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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 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.
Symmetry 13y ago
People need some notion of the current state of the world in order to have a meaningful opinion of how to change it. Most people think that income taxes on the rich ought to be raised and most people think that 33% is an ideal marginal tax rate for the rich, but the rich already pay more than 33% on their marginal income. Or there's the position that we ought to balance the budget by cutting foreign aid. Or the idea that we shouldn't accept any level of radioactivity in our food.
- Gormo 13y ago
  > People need some notion of the current state of the world in order to have a meaningful opinion of how to change it. It goes without saying that if you want to get from here to there, you need to know where 'here' is. But I'm arguing that political debate is rarely about how to get from here to there, but rather is about which 'there' we should be heading for in the first place. Do you think the commonplace opinions that you've described are the result of people misjudging circumstances, and drawing incorrect conclusions about them, or do you think they're not even evaluating circumstances, but merely projecting values onto the world?

by Gormo 13y ago

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.

Symmetry 13y ago

People need some notion of the current state of the world in order to have a meaningful opinion of how to change it. Most people think that income taxes on the rich ought to be raised and most people think that 33% is an ideal marginal tax rate for the rich, but the rich already pay more than 33% on their marginal income. Or there's the position that we ought to balance the budget by cutting foreign aid. Or the idea that we shouldn't accept any level of radioactivity in our food.

Gormo 13y ago
> People need some notion of the current state of the world in order to have a meaningful opinion of how to change it. It goes without saying that if you want to get from here to there, you need to know where 'here' is. But I'm arguing that political debate is rarely about how to get from here to there, but rather is about which 'there' we should be heading for in the first place. Do you think the commonplace opinions that you've described are the result of people misjudging circumstances, and drawing incorrect conclusions about them, or do you think they're not even evaluating circumstances, but merely projecting values onto the world?