in reality. It's an accurate description of leftists who universally assume that only evil/stupid people would judge the truth or falsity of academic claims for themselves. So they memorize arguments from their tribe, but don't even really consult alternative sources to anticipate counterarguments because they find the idea of reading words written by tribal enemies somehow dangerous or offensive.
But comments from right wing people are much more mixed, with some believing it's true and others believing it's false, but in all cases they cite their own internal reasoning. And many of them DO act like scientists. They look at data, they plot their own graphs, they judge the methodologies etc. They are happy to cite papers and sources written by leftists, when necessary or useful. That's actually what the left find so offensive and triggering about such discourse - they aren't just baffled that anyone would try to actually study climatology themselves, they find it outright dangerous and immoral to do so.
These differences in epistemology aren't predicted by your model.
I think there are three major issues with Winegard’s thesis.
First, it relies on a flawed view of the mind as a strict fitness-maximizer. As I understand it, Winegard posits that the human mind is essentially a generator of beliefs designed to maximize reproductive fitness. This strikes me as false. If our minds strictly optimized beliefs for reproductive fitness, it would be difficult to explain the antinatalist belief that “we shouldn’t reproduce.” Similarly, consider a severely ill patient who looks at the medical data and concludes, “According to the evidence, my chances of recovery are just 10%.” Psychological studies show that deluding oneself into extreme optimism can actually improve physical health outcomes and survival rates. Yet, a rational patient usually cannot help but believe the grim medical evidence. In these cases, our truth-tracking cognitive mechanisms clearly override any “fitness-enhancing” delusions.
Second, Winegard’s formula conflates epistemic reasons with practical reasons. The formula for calculating the "fitness value" of a belief
( F ( B ) = S b + E b − S c − E c
assumes that our cognitive architecture unconsciously calculates practical utility and empirical truth on the exact same scale. But this is an extremely controversial view in contemporary analytic epistemology. For one, many philosophers argue that epistemic reasons and practical reasons are fundamentally incommensurable (they belong to entirely different categories of thought and cannot be meaningfully traded off, added, or subtracted in a single cognitive calculation). Furthermore, many go so far as to argue that epistemic reasons (evidence and truth-conduciveness) are the only actual reasons for belief. This is grounded in doxastic involuntarism(the widely accepted thesis that you cannot simply choose what to believe independently of the evidence you perceive).
To illustrate this with Winegard’s own formula: let’s say an eccentric billionaire offers you (or your “tribe”) 1 billion on the condition that you genuinely believe (not just pretend to believe, but sincerely hold the conviction) that the moon is made of cheese. The social benefits (Sb) of the belief are astronomical (1 billion), while the empirical costs (Ec) of holding this false belief are virtually zero, since thinking the moon is made of cheese won’t negatively affect your daily life. According to Winegard’s formula, the fitness value of this belief is massively positive, so your mind should easily adopt it. But you can’t. Despite the massive social and practical benefit, you simply cannot will yourself into believing the moon is made of cheese. Practical incentives might give you a reason to pretend to hold a belief, but they cannot actually generate the belief itself.
Third, the formula fails to account for the fundamentally normative nature of political beliefs. Winegard’s variables heavily rely on the “empirical benefits” (Eb, accurately representing the world) and “empirical costs” (Ec, the cost of a belief being factually false). But a great big deal of political beliefs are not descriptive; they are normative.
Take claims like "A nation ought to have open borders" or "Abortion is morally permissible." These are claims about what should be, not what is. You cannot measure the "empirical accuracy" of a moral belief in the same way you can measure a descriptive belief about the weather or agriculture. By trying to force political ideology into a cost-benefit calculation of "empirical failure" versus "social reward," Winegard misses the normative dimension entirely. People generally hold these political beliefs because they perceive them to be morally true or justified, not because they have weighed empirical adequacy against social status. Winegard’s model treats political discourse as bad science, when in reality, much of it is applied ethics.
You wrote: "First, it relies on a flawed view of the mind as a strict fitness-maximizer. As I understand it, Winegard posits that the human mind is essentially a generator of beliefs designed to maximize reproductive fitness. This strikes me as false. If our minds strictly optimized beliefs for reproductive fitness, it would be difficult to explain the antinatalist belief that “we shouldn’t reproduce.”
I agree that the mind is not strictly a fitness maximizer, for a variety of reasons, mostly constraints. The mind *should* be designed to maximize fitness in the relevant ancestral environment, but there are issues of mismatch and manipulation. And failure. So, bodies should be maximized for reproductive fitness, given constraints, but they break down, they are attacked by pathogens, and so forth. The claim is a heuristic one, which is fruitful, but should not be taken 100% literally for many reasons.
You wrote: "For one, many philosophers argue that epistemic reasons and practical reasons are fundamentally incommensurable (they belong to entirely different categories of thought and cannot be meaningfully traded off, added, or subtracted in a single cognitive calculation)"
Maybe, but the mind still has to assess relevant feedback. If some tells you that the gods want you to drink something that is poisonous, your brain must calculate the relative costs and benefits of (1) believing that and (2) doing it.
You wrote: "To illustrate this with Winegard’s own formula: let’s say an eccentric billionaire offers you (or your “tribe”) 1 billion on the condition that you genuinely believe (not just pretend to believe, but sincerely hold the conviction) that the moon is made of cheese. The social benefits (Sb) of the belief are astronomical (1 billion), while the empirical costs (Ec) of holding this false belief are virtually zero, since thinking the moon is made of cheese won’t negatively affect your daily life. According to Winegard’s formula, the fitness value of this belief is massively positive, so your mind should easily adopt it. But you can’t. Despite the massive social and practical benefit, you simply cannot will yourself into believing the moon is made of cheese. Practical incentives might give you a reason to pretend to hold a belief, but they cannot actually generate the belief itself."
This is an excellent argument. The formula was meant to illustrate the logic throughout evolutionary history, not to claim that at any particular moment, people will actually believe whatever increases their reproductive fitness. We have representations of the world that cannot be suppressed and belief is largely not voluntary. Notice, however, that if you inhabited a society a few thousand years ago that thought the moon was a powerful god who would punish people who did evil deeds at night, you probably would believe that. Nevertheless, I think the point here is excellent, and a longer essay would have to deal with it in more detail.
You wrote: "Third, the formula fails to account for the fundamentally normative nature of political beliefs. Winegard’s variables heavily rely on the “empirical benefits” (Eb, accurately representing the world) and “empirical costs” (Ec, the cost of a belief being factually false). But a great big deal of political beliefs are not descriptive; they are normative."
I agree and this is important, but normative beliefs are based on empirical beliefs, right? That is, people who, say, want more gun control would presumably argue that it would reduce the murder rate. And so on. I agree that at some point you hit the level of values which are not empirical, and one could argue that politics are about signaling those values. But that assumes that values are plural, which is a contentious claim. Maybe they are. Maybe not. I tend to be a pluralist, but I don't hold that view with confidence.
You wrote: "Winegard’s model treats political discourse as bad science, when in reality, much of it is applied ethics."
This was not my intended argument, but to push back: Political disputants certainly act as though they are making claims about reality that could be true or false. And they often recruit empirical literature/facts to support their claims. I don't think ethics are as divorced from science as some, though I do not think they are reducible to science either.
At any rate, I cannot possibly address fairly your thoughtful criticisms without writing another essay, but I appreciate the feedback. Excellent arguments.
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.
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.
Social Signaling Dilemma: Expected Ultility of Signaling
U(S) = Sb - (ΔPe x Cp)
Is there a person alive who would find this formalisation more comprehensible than a paragraph explaining the phenomenon, aided by an example? If so, what on earth happened to the poor child?
That question aside, I find Bo's theory of tribal signalling more persuasive that Rob Henderson's theory of Luxury Beliefs.
Ha! I tried to satisfy both kinds of thinkers, verbal and quantitative, by giving examples and formalizing. The formalization is important, I think, because it allows us to test (even if only hypothetical examples) the competing models rigorously.
I remember a professor saying that (and he might have been borrowing this quip) when he read biology papers with loads of math, he just hummed through the equations. Not bad advice.
In truth I'm in awe of people who can bend their clever minds to such stuff. But another part of me is proud that I've clung onto my Neolithic heritage.
Nice to know that even Biology Professors's minds go numb when they see a complicated equation. And yes, I suppose it must be a way of adding more rigour to an idea so as to render it more testable, though how this is so is as opaque to me as a slab of concrete.
From the perspective of science, not philosophy, what is a “belief”? Can “beliefs” be identified, except by self-report? Questions for another article?
Great question. There's an enormous literature on this, as you can probably imagine. Some would say the best way to identify a belief is through behavior. Pierce, I think, more or less defined belief as that upon which a person is prepared to act. And there's a tradition that defines beliefs on the basis of bets a person would accept. I don't know that I'd accept such a restrictive view. People can fail to "live up" to the their beliefs. Or, as I argued, they may have contradictory beliefs (although I guess that is partially question begging).
So, yes, that would require another essay. But it is an important question, and I should have at least addressed it.
>There may very well be beliefs that signal some quality to others because the believer is relatively insulated from the costs.
Under a strict definition, I would put belief in open immigration in this category: it signals that one's economic role is sufficiently high-status as to be insulated from immigrant labor competition.
Under a looser definition, I would add certain expressions of female sexual emancipation, a.k.a. "trainwreck feminism", whose downside risk can be managed with exceptional conscientiousness, itself highly correlated with social class, or simply compensated for with greater resources. But here it is a "belief" in actual practice, not just as social signal.
Interesting article with sociological slant (group dynamics). I think even if we move on level of random individual (debate need not be online) it is very very difficult to change basic political orientation of somebody. Empirical and logical arguments will collide with really deeply ingrown value predispositions. If you are articulate and well read you may "win" a debate in eyes of public. But your opponent probably was not convinced; he just lost ability of effective countering.
I appreciate what you've written and broadly agree. The overture to the invention of philosophy and science as is an important one. For philosophy specifically, I would think that the notion of an epistemic virtue is particularly important. The epistemic virtues, such as truth-seeking, confer status upon those who signal that they are willing to change their beliefs when presented with strong arguments.
This is a very good point. One of the important features of a (relatively) epistemically rational group or activity is that it gives prestige to those who have accurate beliefs. Obviously this is not true online. But it can be true in some groups. And science, for whatever its flaws, has done this better than any other human institution.
Exactly. It is concerning that the prestige giving function of scientific practice is breaking down, both in the tendency for scientists to prefer signalling group membership in the technocratic expert class, and the general public's increasing lack of respect for that class.
Thanks for writing it up with the literature, but as far as I know, this dynamic (tribalism over truth) as a costly signal is basic NRx dogma, reasonably deducted from game theory.
Even Plato in the Republic warns about manipualtive structure to his eutopia from people outside, hence only a select few are allowed to think radically and get intel/memes/ideas from outside, discuss them privately, decide on what to try or not, and then propagate it in the polis.
Yeah I don't think there is anything particularly novel in this essay. And I could, if I were inclined, write a counter essay arguing against it. Which would be fun.
> 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.
"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."
Yes, I agree. Science has all kinds of problems. Interesting, though, that in the USSR, Stalin largely didn't mess with nuclear science. It was too important. But yes, I accept your point.
"Yes, but r/K selection theory says that wildly differing life strategies can bestow reproductive fitness through differentially enhanced reproductive rates."
Completely agree. Would be interesting to relate this to the fitness value of various beliefs.
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
"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)."
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.
Same here. So I agree with you. I was making a broad claim about the function of political beliefs--but you are right: we also have at least a slight desire for truth, and that can cause us to search for alternative sources and to update our beliefs, even our ideological beliefs.
Bo
Fantastic article! I found it quite fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to write and to post this.
Thank you for taking the time to read it and for the kind words
Bo
Although a lot of this is true, the essay suffers from trying to claim this is some universal aspect of human nature.
It's not. Leftism is tribalist instincts that aren't being properly suppressed and there's plenty of arguments for that stance:
https://penbroke.substack.com/p/leftist-behavior-is-just-ancient
But the right isn't just the mirror image of the left. You can just think of people you know to see that, or you can rely on social studies data which shows right wing people understand the left far more than the other way around. And there are many other asymmetries.
Until it's recognized that left and right aren't duals, political analysis like this will always miss the mark. Right wing people, for example, clearly have a much more open mind and are more willing to be convinced by arguments than the left, because a lot of them started out being left wing when they were younger! Travel in the opposite direction though is very rare indeed.
The literature on this is voluminous and contradictory, but I generally assume, as a heuristic, symmetry between left and right. That does not, of course, mean that they are the same. But it is a useful starting point.
It would be fun but laborious to collect all relevant beliefs by political orientation and then to assess their truth value. I would not feel confident betting on either left or right. Interesting empirical question, though.
Bo
I used to have the same heuristic but in recent years have been forced to give it up. Too much evidence is accumulating that left and right are fundamentally different in ways that aren't inverses of each other.
Judging truth of arbitrary beliefs is hard, but there are studies that show unequal levels of understanding of each other, which do seem robust. They ask people to answer a survey pretending to be someone on a different point of the political spectrum and compare vs ground truth of the same survey when people aren't asked to pretend. The nice thing about this method is it's independent of any specific topic, or even what's "really" true.
What they show is that right wing people can emulate left wing people successfully but not the other way around. That's a fundamental asymmetry, as it tests theory of mind. Modeling other people correctly is such a foundational mental skill that failure to do it causes many other asymmetries.
You see this in action when leftists misdiagnose why people disagree with them, e.g. assuming opponents must have been bought off, or ascribing bizarre motivations like voting against an expansion of social housing because it's unaffordable implies "they must hate homeless people". You see these broken explanations even when they talk amongst themselves, so it's not just a bullying tactic, they genuinely are deeply confused about how other people think.
There are other interesting studies that show major gaps or weaknesses in left wing mental processes, like much higher rates of mental illness.
When the basics are so wildly asymmetric like this, I find it easier to just lose the assumption of symmetry entirely. It's a fresh perspective that helps.
Take climate change, a topic I just published an article on with predictable results. Your "everything is tribalism" model predicts this:
> Participants engaged in political discourse thus often act like partisan lawyers, rather than scientists attempting to ferret out the truth. They learn the claims and nomenclature of their tribe. They cite the sources their tribe approves of. And they consult alternative sources only to anticipate arguments they might be forced to rebut.
This isn't what we see in reality. It's an accurate description of leftists who universally assume that only evil/stupid people would judge the truth or falsity of academic claims for themselves. So they memorize arguments from their tribe, but don't even really consult alternative sources to anticipate counterarguments because they find the idea of reading words written by tribal enemies somehow dangerous or offensive.
But comments from right wing people are much more mixed, with some believing it's true and others believing it's false, but in all cases they cite their own internal reasoning. And many of them DO act like scientists. They look at data, they plot their own graphs, they judge the methodologies etc. They are happy to cite papers and sources written by leftists, when necessary or useful. That's actually what the left find so offensive and triggering about such discourse - they aren't just baffled that anyone would try to actually study climatology themselves, they find it outright dangerous and immoral to do so.
These differences in epistemology aren't predicted by your model.
I think there are three major issues with Winegard’s thesis.
First, it relies on a flawed view of the mind as a strict fitness-maximizer. As I understand it, Winegard posits that the human mind is essentially a generator of beliefs designed to maximize reproductive fitness. This strikes me as false. If our minds strictly optimized beliefs for reproductive fitness, it would be difficult to explain the antinatalist belief that “we shouldn’t reproduce.” Similarly, consider a severely ill patient who looks at the medical data and concludes, “According to the evidence, my chances of recovery are just 10%.” Psychological studies show that deluding oneself into extreme optimism can actually improve physical health outcomes and survival rates. Yet, a rational patient usually cannot help but believe the grim medical evidence. In these cases, our truth-tracking cognitive mechanisms clearly override any “fitness-enhancing” delusions.
Second, Winegard’s formula conflates epistemic reasons with practical reasons. The formula for calculating the "fitness value" of a belief
( F ( B ) = S b + E b − S c − E c
assumes that our cognitive architecture unconsciously calculates practical utility and empirical truth on the exact same scale. But this is an extremely controversial view in contemporary analytic epistemology. For one, many philosophers argue that epistemic reasons and practical reasons are fundamentally incommensurable (they belong to entirely different categories of thought and cannot be meaningfully traded off, added, or subtracted in a single cognitive calculation). Furthermore, many go so far as to argue that epistemic reasons (evidence and truth-conduciveness) are the only actual reasons for belief. This is grounded in doxastic involuntarism(the widely accepted thesis that you cannot simply choose what to believe independently of the evidence you perceive).
To illustrate this with Winegard’s own formula: let’s say an eccentric billionaire offers you (or your “tribe”) 1 billion on the condition that you genuinely believe (not just pretend to believe, but sincerely hold the conviction) that the moon is made of cheese. The social benefits (Sb) of the belief are astronomical (1 billion), while the empirical costs (Ec) of holding this false belief are virtually zero, since thinking the moon is made of cheese won’t negatively affect your daily life. According to Winegard’s formula, the fitness value of this belief is massively positive, so your mind should easily adopt it. But you can’t. Despite the massive social and practical benefit, you simply cannot will yourself into believing the moon is made of cheese. Practical incentives might give you a reason to pretend to hold a belief, but they cannot actually generate the belief itself.
Third, the formula fails to account for the fundamentally normative nature of political beliefs. Winegard’s variables heavily rely on the “empirical benefits” (Eb, accurately representing the world) and “empirical costs” (Ec, the cost of a belief being factually false). But a great big deal of political beliefs are not descriptive; they are normative.
Take claims like "A nation ought to have open borders" or "Abortion is morally permissible." These are claims about what should be, not what is. You cannot measure the "empirical accuracy" of a moral belief in the same way you can measure a descriptive belief about the weather or agriculture. By trying to force political ideology into a cost-benefit calculation of "empirical failure" versus "social reward," Winegard misses the normative dimension entirely. People generally hold these political beliefs because they perceive them to be morally true or justified, not because they have weighed empirical adequacy against social status. Winegard’s model treats political discourse as bad science, when in reality, much of it is applied ethics.
Many fair points. I'll try to address a few.
You wrote: "First, it relies on a flawed view of the mind as a strict fitness-maximizer. As I understand it, Winegard posits that the human mind is essentially a generator of beliefs designed to maximize reproductive fitness. This strikes me as false. If our minds strictly optimized beliefs for reproductive fitness, it would be difficult to explain the antinatalist belief that “we shouldn’t reproduce.”
I agree that the mind is not strictly a fitness maximizer, for a variety of reasons, mostly constraints. The mind *should* be designed to maximize fitness in the relevant ancestral environment, but there are issues of mismatch and manipulation. And failure. So, bodies should be maximized for reproductive fitness, given constraints, but they break down, they are attacked by pathogens, and so forth. The claim is a heuristic one, which is fruitful, but should not be taken 100% literally for many reasons.
You wrote: "For one, many philosophers argue that epistemic reasons and practical reasons are fundamentally incommensurable (they belong to entirely different categories of thought and cannot be meaningfully traded off, added, or subtracted in a single cognitive calculation)"
Maybe, but the mind still has to assess relevant feedback. If some tells you that the gods want you to drink something that is poisonous, your brain must calculate the relative costs and benefits of (1) believing that and (2) doing it.
You wrote: "To illustrate this with Winegard’s own formula: let’s say an eccentric billionaire offers you (or your “tribe”) 1 billion on the condition that you genuinely believe (not just pretend to believe, but sincerely hold the conviction) that the moon is made of cheese. The social benefits (Sb) of the belief are astronomical (1 billion), while the empirical costs (Ec) of holding this false belief are virtually zero, since thinking the moon is made of cheese won’t negatively affect your daily life. According to Winegard’s formula, the fitness value of this belief is massively positive, so your mind should easily adopt it. But you can’t. Despite the massive social and practical benefit, you simply cannot will yourself into believing the moon is made of cheese. Practical incentives might give you a reason to pretend to hold a belief, but they cannot actually generate the belief itself."
This is an excellent argument. The formula was meant to illustrate the logic throughout evolutionary history, not to claim that at any particular moment, people will actually believe whatever increases their reproductive fitness. We have representations of the world that cannot be suppressed and belief is largely not voluntary. Notice, however, that if you inhabited a society a few thousand years ago that thought the moon was a powerful god who would punish people who did evil deeds at night, you probably would believe that. Nevertheless, I think the point here is excellent, and a longer essay would have to deal with it in more detail.
You wrote: "Third, the formula fails to account for the fundamentally normative nature of political beliefs. Winegard’s variables heavily rely on the “empirical benefits” (Eb, accurately representing the world) and “empirical costs” (Ec, the cost of a belief being factually false). But a great big deal of political beliefs are not descriptive; they are normative."
I agree and this is important, but normative beliefs are based on empirical beliefs, right? That is, people who, say, want more gun control would presumably argue that it would reduce the murder rate. And so on. I agree that at some point you hit the level of values which are not empirical, and one could argue that politics are about signaling those values. But that assumes that values are plural, which is a contentious claim. Maybe they are. Maybe not. I tend to be a pluralist, but I don't hold that view with confidence.
You wrote: "Winegard’s model treats political discourse as bad science, when in reality, much of it is applied ethics."
This was not my intended argument, but to push back: Political disputants certainly act as though they are making claims about reality that could be true or false. And they often recruit empirical literature/facts to support their claims. I don't think ethics are as divorced from science as some, though I do not think they are reducible to science either.
At any rate, I cannot possibly address fairly your thoughtful criticisms without writing another essay, but I appreciate the feedback. Excellent arguments.
Bo
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.
I could not agree more with this: "Everyone senses this, but nobody knows how it is working or what to do about it."
I don't know either.
Bo
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.
Same here. I would love to have that discussion. Probably could have it for many years without deciding the issue!
Bo
Social Signaling Dilemma: Expected Ultility of Signaling
U(S) = Sb - (ΔPe x Cp)
Is there a person alive who would find this formalisation more comprehensible than a paragraph explaining the phenomenon, aided by an example? If so, what on earth happened to the poor child?
That question aside, I find Bo's theory of tribal signalling more persuasive that Rob Henderson's theory of Luxury Beliefs.
Ha! I tried to satisfy both kinds of thinkers, verbal and quantitative, by giving examples and formalizing. The formalization is important, I think, because it allows us to test (even if only hypothetical examples) the competing models rigorously.
I remember a professor saying that (and he might have been borrowing this quip) when he read biology papers with loads of math, he just hummed through the equations. Not bad advice.
Bo
In truth I'm in awe of people who can bend their clever minds to such stuff. But another part of me is proud that I've clung onto my Neolithic heritage.
Nice to know that even Biology Professors's minds go numb when they see a complicated equation. And yes, I suppose it must be a way of adding more rigour to an idea so as to render it more testable, though how this is so is as opaque to me as a slab of concrete.
Amazing stuff again, Bo. Best single piece I’ve read on political beliefs and polarisation. Gong straight to X with this!
From the perspective of science, not philosophy, what is a “belief”? Can “beliefs” be identified, except by self-report? Questions for another article?
Great question. There's an enormous literature on this, as you can probably imagine. Some would say the best way to identify a belief is through behavior. Pierce, I think, more or less defined belief as that upon which a person is prepared to act. And there's a tradition that defines beliefs on the basis of bets a person would accept. I don't know that I'd accept such a restrictive view. People can fail to "live up" to the their beliefs. Or, as I argued, they may have contradictory beliefs (although I guess that is partially question begging).
So, yes, that would require another essay. But it is an important question, and I should have at least addressed it.
Bo
>There may very well be beliefs that signal some quality to others because the believer is relatively insulated from the costs.
Under a strict definition, I would put belief in open immigration in this category: it signals that one's economic role is sufficiently high-status as to be insulated from immigrant labor competition.
Under a looser definition, I would add certain expressions of female sexual emancipation, a.k.a. "trainwreck feminism", whose downside risk can be managed with exceptional conscientiousness, itself highly correlated with social class, or simply compensated for with greater resources. But here it is a "belief" in actual practice, not just as social signal.
Interesting article with sociological slant (group dynamics). I think even if we move on level of random individual (debate need not be online) it is very very difficult to change basic political orientation of somebody. Empirical and logical arguments will collide with really deeply ingrown value predispositions. If you are articulate and well read you may "win" a debate in eyes of public. But your opponent probably was not convinced; he just lost ability of effective countering.
I appreciate what you've written and broadly agree. The overture to the invention of philosophy and science as is an important one. For philosophy specifically, I would think that the notion of an epistemic virtue is particularly important. The epistemic virtues, such as truth-seeking, confer status upon those who signal that they are willing to change their beliefs when presented with strong arguments.
This is a very good point. One of the important features of a (relatively) epistemically rational group or activity is that it gives prestige to those who have accurate beliefs. Obviously this is not true online. But it can be true in some groups. And science, for whatever its flaws, has done this better than any other human institution.
Bo
Exactly. It is concerning that the prestige giving function of scientific practice is breaking down, both in the tendency for scientists to prefer signalling group membership in the technocratic expert class, and the general public's increasing lack of respect for that class.
We need a new Jonathan Swift now that Tom Wolfe is gone.
Thanks for writing it up with the literature, but as far as I know, this dynamic (tribalism over truth) as a costly signal is basic NRx dogma, reasonably deducted from game theory.
Even Plato in the Republic warns about manipualtive structure to his eutopia from people outside, hence only a select few are allowed to think radically and get intel/memes/ideas from outside, discuss them privately, decide on what to try or not, and then propagate it in the polis.
Yeah I don't think there is anything particularly novel in this essay. And I could, if I were inclined, write a counter essay arguing against it. Which would be fun.
Bo
> 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.
"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."
Yes, I agree. Science has all kinds of problems. Interesting, though, that in the USSR, Stalin largely didn't mess with nuclear science. It was too important. But yes, I accept your point.
"Yes, but r/K selection theory says that wildly differing life strategies can bestow reproductive fitness through differentially enhanced reproductive rates."
Completely agree. Would be interesting to relate this to the fitness value of various beliefs.
Bo
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
"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)."
Very true and made me laugh.
Bo
Thanks!