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> _Everyone_ has an ideology that overrides logic for many topics. Yes. However, my ideology is that logic, evidence, and reason, and reality are far more imp

> _Everyone_ has an ideology that overrides logic for many topics. Yes. However, my ideology is that logic, evidence, and reason, and reality are far more important than ideology. All I care about is evidence and if I hold a position that is faulty I abandon it the moment there is evidence that I'm incorrect.

ilaksh 8y ago
See I believe even people who (like me) have a scientific or rational worldview are biased by their existing pre-conceived premises. You have to start from some perspective. So effectively this idea that your worldview is totally evidence-based just acts as a blanket and automatic (non-rational) reinforcement for you existing views.
perfmode 8y ago
Do you believe there are things that cannot be understood through reason alone? Are there things that lie beyond understanding? That cannot be understood or discussed rationally?
mbrock 8y ago
In political issues, what kind of evidence do you require? For example, what evidence can settle the question of whether the state ought to use taxes to provide healthcare?
- draugadrotten 8y ago
  Remember time. One way to think about this dilemma is that evidence is a result of observing reality. Evidence are about the present and the past. Politics on the other hand is a way to change reality, which will change the future observations to give different evidence as a result. Politics is about making changes now to change the future. Evidence and politics are connected but separated by time.
  - mbrock 8y ago
    Indeed. But questions of how to evaluate results are always answered by way of some kind of preference, desire, or ideology, right? Different ethical principles can be in conflict; there's no objective measurement of the good.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  I personally usually don't have strong preferences in politics. Most things make sense (or no-sense) in some light. That's why I have trouble choosing a party. Most issues are a close decision for me, so they don't clearly fall into one party's political view.
- mcv 8y ago
  I can answer that one: look at other countries. Look at what they do and compare the results. Some countries use taxes to provide health care, some fund it partially by taxes, some don't use taxes at all. Compare the results: which system gets the best health care for the least amount of money?
  - mbrock 8y ago
    That is indeed a good way to gain insight into consequences, but still you will have to make ambiguous decisions when formulating the measure of good healthcare—e.g., do you consider equality for rich and poor?—and when judging tradeoffs like those involved in budgeting tax revenue, etc.
    - bloak 8y ago
      I agree that this is the main point: What are you trying to achieve? If your aim is to increase average happiness, what do you consider to be a good measure of happiness? And what kind of average are you using? Most "ideology" relates to this kind of arbitrary preference, I think. But there are also other problems with evidence: How well do you trust the authors and institutions that produce or report the evidence? And if the evidence is probabilistic, as most evidence is, outside mathematics, what are your prior probabilities (in a Bayesian sense)? In the case of international comparisons of health care, and other situations in which there is no repeatable experiment, there's also the problem of whether A caused B or whether A and B are both consequences of something else, perhaps something that the authors had considered and dismissed with some non-numerical justification, or perhaps something that wasn't even considered.
rjf72 8y ago
I find this worldview tends to face difficulties in practice because on any reasonably controversial issue you can find solid evidence that 'both' (assuming only two sides here for linguistic ease) sides are wrong, and evidence that both sides are right. So which do you choose? Neither? What if it's an issue that you find particularly relevant? Do you now base your decision on popular vote? Weighted vote? Or do you go with what you personally find most compelling? Something altogether different? To avoid the hornet's nest that is contemporary issues let's go back a bit in time. Is Earth in the very center of the universe with literally everything in existence revolving around it, a geocentric view? Or do we live in a universe where the Earth holds no particular relevance and is just another rock rotating around our star, a heliocentric view? There is hundreds of years of astronomical evidence indicating that the Earth is at the center of the universe. But at the same time you understand that alternative views, heliocentricism in particular, have not been given anywhere near the same degree of consideration. It borders on heresy against the established political forces, but even in academia it turns against centuries of established research. But might we be missing something? Personally you find the models used to articulate the astronomical 'reality' of a geocentric to be rather unrealistically fanciful. Mercury at some point in its orbit literally stops and just starts going the other way. Most of all the planets have to travel in these really peculiar swirly orbits that we don't really have any physical evidence of in any other phenomena. Perhaps most worrying of all to you, the models used to demonstrate a geocentric universe are completely unfalsifiable. Each time we make a new observation we simply tack it onto the model. There is no way the model could ever be refuted outside of being able to view the universe through the eyes of god himself, which is something we surely will never be able to do. So would you choose to believe that the Earth is at the center of the universe? Or might you find it something less than compelling in spite of the fact that 'logic, evidence, reason, and reality' as framed by the times had entrenched it as indisputable fact? In any case there would certainly be no indisputable evidence that Earth was not at the center of the universe with everything else revolving around it.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  Geocentrism vs heliocentrism was actually a proxy debate between religious authoritarianism and the first stirrings of scientific empiricism. You buy ideology wholesale, and ideological thinking is essentially authoritarian. It means you can hide behind something that you assume is bigger than yourself to make your beliefs more plausible and your arguments more convincing. You can see this reduced to bare essentials when you talk to religious types who "prove" everything with a bible quote. If you don't believe in the authority of the bible this seems ridiculous, and if you do it's completely authoritative. But science has similar issues. It's not unusual to see "You can't argue with me, I'm a scientist" being used in the fringes of science where it isn't truly justified empirically or theoretically. It's even more popular among technical types who aren't scientists at all, but who use "science" to dismiss opinions they disapprove of as "woo". Ideology is essentially just people not-thinking in a herd. You can buy your value system wholesale, have it justified by the size and heft of your herd, and persuade yourself that your beliefs make sense - and even that they can't be argued with. The authoritarian part comes from the political reality that political "morality" is about power, status, and credibility, not about facts or accuracy. In a political moral framework you score points by destroying the power, status, and credibility of your opponent using any means possible - including outright lies and character smears. Humans seem much more likely to "prove" a point politically than empirically and with intellectual humility and integrity - which is fatal for real knowledge, because making and admitting mistakes in a political frame is a strongly losing move.
cyborgx7 8y ago
I trust people like you, who don't even acknowledge the impact of ideology on their reasoning, even less to be objective.

ilaksh 8y ago

See I believe even people who (like me) have a scientific or rational worldview are biased by their existing pre-conceived premises. You have to start from some perspective. So effectively this idea that your worldview is totally evidence-based just acts as a blanket and automatic (non-rational) reinforcement for you existing views.

perfmode 8y ago

Do you believe there are things that cannot be understood through reason alone? Are there things that lie beyond understanding? That cannot be understood or discussed rationally?

mbrock 8y ago

In political issues, what kind of evidence do you require? For example, what evidence can settle the question of whether the state ought to use taxes to provide healthcare?

draugadrotten 8y ago
Remember time. One way to think about this dilemma is that evidence is a result of observing reality. Evidence are about the present and the past. Politics on the other hand is a way to change reality, which will change the future observations to give different evidence as a result. Politics is about making changes now to change the future. Evidence and politics are connected but separated by time.
- mbrock 8y ago
  Indeed. But questions of how to evaluate results are always answered by way of some kind of preference, desire, or ideology, right? Different ethical principles can be in conflict; there's no objective measurement of the good.
Double_a_92 8y ago
I personally usually don't have strong preferences in politics. Most things make sense (or no-sense) in some light. That's why I have trouble choosing a party. Most issues are a close decision for me, so they don't clearly fall into one party's political view.
mcv 8y ago
I can answer that one: look at other countries. Look at what they do and compare the results. Some countries use taxes to provide health care, some fund it partially by taxes, some don't use taxes at all. Compare the results: which system gets the best health care for the least amount of money?
- mbrock 8y ago
  That is indeed a good way to gain insight into consequences, but still you will have to make ambiguous decisions when formulating the measure of good healthcare—e.g., do you consider equality for rich and poor?—and when judging tradeoffs like those involved in budgeting tax revenue, etc.
  - bloak 8y ago
    I agree that this is the main point: What are you trying to achieve? If your aim is to increase average happiness, what do you consider to be a good measure of happiness? And what kind of average are you using? Most "ideology" relates to this kind of arbitrary preference, I think. But there are also other problems with evidence: How well do you trust the authors and institutions that produce or report the evidence? And if the evidence is probabilistic, as most evidence is, outside mathematics, what are your prior probabilities (in a Bayesian sense)? In the case of international comparisons of health care, and other situations in which there is no repeatable experiment, there's also the problem of whether A caused B or whether A and B are both consequences of something else, perhaps something that the authors had considered and dismissed with some non-numerical justification, or perhaps something that wasn't even considered.

rjf72 8y ago

I find this worldview tends to face difficulties in practice because on any reasonably controversial issue you can find solid evidence that 'both' (assuming only two sides here for linguistic ease) sides are wrong, and evidence that both sides are right. So which do you choose? Neither? What if it's an issue that you find particularly relevant? Do you now base your decision on popular vote? Weighted vote? Or do you go with what you personally find most compelling? Something altogether different? To avoid the hornet's nest that is contemporary issues let's go back a bit in time. Is Earth in the very center of the universe with literally everything in existence revolving around it, a geocentric view? Or do we live in a universe where the Earth holds no particular relevance and is just another rock rotating around our star, a heliocentric view? There is hundreds of years of astronomical evidence indicating that the Earth is at the center of the universe. But at the same time you understand that alternative views, heliocentricism in particular, have not been given anywhere near the same degree of consideration. It borders on heresy against the established political forces, but even in academia it turns against centuries of established research. But might we be missing something? Personally you find the models used to articulate the astronomical 'reality' of a geocentric to be rather unrealistically fanciful. Mercury at some point in its orbit literally stops and just starts going the other way. Most of all the planets have to travel in these really peculiar swirly orbits that we don't really have any physical evidence of in any other phenomena. Perhaps most worrying of all to you, the models used to demonstrate a geocentric universe are completely unfalsifiable. Each time we make a new observation we simply tack it onto the model. There is no way the model could ever be refuted outside of being able to view the universe through the eyes of god himself, which is something we surely will never be able to do. So would you choose to believe that the Earth is at the center of the universe? Or might you find it something less than compelling in spite of the fact that 'logic, evidence, reason, and reality' as framed by the times had entrenched it as indisputable fact? In any case there would certainly be no indisputable evidence that Earth was not at the center of the universe with everything else revolving around it.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
Geocentrism vs heliocentrism was actually a proxy debate between religious authoritarianism and the first stirrings of scientific empiricism. You buy ideology wholesale, and ideological thinking is essentially authoritarian. It means you can hide behind something that you assume is bigger than yourself to make your beliefs more plausible and your arguments more convincing. You can see this reduced to bare essentials when you talk to religious types who "prove" everything with a bible quote. If you don't believe in the authority of the bible this seems ridiculous, and if you do it's completely authoritative. But science has similar issues. It's not unusual to see "You can't argue with me, I'm a scientist" being used in the fringes of science where it isn't truly justified empirically or theoretically. It's even more popular among technical types who aren't scientists at all, but who use "science" to dismiss opinions they disapprove of as "woo". Ideology is essentially just people not-thinking in a herd. You can buy your value system wholesale, have it justified by the size and heft of your herd, and persuade yourself that your beliefs make sense - and even that they can't be argued with. The authoritarian part comes from the political reality that political "morality" is about power, status, and credibility, not about facts or accuracy. In a political moral framework you score points by destroying the power, status, and credibility of your opponent using any means possible - including outright lies and character smears. Humans seem much more likely to "prove" a point politically than empirically and with intellectual humility and integrity - which is fatal for real knowledge, because making and admitting mistakes in a political frame is a strongly losing move.

cyborgx7 8y ago

I trust people like you, who don't even acknowledge the impact of ideology on their reasoning, even less to be objective.