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I'm assuming it's for a similar reason that people like to watch sports rather than just read the outcome in the news the next day.

• jfengel 6y ago
  Indeed, and I think that treating this like sports is part of the problem. Victory for your team dominates any actual effect of policy on human beings. And it's constant -- the game is going on at literally every instant, with a SuperHyperDuperMegaBowl every four years. Our choices of elections teams are only slightly less arbitrary than our choices of sports teams. Once chosen we get a continual barrage of cheerleading for us and against our arch-rivals. It's not just the ordinary mental failings of refusing to consider things from others' point of view (while telling ourselves that we have carefully considered and rejected it). It's the continual thrill of the match, with both points for and points against creating mental rewards to cheer harder and not look away for a moment. We'll all be healthier if we stopped looking at it like a sports match. And the first step, I believe, is to turn it off, so that we can engage with it at a greater distance, without the dopamine hits and troughs that make it so addicting.