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> I don't think the policy positions even matter that much. The tribalism at this point is insane, it’s basically organized religion. You choose your tribe and

• arghwhat 2y ago
  Tribalism is human nature, as social success - a key survival criteria - requires alignment. The reason it becomes a problem is that there the only options for each "tribe" is one of two extremes, and that these are perceived so fundamentally different it is hard for people to find common grounds. When you have many more parties, you have a wider spectrum where you can have partial agreement and disagreement with much softer borders between political strongholds, and tribes can incrementally move within the spectrum without having to switch all their beliefs and ideologies from one day to the next. Being more understanding of tribes with other ideas rather than making them villains would also help both sides in communication and political mobility.
  • dataviz1000 2y ago
    Veritasium released a wonderful new video yesterday, "On These Questions, Smarter People Do Worse" which ..... I'm not going to spoil it for you but you will understand why I responded with the link. Watching, they discuss a study about gun control and I though omg I was thinking about that recently and the study they presented answers the question I've been pondering about gun control. If you watch the video, you will understand my disappointment. I had been living in New Orleans including when it had the 8th highest murder rate ... not in the United States but the world in 2022 (it was #1 in US hence not 8th). The city couldn't hire police officers and close 120 position had been unfilled. There is a very strange phenomena happening in the past 2 years, the crime rate in New Orleans is plummeting without police. [1] So, in the Veritasium video, they talk about a gun violence study and I think, that is exactly the question I'm asking. Does gun violence go down if law enforcement is removed from the equation because that is exactly for unknown reasons happening New Orleans today. Nobody is taking away guns in New Orleans and everyone I know has at least 2. I was a little disappointed with the study but tapped my self on the shoulder asking the correct question when presented with it. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB_OApdxcno [1]https://www.fox8live.com/2024/09/19/how-new-orleans-went-murder-capital-cutting-homicides-by-almost-50/ https://www.fox8live.com/2024/09/19/how-new-orleans-went-mur...
    • selimthegrim 2y ago
      I currently still live in New Orleans, and I am willing to bet you the surveillance programs and license plate readers have something to do with it.
    • lesuorac 2y ago
      Well, the title of the video is actually wrong. Smarter people did better than Dumber people. The people with a score of 8,9 on numeracy did the best [1] but not as good as they should've. This is basically best shown on page 12 [2] on the actual paper, people with high numeracy have a better chance of correct answer than low numeracy. I suspect the effect is even across low & high numeracy but because high numeracy people were more likely to get the correct answer to begin with. Akin to say you playing a toddler in Counter-Strike. You're more likely to win a round than them. So if for a round I disconnect one of your controllers then the disconnection is more likely to cause you a loss than the toddler because the toddler was going to lose anyways, the effect of disconnection for them is dwarfed by their innate ability. [1]: https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno?t=413 https://youtu.be/zB_OApdxcno?t=413 [2]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992
      • throwaway817472 2y ago
        The title says that smarter people do worse, which is correct in the sense that their relative performance is 20% worse than less numerically inclined people. They cover this in the latter half of the video. However, in order to believe this was the title’s intent, you would have to assume the title should have read, “Smarter people score worse on political numerical questions than on apolitical numerical questions.” Realistically it’s so ambiguous that any interpretation is plausible.
        • lesuorac 2y ago
          > Realistically it’s so ambiguous that any interpretation is plausible. The dude isn't some rushed working single mother. He had amble time to choose what he wanted to convey and instead chose that title. When your study creates 2 populations (those with good numeracy and those without) and you make a claim that one of those populations "do worse" than it's always implicitly with respect to the other population.
  • generic92034 2y ago
    > When you have many more parties, you have a wider spectrum where you can have partial agreement and disagreement with much softer borders between political strongholds, and tribes can incrementally move within the spectrum without having to switch all their beliefs and ideologies from one day to the next. That is a good theory, but coalitions can also easily create stalemates on many topics and effectively rendering a government incapable of any significant action. There are recent examples in EU countries.
    • arghwhat 2y ago
      The effect of coalitions is in political execution rather than in ideological separation. The concern here was entirely about the social impact on residents, not the political efficiency. Coalitions can partly negate the benefit of the “spectrum”, but each member still answers to a different body of voters and going along with too many conflicting proposals would put them at risk of losing the confidence of their voters. Not differentiating from the other coalition members puts the party at risk of voters jumping ship to the others, and each party ultimately wishes to grow their own voter base.
      • generic92034 2y ago
        The effect on the residents from a coalition not performing is usually increasing the base of the politically more extreme parties.
  • Gormo 2y ago
    > Tribalism is human nature Nah, tribalism of this sort is absolutely not human nature. People naturally form tribes and define ingroup/outgroup boundaries around their actual relationships and communities. It takes alignment of a lot of unusual circumstances to get people to attach their identities to "tribes" that are actually aggregations of completely unrelated strangers grouped together on the bases of abstract symbols. People are naturally loyal to their families and local communities, not to continent-spanning political organizations.
    • arghwhat 2y ago
      I’m confused: You start by saying that tribalism isn’t human nature, but then you describe that tribal behaviors are natural. People are indeed loyal to their local communities - which includes having ideologies that would not greatly offend your peers - but everyone has different communities. Yours might include family A and B. Theirs might include C and D, and E and F, respectively. Continue a few rounds and you’ll see that each social circle is unique and inter-connected. No one within this “super-tribe” can have a different ideology without offending their local community by aligning with the opposite extreme - even if your opinion only differed slightly, your choice is one of two extremes. In order to fix this, you need people to have more choices so that they can select something slightly different from your community without offending it.
      • Gormo 2y ago
        I feel like I'm using pretty clear qualifiers to distinguish actual tribes from what Kurt Vonnegut would call granfaloons. The point is that equating these ideologically polarized aggregations of strangers with tribalism is a huge stretch, and not really valid. They're two very different phenomena. Yes, social circles are unique and inter-connected, and most people are simultaneously members of multiple "tribes", but this has nothing whatsoever to do with vast aggregations of strangers linked only by abstract symbolism.
        • arghwhat 2y ago
          I fail to see the justification for not considering this a (super)tribe. I wouldn't think of Cat's Cradle as the authority on social dynamics, but "granfaloons" refer to people that have no connection, whereas everyone in the supertribe is connected in a meaningful way. What we are dealing with is a local community (for which I believe "tribe" is a perfectly valid use), which is directly and closely linked to nearby communities in such a way that, when combined with a binary and divisive choice, makes the whole network form a virtual supertribe. With only two choices, so you are either 100% aligned or 0% aligned which makes it very difficult to have connected communities with differing opinions. Each individual is either aligned with their local community, or at risk of being ejected from it. With no connected communities of differing opinions, this in turn means you get ejected from all other possible local communities - the entire virtual supertribe. This makes it far less likely that someone will deviate than if it only affected their own direct connections. If you had, say, 10 choices, you would be able to have a community that was only 70-90% aligned with its connected communities while still being tolerated, so no virtual supertribe would form.
• nemo44x 2y ago
  I don’t think it’s as tribal as you think. At the margins yes, there are wing nuts both ways. But Trump got a lot of votes he didn’t get before and Kamala got fewer than Biden. Inflation has been a shocker. The border being flooded is terrifying. The economy is and has been struggling in many peoples lives. And the democrats want to still focus on identity politics. I think they can easily win in 4 years but they need to change their ways. They need to abandon the poisoned ideology that Obama inspired.
  • istjohn 2y ago
    > The border being flooded is terrifying. ... > And the democrats want to still focus on identity politics. Does typing this out not cause the slightest pang of cognitive dissonance?
    • m0llusk 2y ago
      Add to that the Democrats have been far more successful with apprehending and deporting illegal immigrants. This is a struggle among people trapped in their own bubbles, disconnected from and uninterested in reality or relevant metrics.
      • nemo44x 2y ago
        I don’t know if that’s true or not but “sanctuary cities”, “Abolish ICE”, blue city mayors complaining about a migrant crisis, and Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes don’t inspire confidence.
    • nemo44x 2y ago
      If the issue was immigrants in general then possibly. But it’s about illegal immigration specifically and complete disregard for law and order when it comes to the millions crossing the border illegally and being encouraged to do so in many cases or no pressure to deport anyhow. Turns out that’s bad policy.
      • ubertaco 2y ago
• matsemann 2y ago
  <omitted because this is an overwhelmingly one-tribe site> A woman? Lots worse than "liar" could be said about one of them, I'm curious what makes you think both candidates are equally bad but don't dare say it.
  • oefrha 2y ago
    I never said two choices have to be equally bad for me to not want to choose either. And don’t try to gotcha me with the misogyny nonsense.
• Molitor5901 2y ago
  In group power dynamics. Once a person identifies with a group, and makes the beliefs of that group part of their identity, then they will fight any threat to it. Since there are just two parties you are forced to choose one or the other. The single greatest thing the American people can do from this moment on is to stop hating each other for political beliefs, put that aside, and just talk without expectation or trying to convince someone. Just talk. America has let political identity supersede all else.
  • xeromal 2y ago
    A youtuber spoke about this though I can't remember the name. Veretisium maybe? He goes into how humans inherently want to avoid being ostracized from their tribe so they vote regardless of data or hard science. He said it was a feature rather than a bug though
  • mrguyorama 2y ago
    >The single greatest thing the American people can do from this moment on is to stop hating each other for political beliefs Many conservatives, including many of my own family members, have enthusiastically declared "all democrats should be shot", for usually really odd and mundane things too, like Michelle Obama saying children should eat healthily. They blame her for school lunch programs in my state going downhill, primarily from reduced budgets that prevent the school from buying anything to eat other than a shitload of frozen chicken patties. But no, apparently that reduction in funding, which was decided at the state level and mostly done during Bush's admin when no child left behind fucked with school funding, is her fault. None of the hate came from democrats. The first mean spirited thing said by democrats was when Hillary called republicans a basket of deplorables. Republicans have been calling democrats satan worshippers, literal biblical demons, degenerates, sexual deviants, etc since the 70s. Republicans walked away from basic decency. Not democrats. None of us feel comfortable talking to our Trumper friends and family because they are our parents who raised us to hate others and we had to individually of our own accord grow past that. They are our brothers who literally tell us we should be shot back in the mid 2000s, before you can even blame identity politics. They are our mothers who taught us we were sluts for wearing a skirt and deserved to be raped. They are our grandparents who taught us that having a baby out of wedlock is an ostracization worthy event. They are teachers who spent a lecture talking about how slavery wasn't so bad. They are bosses who force you to watch anti-union propaganda before you can work. Fox News specifically has been declaring and waging regular war on most things that aren't stereotypical 50s americana since it's inception. Like what fucking more do you want from us? How do you talk to that?
• Pxtl 2y ago
  Considering how quickly the Democrats ousted Biden when his mental fitness to lead was in doubt, I don't think it's fair to describe progressives as having a "religious leader".
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• CWuestefeld 2y ago
  I've been trying to argue for some time that with two parties, even accounting for their primaries, the bandwidth of our representation is much too low to communicate a spectrum of political ideas. I forget the exact numbers I calculated, but from memory, current American democratic bandwidth at the national level is something in the neighborhood of 5 bits per year. This can't allow for any kinds of subtle distinctions between philosophy. We're stuck with big ugly buckets of loosely-related (at best) issues because we can't democratically communicate any more specifically.
  • csense 2y ago
    It sure feels like ranked choice voting would help a lot.
  • returningfory2 2y ago
    I think this is somewhat true but not fully true. Elections aren't the only way in which policy gets communicated and so this bit-level analysis doesn't capture it fully IMO. If you look at border policy, for instance, Democrats have moved to the right not because of election mechanisms like primaries, but through public opinion.