Disfunctioning brains - political spectrum

[Agathon]

Oh, that is so a copout.

It's true, nonetheless. I posted the original study as both a troll and an interesting piece on the topic.

[Pekka]

So, many people might think what the hell I'm talking about, what does it mean, it's on such high abstract level that it doesn't have any true applications.

So, if you as much as agree with the major points I made, then you realize, that the 99% of internet debates are all moot, that we are living in a real world but basing our beliefs on others beliefs, which makes us delusional by chance, and because we do that, it hinders us as society, nation, world and people. And also that our democracies are failing us, and that we believe something that is long gone, but it's enough we feel good about it and believe in it anyway? Millions of flies like poo. Are they wrong, or is it a subjective matter, if they like it, well good for them? Maybe, but all I'm saying is, we could be flying over poo too, thinking it's good so it doesn't matter. I would say we would have solved tons of current problems had we just solved the problem of demolishing some current beliefs and structures. So we could be pulling one rope. Science would be more advanced too, and maybe we could all get quality service at the hospital and afford it. It's a possiblity, not necessarily true.

[Pekka]

And it's just a tool to help us visualize, think about the situation and people's views better? Wrong.

How about liberals? They are viewed pretty negatively, but what does the definition of a liberal say.. :

" the term liberalism refers to a wide range of political viewpoints which can not easily be categorized as "left" or "right". "

Doesn't sound too bad to me. So how come it's a negative thing to be labeled? Because the perception of liberals is bad. Because there might have been some self proclaimed liberals, saying things and getting owned or what ever.

So, does it have a huge impact on people 'who don't necessarily hold traditional thoughts'? Hells yes! And by definition, the true liberal is not even categorizable. Maybe that should be the definition. Spells independent thinker to me. But by my points, I wouldn't think liberals are a good idea either. Just let's take an issue at a time and figure out what we think about it, and that's it.

Because the side products of these spectrums are so much crap that is unnecessary and MOST OF ALL gets everyone sidetracked while the GOAL, be it agreed commonly or not, is forgotten, or twisted.

[Jaguar]

Originally posted by Agathon

Agathon, I love how you immediately did exactly what Pekka was ranting about and didn't even realize it.

And you believe this was unintentional...

You've been pwned again by the master of irony.

Hmm, you didn't mention anything when Pekka called you out on it with his "ivory tower" comment. I think it's more likely that the irony was lost on you until JohnT and I pointed it out specifically.

[Agathon]

Hmm, you didn't mention anything when Pekka called you out on it with his "ivory tower" comment

And you think I actually read his posts?

More to the point, do you?

[Jaguar]

Actually, I did read his entire post this time.

[Bill3000]

I'd like to point out something that the awesomeness of Giant Squid (formerly of Apolyton) said, roughly eight months ago. http://www.livejournal.com/users/squid314/9858.html

The theory I have recently developed is that politics, as practiced by the average person who is neither a political scientist nor a politician, is less rooted in either a genuine concern about the state of the country or in appraisal of what is going on than in a desire for a good conversation topic and a sort of more intellectually stimulating version of sports.

Yes, a "more intellectually stimulating version of sports." Consider. In sports, the general paradigm is that a person support some team, usually because that team is close to zir house or some reason like that. The team isn't morally superior to any other team, or even necessarily better at its game than another team, but ze will support it loudly until the day ze dies (think Boston Red Sox) because ze has psychologically invested zirself in it. Whether zir team is good or bad, it has become one of those things (look at the Law of Universal Egotism, below) that ze uses to differentiate zirself from other people and define who ze is, and therefore, it is possible for zir to honestly feel completely crushed when it loses an important game. Despite the fact that there's really no objective reason to prefer either team over the other, it can be taken as a personal defeat.

When ze meets with friends, ze passes the time by discussing the team's chances for this year, which teams are good and which are bad, and what strategies the coaches ought to take. Ze impresses people by proving zir knowledge of statistics and obscure rules. It is a harmless means of totally harmless social interaction that manages, in some cases, to become such a big deal that people riot and kill over it.

In my opinion, this satisfies a deep need in the human psyche. People generally like identifying themselves with some cause bigger than themselves and then proving to others how that cause is a superior one. It helps them us out who we are, and makes us feel good about ourselves.

Now, take that general paradigm and add the most volatile parts of the human experience - religious beliefs, morals, class divisions, racial divisions, and self-interest. Add a level of complexity so deep that the average person won't be anywhere near qualified to discuss it intelligently. A recipe for disaster, to be certain.

In politics, we have our two teams - the Republicans and the Democrats. People think a lot of the time, that these two parties represent two fundamentally different worldviews. I beg to differ. Consider some issues such as abortion, gun control, euthanasia, and free health care. As we all know, the Republicans generally oppose all of these whereas Democrats generally support all of these. For each side of these positions, there are many good arguments - but there is not, in my opinion, one single argument or philosophical view that could lead to the stance of either of the two major parties.

The libertarians could argue that the state has no right making decisions for people and therefore we should support one and three and oppose two and four. Fair enough. Strong statists might say that the individual should not be allowed to make a decision until it has been assured that it will benefit society, and therefore oppose one and three and support two and four. Fair enough again. Someone who thought protecting human life was the most important factor might oppose one and three, go either way on two, and support four. But I challenge anyone to come up with a single philosophical position or moral law that proves that you should support all four of these or oppose all four of these. If you can, see whether it correctly predicts the parties' stance on invading Iraq, or on the death penalty. If it does, definitely tell me.

And yet, even though each of these stances is completely separate from the others, anyone who ran a statistical test would find massive correlation between, say, someone thinking abortion was wrong and thinking that we ought to invade Iraq. Scarily enough, people's opinions do not shape the platforms of the parties. Rather, the platforms of the parties shape peoples' opinions. Just as my brother hates a player when he's playing against the Angels, and then loves him when he gets traded to the Angels and helps them win a game, so the stance of many people on an issue depends on what party is supporting it at the moment. Back when Reagan was in power, Republicans were going on and on about how unfair the two term limit for a president was. When Democrats mentioned the same limit in regards to Clinton, the Republicans were horrified that anyone would ever think of getting rid of such a constitutionally important protection. Indeed do many things come to pass.

People support their parties as sports teams - as a group to be cheered on because their performance, in some odd way, reflects your value as a human being. Ninety percent of political discussion is less of a "let's see what's best for America" than an attempt to outwit your opponent in order to boost your party and your ego at his expense. The average protester protests less out of outrage - though he certainly feels it - than for the same reason that my brother used to wear an Angels cap everywhere he went - to show his idenitification with a certain cause, and to help that cause define who he is to himself. What exactly do I mean by this? The Law of Omnipresent Egotism states that everyone wants to feel like they're better than the unwashed masses, in their own little way. Both political groups peddle this product. The Republicans let people feel that they're the last bastion of religion against God-hating secularists, supports of morality in a world full of homosexuals and sex-crazed Hollywood stars, and one of the few Americans brave enough to support sending other people's children to Iraq. The Democrats offer people the knowledge that they're supporting peace when everyone else is a testosterone-crazed hawk and the belief that they're with the intellectuals when so many others are hicks who let their personal prejudices get the better of them. Both groups are happy in their smug superiority and never miss a chance to reinforce their feeling by telling it to members of the other group, generally tuning out the other group's answer.

To test this theory, we need only figure out what it would predict, and see whether those predictions are more correct than those generated by the theory that people actually care about their country. Granted, it will be unscientific and easy to fake because I'm deciding what each theory predicts after knowing what the facts are, but hey, if you want YOUR theories to look good, get your own livejournal.

First, it predicts that the popularity of a political figure will have almost nothing to do with the state of the country, but only with how good of a "cause" he creates. This explains the observations so troubling to me above. Sure, almost every objective indicator of the state of the nation has fallen under Bush. But Bush's job isn't to help the economy, or make our country a healthy place to live, or even to prevent our soldiers from dying needlessly. It's to let Republicans believe that they're part of the Army of God going out and fighting those terrorists despite all the Benedict Arnolds and cowards at home trying to stop them. The more crazy evil terrorists kill our soldiers in Iraq, the easier this view becomes to accept, and the higher Bush's poll numbers go.

Second, it predicts that the most effective and common tactic of political debate will not be mentioning specific facts about the effects, whether real or potential, of a certain policy, or even discussion of any specific policy at all. but rather broad condemnations of the moral character and philosophical basis of the opposing party, even when the party doesn't really have much of a philosophical basis to begin with. And tell me, how many times have you heard that the Democrats are just tax-and-spend bureaucrats serving Big Government, or that the Republicans are just corrupt fat cats in the pocket of Big Business? And how does that compare to whether or not you know whether the economy has expanded more quickly under Democratic or Republican administrations in the past forty years (answer, in case you were wondering: Democratic, by an unbelievably large margin - check out the statistics sometime, and be amazed, but don't expect anyone to care).

Third, it predicts that the political issues which citizens, nonprofit groups, politicians, and the American government will address will NOT be the ones that have easy, clear-cut solutions, but rather the ones in which everyone disagrees, every possible solution is bad, and which will obviously never be solved. My shining example here is Tibet versus Palestine. Both are countries that are under the control of a foreign power, and both want more rights and, hopefully at some point in the future, greater autonomy. The difference is that everyone agrees that Tibet is in the right, they're wonderful peace-and-love monk people, and China's an evil Communist regime that basically kills hundreds of thousands of them and says "So sue us" afterwards, whereas Palestine is a much more complex topic, seeing as Israel has legitimate security concerns about them, as their government is much more corrupt and less democratic than Israel, as there are all sorts of terrorist groups there, and as Israel generally treats them amazingly well considering the circumstances. And yet, when you hear someone speaking out for the rights of oppressed people, do you think you're going to hear something about Tibet, or something about Palestine. When a magazine wants to run a sob piece about families suffering under an occupation, do they interview Tibetans or Palestinians. When the US government decides that they want to make a meaningless token gesture to atone for however many international incidents they've caused this week, do they condemn China, or Israel? I suspect that if asked which occupation has caused more deaths, that of Tibet and that of Palestine, at least 75% of Americans would say Palestine, for sure (those darned Israelis!). In fact, it would be Tibet, with over five hundred times as many people dead. But if you bring up Tibet at a dinner party, people will just say "Yeah, wow, sucks to be them," whereas if you bring up Palestine, you can count on supporters of Israel getting a chance to show off their Jewishness and supporters of Palestine getting a chance to show off how forward-thinking and anti-imperialist they are, and everyone's happy except the Palestinians and Tibetans, neither of whom are getting their problems solved any time soon.

So. This rant went a bit longer than I had hoped, as usual, but I think it's some important stuff. Lest I sound like I'm picking on everyone else here while claiming to be a saint myself, most of this I developed through intense introspection and then generalizing the results to everyone else as far as seemed justified by their behavior.

This is exactly why I don't participate in political debates anymore, except sporadically on sides I don't actually agree with in order to hone my arguing skills.

[JohnT]

Originally posted by Agathon

Hmm, you didn't mention anything when Pekka called you out on it with his "ivory tower" comment

And you think I actually read his posts?

I think you're being a bit harsh, Pekka.

Uh... yes. Yes, we do.

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
If you want to claim that, Agathon, you should also note that psychologist have also found that non-severe depression, all of which those "Syptoms" would be associated with, is also correlated strongly with being more in touch with reality. Pessimists and mildly depressed people tend to be in touch with reality much more so then optimists. So if you wanted to claim then the conservatives are the only ones with a realalistic view of the world, well, you'd probably be correct.

Conservatives do have a realistic view of life: Then they try to win at life.
Liberals have a realistic view of life: Then they try to make everyone win at it.

End result: everyone gets depressed.

[Jaguar]

I read every word of that, Bill. I've thought about things that way before, but he expressed it very well. to Squid.

[Agathon]

Uh... yes. Yes, we do.

I skim the first bit. Otherwise it gets too much.

[JohnT]

I just read the fifth word in every sentence. Makes more sense that way.

[Bill3000]

Originally posted by JohnT
I just read the fifth word in every sentence. Makes more sense that way.

I word. Make way.

Nope.

[Agathon]

I just read the fifth word in every sentence. Makes more sense that way.

I suggested a similar system to the people who complained about the length of my dissertation. They were not amused.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Agathon
There's a paper you should read called: Political Conservatism as Socially Motivated Cognition.

Its authord haven't read Sniderman 1975.

Therefore, it's crap