I agree with the broad sentiment, but I think it’s increasingly unrealistic to believe that the liberal/conservative distinction is based on a fundamental philosophical difference instead of just raw partisan tribal hatred. In theory people would develop an ethical philosophy and then join the party that best represents the philosophy, but in practice people pick a tribe and then adopt the values of that tribe.
I think it’s both. My model is that people join “tribes” that attract them psychologically, because their reflect either their traits or experience, but often also because of peer pressure. And then, the “tribes” create political coalitions to get more power, and this is where many “strange bedfellows” and dogmatism happens. -- In other words, that there are natural “clusters in the opinion-space”, and also historical coalitions of clusters based on random events.
The difficult part is to find out, when we talk about a group, how much of its constitution is a natural cluster, and how much is a historically evolved coalition of potentially unrelated clusters.
For example, it is natural for a person to enjoy the idea of a world where their specific traits are highly rewarded, and the skills they miss are considered irrelevant. It is also natural, for people who feel oppressed by a group X, to make “fighting against X” a part of their identity.
But whether groups A and B make a coalition against a coalition of C and D, or whether A and C make a coalition against B and D, that mostly depends on history. Maybe A and B originally had nothing in common, but they joined forces because their common enemy C was too strong at some moment of history; and now it may be different, but the idea that A and B should be allies is already considered common sense between the members of both groups, so C chose D as an ally, despite having nothing else in common.
Talking about “Republicans” and “Democrats” is likely too far on the coalition-making level. Not sure how we operationally define e.g. “conservatives”—for example, would that include the communists in the former communist countries (people who want to “make Soviet Russia great again”)? Because “clinging to the past” seems like a psychological trait, but whether the past happens to be capitalist or communist or islamic or whatever, that’s a historical accident.
I agree with the broad sentiment, but I think it’s increasingly unrealistic to believe that the liberal/conservative distinction is based on a fundamental philosophical difference instead of just raw partisan tribal hatred. In theory people would develop an ethical philosophy and then join the party that best represents the philosophy, but in practice people pick a tribe and then adopt the values of that tribe.
I think it’s both. My model is that people join “tribes” that attract them psychologically, because their reflect either their traits or experience, but often also because of peer pressure. And then, the “tribes” create political coalitions to get more power, and this is where many “strange bedfellows” and dogmatism happens. -- In other words, that there are natural “clusters in the opinion-space”, and also historical coalitions of clusters based on random events.
The difficult part is to find out, when we talk about a group, how much of its constitution is a natural cluster, and how much is a historically evolved coalition of potentially unrelated clusters.
For example, it is natural for a person to enjoy the idea of a world where their specific traits are highly rewarded, and the skills they miss are considered irrelevant. It is also natural, for people who feel oppressed by a group X, to make “fighting against X” a part of their identity.
But whether groups A and B make a coalition against a coalition of C and D, or whether A and C make a coalition against B and D, that mostly depends on history. Maybe A and B originally had nothing in common, but they joined forces because their common enemy C was too strong at some moment of history; and now it may be different, but the idea that A and B should be allies is already considered common sense between the members of both groups, so C chose D as an ally, despite having nothing else in common.
Talking about “Republicans” and “Democrats” is likely too far on the coalition-making level. Not sure how we operationally define e.g. “conservatives”—for example, would that include the communists in the former communist countries (people who want to “make Soviet Russia great again”)? Because “clinging to the past” seems like a psychological trait, but whether the past happens to be capitalist or communist or islamic or whatever, that’s a historical accident.