7 ms·

In politics, at least, it is harder to distinguish between someone genuinely changing their mind, and someone merely switching to a now-popular position. The f

In politics, at least, it is harder to distinguish between someone genuinely changing their mind, and someone merely switching to a now-popular position. The first is someone who is thoughtful. The latter is someone who lacks conviction and unreliable- you can't really know what you get when you vote for them.

bombcar 3y ago
Usually you know exactly what you’re getting - someone who will lockstep support the popular positions of the day/country/party, whatever that may become. The first is a bit more dangerous as you’re trusting them to make the best decision in the circumstances: which is better but easily second guessed.
criley2 3y ago
I feel this is an extremism vs moderate thing. Extremists are offended when their extremist politicians were "faking it" by only taking on popular positions to win elections, but moderates are the opposite: They are proud when a politician tells them they listen to the constituents and faithfully represent them even if the politicians personal feelings would be different than the peoples.
someweirdperson 3y ago
> you can't really know what you get when you vote for them You'll get that person. And politics that follow daily polls. That's almost like direct democracy, except that there's no guarantee that the peoples oppinion will be considered in all cases.
pohl 3y ago
OTOH, folk who use confidence & apparent conviction as signifiers of voteworthiness also can’t really know what they’re getting.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Conviction is important because you’re electing people with a mandate. If that someone runs with View X, gets elected, then switches to View Y, they have (potentially) invalidated the mandate that got them elected in the first place.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. 1. It signals that the candidate has a lack of interest in doing the actual job. In fairness, you may share the same lack of interest. It is certainly the easy way out, but nobody ever said that democracy is easy. If you really don't want democracy there are better options than trying to pretend. 2. Even if you buy into the mandate presented during an election campaign, it is going to be woefully out of date before it can be executed on. The state of the world is constantly changing. Which means you still have to put in the work to oversee the employee you hired, buying you little if you thought #1 would be a shortcut.
    - pjc50 3y ago
      > Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. In the UK there's "supposed to be" a commitment to following a party manifesto, and voting for a party is deemed to be a mandate for the manifesto. Not really binding in most cases, but it is part of the constitution. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbury-doctrine/ https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbur...
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      (1) is what elections are. It authorizes the mandate proposed by the candidate during the election cycle. Democracies aren't really about giving individuals authority to exercise their will, they're about authorizing individuals to execute the will of the people who elected the individual. I.e. it would be more proper for a candidate to pursue a platform they were elected on but which they no longer personally believe in than it would be for them to get elected on platform X then pursue platform Y. One obvious reason is that you actually can't know whether they changed their mind X -> Y or whether they knew X had a higher chance of election than Y. In either scenario, their mandate is for X, not Y, and they ought to be somewhat beholden to that. Of course not beholden against all new information, compromises, or circumstances. All of this wiggle room and the individual's propensity for wishy-washiness is considered during the election and is, in fact, part of the mandate. Some people prefer a candidate who has shown willingness to compromise, others do not. Again, in either case, candidates are expected to behave similarly to how the electorate expected them to behave. Point (2) is a valid one. The modern world changes very, very quickly and this is indeed a problem for democracies, but it's a problem only because all of this^ is true. We could simply elect tyrants (not in the pejorative sense) and they can react reflexively to the changing world, but that's not really how democracies work. This dynamic is exactly why crises (a fast-changing world) push democracies toward tyranny.
bhouston 3y ago
So much of Politics is theatre aimed at engaging a base large enough to get you elected. The constant threats to society that engage many, such as Gay Marriage (remember all the rushed state bans?), Sharia Law (remember that being outlawed?), Critical Race Theory (remember that?), or now Youth Transexual Treatment, are designed to engage a demographic to vote for a politician, they are not true societal threats, and they are also discarded soon as they stop working well and another potential engagement strategy arises. Also on many other non-hot topics a lot of politicians have opinions that align with their major donors. So again, they are slow to change their opinions if the money continues to flow. So politics are not good studies of how people change their minds.
- pjc50 3y ago
  "Moral panics". All sorts of things fall under that topic. The fear runs ahead of the evidence. There may or may not be any real underlying problems, but the proposed solutions either don't engage with them or are massive over-responses. You can add various types of music to that list. UK ban on raves https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 with "repetitive beats"; more recently "drill" music.
  - LanceH 3y ago
    Moral panics. We still haven't found all those satanists. We haven't found the clowns. The Prius started working again once Toyota paid $1 billion and bolted the mat to the floor. Popcorn lung has apparently subsided. And the murder hornets were just visiting. Still going strong is anything can be "grooming". And your child can be taken from you if you look away from them even once. I really like the last one -- images of professional gangs having difficulty snatching that child because the mom is going to stop a professional gang.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      Believing the opposite extreme, that there is zero harm associated with moral panics, is necessarily true based on heuristics is arguably not optimal thinking either. Thinking better than dummies is not hard, but thinking without error is a lot harder than it seems. I think if more people started thinking in terms of both relative and absolute comparisons the world might improve. If you only think in relative terms, you are living in a dream world of sorts.
rhaway84773 3y ago
It’s also obviously easy to see the difference. The former is able to clearly explain why they change their mind. The latter is unable other than by falling into sound bites.
duxup 3y ago
> merely switching to a now-popular position If their job is to be representative of the people in their community and those people have a popular opinion, that doesn’t seem to strike me as wrong necessarily.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Problem is when you cast your vote based on a position and they change their mind after because it's not popular with donors etc.
  - duxup 3y ago
    If it isn’t popular with voters I wouldn’t call that “popular opinion”.
    - eesmith 3y ago
      "popular with donors" can be a far smaller set of people than voters.
      - duxup 3y ago
        I don’t think about fits the context of what I was responding to originally.
        eesmith 3y ago
        I think zdragnar's position is that there can multiple reasons for someone to change their position; two being "genuinely changing their mind" (making them "thoughtful"), and "someone merely switching to a now-popular position" (making them "someone who lacks conviction and unreliable"). Your view seems to be the inner state doesn't matter - they still represent the will of the people they represent. morkalork's position seems to be that if someone lacks conviction and is unreliable then a problem may be they get elected then switch to represent the interests of a donor more than the electors.
    - 3y ago
mattm 3y ago
What do we expect from politicians? Is it better to have politicians that are thoughtful and have conviction even though it goes against what the populace demands or is it better to have politicians that understand the populace and are aligned with them in general?
- soco 3y ago
  I argue that a politician going against what the people (aka voters) demands will not get elected in the first place. So the real work must be done before election - a matter of influence in a direction or another.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I understand your point, but it's also true that "the people" don't exactly have a unified opinion of much. Any politician will be going with what some of the people want, and against what a different group of the people want, all at the same time.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  We elect representatives because we can’t expect the populace to be in the room at every moment. The expectation is that those representatives will have some consistency, the hope is that that will mean they’ll make calls similar to the ones we’d make if we were in the room and had all the info. Consistency could also be a guard against pure power politics. Usually people get elected by appealing to some constituency, but it is uncomfortable to just say “I’m here to appeal to X demographic!” So, they try to express the interests of those demographics in terms of principles. Holding them to those principles when they don’t work in the interest of their chosen demographic can result in some pretty strong rhetoric at least.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Presidential ad: “Windsurfing” George W. Bush vs. John Kerry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo "John Kerry, whichever way the wind blows."
- mikewarot 3y ago
  I really, really, hated this anti-intellectual movement that "W" symbolized. The complete crushing of nuance in the public sphere. Dick Cheney has a great number of sins to answer for, and this is one of them.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
Though even cynically doing an about face to a now-popular position due to the polls has some merit in that at least one can say that this politician has respect for and is listening to the population. They are capitulating their position and acknowledging that the population they seek to represent does not agree with them. They may still personally believe differently (who knows) but they are putting the opinions of the population in front of their own. What is unfortunate is that in politics we rarely see a politician talk about situations where they were wrong or made mistakes and they much prefer to turn the page and stick with their talking points of their new idea. I think there's well developed political science and strategic reasons for this. I sometimes say to myself that I'd take another look at some politician I previously disagreed with if they actually offered real apology and regret, but maybe that's not really true.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

bombcar 3y ago

Usually you know exactly what you’re getting - someone who will lockstep support the popular positions of the day/country/party, whatever that may become. The first is a bit more dangerous as you’re trusting them to make the best decision in the circumstances: which is better but easily second guessed.

criley2 3y ago

I feel this is an extremism vs moderate thing. Extremists are offended when their extremist politicians were "faking it" by only taking on popular positions to win elections, but moderates are the opposite: They are proud when a politician tells them they listen to the constituents and faithfully represent them even if the politicians personal feelings would be different than the peoples.

someweirdperson 3y ago

> you can't really know what you get when you vote for them You'll get that person. And politics that follow daily polls. That's almost like direct democracy, except that there's no guarantee that the peoples oppinion will be considered in all cases.

pohl 3y ago

OTOH, folk who use confidence & apparent conviction as signifiers of voteworthiness also can’t really know what they’re getting.

ethanbond 3y ago
Conviction is important because you’re electing people with a mandate. If that someone runs with View X, gets elected, then switches to View Y, they have (potentially) invalidated the mandate that got them elected in the first place.
- randomdata 3y ago
  Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. 1. It signals that the candidate has a lack of interest in doing the actual job. In fairness, you may share the same lack of interest. It is certainly the easy way out, but nobody ever said that democracy is easy. If you really don't want democracy there are better options than trying to pretend. 2. Even if you buy into the mandate presented during an election campaign, it is going to be woefully out of date before it can be executed on. The state of the world is constantly changing. Which means you still have to put in the work to oversee the employee you hired, buying you little if you thought #1 would be a shortcut.
  - pjc50 3y ago
    > Electing someone, at least in a democratic system, with a mandate would be quite foolhardy. In the UK there's "supposed to be" a commitment to following a party manifesto, and voting for a party is deemed to be a mandate for the manifesto. Not really binding in most cases, but it is part of the constitution. https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbury-doctrine/ https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/salisbur...
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    (1) is what elections are. It authorizes the mandate proposed by the candidate during the election cycle. Democracies aren't really about giving individuals authority to exercise their will, they're about authorizing individuals to execute the will of the people who elected the individual. I.e. it would be more proper for a candidate to pursue a platform they were elected on but which they no longer personally believe in than it would be for them to get elected on platform X then pursue platform Y. One obvious reason is that you actually can't know whether they changed their mind X -> Y or whether they knew X had a higher chance of election than Y. In either scenario, their mandate is for X, not Y, and they ought to be somewhat beholden to that. Of course not beholden against all new information, compromises, or circumstances. All of this wiggle room and the individual's propensity for wishy-washiness is considered during the election and is, in fact, part of the mandate. Some people prefer a candidate who has shown willingness to compromise, others do not. Again, in either case, candidates are expected to behave similarly to how the electorate expected them to behave. Point (2) is a valid one. The modern world changes very, very quickly and this is indeed a problem for democracies, but it's a problem only because all of this^ is true. We could simply elect tyrants (not in the pejorative sense) and they can react reflexively to the changing world, but that's not really how democracies work. This dynamic is exactly why crises (a fast-changing world) push democracies toward tyranny.

bhouston 3y ago

So much of Politics is theatre aimed at engaging a base large enough to get you elected. The constant threats to society that engage many, such as Gay Marriage (remember all the rushed state bans?), Sharia Law (remember that being outlawed?), Critical Race Theory (remember that?), or now Youth Transexual Treatment, are designed to engage a demographic to vote for a politician, they are not true societal threats, and they are also discarded soon as they stop working well and another potential engagement strategy arises. Also on many other non-hot topics a lot of politicians have opinions that align with their major donors. So again, they are slow to change their opinions if the money continues to flow. So politics are not good studies of how people change their minds.

pjc50 3y ago
"Moral panics". All sorts of things fall under that topic. The fear runs ahead of the evidence. There may or may not be any real underlying problems, but the proposed solutions either don't engage with them or are massive over-responses. You can add various types of music to that list. UK ban on raves https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/section/63 with "repetitive beats"; more recently "drill" music.
- LanceH 3y ago
  Moral panics. We still haven't found all those satanists. We haven't found the clowns. The Prius started working again once Toyota paid $1 billion and bolted the mat to the floor. Popcorn lung has apparently subsided. And the murder hornets were just visiting. Still going strong is anything can be "grooming". And your child can be taken from you if you look away from them even once. I really like the last one -- images of professional gangs having difficulty snatching that child because the mom is going to stop a professional gang.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    Believing the opposite extreme, that there is zero harm associated with moral panics, is necessarily true based on heuristics is arguably not optimal thinking either. Thinking better than dummies is not hard, but thinking without error is a lot harder than it seems. I think if more people started thinking in terms of both relative and absolute comparisons the world might improve. If you only think in relative terms, you are living in a dream world of sorts.

rhaway84773 3y ago

It’s also obviously easy to see the difference. The former is able to clearly explain why they change their mind. The latter is unable other than by falling into sound bites.

duxup 3y ago

> merely switching to a now-popular position If their job is to be representative of the people in their community and those people have a popular opinion, that doesn’t seem to strike me as wrong necessarily.

morkalork 3y ago
Problem is when you cast your vote based on a position and they change their mind after because it's not popular with donors etc.
- duxup 3y ago
  If it isn’t popular with voters I wouldn’t call that “popular opinion”.
  - eesmith 3y ago
    "popular with donors" can be a far smaller set of people than voters.
    - duxup 3y ago
      I don’t think about fits the context of what I was responding to originally.
      - eesmith 3y ago
        I think zdragnar's position is that there can multiple reasons for someone to change their position; two being "genuinely changing their mind" (making them "thoughtful"), and "someone merely switching to a now-popular position" (making them "someone who lacks conviction and unreliable"). Your view seems to be the inner state doesn't matter - they still represent the will of the people they represent. morkalork's position seems to be that if someone lacks conviction and is unreliable then a problem may be they get elected then switch to represent the interests of a donor more than the electors.
  - 3y ago

mattm 3y ago

What do we expect from politicians? Is it better to have politicians that are thoughtful and have conviction even though it goes against what the populace demands or is it better to have politicians that understand the populace and are aligned with them in general?

soco 3y ago
I argue that a politician going against what the people (aka voters) demands will not get elected in the first place. So the real work must be done before election - a matter of influence in a direction or another.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I understand your point, but it's also true that "the people" don't exactly have a unified opinion of much. Any politician will be going with what some of the people want, and against what a different group of the people want, all at the same time.
bee_rider 3y ago
We elect representatives because we can’t expect the populace to be in the room at every moment. The expectation is that those representatives will have some consistency, the hope is that that will mean they’ll make calls similar to the ones we’d make if we were in the room and had all the info. Consistency could also be a guard against pure power politics. Usually people get elected by appealing to some constituency, but it is uncomfortable to just say “I’m here to appeal to X demographic!” So, they try to express the interests of those demographics in terms of principles. Holding them to those principles when they don’t work in the interest of their chosen demographic can result in some pretty strong rhetoric at least.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Presidential ad: “Windsurfing” George W. Bush vs. John Kerry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QpS2Am51Wo "John Kerry, whichever way the wind blows."

mikewarot 3y ago
I really, really, hated this anti-intellectual movement that "W" symbolized. The complete crushing of nuance in the public sphere. Dick Cheney has a great number of sins to answer for, and this is one of them.

Tiktaalik 3y ago

Though even cynically doing an about face to a now-popular position due to the polls has some merit in that at least one can say that this politician has respect for and is listening to the population. They are capitulating their position and acknowledging that the population they seek to represent does not agree with them. They may still personally believe differently (who knows) but they are putting the opinions of the population in front of their own. What is unfortunate is that in politics we rarely see a politician talk about situations where they were wrong or made mistakes and they much prefer to turn the page and stick with their talking points of their new idea. I think there's well developed political science and strategic reasons for this. I sometimes say to myself that I'd take another look at some politician I previously disagreed with if they actually offered real apology and regret, but maybe that's not really true.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]