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Re: #2. Let's look at voting according to its consequences, as a mechanism for hopefully getting good outcomes. A zero-information voter picking between two c

by aamar 16y ago

Re: #2. Let's look at voting according to its consequences, as a mechanism for hopefully getting good outcomes. A zero-information voter picking between two candidates is 50% likely to choose the better candidate. Slogans & sound-bites are designed to efficiently (i.e. at low cognitive cost) deliver a message which will inform a voter. If a slogan is totally useless, it leaves me where I was before, at 50%. If some are slightly helpful, I become a slightly better voter, e.g. 50.0001% likely to choose the better candidate. Now let's start with a group of high-information, analytical voters who spent costly time and energy making a decision -- these people should definitely vote, as they're (say) 60% likely to choose the right person. Now, adding any number of additional 50.0001% voters only makes the better outcome more likely. So we should try to include as many low-information voters as possible. There are some ways in which slogans could still be bad. For example, let's say that slogans are in general more easily constructed by "bad" candidates, people who are unqualified for governance (not that slogans have zero correlation with quality, they're negatively correlated). This seems very unlikely and probably requires a radical theory for the function of language. Another example, somewhat narrower: let's say sloganeering is consistently better at selling certain ideas (e.g. low taxes, xenophobia) over others that inherently require more cognitive energy. This seems plausible, but it also seems to me that both "good" and "bad" slogans can have inordinate power given certain conditions in education and culture, so flaws are likely temporary and can be remediated by work in those areas.

bokonist 16y ago
Slogans & sound-bites are designed to efficiently (i.e. at low cognitive cost) deliver a message which will inform a voter Have you ever been in the back office of a typical political campaign? All slogans and ads are designed foremost to elect the candidate, not to inform the voter. An ad will be as deceptive as possible without overstepping the bounds into an outright factual lie (simply because factual lies are easy to double check). This is politics 101, I'm shocked that anyone could believe that slogans and sound bites are information devices. Since the purpose of a slogan is to deceive, the more susceptible voting is to slogans, the worse the outcomes will be. Also, the feedback loop is such that overtime the candidates out compete each other with the base, negative, demagoguing slogans. The all time worst case of this Germany. Under the non-democratic, absolute monarchy of Frederick II the government invited the Jews into the country to start businesses and grow the economy. But over the course of the 1800's Germany got an elected parliament, and then a universal suffrage. Over time politicians out competed each other in blaming problems on the "other" (the Jews). The first anti-semite politicians in the late 1800's were fairly mild, but the feedback loop made things worse, culminating in Hitler. Only after World War II the did the U.S. written constitution ban jingoistic and racist speech, and restore some sanity to politics. In general, there are far more ways to be wrong than to be right. Any selection factor which does not select for truth, will select for falsehood. Since the selection process for sloganeering does not reward truth, we can expect it to reward falsehood. Education is a partial-remedy, but there are limits to how well you can educate anyone. Plus, it raises the new question - who chooses the educators? What if say, one political party captures the education system (which is what has happened in the U.S.)? Essentially what you end up with a hybrid between theocracy (government by the ideological/information authorities) and democracy. Since theocracy is also quite a lousy form of government, if I wanted to improve democracy by splicing in a hybrid gene, I would choose one other than theocracy.
- aamar 16y ago
  Have you ever been in the back office of a typical political campaign? Yes. I've had many roles including leadership positions in political campaigns, and including positions where I crafted official campaign language. I have many friends who have held state directorships or higher roles in winning presidential (and other) campaigns. However, politics has not been my main livelihood, so I think I'm informed while also avoiding extremes of idealism (and cynicism) on this front. Slogans are certainly short-cuts (reductive), tendentious and often misleading. They are totally partisan, but they are also informative. It's certainly upset me when one candidate can spend a lot to get their misleading slogan out and we don't have the money to get our counter-slogan out. I regret the crucial role of money generally in U.S. democracy. However, "slogans" are not "money", and I do think sloganeering/ads are positive, not negative (and also not optimal). Also "slogans" are not "factionalism" -- another problem that I think you are right to be interested in and concerned with (but one that is very difficult to analyze). Also "slogans" are not negativism or necessarily fear-based even if it maybe seems like that right now; in '08, both U.S. pres. candidates emphasized mostly positive/uplifting (typically low-info) slogans. Since the purpose of a slogan is to deceive, the more susceptible voting is to slogans, the worse the outcomes will be. This is not right, for several reasons. First, in practical terms: since outright lies (often) get caught, provocative statements that have some grain of truth are the ones that get picked up. These competing slogans are often stupid (very low signal-to-noise ratio), but the noise -- on average -- cancels out, resulting in people on average getting slightly better chances to make the right decision. E.g.: CA doesn't get every proposition right, but through the haze of slogans back and forth on -- say, prop 23 -- people make the right choice far more often than can be attributed to chance. Yet, all but the very, very few most informed voters seem to be voting based on the slogan/ad/heuristic that mysteriously resonated with them the most. Second, from a logical perspective: in a 2-person election we start from a fair coin-flip. How do slogans make things worse? Do they "crowd out" intelligent analysis, so that what could have been 55% chance to get the right person becomes a 50% chance? Crowding-out presumes fixed amount of communication bandwidth, which seems for all practical purposes false. Or do you imagine that somehow slogans make the election worse than a coin-flip, taking a 50% chance of success down to only a 40% chance? I can't see how you'd reach that conclusion without a very elaborate and speculative theory. I differ on Germany; that historical pathology developed through the action of intellectuals, artists, economists, and philosophers, as well as through the compliance of apathetic and ignorant people. Slogans played a role along with every other form of communication, but we can't single out that form of communication -- even though some people may know them better than they know Baeumler or Riefenstahl. Additionally, I don't think post-WWII limitations on German political speech were eliminations of jingoes or slogans: what's criminalized is all endorsements, both sloganeering and seriously intellectual, of certain ideas. Agree with your concern about partisan capture of education; perhaps isolating curriculum development from elected officials mitigates. Culture somewhat helps, though there are few countries with strong, practical free-speech protections.

by aamar 16y ago

bokonist 16y ago

Slogans & sound-bites are designed to efficiently (i.e. at low cognitive cost) deliver a message which will inform a voter Have you ever been in the back office of a typical political campaign? All slogans and ads are designed foremost to elect the candidate, not to inform the voter. An ad will be as deceptive as possible without overstepping the bounds into an outright factual lie (simply because factual lies are easy to double check). This is politics 101, I'm shocked that anyone could believe that slogans and sound bites are information devices. Since the purpose of a slogan is to deceive, the more susceptible voting is to slogans, the worse the outcomes will be. Also, the feedback loop is such that overtime the candidates out compete each other with the base, negative, demagoguing slogans. The all time worst case of this Germany. Under the non-democratic, absolute monarchy of Frederick II the government invited the Jews into the country to start businesses and grow the economy. But over the course of the 1800's Germany got an elected parliament, and then a universal suffrage. Over time politicians out competed each other in blaming problems on the "other" (the Jews). The first anti-semite politicians in the late 1800's were fairly mild, but the feedback loop made things worse, culminating in Hitler. Only after World War II the did the U.S. written constitution ban jingoistic and racist speech, and restore some sanity to politics. In general, there are far more ways to be wrong than to be right. Any selection factor which does not select for truth, will select for falsehood. Since the selection process for sloganeering does not reward truth, we can expect it to reward falsehood. Education is a partial-remedy, but there are limits to how well you can educate anyone. Plus, it raises the new question - who chooses the educators? What if say, one political party captures the education system (which is what has happened in the U.S.)? Essentially what you end up with a hybrid between theocracy (government by the ideological/information authorities) and democracy. Since theocracy is also quite a lousy form of government, if I wanted to improve democracy by splicing in a hybrid gene, I would choose one other than theocracy.

aamar 16y ago
Have you ever been in the back office of a typical political campaign? Yes. I've had many roles including leadership positions in political campaigns, and including positions where I crafted official campaign language. I have many friends who have held state directorships or higher roles in winning presidential (and other) campaigns. However, politics has not been my main livelihood, so I think I'm informed while also avoiding extremes of idealism (and cynicism) on this front. Slogans are certainly short-cuts (reductive), tendentious and often misleading. They are totally partisan, but they are also informative. It's certainly upset me when one candidate can spend a lot to get their misleading slogan out and we don't have the money to get our counter-slogan out. I regret the crucial role of money generally in U.S. democracy. However, "slogans" are not "money", and I do think sloganeering/ads are positive, not negative (and also not optimal). Also "slogans" are not "factionalism" -- another problem that I think you are right to be interested in and concerned with (but one that is very difficult to analyze). Also "slogans" are not negativism or necessarily fear-based even if it maybe seems like that right now; in '08, both U.S. pres. candidates emphasized mostly positive/uplifting (typically low-info) slogans. Since the purpose of a slogan is to deceive, the more susceptible voting is to slogans, the worse the outcomes will be. This is not right, for several reasons. First, in practical terms: since outright lies (often) get caught, provocative statements that have some grain of truth are the ones that get picked up. These competing slogans are often stupid (very low signal-to-noise ratio), but the noise -- on average -- cancels out, resulting in people on average getting slightly better chances to make the right decision. E.g.: CA doesn't get every proposition right, but through the haze of slogans back and forth on -- say, prop 23 -- people make the right choice far more often than can be attributed to chance. Yet, all but the very, very few most informed voters seem to be voting based on the slogan/ad/heuristic that mysteriously resonated with them the most. Second, from a logical perspective: in a 2-person election we start from a fair coin-flip. How do slogans make things worse? Do they "crowd out" intelligent analysis, so that what could have been 55% chance to get the right person becomes a 50% chance? Crowding-out presumes fixed amount of communication bandwidth, which seems for all practical purposes false. Or do you imagine that somehow slogans make the election worse than a coin-flip, taking a 50% chance of success down to only a 40% chance? I can't see how you'd reach that conclusion without a very elaborate and speculative theory. I differ on Germany; that historical pathology developed through the action of intellectuals, artists, economists, and philosophers, as well as through the compliance of apathetic and ignorant people. Slogans played a role along with every other form of communication, but we can't single out that form of communication -- even though some people may know them better than they know Baeumler or Riefenstahl. Additionally, I don't think post-WWII limitations on German political speech were eliminations of jingoes or slogans: what's criminalized is all endorsements, both sloganeering and seriously intellectual, of certain ideas. Agree with your concern about partisan capture of education; perhaps isolating curriculum development from elected officials mitigates. Culture somewhat helps, though there are few countries with strong, practical free-speech protections.