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> "Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion." I agree that this is how people tend to see it. But

by veidr 13y ago

> "Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion." I agree that this is how people tend to see it. But it isn't really true. Like JavaScript or auto mechanics or animal husbandry, there is indeed a threshold of expertise for expressing a meaningful opinion. The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. This is true even if they subscribe to political ideals diametrically opposed to your own. Personally speaking, this is why I have been so sad about the political discussion on HN since SOPA and Snowden. I thought it might be one of those rare forums where empirical facts and "evidence-based" thinking prevailed -- but it really hasn't. People still seem mostly trapped in their private little jihads, just like they are in the youtube comments section. To me that's disappointing because government is something so fundamentally amenable to hacking, and the stakes are so incredibly high. The state of the art is so so sad and primitive, with so much low-hanging fruit. (The state of the art in governance, that is, at least if you accept at face value the objective of representing the interests of the electorate; the state of the art of getting elected is actually incredibly advanced, but rarely publicly talked about in earnest.)

chasehood 13y ago
Dujdjdfjshjx
ColinWright 13y ago
>> "Politics, like religion, is a topic where >> there's no threshold of expertise for expressing >> an opinion." > I agree that this is how people tend to see it. > But it isn't really true. Like JavaScript or auto > mechanics or animal husbandry, there is indeed a > threshold of expertise for expressing a *meaningful* > opinion. But that's the entire point. Lots and lots of people feel that they have something to say, and they say it, whereas very few actually have a meaningful opinion, and they get drowned out. Although you say "it isn't really true" you have, in fact, agreed entirely.
- veidr 13y ago
  Right, I am not disagreeing with the OP's premise. I'm more just lamenting the truth of it -- and expressing disappointment that we haven't seen better discourse here on HN (where actually I think the signal to noise on stuff like node vs go, should you ever use rails for anything, etc, is actually pretty good, all things considered...). Edit/Addition: What I mean to say is, the article isn't wrong, but the people it describes are wrong. Wrong to think that weighing in on a serious topic with essentially zero knowledge is acceptable, and wrong to conflate their politics with their identity. There is a bedrock of objective truth underlying virtually any political discussion, and it is just as stupid to conflate your own individual identity with a political party or TV station as it is to do the same thing with your smartphone OS or web app framework.
_dps 13y ago
> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. I think this is objectively wrong for the specific case of politics; unlike, say, analytical chemistry, politics has an active opinion on how each of us live our lives and can't be "left to the expert" (the latter being what the political and legal experts would love everyone to accept). Concrete counter-examples to your claim: 1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry? 2) Did poorly educated blacks or women need training in the subtleties of constitutional law before they could have a valid opinion on universal suffrage? Politics, by its nature, shoves itself in everyone's face. Thus everyone has a legitimate basis on which to argue about how they are to be governed, even if they are ignorant of the details of the governance mechanism.
- leephillips 13y ago
  I tend to agree with the GP. No matter how strong someone's opinions on, say, the US Iraq invasion are, they're not worth much if they're not grounded in some notion of world history since WWI. "Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry?" They have an interest in the marriage laws, but that doesn't make their opinions more interesting or well-founded. In fact, because of the obvious conflict of interest, it makes them suspect.
  - Gormo 13y ago
    Politics is about "ought", not "is", and policy is entirely about the interaction of people with divergent interests. Your point of view make it seem like there's some objective context for politics in the first place, but there isn't: the entire context in which politics takes place, the substance that defines it, and the objects it pursues are created by people and their interests. Having an interest is having an opinion.
    - leephillips 13y ago
      In light of your points, which I appreciate, perhaps I should recast my point of view this way: a person's opinion about politics is interesting or not (perhaps we could even say valid or not) to the extent that he is able to generalize his interests far enough to place them in a context informed by general principles and relevant domain knowledge, and beyond narrow self-interest. "Virginia should allow Gays to marry because I'm Gay and I want to live in Virginia and get married" is as meaningless, as a political opinion, as me saying "Everyone in the US should give me a dollar because I want a lot of money." Socrates took the hemlock not because he thought it would be good for him personally, but because he thought it was a good thing for citizens to obey the law.
Gormo 13y ago
> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. Politics isn't about objective facts. Politics deals with ought, not is. There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among people pursuing different ends, not arguing over which means best effect ends that everyone agrees on. Even what appears superficially to be an argument over facts is usually just rhetorical cover for contesting underlying values and intentions.
- clicks 13y ago
  > There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among people pursuing different ends That is true only for a few set of issues, like abortion, immigration, etc. I'm socialistic-inclined and my neighbors are mostly republicans, I usually start conversations with them by saying "Look, we both want the same thing: we want the greatest amount of people in America to be eating well, being well-educated, living in dignified places... we just disagree on how we can get there". Then we discuss -- and we get along surprisingly well.
  - Gormo 13y ago
    But you're (a) making an assumption that the full set of end-goals that your neighbor desires aligns exactly with yours, and (b) speaking in very generalized terms about what those end-goals are, without making reference to details of questions that people might evaluate differently. Your attempts to build common ground with your neighbor will approximate tautologies as the actual intersection of your respective value systems shrink. You can say "Look: we all want more good things and less bad things", but what are you actually proposing? If I asked you and your neighbor a more particular question, i.e. "should the state intervene to ensure that the greatest amount of people in America are well-fed, well-educated, etc., in its own judgement", I might get different answers from you and your neighbors. If I asked you to define what constitutes "well-fed", "well-educated", etc., I'll likely get different answers. If I asked you whether it's desirable to allow top-down, universalized definitions of these terms to form the basis of public policy, I'll likely get different answers. All of these are questions of desired ends, answered differently due to different hierarchies of values, and not due to divergent interpretations of empirical data.
pasbesoin 13y ago
Politics in this country (U.S. -- especially, if also elsewhere) has been coopted by a... "religious fervor". To our detriment. It appears, at least in the reported news, to have drowned out the rational thought and decision making that are central to an effective political environment. We have a similar relationship to professional sports teams. For many, it is of paramount importance to "root" for "your team". And... many of these people do not actually play, themselves. There may be "no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion". But we should all seek and use such thresholds when accepting political opinions. Just in many professional areas of life, your success or failure will be marked not by blind obeisance but rather by critical thinking.
dllthomas 13y ago
People's right to have their interests and values weighed in communal decision-making does not (in principle) deserve any "threshold of expertise" requirement. When discussions (quite necessarily) move into precisely how that translates into policy there quite definitely is a demand for expertise. Unfortunately, our systems don't do a very good job pulling those apart.

by veidr 13y ago

chasehood 13y ago

Dujdjdfjshjx

ColinWright 13y ago

>> "Politics, like religion, is a topic where >> there's no threshold of expertise for expressing >> an opinion." > I agree that this is how people tend to see it. > But it isn't really true. Like JavaScript or auto > mechanics or animal husbandry, there is indeed a > threshold of expertise for expressing a *meaningful* > opinion. But that's the entire point. Lots and lots of people feel that they have something to say, and they say it, whereas very few actually have a meaningful opinion, and they get drowned out. Although you say "it isn't really true" you have, in fact, agreed entirely.

veidr 13y ago
Right, I am not disagreeing with the OP's premise. I'm more just lamenting the truth of it -- and expressing disappointment that we haven't seen better discourse here on HN (where actually I think the signal to noise on stuff like node vs go, should you ever use rails for anything, etc, is actually pretty good, all things considered...). Edit/Addition: What I mean to say is, the article isn't wrong, but the people it describes are wrong. Wrong to think that weighing in on a serious topic with essentially zero knowledge is acceptable, and wrong to conflate their politics with their identity. There is a bedrock of objective truth underlying virtually any political discussion, and it is just as stupid to conflate your own individual identity with a political party or TV station as it is to do the same thing with your smartphone OS or web app framework.

_dps 13y ago

> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. I think this is objectively wrong for the specific case of politics; unlike, say, analytical chemistry, politics has an active opinion on how each of us live our lives and can't be "left to the expert" (the latter being what the political and legal experts would love everyone to accept). Concrete counter-examples to your claim: 1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry? 2) Did poorly educated blacks or women need training in the subtleties of constitutional law before they could have a valid opinion on universal suffrage? Politics, by its nature, shoves itself in everyone's face. Thus everyone has a legitimate basis on which to argue about how they are to be governed, even if they are ignorant of the details of the governance mechanism.

leephillips 13y ago
I tend to agree with the GP. No matter how strong someone's opinions on, say, the US Iraq invasion are, they're not worth much if they're not grounded in some notion of world history since WWI. "Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry?" They have an interest in the marriage laws, but that doesn't make their opinions more interesting or well-founded. In fact, because of the obvious conflict of interest, it makes them suspect.
- Gormo 13y ago
  Politics is about "ought", not "is", and policy is entirely about the interaction of people with divergent interests. Your point of view make it seem like there's some objective context for politics in the first place, but there isn't: the entire context in which politics takes place, the substance that defines it, and the objects it pursues are created by people and their interests. Having an interest is having an opinion.
  - leephillips 13y ago
    In light of your points, which I appreciate, perhaps I should recast my point of view this way: a person's opinion about politics is interesting or not (perhaps we could even say valid or not) to the extent that he is able to generalize his interests far enough to place them in a context informed by general principles and relevant domain knowledge, and beyond narrow self-interest. "Virginia should allow Gays to marry because I'm Gay and I want to live in Virginia and get married" is as meaningless, as a political opinion, as me saying "Everyone in the US should give me a dollar because I want a lot of money." Socrates took the hemlock not because he thought it would be good for him personally, but because he thought it was a good thing for citizens to obey the law.

Gormo 13y ago

> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their command of objective facts. Politics isn't about objective facts. Politics deals with ought, not is. There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among people pursuing different ends, not arguing over which means best effect ends that everyone agrees on. Even what appears superficially to be an argument over facts is usually just rhetorical cover for contesting underlying values and intentions.

clicks 13y ago
> There are certainly objective, measurable facts relevant to any particular question, but political debate rarely focuses on those; it's usually a contest among people pursuing different ends That is true only for a few set of issues, like abortion, immigration, etc. I'm socialistic-inclined and my neighbors are mostly republicans, I usually start conversations with them by saying "Look, we both want the same thing: we want the greatest amount of people in America to be eating well, being well-educated, living in dignified places... we just disagree on how we can get there". Then we discuss -- and we get along surprisingly well.
- Gormo 13y ago
  But you're (a) making an assumption that the full set of end-goals that your neighbor desires aligns exactly with yours, and (b) speaking in very generalized terms about what those end-goals are, without making reference to details of questions that people might evaluate differently. Your attempts to build common ground with your neighbor will approximate tautologies as the actual intersection of your respective value systems shrink. You can say "Look: we all want more good things and less bad things", but what are you actually proposing? If I asked you and your neighbor a more particular question, i.e. "should the state intervene to ensure that the greatest amount of people in America are well-fed, well-educated, etc., in its own judgement", I might get different answers from you and your neighbors. If I asked you to define what constitutes "well-fed", "well-educated", etc., I'll likely get different answers. If I asked you whether it's desirable to allow top-down, universalized definitions of these terms to form the basis of public policy, I'll likely get different answers. All of these are questions of desired ends, answered differently due to different hierarchies of values, and not due to divergent interpretations of empirical data.

pasbesoin 13y ago

Politics in this country (U.S. -- especially, if also elsewhere) has been coopted by a... "religious fervor". To our detriment. It appears, at least in the reported news, to have drowned out the rational thought and decision making that are central to an effective political environment. We have a similar relationship to professional sports teams. For many, it is of paramount importance to "root" for "your team". And... many of these people do not actually play, themselves. There may be "no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion". But we should all seek and use such thresholds when accepting political opinions. Just in many professional areas of life, your success or failure will be marked not by blind obeisance but rather by critical thinking.

dllthomas 13y ago

People's right to have their interests and values weighed in communal decision-making does not (in principle) deserve any "threshold of expertise" requirement. When discussions (quite necessarily) move into precisely how that translates into policy there quite definitely is a demand for expertise. Unfortunately, our systems don't do a very good job pulling those apart.