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> The value of somebody else's commentary on political issues is pretty much directly proportional to their understanding of the political system and their comm

by _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
      Any statement that contains the word "should" is inherently a normative claim, which exists outside the scope of empirical data. When people articulate their own interests - of which they are the most credible experts - and then say "the current policy framework is damaging to my interests/rights", they're articulating a far more valid position than someone who is trying to abstract their own hypothetical understanding of the world into some set of universal principles. "General principles" don't actually exist - principles only exist in the minds of people, and there are many people, each with his or her own own worldview. Attempting to treat politics as a means of perfecting the world in accordance with putatively universal principles can lead to only one outcome: an escalating cycle of ideological conflict. The relevant "domain knowledge" here would apply to the proper domain of politics: reconciling the disparate interests of actual people. > 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. Then Socrates was as much a victim of his own defective ideals as he was a victim of the Athenian establishment. Law is a tool we use to mitigate and restrain conflicts among actual human beings. If the law is perverted into something that harms the rights and interests of actual human beings, then it shouldn't be called law at all; it becomes merely a weapon, and remains so, no matter what grandiose ideals are appealed to as justification for its excess.
      - 13y ago
_delirium 13y ago
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" That's true of computing also, though, which is why you have a lot of non-techies with opinions about computing. Even if you aren't a technologist, you will likely be impacted by technology whether you want to be or not, because it structures a large amount of daily life, at least unless you are a hermit in the mountains. From that perspective, it's perfectly reasonable for everyone to have opinions on technology. Unfortunately, as with politics, the opinions not based on any kind of understanding of how things work tend not to be as useful in figuring out how to improve them. Ted Nelson's version of it [1] is something like: technology is too important to be left up to the techies, but if nobody but techies understands technology at all, it will by default be left up to them, because nobody else will be able to say anything sensible about it. Therefore regular people need to learn at least something about technology, enough to analyze it intelligently and make decisions for themselves. That's how I view politics as well. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib_/_Dream_Machines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib_/_Dream_Machines
dylangs1030 13y ago
Counters to your counters: >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? No, that couple doesn't have a valid opinion. How could they? They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. The threshold at which they can form a valid opinion is, therefore, at the entry-level of understanding United States marriage laws. >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? Depends on what you mean by "training" - they need to understand what suffrage is, so in that sense, yes, they do need training. This is the threshold for having a valid opinion. Here are concrete counter-examples to your counter-examples: 1) If a gay couple were asked if they wanted the right to be married without first being told the sociological context and culture of marriage in the United States, and without understanding the legal ramifications of being married, their opinion would be null and void - just noise. They don't know what they're agreeing/disagreeing with. 2) If you asked women if they'd like the ability to vote, and they said yes, but couldn't answer you when you asked them what a democratic republic is, or how representation works in the United States, their opinions would be meaningless. It would be equivalent to pathos-driven desire to be able to do something - ultimately, a useless opinion. Understand - I'm not being pedantic. Your examples may show a somewhat low threshold for meaningful opinions, but the parent is correct in that you need some threshold for every opinion.
- _dps 13y ago
  I was tempted not to reply because I think we're just arguing over the many possible definitions of the word "valid", and that can quickly become uninteresting. Here's a stab at not being too much of a hair-splitter. In a nutshell, it sounds like your definition of "valid" (and parent's) refer to some frame of objectively true facts and a commonly accepted value system. I agree that one would have to take such a definition in order to find intellectual value in a person's opinions on political matters. My definition of validity (in the context of the previous comment) has to do with recognizing subjective individual value systems that must occasionally be trampled upon in order to have a functioning state. By their nature, political institutions touch your life whether you want them to do so or not. So my view is that all people affected by a political institution have valid opinions on the actions of said institution, even if those opinions are not particularly well informed or even logical. If an institution forces something into (or out of) your life, I take the position that you have a valid voice with which to support or oppose that action, even if I might find that support or opposition to be unpersuasive from a logical or evidentiary frame of reference. To close the loop of example/counter-example, I think your two counter-counter-examples demonstrate opinions of low intellectual validity, as they do not stem from a body of knowledge. However, I think they are fully politically valid, because I don't see any way to have a politically legitimate institution while invalidating the opinions of those whose individual values are violated by its actions.
kevinpet 13y ago
> 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? Does a redneck from the south with no knowledge of US marriage law have a valid opinion on whether gays should be allowed to marry? Does you opinion on what's a valid opinion change depending on whether you think people would agree with you?
saraid216 13y ago
I think that the main thing this misses is the words "directly proportional". There's a threshold of expertise, which is ridiculously low, but as someone who keeps an eye on the polyamory community, one of the things being bandied about right now is that the legal concept of marriage is problematic for certain definitions of polyamory, and people who want to advocate polyamorous marriage have a far less valuable opinion because they haven't been able to make clear what they intend to advocate as a group.

by _dps 13y ago

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
    Any statement that contains the word "should" is inherently a normative claim, which exists outside the scope of empirical data. When people articulate their own interests - of which they are the most credible experts - and then say "the current policy framework is damaging to my interests/rights", they're articulating a far more valid position than someone who is trying to abstract their own hypothetical understanding of the world into some set of universal principles. "General principles" don't actually exist - principles only exist in the minds of people, and there are many people, each with his or her own own worldview. Attempting to treat politics as a means of perfecting the world in accordance with putatively universal principles can lead to only one outcome: an escalating cycle of ideological conflict. The relevant "domain knowledge" here would apply to the proper domain of politics: reconciling the disparate interests of actual people. > 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. Then Socrates was as much a victim of his own defective ideals as he was a victim of the Athenian establishment. Law is a tool we use to mitigate and restrain conflicts among actual human beings. If the law is perverted into something that harms the rights and interests of actual human beings, then it shouldn't be called law at all; it becomes merely a weapon, and remains so, no matter what grandiose ideals are appealed to as justification for its excess.
    - 13y ago

_delirium 13y ago

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" That's true of computing also, though, which is why you have a lot of non-techies with opinions about computing. Even if you aren't a technologist, you will likely be impacted by technology whether you want to be or not, because it structures a large amount of daily life, at least unless you are a hermit in the mountains. From that perspective, it's perfectly reasonable for everyone to have opinions on technology. Unfortunately, as with politics, the opinions not based on any kind of understanding of how things work tend not to be as useful in figuring out how to improve them. Ted Nelson's version of it [1] is something like: technology is too important to be left up to the techies, but if nobody but techies understands technology at all, it will by default be left up to them, because nobody else will be able to say anything sensible about it. Therefore regular people need to learn at least something about technology, enough to analyze it intelligently and make decisions for themselves. That's how I view politics as well. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib_/_Dream_Machines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib_/_Dream_Machines

dylangs1030 13y ago

Counters to your counters: >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? No, that couple doesn't have a valid opinion. How could they? They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. The threshold at which they can form a valid opinion is, therefore, at the entry-level of understanding United States marriage laws. >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? Depends on what you mean by "training" - they need to understand what suffrage is, so in that sense, yes, they do need training. This is the threshold for having a valid opinion. Here are concrete counter-examples to your counter-examples: 1) If a gay couple were asked if they wanted the right to be married without first being told the sociological context and culture of marriage in the United States, and without understanding the legal ramifications of being married, their opinion would be null and void - just noise. They don't know what they're agreeing/disagreeing with. 2) If you asked women if they'd like the ability to vote, and they said yes, but couldn't answer you when you asked them what a democratic republic is, or how representation works in the United States, their opinions would be meaningless. It would be equivalent to pathos-driven desire to be able to do something - ultimately, a useless opinion. Understand - I'm not being pedantic. Your examples may show a somewhat low threshold for meaningful opinions, but the parent is correct in that you need some threshold for every opinion.

_dps 13y ago
I was tempted not to reply because I think we're just arguing over the many possible definitions of the word "valid", and that can quickly become uninteresting. Here's a stab at not being too much of a hair-splitter. In a nutshell, it sounds like your definition of "valid" (and parent's) refer to some frame of objectively true facts and a commonly accepted value system. I agree that one would have to take such a definition in order to find intellectual value in a person's opinions on political matters. My definition of validity (in the context of the previous comment) has to do with recognizing subjective individual value systems that must occasionally be trampled upon in order to have a functioning state. By their nature, political institutions touch your life whether you want them to do so or not. So my view is that all people affected by a political institution have valid opinions on the actions of said institution, even if those opinions are not particularly well informed or even logical. If an institution forces something into (or out of) your life, I take the position that you have a valid voice with which to support or oppose that action, even if I might find that support or opposition to be unpersuasive from a logical or evidentiary frame of reference. To close the loop of example/counter-example, I think your two counter-counter-examples demonstrate opinions of low intellectual validity, as they do not stem from a body of knowledge. However, I think they are fully politically valid, because I don't see any way to have a politically legitimate institution while invalidating the opinions of those whose individual values are violated by its actions.

kevinpet 13y ago

> 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? Does a redneck from the south with no knowledge of US marriage law have a valid opinion on whether gays should be allowed to marry? Does you opinion on what's a valid opinion change depending on whether you think people would agree with you?

saraid216 13y ago

I think that the main thing this misses is the words "directly proportional". There's a threshold of expertise, which is ridiculously low, but as someone who keeps an eye on the polyamory community, one of the things being bandied about right now is that the legal concept of marriage is problematic for certain definitions of polyamory, and people who want to advocate polyamorous marriage have a far less valuable opinion because they haven't been able to make clear what they intend to advocate as a group.