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anything that starts off with "left" and "right" as an underlying political model is already hopelessly lost in poor thinking. this particular model is especial

anything that starts off with "left" and "right" as an underlying political model is already hopelessly lost in poor thinking. this particular model is especially prone to tautological "evidence" of its own potency but it's simply uncovering a bias embedded in its own premises. start with a more realistic multidimensional model of political space and then maybe we can have productive conversations about things like intelligence and economic attitudes.

scarmig 4y ago
Conflict tends toward dualism, and politics is inherently about conflict. The space of possible positions is indeed very wide and multidimensional, but the process of effective contention and coalition building drives everything into two sides. Actors who don't want to do this can avoid falling into that binary, but they're also then less engaging in politics than philosophy.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I was stuck in between 5 groups all arguing over a data interchange format. Several groups insisted that the system should categorically not be allowed to support some of the business cases of the people they either got information from or gave it to. I still don't understand how they thought having the whole project fail was going to get them whatever status they were looking for. I got real fond of saying, "compromise means everybody is equally unhappy with the solution" and giving them solutions that worked but often took each of them a couple extra lines of code. Helping them figure out what those lines were smoothed some feathers, but I don't think any of those people were comfortable unless at least a couple feathers were out of place. It's weird when people 10 years older than you are acting like babies. It's not like 'mature' is the first adjective people would use to describe me at that time. When you don't want to be the adult in the room, it's all the more annoying when you have to be.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  > the process of effective contention and coalition building drives everything into two sides. This doesn't seem right. First, there are a lot of political systems with more than one "side", and in which coalitions are at least somewhat fluid. This is even true in the United States; if you have ever served on a board that proposes a bond issue or tax increase, you know that that coalitions are quite local and easy to fragment (need to build a new school on the south side, but the north side has lots of tax hawks? Include a new football stadium on the north side as part of the issue). Second, think about conflict outside of politics. There is a lot of conflict in markets, for example, but most markets do not tend toward duopoly.
- clairity 4y ago
  no, that's post hoc rationalization. the world is more complex than 2 points on a line, always. sure, our brains like 2-dimensions the best, because they're easier to reason about, but there's no law that says that that simple reasoning translates into either an accurate read of a given situation, or an accurate prediction about the future (which is what we want models to do). that's why starting with the "political spectrum" is bound to give you false information. it compresses too much of the complexity down into a simple model that doesn't predict the world in any meaningful way. it may aid conflict, but that's exactly the trouble: couching sociopolitical challenges purely in terms of conflict itself perpetuates, rather than helps to solve, problems. and as others have noted, you can just as easily have multiple political coalitions coming together to solve problems without devolving into dualism. humans prefer but don't require binary political stances as you're asserting. moreover, even binary issues won't all fall neatly into a single left-right spectrum without active coercion (which is most of what we see in mediopolitical theater).
- groby_b 4y ago
  "drives everything into two sides." Mostly true for political systems that are set up as dual parties. Turns out if you have a system that encourages a more open political ecosystem, there are more "sides" that people can end up on.
mistermann 4y ago
> tautological "evidence" Do you (or anyone else) have any idea if this is a formal term in any discipline, or did you come upon it on your own? I notice people engaging in this all the time in arguments, and having thought about it a fair amount I think it is almost impossible to avoid doing unless one is paying extremely close attention to their word choice, as typically (~only) happens during technical discussions. > start with a more realistic multidimensional model of political space This seems like a good idea... But how might one go about doing it?
- clairity 4y ago
  "tautological" comes generally from logical reasoning as a field (in which i have interest but no formal training). is that what you're asking? it's "circular reasoning": a (usually hidden) premise comes around to "prove" the causal chain, which means it's not really proven at all, but merely reasserted. it's a pretty common logical mistake to fall for, because it's hard to detect without that close reading (the platitude that "falsehoods can travel the world before truth has had breakfast" comes to mind here as well). i think political scientists do research the multidimensionality of issues all the time. it's just that politicization (as in partisan politics) wants to collapse the problem space into memes that can lodge in people's brains without further thinking, and simpler (binary) memes are more easily remembered and propagated. in any case, the standard remedies certainly include voting reform (to lessen the incentive towards this binary collapse), parliametary systems (accommodating multiparty coalition-building), federalism (smaller governments are more responsive to the local populace), direct democracy or finer representation, etc.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    > "tautological" comes generally from logical reasoning as a field (in which i have interest but no formal training). is that what you're asking? it's "circular reasoning": a (usually hidden) premise comes around to "prove" the causal chain, which means it's not really proven at all, but merely reasserted. it's a pretty common logical mistake to fall for, because it's hard to detect without that close reading (the platitude that "falsehoods can travel the world before truth has had breakfast" comes to mind here as well). The degree to which humanity runs on tautological reasoning is the part that I find interesting. And I very much agree with the "pretty common logical mistake to fall for" part - I've encountered very few even intelligent people who are highly resistant to it, at least on certain topics (generally: culture war topics, or anything from a non-deterministic problem space). > i think political scientists do research the multidimensionality of issues all the time. it's just that politicization (as in partisan politics) wants to collapse the problem space into memes that can lodge in people's brains without further thinking, and simpler (binary) memes are more easily remembered and propagated. Agree... > in any case, the standard remedies certainly include voting reform (to lessen the incentive towards this binary collapse), parliametary systems (accommodating multiparty coalition-building), federalism (smaller governments are more responsive to the local populace), direct democracy or finer representation, etc. It would be interesting to see what the world would be like if we actually ever tried these "reforms" instead of only talking about them. It is bizarre to me how no one seems to notice that we only talk about certain things, year after year, decade after decade, while simultaneously becoming angry at how suboptimal the world is....it's like "Well duh, what do you expect!!??? lol".

scarmig 4y ago

Conflict tends toward dualism, and politics is inherently about conflict. The space of possible positions is indeed very wide and multidimensional, but the process of effective contention and coalition building drives everything into two sides. Actors who don't want to do this can avoid falling into that binary, but they're also then less engaging in politics than philosophy.

hinkley 4y ago
I was stuck in between 5 groups all arguing over a data interchange format. Several groups insisted that the system should categorically not be allowed to support some of the business cases of the people they either got information from or gave it to. I still don't understand how they thought having the whole project fail was going to get them whatever status they were looking for. I got real fond of saying, "compromise means everybody is equally unhappy with the solution" and giving them solutions that worked but often took each of them a couple extra lines of code. Helping them figure out what those lines were smoothed some feathers, but I don't think any of those people were comfortable unless at least a couple feathers were out of place. It's weird when people 10 years older than you are acting like babies. It's not like 'mature' is the first adjective people would use to describe me at that time. When you don't want to be the adult in the room, it's all the more annoying when you have to be.
thwayunion 4y ago
> the process of effective contention and coalition building drives everything into two sides. This doesn't seem right. First, there are a lot of political systems with more than one "side", and in which coalitions are at least somewhat fluid. This is even true in the United States; if you have ever served on a board that proposes a bond issue or tax increase, you know that that coalitions are quite local and easy to fragment (need to build a new school on the south side, but the north side has lots of tax hawks? Include a new football stadium on the north side as part of the issue). Second, think about conflict outside of politics. There is a lot of conflict in markets, for example, but most markets do not tend toward duopoly.
clairity 4y ago
no, that's post hoc rationalization. the world is more complex than 2 points on a line, always. sure, our brains like 2-dimensions the best, because they're easier to reason about, but there's no law that says that that simple reasoning translates into either an accurate read of a given situation, or an accurate prediction about the future (which is what we want models to do). that's why starting with the "political spectrum" is bound to give you false information. it compresses too much of the complexity down into a simple model that doesn't predict the world in any meaningful way. it may aid conflict, but that's exactly the trouble: couching sociopolitical challenges purely in terms of conflict itself perpetuates, rather than helps to solve, problems. and as others have noted, you can just as easily have multiple political coalitions coming together to solve problems without devolving into dualism. humans prefer but don't require binary political stances as you're asserting. moreover, even binary issues won't all fall neatly into a single left-right spectrum without active coercion (which is most of what we see in mediopolitical theater).
groby_b 4y ago
"drives everything into two sides." Mostly true for political systems that are set up as dual parties. Turns out if you have a system that encourages a more open political ecosystem, there are more "sides" that people can end up on.

mistermann 4y ago

> tautological "evidence" Do you (or anyone else) have any idea if this is a formal term in any discipline, or did you come upon it on your own? I notice people engaging in this all the time in arguments, and having thought about it a fair amount I think it is almost impossible to avoid doing unless one is paying extremely close attention to their word choice, as typically (~only) happens during technical discussions. > start with a more realistic multidimensional model of political space This seems like a good idea... But how might one go about doing it?

clairity 4y ago
"tautological" comes generally from logical reasoning as a field (in which i have interest but no formal training). is that what you're asking? it's "circular reasoning": a (usually hidden) premise comes around to "prove" the causal chain, which means it's not really proven at all, but merely reasserted. it's a pretty common logical mistake to fall for, because it's hard to detect without that close reading (the platitude that "falsehoods can travel the world before truth has had breakfast" comes to mind here as well). i think political scientists do research the multidimensionality of issues all the time. it's just that politicization (as in partisan politics) wants to collapse the problem space into memes that can lodge in people's brains without further thinking, and simpler (binary) memes are more easily remembered and propagated. in any case, the standard remedies certainly include voting reform (to lessen the incentive towards this binary collapse), parliametary systems (accommodating multiparty coalition-building), federalism (smaller governments are more responsive to the local populace), direct democracy or finer representation, etc.
- mistermann 4y ago
  > "tautological" comes generally from logical reasoning as a field (in which i have interest but no formal training). is that what you're asking? it's "circular reasoning": a (usually hidden) premise comes around to "prove" the causal chain, which means it's not really proven at all, but merely reasserted. it's a pretty common logical mistake to fall for, because it's hard to detect without that close reading (the platitude that "falsehoods can travel the world before truth has had breakfast" comes to mind here as well). The degree to which humanity runs on tautological reasoning is the part that I find interesting. And I very much agree with the "pretty common logical mistake to fall for" part - I've encountered very few even intelligent people who are highly resistant to it, at least on certain topics (generally: culture war topics, or anything from a non-deterministic problem space). > i think political scientists do research the multidimensionality of issues all the time. it's just that politicization (as in partisan politics) wants to collapse the problem space into memes that can lodge in people's brains without further thinking, and simpler (binary) memes are more easily remembered and propagated. Agree... > in any case, the standard remedies certainly include voting reform (to lessen the incentive towards this binary collapse), parliametary systems (accommodating multiparty coalition-building), federalism (smaller governments are more responsive to the local populace), direct democracy or finer representation, etc. It would be interesting to see what the world would be like if we actually ever tried these "reforms" instead of only talking about them. It is bizarre to me how no one seems to notice that we only talk about certain things, year after year, decade after decade, while simultaneously becoming angry at how suboptimal the world is....it's like "Well duh, what do you expect!!??? lol".