I am not into politics at all, but I think if you could change the following it would improve the political process.
Currently politics seems to be based on arguing your position and gaining status for your team rather than seeking truth and the best policy.
Politics is the Mind-Killer – Politics is not a good area for rational debate. It is often about status and power plays where arguments are soldiers rather than tools to get closer to the truth.
Color politics—the words “Blues” and “Greens” are often used to refer to two opposing political factions. Politics commonly involves an adversarial process, where factions usually identify with political positions, and use arguments as soldiers to defend their side. The dichotomies presented by the opposing sides are often false dilemmas, which can be shown by presenting third options.
Arguments as soldiers – is a problematic scenario where arguments are treated like war or battle. Arguments get treated as soldiers, weapons to be used to defend your side of the debate, and to attack the other side. They are no longer instruments of the truth.
A democracy is only as strong as the people that are people in it. It seems to me like politicians too often dwell on inconsequential, but politically important issues. They do this because voters care about these issues. The thing is, though, that voters are most often laymen. They are not experts. Therefore, I find it worrisome that politicians seem to discuss and change policies in order to placate voters. Obviously the opinions of voters should still matter, but when it comes to where politicians spend their effort and time. This should be based on what will provide the most benefit. I see two ways to overcome this: somehow get the voters more informed or change the political process somehow, this is related to the first point, so that there is less showboating, sycophantism and placation to the whims of voters.
Privileging the question—questions that someone has unjustifiably brought to your attention in the same way that a privileged hypothesis unjustifiably gets brought to your attention. Examples are: should gay marriage be legal? Should Congress pass stricter gun control laws? Should immigration policy be tightened or relaxed? The problem with privileged questions is that you only have so much attention to spare. Attention paid to a question that has been privileged funges against attention you could be paying to better questions. Even worse, it may not feel from the inside like anything is wrong: you can apply all of the epistemic rationality in the world to answering a question like “should Congress pass stricter gun control laws?” and never once ask yourself where that question came from and whether there are better questions you could be answering instead.
Error of crowds—is the idea that under some scoring rules, the average error becomes less than the error of the average, thus making the average belief tautologically worse than a belief of a random person. Compare this to the ideas of modesty argument and wisdom of the crowd. A related idea is that a popular belief is likely to be wrong because the less popular ones couldn’t maintain support if they were worse than the popular one.
Most peoples’ beliefs aren’t worth considering—Sturgeon’s Law says that as a general rule, 90% of everything is garbage. Even if it is the case that 90% of everything produced by any field is garbage that does not mean one can dismiss the 10% that is quality work. Instead, it is important engage with that 10%, and use that as the standard of quality.
Politicians need to become more aware of complexity and the feedback caused by their policies. Understanding system dynamics would help tremendously in this regard.
Policy resistance—Frequently, a nonlinear feedback system will respond to a policy change in the desired manner for a short period of time, but then return to its pre-policy-change state. This occurs when the system’s feedback structure works to defeat the policy change designed to improve it.
Goodhart’s law—states that once a certain indicator of success is made a target of a social or economic policy, it will lose the information content that would qualify it to play such a role. People and institutions try to achieve their explicitly stated targets in the easiest way possible, often obeying the letter of the law. This is often done in way that the designers of the law did not anticipate or want. For example, the soviet factories which when given targets on the basis of numbers of nails produced many tiny useless nails and when given targets on basis of weight produced a few giant nails.
The complexity of politics that these arguments demonstrate (and the “error of the crowds” itself) makes democracy a seemingly futile solution to government. It would take an enormously skilled tactician to win the vote by selling actually useful policies to a population that prefers simple rhetoric aligning with their color.
They would need:
Knowledge and skill at creating policies.
Sufficient background in all areas that the policies affect (weighted by importance and enough to make proper use of their advisors).
Ability to raise money without making promises that severely limit them once elected.
Excellent rhetorical abilities. Skilled enough to convince people of varying degrees of intelligence and differing allegiances to side with you despite your lack of focus on the “sexy” (but meaningless) topics.
Excellent negotiating abilities. Fair-representation means you will always have significant opposition once elected. Getting anything done will require tactical negotiating and efficient compromises.
...lots of other things.
But someone who wants power really only needs rhetoric and a PR team that can find them the correct issues to align with. There is something wrong here.
Teenage me, with rather too much confidence, would say that we need a benevolent dictator. Now, with rather less confidence in my world-organizing abilities, I prefer voluntarism in some form. It is… less of a lottery and far more elegant. I just need to figure out if it’s too idealistic to work.
makes democracy a seemingly futile solution to government
I am not sure what does “solution to government” mean, but there is a well-known Churchill quote: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”.
“solution to government” means “solution to the problem of how organise society”.
If “except for all the others” only includes those that have been tried, then I mostly agree. But if it includes all possible forms of social organisation, I strongly disagree. The idea that we’ve reached the best solution and it barely works is similar to the idea that we will never solve death. Either of those could be true, but there is not nearly evidence to stop us from trying.
With the death problem, we can characterize the nature of the problem, list out subproblems, list out causal contributors, and attack them one by one.
With “how to organize society”, people disagree on the criterion for forming a component of the problem. Conflicting interests are the basic building-block of politics.
If “except for all the others” only includes those that have been tried, then I mostly agree.
The original wording of that quote indeed was “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
The word “solution” has too much of engineering / hard sciences connotations for my liking.
Organising society is a process and the criteria of what can be considered a successful one are not stable on historic time scale unless you want to take the social darwinism approach.
The point of the Churchill quote wasn’t to proclaim democracy the best evah! The point was to hint at the danger of the nirvana fallacy—you need to have some method of organising society, so relative metrics are more important than absolute. You pick the best out of what’s available.
It would take an enormously skilled tactician to win the vote by selling actually useful policies to a population that prefers simple rhetoric aligning with their color.
That presupposes that you have to win election by explaining the policies that you honestly want to enact. In reality that’s not how modern representative democracy work.
Neither how it works in practice nor how it works in theory.
True, but you do need a platform that promises, at the very least, a direction that your policies are taking you. If, during your term, you completely neglect everything you talked about while running, you’ll take a hit in the next election (unless you’ve miraculously been so effective during those 4⁄5 years that everyone is convinced you know better than them).
And if the point is to be the best liar and then do what you want in office, uh, why even have elections?
Obama never talked about how children’s IQ would be higher in the future because his administration calculated the dollar value of children’s IQ’s and opposed it to the costs of reduces mercury pollution. The policy was done by the EPA with very little public debate.
On the other hand the EPA didn’t get done much on global warming where there’s massive media attention.
why even have elections?
To allow voters to refuse to reelect politicians with bad track records. If democracy is done right, politicians who mess up don’t get reelected.
If it comes to decide whether to vote for a politician’s you don’t focus on what he promises for the future but what he did in the past. That provides for democratic accountability.
To choose representatives and not to choose policy.
If I look at Bernie Sanders I know that he engaged in good policy for decades.
He voted against the Iraq war and the patriotic act. That tells me much more about him than any promise he makes before the election.
If, during your term, you completely neglect everything you talked about while running, you’ll take a hit in the next election
Bush campaigned on “no statebuilding” and then went to do very expensive statebuilding in Iraq or Afghanistan without the Republican base complaining.
The Republican didn’t like Clinton’s intervention against Kosovo, so it made sense for Bush to run with “no statebuilding”.
Obama promised to clean up Wall Street but did nothing substantial. He engaged in busywork and passed laws but they are more symbolic than real reform.
I am not into politics at all, but I think if you could change the following it would improve the political process. Currently politics seems to be based on arguing your position and gaining status for your team rather than seeking truth and the best policy.
Politics is the Mind-Killer – Politics is not a good area for rational debate. It is often about status and power plays where arguments are soldiers rather than tools to get closer to the truth.
Adversarial process—a form of truth-seeking or conflict resolution in which identifiable factions hold one-sided positions.
Color politics—the words “Blues” and “Greens” are often used to refer to two opposing political factions. Politics commonly involves an adversarial process, where factions usually identify with political positions, and use arguments as soldiers to defend their side. The dichotomies presented by the opposing sides are often false dilemmas, which can be shown by presenting third options.
Arguments as soldiers – is a problematic scenario where arguments are treated like war or battle. Arguments get treated as soldiers, weapons to be used to defend your side of the debate, and to attack the other side. They are no longer instruments of the truth.
A democracy is only as strong as the people that are people in it. It seems to me like politicians too often dwell on inconsequential, but politically important issues. They do this because voters care about these issues. The thing is, though, that voters are most often laymen. They are not experts. Therefore, I find it worrisome that politicians seem to discuss and change policies in order to placate voters. Obviously the opinions of voters should still matter, but when it comes to where politicians spend their effort and time. This should be based on what will provide the most benefit. I see two ways to overcome this: somehow get the voters more informed or change the political process somehow, this is related to the first point, so that there is less showboating, sycophantism and placation to the whims of voters.
Privileging the question—questions that someone has unjustifiably brought to your attention in the same way that a privileged hypothesis unjustifiably gets brought to your attention. Examples are: should gay marriage be legal? Should Congress pass stricter gun control laws? Should immigration policy be tightened or relaxed? The problem with privileged questions is that you only have so much attention to spare. Attention paid to a question that has been privileged funges against attention you could be paying to better questions. Even worse, it may not feel from the inside like anything is wrong: you can apply all of the epistemic rationality in the world to answering a question like “should Congress pass stricter gun control laws?” and never once ask yourself where that question came from and whether there are better questions you could be answering instead.
Error of crowds—is the idea that under some scoring rules, the average error becomes less than the error of the average, thus making the average belief tautologically worse than a belief of a random person. Compare this to the ideas of modesty argument and wisdom of the crowd. A related idea is that a popular belief is likely to be wrong because the less popular ones couldn’t maintain support if they were worse than the popular one.
Most peoples’ beliefs aren’t worth considering—Sturgeon’s Law says that as a general rule, 90% of everything is garbage. Even if it is the case that 90% of everything produced by any field is garbage that does not mean one can dismiss the 10% that is quality work. Instead, it is important engage with that 10%, and use that as the standard of quality.
Politicians need to become more aware of complexity and the feedback caused by their policies. Understanding system dynamics would help tremendously in this regard.
Policy resistance—Frequently, a nonlinear feedback system will respond to a policy change in the desired manner for a short period of time, but then return to its pre-policy-change state. This occurs when the system’s feedback structure works to defeat the policy change designed to improve it.
Goodhart’s law—states that once a certain indicator of success is made a target of a social or economic policy, it will lose the information content that would qualify it to play such a role. People and institutions try to achieve their explicitly stated targets in the easiest way possible, often obeying the letter of the law. This is often done in way that the designers of the law did not anticipate or want. For example, the soviet factories which when given targets on the basis of numbers of nails produced many tiny useless nails and when given targets on basis of weight produced a few giant nails.
The complexity of politics that these arguments demonstrate (and the “error of the crowds” itself) makes democracy a seemingly futile solution to government. It would take an enormously skilled tactician to win the vote by selling actually useful policies to a population that prefers simple rhetoric aligning with their color.
They would need:
Knowledge and skill at creating policies.
Sufficient background in all areas that the policies affect (weighted by importance and enough to make proper use of their advisors).
Ability to raise money without making promises that severely limit them once elected.
Excellent rhetorical abilities. Skilled enough to convince people of varying degrees of intelligence and differing allegiances to side with you despite your lack of focus on the “sexy” (but meaningless) topics.
Excellent negotiating abilities. Fair-representation means you will always have significant opposition once elected. Getting anything done will require tactical negotiating and efficient compromises.
...lots of other things.
But someone who wants power really only needs rhetoric and a PR team that can find them the correct issues to align with. There is something wrong here.
Teenage me, with rather too much confidence, would say that we need a benevolent dictator. Now, with rather less confidence in my world-organizing abilities, I prefer voluntarism in some form. It is… less of a lottery and far more elegant. I just need to figure out if it’s too idealistic to work.
I am not sure what does “solution to government” mean, but there is a well-known Churchill quote: “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”.
In general if someone tells you they have found “the solution” in politics: “Run!”
“solution to government” means “solution to the problem of how organise society”.
If “except for all the others” only includes those that have been tried, then I mostly agree. But if it includes all possible forms of social organisation, I strongly disagree. The idea that we’ve reached the best solution and it barely works is similar to the idea that we will never solve death. Either of those could be true, but there is not nearly evidence to stop us from trying.
With the death problem, we can characterize the nature of the problem, list out subproblems, list out causal contributors, and attack them one by one.
With “how to organize society”, people disagree on the criterion for forming a component of the problem. Conflicting interests are the basic building-block of politics.
The original wording of that quote indeed was “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Hmm, yeah, I thought I remembered that quote having such a clause.
The word “solution” has too much of engineering / hard sciences connotations for my liking.
Organising society is a process and the criteria of what can be considered a successful one are not stable on historic time scale unless you want to take the social darwinism approach.
You’re right, “solution” has too much finality to it. How about “approach” as a replacement word that doesn’t break the grammar above?
Sure, “approach” will work.
There is probably a similar quote from Plato about slavery.
The point of the Churchill quote wasn’t to proclaim democracy the best evah! The point was to hint at the danger of the nirvana fallacy—you need to have some method of organising society, so relative metrics are more important than absolute. You pick the best out of what’s available.
That presupposes that you have to win election by explaining the policies that you honestly want to enact. In reality that’s not how modern representative democracy work. Neither how it works in practice nor how it works in theory.
True, but you do need a platform that promises, at the very least, a direction that your policies are taking you. If, during your term, you completely neglect everything you talked about while running, you’ll take a hit in the next election (unless you’ve miraculously been so effective during those 4⁄5 years that everyone is convinced you know better than them).
And if the point is to be the best liar and then do what you want in office, uh, why even have elections?
Obama never talked about how children’s IQ would be higher in the future because his administration calculated the dollar value of children’s IQ’s and opposed it to the costs of reduces mercury pollution.
The policy was done by the EPA with very little public debate.
On the other hand the EPA didn’t get done much on global warming where there’s massive media attention.
To allow voters to refuse to reelect politicians with bad track records. If democracy is done right, politicians who mess up don’t get reelected.
If it comes to decide whether to vote for a politician’s you don’t focus on what he promises for the future but what he did in the past. That provides for democratic accountability.
To choose representatives and not to choose policy.
If I look at Bernie Sanders I know that he engaged in good policy for decades. He voted against the Iraq war and the patriotic act. That tells me much more about him than any promise he makes before the election.
Bush campaigned on “no statebuilding” and then went to do very expensive statebuilding in Iraq or Afghanistan without the Republican base complaining. The Republican didn’t like Clinton’s intervention against Kosovo, so it made sense for Bush to run with “no statebuilding”.
Obama promised to clean up Wall Street but did nothing substantial. He engaged in busywork and passed laws but they are more symbolic than real reform.