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I am also 37. My political opinions as a twenty year old weren't wildly different. I have become more pragmatic as I've realised just how hard it is to get anyt

I am also 37. My political opinions as a twenty year old weren't wildly different. I have become more pragmatic as I've realised just how hard it is to get anything complex done and how many cognitive biases people have but I'm also worried that I might be losing something in not feeling that idealism. I distrust people voting according to their opinions rather than "ones borrowed from books". In many cases younger voters vote "better" (at least according to my views). The Brexit vote, or US presidential election, for example, where older voters appeared to win the vote whilst trusting to their emotional experiences rather than the evidence. They certainly seemed less well informed for the most part.

klodolph 10y ago
There's plenty of garbage to be learned either from books or from personal experience. I'm not trying to be flippant. As you pointed out, we all have our biases. If I were raised racist, I'd try to confirm those biases in my personal experiences. Or perhaps some kind of personal experience would shatter my biases. I could be on the lookout for things I hear on talk radio, or I could make unexpected friends. Equally, I could get my sense of morals from reading Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, St. Augustine, or the Dhammapada. I've known people who have learned atrocious or wonderful things from books, and I've known people who have invented fantastic or horrifying personal philosophies. I don't think I've uncovered any kind of pattern as to why some people think one way and others another. The funny thing here is that in this discussion, we're using our personal experiences (anecdotes and armchair speculation) to try and analyze it. My personal contribution is that older people have more property, and that whatever material they use for their political views (be it books or experiences) will mostly be used to support their own goals for enjoying that property. The young folks want to get property, so they vote for that instead. That doesn't explain much, but it does partly explain why younger citizens tend to be more liberal.
- tormeh 10y ago
  Yes, and young people have little property and therefore don't have that much to lose from change. Old people are conservative because they have property - the less change the better.
- croon 10y ago
  Polarizing question, but I wonder how many people who hold up an Ayn Rand book as a marker for their views have actually read it, and how much they read otherwise. I think it's very rare for people who do read a lot, and read varied to not be "better" off than not reading. Like most I was an idealist in youth, and while I have become more pragmatic, I still try to stoke that fire. I however learned in my 20s to never fear the opposition/unknown, and reading more and challenging views is never dangerous. Sometimes it challenges you to rethink your stance, sometimes it's exposed as ridiculous. My point is that I think it's really hard to "learn garbage" from reading a lot.
  - klodolph 10y ago
    Consider my viewpoint as one in opposition to your own. My personal experience—I've met people who are well read but don't read well, if you know what I mean. People who read Nietzcshe and think that they can get by with less sleep because they're übermensch. Yes, I've actually met two people who have come to that particular conclusion. I imagine that they eventually grew out of it, but was it reading, specifically that caused this, or just the general experience of life (of which reading is one part)? If your attitude is that you are reading to challenge yourself with views that you disagree with, then you are going to find it easier to expand your mind. But that's not why everyone reads, not everything you read will expand your mind, and that kind of attitude will allow you to expand your mind in many other ways as well (besides reading). I'm also not sold on the idea that youth are idealists in some kind of ideological sense. I feel that it comes across that way, but only because as I get older, I am a better judge of how I can actually change the world, and I might as well devote my resources to where I can make the biggest difference. In other words, we may become more or less idealist as we get older, but being pragmatic is literally a skill that requires experience to develop. And if you doubt that you are still idealistic, remember that you are the one arguing that it's hard to "learn garbage" from reading—perhaps an ideological standpoint, from my perspective ;-)
    - hliyan 10y ago
      I'd like to think that the ideals/principles of youth and old are the same, except that the old have been patched over the years for real world vulnerabilities.
tajen 10y ago
> In many cases younger voters vote "better" So in your opinion, there was a "right" choice to make, and a wrong choice? Why let people vote, then? The fact that a group I'll name "L." thinks they're plain right and the others are plain wrong worries me at the highest point. > trusting the evidence Can't you just absorb that older people voted rationally, based on evidence and distinct life choices that aren't necessarily stupid? In another world where their vote would match your vision of "right", you'd praise the elderly for having more 70 more years of experience, saluting their knowledge, etc. In the present situation, the "L." group presents older people as too senile to make "the right choice". You belong to this L. group. One point which tips the votes is the "L." group is so dictatorial about their vision of right, and that makes a huge group tip for the alternative, the Trump/Brexit vote. The L group generally uses the "right-vs-wrong" attitude, like you just did, but also weighs the supposedly "correct" vote with plenty of dubious things: If you vote Remain in the brexit, you also vote for a huge increase in London's size which is against countryside's interest – Maybe people don't want that? Maybe a huge London also increases inequalities? If you vote Democrats you also vote for plenty of leftish/liberal laws which aren't right at all (including bribes and murders at the highest level of the government, including plain war and suffering of kids in the Middle-East using blind drones and pure horror, including the militarization of US police). Neither the Democrats nor the Remain planned to do things that convinced most of the population. Definitely, there wasn't a right and wrong choice in Brexit and Trump. There's just a democratic choice, and people like you, at the end of the year, who still are in denial that their opponent might have a rational reasoning. Which is exactly the lack of listening that is killing our democracies. The ball is on your side.
- ajkjk 10y ago
  Well, if someone has an opinion about the right choice on an issue, it sure makes a lot of sense to judge the rightness of voters based whether they vote that way. There's basically no other way to do it, right? Like.. no one votes for something they don't think is right. The whole point is a difference of opinion about what right is.
- chimprich 10y ago
  > So in your opinion, there was a "right" choice to make, and a wrong choice? Why let people vote, then? Of course in my opinion there was a right and a wrong choice. If I didn't think that, I wouldn't have an opinion, would I? The "better" was in quotes because I appreciate that it is subjective. I can't say with absolute certainty that one option is better than another because I don't have perfect information. We prefer democracy because in general it leads to far better outcomes in general than the alternatives that have been tried. That doesn't mean I don't think we often vote badly in individual votes. > Can't you just absorb that older people voted rationally, based on evidence and distinct life choices that aren't necessarily stupid? No, I cannot. No one votes entirely rationally, and I certainly include myself. People tend to vote according to their emotions, and because of a range of cognitive biases. A case in point: > One point which tips the votes is the "L." group is so dictatorial about their vision of right, and that makes a huge group tip for the alternative, the Trump/Brexit vote. Casting a vote because you are annoyed at your political opponents being confident about their views makes no sense logically. This is an emotional reaction rather than a sober assessment of what is best for yourself, your country and the world. Surely the questions of jobs, climate change, scientific research, health and so on are vastly more important than punishing a certain group's mindset? I feel that the Trump/Brexit campaigns won because they were far better at manipulating these kind of reactions than because they presented better arguments. I think any objective assessment of the respective campaigns would conclude they or their supporters spread more misinformation. That doesn't mean they were with certainty the wrong choice, just that I don't like how we got there. > Which is exactly the lack of listening that is killing our democracies. I have the opposite opinion. The increasing emphasis on making decisions by emotion as in "our opponents aren't listening to us enough" is doing more harm to democracy. Less reliance on personal experience and more reliance on logical argument and facts please.
madaxe_again 10y ago
I'm 34 and I seem to reinvent myself drastically every 7 years or so, and this includes politics. My views on life the universe and everything stem both from direct experience and books - lots and lots of books. At 15 I was apolitical, and a default conservative, but while I would merrily assign myself these labels my actions spoke very differently. At 22 I was a libertarian/objectivist zealot, and still an authoritarian, just a different source of authority. By 26 I had moved to classical liberalism with leftist leanings - and had become vehemently and vocally antiauthoritarian in a political rather than "fuck you, dad" manner. At this point I just sit on the sidelines and laugh at the insane symbol manipulation that seems to be the primary occupation of humans. The thing is, while my views and degrees of misanthropy and cynicism have ebbed and flowed over the years, a constant thread can be traced back throughout - a nascent distrust of authority which grew into a rejection of all authority - and a pattern of thinking that makes people look at me cock-eyed, as I think and say things which others consider irregular. Always have. The only thing that has changed is that I've continued to load more and more information into the system, which has given me more to work with, more precise identifiers, a more nuanced understanding of ape-men and their activities. So - the crux is that while I rebrand myself every seven years or so, the only thing that's actually changing is the labels, the assignation - I still identify strongly with eleven year old me - although I do now prefer Trek to Wars.
- narrowrail 10y ago
  Regarding labels, whether one believes humans are innately good or evil I have found more telling than the more popular labels people like to assign to themselves.
  - madaxe_again 10y ago
    I actually reject the concepts of good and evil, and instead see the axis as selfish/altruistic - and I think humans are generally selfish.
    - barrkel 10y ago
      I think altruism is selfish. That is, I think people seek pleasurable feelings through altruistic acts. Sometimes the feelings come from the act itself, of having done a good thing. More usually, it comes from other people, whether it's the gratitude of those to whom the thing has been done, or the admiration of those who observed the act, or - probably the most dubious - from feeling morally superior to other people. Feeling morally superior can lead to moral self-licencing, whereupon you can feel free to act more selfishly or immorally because of a previous morally virtuous or selfless / altruistic act. My axis for judgement would be closer to fair vs unfair, from a Rawlsian veil of ignorance perspective, which lends the notion of fairness a wider social dimension rather than restricting it to the fairness of individual acts, and enables more consequentialist reasoning for the outcomes of universal rules, rather than deontological reasoning.

klodolph 10y ago

There's plenty of garbage to be learned either from books or from personal experience. I'm not trying to be flippant. As you pointed out, we all have our biases. If I were raised racist, I'd try to confirm those biases in my personal experiences. Or perhaps some kind of personal experience would shatter my biases. I could be on the lookout for things I hear on talk radio, or I could make unexpected friends. Equally, I could get my sense of morals from reading Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, St. Augustine, or the Dhammapada. I've known people who have learned atrocious or wonderful things from books, and I've known people who have invented fantastic or horrifying personal philosophies. I don't think I've uncovered any kind of pattern as to why some people think one way and others another. The funny thing here is that in this discussion, we're using our personal experiences (anecdotes and armchair speculation) to try and analyze it. My personal contribution is that older people have more property, and that whatever material they use for their political views (be it books or experiences) will mostly be used to support their own goals for enjoying that property. The young folks want to get property, so they vote for that instead. That doesn't explain much, but it does partly explain why younger citizens tend to be more liberal.

tormeh 10y ago
Yes, and young people have little property and therefore don't have that much to lose from change. Old people are conservative because they have property - the less change the better.
croon 10y ago
Polarizing question, but I wonder how many people who hold up an Ayn Rand book as a marker for their views have actually read it, and how much they read otherwise. I think it's very rare for people who do read a lot, and read varied to not be "better" off than not reading. Like most I was an idealist in youth, and while I have become more pragmatic, I still try to stoke that fire. I however learned in my 20s to never fear the opposition/unknown, and reading more and challenging views is never dangerous. Sometimes it challenges you to rethink your stance, sometimes it's exposed as ridiculous. My point is that I think it's really hard to "learn garbage" from reading a lot.
- klodolph 10y ago
  Consider my viewpoint as one in opposition to your own. My personal experience—I've met people who are well read but don't read well, if you know what I mean. People who read Nietzcshe and think that they can get by with less sleep because they're übermensch. Yes, I've actually met two people who have come to that particular conclusion. I imagine that they eventually grew out of it, but was it reading, specifically that caused this, or just the general experience of life (of which reading is one part)? If your attitude is that you are reading to challenge yourself with views that you disagree with, then you are going to find it easier to expand your mind. But that's not why everyone reads, not everything you read will expand your mind, and that kind of attitude will allow you to expand your mind in many other ways as well (besides reading). I'm also not sold on the idea that youth are idealists in some kind of ideological sense. I feel that it comes across that way, but only because as I get older, I am a better judge of how I can actually change the world, and I might as well devote my resources to where I can make the biggest difference. In other words, we may become more or less idealist as we get older, but being pragmatic is literally a skill that requires experience to develop. And if you doubt that you are still idealistic, remember that you are the one arguing that it's hard to "learn garbage" from reading—perhaps an ideological standpoint, from my perspective ;-)
  - hliyan 10y ago
    I'd like to think that the ideals/principles of youth and old are the same, except that the old have been patched over the years for real world vulnerabilities.

tajen 10y ago

> In many cases younger voters vote "better" So in your opinion, there was a "right" choice to make, and a wrong choice? Why let people vote, then? The fact that a group I'll name "L." thinks they're plain right and the others are plain wrong worries me at the highest point. > trusting the evidence Can't you just absorb that older people voted rationally, based on evidence and distinct life choices that aren't necessarily stupid? In another world where their vote would match your vision of "right", you'd praise the elderly for having more 70 more years of experience, saluting their knowledge, etc. In the present situation, the "L." group presents older people as too senile to make "the right choice". You belong to this L. group. One point which tips the votes is the "L." group is so dictatorial about their vision of right, and that makes a huge group tip for the alternative, the Trump/Brexit vote. The L group generally uses the "right-vs-wrong" attitude, like you just did, but also weighs the supposedly "correct" vote with plenty of dubious things: If you vote Remain in the brexit, you also vote for a huge increase in London's size which is against countryside's interest – Maybe people don't want that? Maybe a huge London also increases inequalities? If you vote Democrats you also vote for plenty of leftish/liberal laws which aren't right at all (including bribes and murders at the highest level of the government, including plain war and suffering of kids in the Middle-East using blind drones and pure horror, including the militarization of US police). Neither the Democrats nor the Remain planned to do things that convinced most of the population. Definitely, there wasn't a right and wrong choice in Brexit and Trump. There's just a democratic choice, and people like you, at the end of the year, who still are in denial that their opponent might have a rational reasoning. Which is exactly the lack of listening that is killing our democracies. The ball is on your side.

ajkjk 10y ago
Well, if someone has an opinion about the right choice on an issue, it sure makes a lot of sense to judge the rightness of voters based whether they vote that way. There's basically no other way to do it, right? Like.. no one votes for something they don't think is right. The whole point is a difference of opinion about what right is.
chimprich 10y ago
> So in your opinion, there was a "right" choice to make, and a wrong choice? Why let people vote, then? Of course in my opinion there was a right and a wrong choice. If I didn't think that, I wouldn't have an opinion, would I? The "better" was in quotes because I appreciate that it is subjective. I can't say with absolute certainty that one option is better than another because I don't have perfect information. We prefer democracy because in general it leads to far better outcomes in general than the alternatives that have been tried. That doesn't mean I don't think we often vote badly in individual votes. > Can't you just absorb that older people voted rationally, based on evidence and distinct life choices that aren't necessarily stupid? No, I cannot. No one votes entirely rationally, and I certainly include myself. People tend to vote according to their emotions, and because of a range of cognitive biases. A case in point: > One point which tips the votes is the "L." group is so dictatorial about their vision of right, and that makes a huge group tip for the alternative, the Trump/Brexit vote. Casting a vote because you are annoyed at your political opponents being confident about their views makes no sense logically. This is an emotional reaction rather than a sober assessment of what is best for yourself, your country and the world. Surely the questions of jobs, climate change, scientific research, health and so on are vastly more important than punishing a certain group's mindset? I feel that the Trump/Brexit campaigns won because they were far better at manipulating these kind of reactions than because they presented better arguments. I think any objective assessment of the respective campaigns would conclude they or their supporters spread more misinformation. That doesn't mean they were with certainty the wrong choice, just that I don't like how we got there. > Which is exactly the lack of listening that is killing our democracies. I have the opposite opinion. The increasing emphasis on making decisions by emotion as in "our opponents aren't listening to us enough" is doing more harm to democracy. Less reliance on personal experience and more reliance on logical argument and facts please.

madaxe_again 10y ago

I'm 34 and I seem to reinvent myself drastically every 7 years or so, and this includes politics. My views on life the universe and everything stem both from direct experience and books - lots and lots of books. At 15 I was apolitical, and a default conservative, but while I would merrily assign myself these labels my actions spoke very differently. At 22 I was a libertarian/objectivist zealot, and still an authoritarian, just a different source of authority. By 26 I had moved to classical liberalism with leftist leanings - and had become vehemently and vocally antiauthoritarian in a political rather than "fuck you, dad" manner. At this point I just sit on the sidelines and laugh at the insane symbol manipulation that seems to be the primary occupation of humans. The thing is, while my views and degrees of misanthropy and cynicism have ebbed and flowed over the years, a constant thread can be traced back throughout - a nascent distrust of authority which grew into a rejection of all authority - and a pattern of thinking that makes people look at me cock-eyed, as I think and say things which others consider irregular. Always have. The only thing that has changed is that I've continued to load more and more information into the system, which has given me more to work with, more precise identifiers, a more nuanced understanding of ape-men and their activities. So - the crux is that while I rebrand myself every seven years or so, the only thing that's actually changing is the labels, the assignation - I still identify strongly with eleven year old me - although I do now prefer Trek to Wars.

narrowrail 10y ago
Regarding labels, whether one believes humans are innately good or evil I have found more telling than the more popular labels people like to assign to themselves.
- madaxe_again 10y ago
  I actually reject the concepts of good and evil, and instead see the axis as selfish/altruistic - and I think humans are generally selfish.
  - barrkel 10y ago
    I think altruism is selfish. That is, I think people seek pleasurable feelings through altruistic acts. Sometimes the feelings come from the act itself, of having done a good thing. More usually, it comes from other people, whether it's the gratitude of those to whom the thing has been done, or the admiration of those who observed the act, or - probably the most dubious - from feeling morally superior to other people. Feeling morally superior can lead to moral self-licencing, whereupon you can feel free to act more selfishly or immorally because of a previous morally virtuous or selfless / altruistic act. My axis for judgement would be closer to fair vs unfair, from a Rawlsian veil of ignorance perspective, which lends the notion of fairness a wider social dimension rather than restricting it to the fairness of individual acts, and enables more consequentialist reasoning for the outcomes of universal rules, rather than deontological reasoning.