5 ms·

Empathy seems like an obvious candidate for being the root cause.

by xeckr 3y ago

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
> people with increased sensitivity to pain are also more likely to endorse values more common to people of their opposite political persuasion. It doesn’t stop there. They also show stronger support for the other camp’s politicians, and, get this -- more likely to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 if they are liberal, or Joe Biden if they are conservative. Except by these sorts of actions they're explicitly showing a lack of empathy for their own fellow believers. This is more than just empathy. It demonstrates something akin to submission to the will of the Other.
- autoexec 3y ago
  > “it’s not that their profile of moral sensitivities shifts from ‘only supporting our side’ to ‘only supporting the other side.’ Instead, they tend to be more supportive of both sides’ views.” Seems like people who are more empathic just recognize that no matter what "team" someone else blindly supports they still have valid concerns and common ground. It's certainly not some kind of bizarre mind control forcing the submission of their will.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Except they're voting for the other side's guy. If you still mostly agree with your side's views, why are you voting for the other guy?
    - autoexec 3y ago
      Who knows? They only talked about a single election where people who were more sensitive to pain were more likely to vote for the other party than people who self reported as being less sensitive to pain. There were plenty of reasons in 2020 to vote against Biden and Trump. Maybe it just means those with more empathy are less blindly devoted to party. Since emotional pain and physical pain are experienced similarly in the brain, maybe they felt a stronger sense of betrayal from the political party they typically align with and that resulted in a vote for the "other team" who they always felt had some good points anyway.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        That's a decent hypothesis.
      - sumthingsumthng 3y ago
        punishing "your own kind" and deriving pleasure from the suffering of all, including yourself, because you feel like you all deserve it. long episodes of constantly recurring pain and an increasing intensity of even small doses of pain acting as a signal that you did wrong and should feel the consequences.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      nominees and appointments to federal agencies can often be for things that I want or don't want to happen that have nothing to do with the party or President that myself and my peers lean towards or are outright affiliated with if there’s a vacancy or an acting director who is given a lot of autonomy and I know what kind of autonomy will be leveraged differently with particular appointments, I will absolutely vote for a President and senators to that affect not everything is about civil rights or the environment, there are dozens of other things that actually can be influenced over the next several years focus on what you can control, its pretty obvious what those things are, I’m more so surprised that so many people gravitated to the far edges of their ideology. but it allows the rest of us nobodies to shape our slice of the world more easily while everyone else is distracted on causes that will never reach consensus.
    - firstplacelast 3y ago
      Look, lots of people are just…stupid. Ignorant. Uninformed. The median IQ is 100, it’s calibrated that way. Meaning half of people have an IQ lower than that. A lot of money is spent to convince/coerce people of all sorts of bull-shit. Unless you’ve spent a lot of time around poorer/lesser IQ people, it is probably hard to understand. You think they should just try harder, think better, etc. Also, other very informed and intelligent people vote for all sorts of policies on different sides of the political divide. And have at least decently thought out reasons for doing so. I’m moreso politically aligned with the HN/reddit crowd, but have lots of family and friends across the political spectrum. You just have to talk to people in a non-judgmental way to learn a LOT. Best tip if you’re feeling like passionately arguing politics in good faith, befriend some lawyers with differing political leanings. They’re the best for this over beers and won’t make things personal (if you don’t).
      - mrangle 3y ago
        On both sides, everyone thinks the other to be low IQ and uninformed. The reality is that IQ has less to do with it than information. Everyone attempts to vote their self-interest with the information that they have. A dirty secret of politics is that you can't know what information you don't have unless you spend significant time on both sides. But even then, there is a lot of hidden politics and history that makes having accurate political perspective difficult for everyone.
    - Amezarak 3y ago
      Perhaps they believe "the other guy" will ultimately do more to advance everyone's true interests than "their" guy.
      - benj111 3y ago
        by voting for trump? Obviously empathy is independent of intelligence. You can't and couldn't have reasonably come to the conclusion that trump would have been good overall for the country. I'm not USian so this isn't really party political, he just doesn't have respect for basic democratic processes.and that was obvious from the start
        Amezarak 3y ago
        Perhaps, as a non-USian, you do not have the same sense for American interests or the same context in which to place current events, whereas these voters would have it directly in their lived experience. No doubt you find it absurd anyone could believe it, but I imagine people in many countries find it absurd what Americans believe about their politics. > You can't and couldn't have reasonably come to the conclusion that trump would have been good overall for the country. If you think everyone who voted for Trump was simply unintelligent and/or morally depraved, this sort of suggests that you lack the empathy to understand their position - which does not require agreeing with it. Unfortunately, I think this is a major reason behind growing partisan divides, and is a hard problem to solve.
        benj111 3y ago
        I'm saying that it was obvious before hand that trump would be divisive. Voting for trump over your own chosen parties representative doesn't really make objective sense. I'm not saying there aren't 'reasonable' reasons to vote for trump, but they're more about self interest than objectively putting the whole country first. He's a 'strong' opinionated leader, people vote for that to get things done their way, not creating consensus. If your empathy extends to voting for the other side's candidate, surely consensus would be high on your list of priorities.
    - trealira 3y ago
      Some Republicans voted for Biden despite having no leftist beliefs and not really liking Biden that much, simply because they really didn't like the direction that Trump had taken the Republican party. They felt like their party was moving in the wrong direction, but they didn't actually identify with the Democratic party, either. I think that the reverse would have happened if, for example, the 2016 presidential election had been between Mitt Romney and Bernie Sanders: probably a lot of moderate Democrats would have voted for Romney, as Romney is more similar to Obama (the previous Democratic president) than Bernie Sanders is/was. Nowadays, people are a lot more partisan (understandably), and I can't see why a Democrat would ever want to vote for Trump today.
- ddd_alice 3y ago
  could be some pain-pleasure kind of mind thing, what do you think?
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    I'd need a more fleshed out hypothesis.
- mrangle 3y ago
  Individual false claims of party affinity aside, which exist within both parties (assuming a two party system): The more articulate way to put your sentiment is that, in the end, partisan politics is about percieved correct action in the service of self-interest. On both sides. And that someone who votes for a candidate not of their party is irrationally voting against their self interest in an act of pathological empathy. At which point I'd offer that observers of this behavior are more likely to be wrong in their conclusions of the voter's motivation than the voter is to be acting irrationally. It's more likely that these anomolous voters perccieve their group's self interest to be better served, in this particular hypothetical election, by the opposing candidate. Possibly given an epiphany of strategy that others of their party don't have. For example, better IQ tends to lead to divergent perspectives rooted in more complete cognitive modeling of reality (except when it doesn't). This type of cross-isle migration may become more frequent as parties evolve in their positions.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    You make some good points, but I was specifically writing on the topic of voting due to empathy, with the expectation that the person doing so is doing so on behalf of others, not on behalf of their own self interest. And that empathically voting on behalf of the Other means demonstrating less empathy toward one's Fellows. As you say, there are plausible rationales why my hypothesis wouldn't be the case.

Empathy seems like an obvious candidate for being the root cause.

by xeckr 3y ago

Empathy seems like an obvious candidate for being the root cause.

> people with increased sensitivity to pain are also more likely to endorse values more common to people of their opposite political persuasion. It doesn’t stop there. They also show stronger support for the other camp’s politicians, and, get this -- more likely to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 if they are liberal, or Joe Biden if they are conservative. Except by these sorts of actions they're explicitly showing a lack of empathy for their own fellow believers. This is more than just empathy. It demonstrates something akin to submission to the will of the Other.

autoexec 3y ago
> “it’s not that their profile of moral sensitivities shifts from ‘only supporting our side’ to ‘only supporting the other side.’ Instead, they tend to be more supportive of both sides’ views.” Seems like people who are more empathic just recognize that no matter what "team" someone else blindly supports they still have valid concerns and common ground. It's certainly not some kind of bizarre mind control forcing the submission of their will.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Except they're voting for the other side's guy. If you still mostly agree with your side's views, why are you voting for the other guy?
  - autoexec 3y ago
    Who knows? They only talked about a single election where people who were more sensitive to pain were more likely to vote for the other party than people who self reported as being less sensitive to pain. There were plenty of reasons in 2020 to vote against Biden and Trump. Maybe it just means those with more empathy are less blindly devoted to party. Since emotional pain and physical pain are experienced similarly in the brain, maybe they felt a stronger sense of betrayal from the political party they typically align with and that resulted in a vote for the "other team" who they always felt had some good points anyway.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      That's a decent hypothesis.
    - sumthingsumthng 3y ago
      punishing "your own kind" and deriving pleasure from the suffering of all, including yourself, because you feel like you all deserve it. long episodes of constantly recurring pain and an increasing intensity of even small doses of pain acting as a signal that you did wrong and should feel the consequences.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    nominees and appointments to federal agencies can often be for things that I want or don't want to happen that have nothing to do with the party or President that myself and my peers lean towards or are outright affiliated with if there’s a vacancy or an acting director who is given a lot of autonomy and I know what kind of autonomy will be leveraged differently with particular appointments, I will absolutely vote for a President and senators to that affect not everything is about civil rights or the environment, there are dozens of other things that actually can be influenced over the next several years focus on what you can control, its pretty obvious what those things are, I’m more so surprised that so many people gravitated to the far edges of their ideology. but it allows the rest of us nobodies to shape our slice of the world more easily while everyone else is distracted on causes that will never reach consensus.
  - firstplacelast 3y ago
    Look, lots of people are just…stupid. Ignorant. Uninformed. The median IQ is 100, it’s calibrated that way. Meaning half of people have an IQ lower than that. A lot of money is spent to convince/coerce people of all sorts of bull-shit. Unless you’ve spent a lot of time around poorer/lesser IQ people, it is probably hard to understand. You think they should just try harder, think better, etc. Also, other very informed and intelligent people vote for all sorts of policies on different sides of the political divide. And have at least decently thought out reasons for doing so. I’m moreso politically aligned with the HN/reddit crowd, but have lots of family and friends across the political spectrum. You just have to talk to people in a non-judgmental way to learn a LOT. Best tip if you’re feeling like passionately arguing politics in good faith, befriend some lawyers with differing political leanings. They’re the best for this over beers and won’t make things personal (if you don’t).
    - mrangle 3y ago
      On both sides, everyone thinks the other to be low IQ and uninformed. The reality is that IQ has less to do with it than information. Everyone attempts to vote their self-interest with the information that they have. A dirty secret of politics is that you can't know what information you don't have unless you spend significant time on both sides. But even then, there is a lot of hidden politics and history that makes having accurate political perspective difficult for everyone.
  - Amezarak 3y ago
    Perhaps they believe "the other guy" will ultimately do more to advance everyone's true interests than "their" guy.
    - benj111 3y ago
      by voting for trump? Obviously empathy is independent of intelligence. You can't and couldn't have reasonably come to the conclusion that trump would have been good overall for the country. I'm not USian so this isn't really party political, he just doesn't have respect for basic democratic processes.and that was obvious from the start
      - Amezarak 3y ago
        Perhaps, as a non-USian, you do not have the same sense for American interests or the same context in which to place current events, whereas these voters would have it directly in their lived experience. No doubt you find it absurd anyone could believe it, but I imagine people in many countries find it absurd what Americans believe about their politics. > You can't and couldn't have reasonably come to the conclusion that trump would have been good overall for the country. If you think everyone who voted for Trump was simply unintelligent and/or morally depraved, this sort of suggests that you lack the empathy to understand their position - which does not require agreeing with it. Unfortunately, I think this is a major reason behind growing partisan divides, and is a hard problem to solve.
        benj111 3y ago
        I'm saying that it was obvious before hand that trump would be divisive. Voting for trump over your own chosen parties representative doesn't really make objective sense. I'm not saying there aren't 'reasonable' reasons to vote for trump, but they're more about self interest than objectively putting the whole country first. He's a 'strong' opinionated leader, people vote for that to get things done their way, not creating consensus. If your empathy extends to voting for the other side's candidate, surely consensus would be high on your list of priorities.
  - trealira 3y ago
    Some Republicans voted for Biden despite having no leftist beliefs and not really liking Biden that much, simply because they really didn't like the direction that Trump had taken the Republican party. They felt like their party was moving in the wrong direction, but they didn't actually identify with the Democratic party, either. I think that the reverse would have happened if, for example, the 2016 presidential election had been between Mitt Romney and Bernie Sanders: probably a lot of moderate Democrats would have voted for Romney, as Romney is more similar to Obama (the previous Democratic president) than Bernie Sanders is/was. Nowadays, people are a lot more partisan (understandably), and I can't see why a Democrat would ever want to vote for Trump today.
ddd_alice 3y ago
could be some pain-pleasure kind of mind thing, what do you think?
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  I'd need a more fleshed out hypothesis.
mrangle 3y ago
Individual false claims of party affinity aside, which exist within both parties (assuming a two party system): The more articulate way to put your sentiment is that, in the end, partisan politics is about percieved correct action in the service of self-interest. On both sides. And that someone who votes for a candidate not of their party is irrationally voting against their self interest in an act of pathological empathy. At which point I'd offer that observers of this behavior are more likely to be wrong in their conclusions of the voter's motivation than the voter is to be acting irrationally. It's more likely that these anomolous voters perccieve their group's self interest to be better served, in this particular hypothetical election, by the opposing candidate. Possibly given an epiphany of strategy that others of their party don't have. For example, better IQ tends to lead to divergent perspectives rooted in more complete cognitive modeling of reality (except when it doesn't). This type of cross-isle migration may become more frequent as parties evolve in their positions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  You make some good points, but I was specifically writing on the topic of voting due to empathy, with the expectation that the person doing so is doing so on behalf of others, not on behalf of their own self interest. And that empathically voting on behalf of the Other means demonstrating less empathy toward one's Fellows. As you say, there are plausible rationales why my hypothesis wouldn't be the case.