I have commented in past posts on the tendency of people, online and elsewhere, to treat arguments as declarations of tribal affinity, to assume that people can be classified and their views determined, by tribal membership, hence that someone who disagrees with them on one political issue must hold the same views as everyone else who disagrees on that issue.
This post diagnoses a deep frustration--the leap from a single opinion to a full stereotype of a person's views. The individual disappears, replaced by a tribal strawman built to be attacked, while the substance of what was said is ignored.
Your examples reveal this is a tactic and not a misunderstanding. The problem isn’t just bias, but the preference for a simple caricature over the complexity of reality. This isn't a failure of perception, but a failure of character--choosing to dismiss the person in favor of a more convenient target.
Thank you for writing this. Your work consistently embodies the discipline to put truth above tribe, which is why I respect it so deeply, perhaps especially when I reach different conclusions.
“This post diagnoses a deep frustration--the leap from a single opinion to a full stereotype of a person's views. The individual disappears, replaced by a tribal strawman built to be attacked…”
Do you not see that with the above you are making the same sweeping generalization that you are accusing and condemning others for doing?
You claim that *all* who exhibit the weaknesses and imperfections DF mentions have in fact gone to a *full* stereotype of another’s views. And that they have replaced it with a strawman.
I don’t doubt that *some* people do more or less exactly as you say. I also don’t doubt that *many* of the people DF is describing do *some* of what you say.
But yes, I think you are making very much the same faulty generalization that you are attacking when you claim that most/all of the folks “guilty” of what DF is describing do *all* of what you just claimed.
As with too many conversations, they are not really listening to what you are saying, or reading with an attempt at comprehension, but merely awaiting an opening into which they can assert their views on something perhaps remotely connected in some way that you neither said nor wrote.
I participate in a discussion board composed of low level academics. Anything connected to policy -- education policy of course, but even foreign policy -- is tribal, and worse in education, corresponds to an organized interest group.
I would add that posters, or people, either have never learned, or have forgotten how to disagree in a civilized manner. Disagreement implies enmity.
“More than that, I think there is at least an outside chance that he might improve things, shift American politics very slightly in the direction I want it to go.”
So now you’ve got me curious.
With hindsight, *do* you think Obama shifted American politics even very slightly in the direction you prefer it go?
I ask both writ large (net) and on any particular axis/axes.
I see so much of this that my brain is fighting my fingers' urge to answer in all caps.
I think there are some corollaries to this common style of discourse: even if you try to express a nuanced or moderate or narrow version of something, some people will respond as if you had proposed the maximalist version of whatever it was; while people may be aware of the diversity of viewpoints on their "own" side (or their conception of their own side), some will assume that the "other" side is ideologically united.
Probably many more corollaries apply, but those are two of the ones I see exercised the most.
How to describe this ideal, "un-tribal" person? Wow, what a resplendent hero he would be! But try to imagine... someone with UNASSAILABLE self-confidence, spiritually magnanimous, not just untroubled but delighted by the exposure of his errors, serene in the face of the most vicious personal assaults, which he counts a pitiable failing of his attackers, a person whose love – intellectual and personal – is untarnished by those who err or fall short of deserving it... . What a glittering UNIVERSE he would be... what a universe unto himself!
The rejection of tribalism in one’s own identity and thinking doesn’t require any of the saintlike qualities you mentioned. It merely requires recognition and, possibly, a bit of a contrarian streak.
For a few months, I've been learning about an organization called Braver Angels that seeks to reduce the extreme polarization of American politics through moderated discussions, debates, and workshops. One of the workshops is titled "Skills for Disagreeing Better". They emphasize listening to the other side. It only works for participants willing to try it, so I don't know how they're going have much impact.
I experience this "opinion lumping" even with discussions sometimes with my wife. If I express disagreement about some part of a statement, it immediately turns into "so you must believe [some not particularly connected other thing]". It's a rhetorical technique, I guess, but something I could live without.
I've been connected with Braver Angels for a few years (although not nearly back to the beginning - I think they started in 2015 or 2016). It was co-founded by a guy who's a marriage counselor, which seems incredibly apt. One area where they may have more impact is in the workshops they do with legislators (I think these happen at both the national and the state level). I've been to a couple of local events and neither was exactly massive. They _are_ persistent, however. Perhaps one day that persistence will pay off.
The Together Across Difference substack (https://togethernow.substack.com/) seems to be connected with Braver Angels (although I'm not sure it's a formal connection)
Our New Hampshire legislature is, so far as I know, the only one to have some persistent effort to apply Braver Angels principles (NH Granite Bridge Legislative Alliance). Doug Teschner is also in NH and is co-author on the forthcoming book Beyond the Politics of Contempt and the corresponding substack "Together Across Differences". Doug is a former state representative and was involved in getting the Granite Bridge caucus started.
There is nuance here though. Most of the time, you actually *can* infer most of a person's opinions from one or two (with imperfect but high accuracy). If someone favors gun control, they are probably pro-choice, worried about the climate and much more likely to be vegan. These things have nothing to do with each other. These days you could infer that they probably are not very concerned about free speech, even though the opposite correlations were typical a few decades ago.
And the tribal thing. If I follow someone that I think is generally "on my side" and they repeatedly keep pummeling "our" candidate, I can't help wondering, whose side are you on anyway? If I say something positive about a liberal, I always caveat it with "I disagree with this guy on almost everything, but...". People with large audiences might be expected to so even more. Jonah Goldberg comes to mind. I followed him on Twitter, a nominal conservative, and every political post was slamming Trump. Nothing about the insanity and inanity on the other side. I really did want to say "whose side are you on"?
This blog is clearly about ideas, and I don't take political comments as endorsements unless they are couched that way. Other contexts are different.
Funny…in 2016 I looked at self-identified conservatives who supported Trump (a NYC billionaire with a history of decidedly un-conservative politics and personal values) and wondered what side *they* were on.
In fact it was this observation that led me to the realization that the idea of “conservative politics” (or “liberal politics” or “libertarian politics” or whatever) is theoretical only, and that in reality people simply “follow the flag” and backfill everything else from opinions to reasoning based on the whims of the tribal leaders and local zeitgeist.
If you can tell what tribe a person is on based on one or two of their opinions, it is because of that.
I follow Goldberg (intermittently) at The Dispatch (where I have a lifetime membership). I think you'll find what he writes there to be more even-handed, although he's still gonna be anti-Trump. AFAICT, the whole raison d'être of The Dispatch was to have a home for principled conservatism outside the Trumpist movement. Which kinda harkens back to the theme of Dr. Friedman's post.
I think it'd be fair to say that nuance and thoughtfulness are algorithmically disfavored on xwitter relative to substack (so far). It's my guess that Mr. Goldberg is probably going to look more inflammatory on xwitter than he does at The Dispatch.
Yeah, I only saw what he posted on Twitter/X. If he could find something negative to say about Trump every day during the election and just kind of let slide all Harris's numerous faults (especially from a conservative POV), I could only assume that he hated Trump so much that he'd rather have her win. He's sort of the extreme case of what this blog post is about... yeah, you shouldn't infer a person's "platform" from a few posts, but after a while a picture emerges. And people with a large audience should know that people are always trying to infer "where they stand".
Your post is all about making distinctions and making distinctions is a key part of thinking clearly.
"I like this aspect of candidate X." But that doesn't mean that you think candidate X is perfect in all regards. "I don't think that global warming will cause problem Y." But that doesn't mean you think global warming is okay or it won't cause problem Z. "Trump supporters have the following weakness..." But that doesn't mean you don't like Trump or Trump supporters.
My theory is that people who can make distinctions, such as you, think clearly and end up being libertarians. People who can't make distinctions and don't think clearly, end up with different political views.
To continue my thought. People who can make distinctions can understand and appreciate the principles of the matter. Once principles are understood, they can be applied consistently. Understanding and applying principles is a key aspect of libertarian thought. People who have other views may use principles, but only occasionally and only when it supports their argument.
Non-libertarian here. Of course, I'm not anti-libertarian, either. Or a theist or antitheist. Etc.
Principle is fine, in principle. But I'm wary of principle without empiricism (and equally wary of empiricism without principle). Pure principle can head off into Vorlon territory.
We might equate making distinctions with not being doctrinaire. You might be a libertarian, ancap, Republican, Democrat, Social Democrat, whatever and still be able to make distinctions (and many of those distinctions might cause tension with other people who adopt the same label as you). Or you might be any of those things and be doctrinaire and impervious to distinctions and feeling lots of warm, fuzzy solidarity.
Once, when cornered into attaching a political label for myself, I struggled for some time and settled on: pluralist, with centrist tendencies. Sure, it's glib, but I think it's also fairly accurate.
There are not a lot of things I believe firmly, but one of those things is that humans are imperfect. And that we all have imperfect knowledge. I'm a big fan of the blind-men-and-the-elephant parable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
We all have our experiences of life and the way that we think about those experiences. And if we can bring together the information from those experiences and thoughts, we might construct a bigger, better pile of information, beyond what we can do individually. Or we might kill the people who disagree with us. Or simply fail to listen to the information that they bring. Whatever. It's a choice. Sometimes the idea of working towards a bigger, better information pile seems to be a hard sell.
“ People who have other views may use principles, but only occasionally and only when it supports their argument.”
As a libertarian-leaning sort myself, I was pretty much with you until this last line.
Way too overgeneralized to be either accurate or fair.
Not only do I know plenty of center-right and center- left folks to whom your claim is largely inaccurate, I even know a few liberals who use their principles and have come to conclusions I strongly disagree with.
I attribute their “wrong” views on public policy partly to their values, partly to their ignorance of economics, and partly to them lacking information (usually related to getting all of their information from left-coded media).
I attribute very little of it to them “only occasionally” being principled, as you claim here.
YMMV I suppose. Just not to the extreme of your last sentence.
I'm unclear on what this particular paragraph's topic is, as I hope to not stray far from it.
"The comment thread contained 227 comments, I think the largest number of comments on any of my posts. About fifteen of them were responses to the post."
Would you prefer commenters stick to the straight and narrow original topic? 15 comments are easier to review than 227.
Then there's my own little 15 minutes of misattributed fame.
"The largest cluster consisted of right wing posters attacking imaginary left wing opponents for their purported views in defense of sex change operations ..." and then mentions my comment, which seems strange when, in chasing back through the parent comments, I found that a different comment of mine was the "Top" comment and not what I think of as "right wing". Well, if right and left are the only two choices, I suppose that if some of mine are right wing, the others must be left wing, although I wish someone would define the two so I'd know which ones are acceptable in which discussions so as not to stray from the topic at hand.
Speaking of straying ... the parent comment to my comment is the original top level comment which strayed from your topic to bring up "gender affirming care", the Orwellian woke term for genital mutilation which used to be so roundly condemned as barbaric when African tribes did it. True, I did stray from your original topic, but I don't know why I got singled out and not the parent commenter who first strayed.
As Chuck37 pointed out: "If someone favors gun control, they are probably pro-choice, worried about the climate and much more likely to be vegan."
In fact, I think all such smaller tribes congeal around just two fundamental tribes rooted in the two irreducible theological replies regarding the malleability of human nature: Either plastic and perfectible (the Left), or fixed and fallen (the Right). All views cluster around either of these two poles.
I hate to spoil my own joke, but I actually embrace all of plastic, perfectible, fixed and fallen - specifically by analogy to language and genetics. Perhaps you can see where I'm headed.
If a word or gene is not reproduced accurately and distinctly the great majority of the time, language or life falls apart. But without occasional mutations, language and life are utterly static - the first language or organism becomes forever the only kind, because perfect reproduction and fidelity mean nothing ever changes.
Having spoiled my own joke, I'll borrow one from Chesterton: The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
I wonder if there is some sort of cognitive trick that could be used to snap people out of this mindset. I have come to accept it online, but when it happens in person, with someone I'm likely to have further interactions with, it would be nice to have a productive conversation.
I've seen humour work in the past, but the right humourous remark doesn't always present itself.
"some sort of cognitive trick [...] to snap people out of this mindset"
I think that there is such a trick, but not "cognitive." It's economic. Those whose end product is words – e.g., the "mind workers" in academe or in the media – have their whole being in this or that opinion. To be proven wrong – horrors! – is not only an affront to their identity, but also to their getting paid.
However, if such people were set up at birth where "money ain't a problem," would they still be beavering away at the word mill? Unlikely. A financially secure gentry would likely be yachting, vacationing in Gstaad, game hunting in Africa, diddling each other's wives, etc.
I seem to hanker for a world of "spiritually ambitious" people who are so self-confident that their ambition is never bruised by their colleagues. But I have tasted that world of academic one-upmanship, of un-collegial vying among smarty-pants, of claustrophobic envy. And that was the "road not taken."
How to describe this ideal, "un-tribal" person? Wow, what a resplendent hero he would be! But try to imagine... someone with UNASSAILABLE self-confidence, spiritually magnanimous, not just untroubled but delighted by the exposure of his errors, serene in the face of the most vicious personal assaults, which he counts a pitiable failing of his attackers, a person whose love – intellectual and personal – is untarnished by those who err or fall short of deserving it... . What a UNIVERSE he would be... what a universe unto himself!
GULP! I've been quoted as being among the tribalists! (for my expressed skepticism for EA)
Say it ain't so, David! 'Cause I shore hope it ain't.
As I say in my forthcoming 2nd edition to _The Constitution of Non-State Government: Field Guide to Texas Secession_: "Many proclaim, 'Let reason be our guide, wherever it may lead us,' and behold, the Christian speaker justifies Christianity, the Muslim justifies Mohammad, the endowed justifies his benefactor, the aggrieved justifies his violence, and the ignorant justifies his nonsense." (page 73)
I would even question the description of man as a "rational animal." (More likely, as Dostoyevsky said, he's the "ungrateful biped," but that's another matter.) For most, "reason" is just an assembly of words to justify his (often tribal) preconceptions. Thus I define him:
Indeed, people often use reason post hoc to rationalize their views. The views come from places other than reason. High IQ people don't have better positions, they just rationalize them better (sometimes).
Nobody has time or mental capability to determine their position on every issue for first principles anyway, even if they could articulate what their first principles were. You have to inherit much of it, and hopefully analyze and adapt it over your lifetime.
I will say, for me personally, I have changed my mind on various things due to good arguments from others (David Friedman among them). The thing about these cases though is that I believed ahead of time that the person I was debating or reading shared a common worldview with me and was in some sense "in my tribe". If I sense that someone's starting axioms are at odds with my own, it will be really hard for them to change my opinion.
"...make me suspect that my upbringing may have left me with a distorted view of the world, ..."
Could be or perhaps the world is distorted these days.
Debates, presidential debates aren't. Perhaps when such were started, the understanding of debate and argument became more nebulous until such is now completely lost.
I remember high school debate teams; subject to be debated stated clearly, preparing stacks of 4X5 index cards, pro & con as we didn't know which side of the argument we'd defend until the start of the debate.
We learned fact matter, preparation and presentation matter and there really are at least two sides to every argument. How many in today's distorted world realize such?
Three things: First I hope you will now agree that the plague that is resulting from Trump's election is far worse than what might have resulted from a Harris election. Yes, she was a bad choice, but she was not dedicated to the destruction of our Republic.
Your observation on the "lower class pride parade" is wrong. MAGAs are flattering themselves when they give a "f*** you" to their" (imagined) "tormentors.” Their "torment" was entirely their own delusion. I lived in Manhattan until 2000 and no one ever gave these folks even a second thought until they started to worship a person who WE all knew to be one of the most despicable human beings alive.
Second, I think you might be interested in my 2017 Substack post: "The Tribe Has Spoken." It touches on many of the points that you make and then some. I still (immodestly) think it is the best thing written on the subject. There is only one thing I would change.
To fair to people who argue that way, views on multiple subjects do seem to often clump together. People who oppose wokism often also think climate change isn't real, despite those being entirely unrelated things. You can call that "tribalism" if you like, but there is a real clumping effect.
You're an intellectual and a particularly insightful one. You're very exceptional in that way. Your views on many subjects are more independent of each other than those of most people who post online (nevertheless I can predict many of your views just by knowing you're a libertarian anarchist).
People who post on your blog are the same people who post and engage in arguments with other people in other venues. Other people who don't think the way you do.
So their responses are unfair to you, but understandable given their experience (and their own lack of nuance).
This post diagnoses a deep frustration--the leap from a single opinion to a full stereotype of a person's views. The individual disappears, replaced by a tribal strawman built to be attacked, while the substance of what was said is ignored.
Your examples reveal this is a tactic and not a misunderstanding. The problem isn’t just bias, but the preference for a simple caricature over the complexity of reality. This isn't a failure of perception, but a failure of character--choosing to dismiss the person in favor of a more convenient target.
Thank you for writing this. Your work consistently embodies the discipline to put truth above tribe, which is why I respect it so deeply, perhaps especially when I reach different conclusions.
“This post diagnoses a deep frustration--the leap from a single opinion to a full stereotype of a person's views. The individual disappears, replaced by a tribal strawman built to be attacked…”
Do you not see that with the above you are making the same sweeping generalization that you are accusing and condemning others for doing?
I do not see it. Please explain where do you see it.
You claim that *all* who exhibit the weaknesses and imperfections DF mentions have in fact gone to a *full* stereotype of another’s views. And that they have replaced it with a strawman.
I don’t doubt that *some* people do more or less exactly as you say. I also don’t doubt that *many* of the people DF is describing do *some* of what you say.
But yes, I think you are making very much the same faulty generalization that you are attacking when you claim that most/all of the folks “guilty” of what DF is describing do *all* of what you just claimed.
As with too many conversations, they are not really listening to what you are saying, or reading with an attempt at comprehension, but merely awaiting an opening into which they can assert their views on something perhaps remotely connected in some way that you neither said nor wrote.
It is tiresome at best.
As Mortimer Adler used to say: "Most 'dialogs' are just two ships passing in the night."
How true, how true.
I participate in a discussion board composed of low level academics. Anything connected to policy -- education policy of course, but even foreign policy -- is tribal, and worse in education, corresponds to an organized interest group.
I would add that posters, or people, either have never learned, or have forgotten how to disagree in a civilized manner. Disagreement implies enmity.
There is no discussion.
“More than that, I think there is at least an outside chance that he might improve things, shift American politics very slightly in the direction I want it to go.”
So now you’ve got me curious.
With hindsight, *do* you think Obama shifted American politics even very slightly in the direction you prefer it go?
I ask both writ large (net) and on any particular axis/axes.
Seriously, the only point you found interesting is the tribal one? Did you not read the post at all?
I found other points interesting, sure. But that is the unaddressed topic I’m most curious about DH’s view on.
Apologies that my interests do not exactly match yours.
I see so much of this that my brain is fighting my fingers' urge to answer in all caps.
I think there are some corollaries to this common style of discourse: even if you try to express a nuanced or moderate or narrow version of something, some people will respond as if you had proposed the maximalist version of whatever it was; while people may be aware of the diversity of viewpoints on their "own" side (or their conception of their own side), some will assume that the "other" side is ideologically united.
Probably many more corollaries apply, but those are two of the ones I see exercised the most.
How to describe this ideal, "un-tribal" person? Wow, what a resplendent hero he would be! But try to imagine... someone with UNASSAILABLE self-confidence, spiritually magnanimous, not just untroubled but delighted by the exposure of his errors, serene in the face of the most vicious personal assaults, which he counts a pitiable failing of his attackers, a person whose love – intellectual and personal – is untarnished by those who err or fall short of deserving it... . What a glittering UNIVERSE he would be... what a universe unto himself!
The rejection of tribalism in one’s own identity and thinking doesn’t require any of the saintlike qualities you mentioned. It merely requires recognition and, possibly, a bit of a contrarian streak.
For a few months, I've been learning about an organization called Braver Angels that seeks to reduce the extreme polarization of American politics through moderated discussions, debates, and workshops. One of the workshops is titled "Skills for Disagreeing Better". They emphasize listening to the other side. It only works for participants willing to try it, so I don't know how they're going have much impact.
I experience this "opinion lumping" even with discussions sometimes with my wife. If I express disagreement about some part of a statement, it immediately turns into "so you must believe [some not particularly connected other thing]". It's a rhetorical technique, I guess, but something I could live without.
I've been connected with Braver Angels for a few years (although not nearly back to the beginning - I think they started in 2015 or 2016). It was co-founded by a guy who's a marriage counselor, which seems incredibly apt. One area where they may have more impact is in the workshops they do with legislators (I think these happen at both the national and the state level). I've been to a couple of local events and neither was exactly massive. They _are_ persistent, however. Perhaps one day that persistence will pay off.
The Together Across Difference substack (https://togethernow.substack.com/) seems to be connected with Braver Angels (although I'm not sure it's a formal connection)
Our New Hampshire legislature is, so far as I know, the only one to have some persistent effort to apply Braver Angels principles (NH Granite Bridge Legislative Alliance). Doug Teschner is also in NH and is co-author on the forthcoming book Beyond the Politics of Contempt and the corresponding substack "Together Across Differences". Doug is a former state representative and was involved in getting the Granite Bridge caucus started.
There is nuance here though. Most of the time, you actually *can* infer most of a person's opinions from one or two (with imperfect but high accuracy). If someone favors gun control, they are probably pro-choice, worried about the climate and much more likely to be vegan. These things have nothing to do with each other. These days you could infer that they probably are not very concerned about free speech, even though the opposite correlations were typical a few decades ago.
And the tribal thing. If I follow someone that I think is generally "on my side" and they repeatedly keep pummeling "our" candidate, I can't help wondering, whose side are you on anyway? If I say something positive about a liberal, I always caveat it with "I disagree with this guy on almost everything, but...". People with large audiences might be expected to so even more. Jonah Goldberg comes to mind. I followed him on Twitter, a nominal conservative, and every political post was slamming Trump. Nothing about the insanity and inanity on the other side. I really did want to say "whose side are you on"?
This blog is clearly about ideas, and I don't take political comments as endorsements unless they are couched that way. Other contexts are different.
Funny…in 2016 I looked at self-identified conservatives who supported Trump (a NYC billionaire with a history of decidedly un-conservative politics and personal values) and wondered what side *they* were on.
In fact it was this observation that led me to the realization that the idea of “conservative politics” (or “liberal politics” or “libertarian politics” or whatever) is theoretical only, and that in reality people simply “follow the flag” and backfill everything else from opinions to reasoning based on the whims of the tribal leaders and local zeitgeist.
If you can tell what tribe a person is on based on one or two of their opinions, it is because of that.
I follow Goldberg (intermittently) at The Dispatch (where I have a lifetime membership). I think you'll find what he writes there to be more even-handed, although he's still gonna be anti-Trump. AFAICT, the whole raison d'être of The Dispatch was to have a home for principled conservatism outside the Trumpist movement. Which kinda harkens back to the theme of Dr. Friedman's post.
I think it'd be fair to say that nuance and thoughtfulness are algorithmically disfavored on xwitter relative to substack (so far). It's my guess that Mr. Goldberg is probably going to look more inflammatory on xwitter than he does at The Dispatch.
Yeah, I only saw what he posted on Twitter/X. If he could find something negative to say about Trump every day during the election and just kind of let slide all Harris's numerous faults (especially from a conservative POV), I could only assume that he hated Trump so much that he'd rather have her win. He's sort of the extreme case of what this blog post is about... yeah, you shouldn't infer a person's "platform" from a few posts, but after a while a picture emerges. And people with a large audience should know that people are always trying to infer "where they stand".
Your post is all about making distinctions and making distinctions is a key part of thinking clearly.
"I like this aspect of candidate X." But that doesn't mean that you think candidate X is perfect in all regards. "I don't think that global warming will cause problem Y." But that doesn't mean you think global warming is okay or it won't cause problem Z. "Trump supporters have the following weakness..." But that doesn't mean you don't like Trump or Trump supporters.
My theory is that people who can make distinctions, such as you, think clearly and end up being libertarians. People who can't make distinctions and don't think clearly, end up with different political views.
To continue my thought. People who can make distinctions can understand and appreciate the principles of the matter. Once principles are understood, they can be applied consistently. Understanding and applying principles is a key aspect of libertarian thought. People who have other views may use principles, but only occasionally and only when it supports their argument.
Non-libertarian here. Of course, I'm not anti-libertarian, either. Or a theist or antitheist. Etc.
Principle is fine, in principle. But I'm wary of principle without empiricism (and equally wary of empiricism without principle). Pure principle can head off into Vorlon territory.
We might equate making distinctions with not being doctrinaire. You might be a libertarian, ancap, Republican, Democrat, Social Democrat, whatever and still be able to make distinctions (and many of those distinctions might cause tension with other people who adopt the same label as you). Or you might be any of those things and be doctrinaire and impervious to distinctions and feeling lots of warm, fuzzy solidarity.
Once, when cornered into attaching a political label for myself, I struggled for some time and settled on: pluralist, with centrist tendencies. Sure, it's glib, but I think it's also fairly accurate.
There are not a lot of things I believe firmly, but one of those things is that humans are imperfect. And that we all have imperfect knowledge. I'm a big fan of the blind-men-and-the-elephant parable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
We all have our experiences of life and the way that we think about those experiences. And if we can bring together the information from those experiences and thoughts, we might construct a bigger, better pile of information, beyond what we can do individually. Or we might kill the people who disagree with us. Or simply fail to listen to the information that they bring. Whatever. It's a choice. Sometimes the idea of working towards a bigger, better information pile seems to be a hard sell.
“ People who have other views may use principles, but only occasionally and only when it supports their argument.”
As a libertarian-leaning sort myself, I was pretty much with you until this last line.
Way too overgeneralized to be either accurate or fair.
Not only do I know plenty of center-right and center- left folks to whom your claim is largely inaccurate, I even know a few liberals who use their principles and have come to conclusions I strongly disagree with.
I attribute their “wrong” views on public policy partly to their values, partly to their ignorance of economics, and partly to them lacking information (usually related to getting all of their information from left-coded media).
I attribute very little of it to them “only occasionally” being principled, as you claim here.
YMMV I suppose. Just not to the extreme of your last sentence.
I'm unclear on what this particular paragraph's topic is, as I hope to not stray far from it.
"The comment thread contained 227 comments, I think the largest number of comments on any of my posts. About fifteen of them were responses to the post."
Would you prefer commenters stick to the straight and narrow original topic? 15 comments are easier to review than 227.
Then there's my own little 15 minutes of misattributed fame.
"The largest cluster consisted of right wing posters attacking imaginary left wing opponents for their purported views in defense of sex change operations ..." and then mentions my comment, which seems strange when, in chasing back through the parent comments, I found that a different comment of mine was the "Top" comment and not what I think of as "right wing". Well, if right and left are the only two choices, I suppose that if some of mine are right wing, the others must be left wing, although I wish someone would define the two so I'd know which ones are acceptable in which discussions so as not to stray from the topic at hand.
Speaking of straying ... the parent comment to my comment is the original top level comment which strayed from your topic to bring up "gender affirming care", the Orwellian woke term for genital mutilation which used to be so roundly condemned as barbaric when African tribes did it. True, I did stray from your original topic, but I don't know why I got singled out and not the parent commenter who first strayed.
As Chuck37 pointed out: "If someone favors gun control, they are probably pro-choice, worried about the climate and much more likely to be vegan."
In fact, I think all such smaller tribes congeal around just two fundamental tribes rooted in the two irreducible theological replies regarding the malleability of human nature: Either plastic and perfectible (the Left), or fixed and fallen (the Right). All views cluster around either of these two poles.
Reading your comment, I suddenly feel bipolar:-)
Ha ha, perfect.
I hate to spoil my own joke, but I actually embrace all of plastic, perfectible, fixed and fallen - specifically by analogy to language and genetics. Perhaps you can see where I'm headed.
If a word or gene is not reproduced accurately and distinctly the great majority of the time, language or life falls apart. But without occasional mutations, language and life are utterly static - the first language or organism becomes forever the only kind, because perfect reproduction and fidelity mean nothing ever changes.
Having spoiled my own joke, I'll borrow one from Chesterton: The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.
I wonder if there is some sort of cognitive trick that could be used to snap people out of this mindset. I have come to accept it online, but when it happens in person, with someone I'm likely to have further interactions with, it would be nice to have a productive conversation.
I've seen humour work in the past, but the right humourous remark doesn't always present itself.
"some sort of cognitive trick [...] to snap people out of this mindset"
I think that there is such a trick, but not "cognitive." It's economic. Those whose end product is words – e.g., the "mind workers" in academe or in the media – have their whole being in this or that opinion. To be proven wrong – horrors! – is not only an affront to their identity, but also to their getting paid.
However, if such people were set up at birth where "money ain't a problem," would they still be beavering away at the word mill? Unlikely. A financially secure gentry would likely be yachting, vacationing in Gstaad, game hunting in Africa, diddling each other's wives, etc.
I seem to hanker for a world of "spiritually ambitious" people who are so self-confident that their ambition is never bruised by their colleagues. But I have tasted that world of academic one-upmanship, of un-collegial vying among smarty-pants, of claustrophobic envy. And that was the "road not taken."
An aversion to disagreeing with your group is a natural human trait you could easily explain by invoking the evolutionary processes.
I think there are clearly cases where it would be best to bypass this tribal instinct.
I don't think wealthy people are immune to it if that's what you're implying.
True, wealthy people aren't immune to tribalism.
How to describe this ideal, "un-tribal" person? Wow, what a resplendent hero he would be! But try to imagine... someone with UNASSAILABLE self-confidence, spiritually magnanimous, not just untroubled but delighted by the exposure of his errors, serene in the face of the most vicious personal assaults, which he counts a pitiable failing of his attackers, a person whose love – intellectual and personal – is untarnished by those who err or fall short of deserving it... . What a UNIVERSE he would be... what a universe unto himself!
GULP! I've been quoted as being among the tribalists! (for my expressed skepticism for EA)
Say it ain't so, David! 'Cause I shore hope it ain't.
As I say in my forthcoming 2nd edition to _The Constitution of Non-State Government: Field Guide to Texas Secession_: "Many proclaim, 'Let reason be our guide, wherever it may lead us,' and behold, the Christian speaker justifies Christianity, the Muslim justifies Mohammad, the endowed justifies his benefactor, the aggrieved justifies his violence, and the ignorant justifies his nonsense." (page 73)
I would even question the description of man as a "rational animal." (More likely, as Dostoyevsky said, he's the "ungrateful biped," but that's another matter.) For most, "reason" is just an assembly of words to justify his (often tribal) preconceptions. Thus I define him:
Man is the self-justifying biped.
Indeed, people often use reason post hoc to rationalize their views. The views come from places other than reason. High IQ people don't have better positions, they just rationalize them better (sometimes).
Nobody has time or mental capability to determine their position on every issue for first principles anyway, even if they could articulate what their first principles were. You have to inherit much of it, and hopefully analyze and adapt it over your lifetime.
I will say, for me personally, I have changed my mind on various things due to good arguments from others (David Friedman among them). The thing about these cases though is that I believed ahead of time that the person I was debating or reading shared a common worldview with me and was in some sense "in my tribe". If I sense that someone's starting axioms are at odds with my own, it will be really hard for them to change my opinion.
"...make me suspect that my upbringing may have left me with a distorted view of the world, ..."
Could be or perhaps the world is distorted these days.
Debates, presidential debates aren't. Perhaps when such were started, the understanding of debate and argument became more nebulous until such is now completely lost.
I remember high school debate teams; subject to be debated stated clearly, preparing stacks of 4X5 index cards, pro & con as we didn't know which side of the argument we'd defend until the start of the debate.
We learned fact matter, preparation and presentation matter and there really are at least two sides to every argument. How many in today's distorted world realize such?
Three things: First I hope you will now agree that the plague that is resulting from Trump's election is far worse than what might have resulted from a Harris election. Yes, she was a bad choice, but she was not dedicated to the destruction of our Republic.
Your observation on the "lower class pride parade" is wrong. MAGAs are flattering themselves when they give a "f*** you" to their" (imagined) "tormentors.” Their "torment" was entirely their own delusion. I lived in Manhattan until 2000 and no one ever gave these folks even a second thought until they started to worship a person who WE all knew to be one of the most despicable human beings alive.
Second, I think you might be interested in my 2017 Substack post: "The Tribe Has Spoken." It touches on many of the points that you make and then some. I still (immodestly) think it is the best thing written on the subject. There is only one thing I would change.
https://charles72f.substack.com/p/the-tribe-has-spoken
To fair to people who argue that way, views on multiple subjects do seem to often clump together. People who oppose wokism often also think climate change isn't real, despite those being entirely unrelated things. You can call that "tribalism" if you like, but there is a real clumping effect.
You're an intellectual and a particularly insightful one. You're very exceptional in that way. Your views on many subjects are more independent of each other than those of most people who post online (nevertheless I can predict many of your views just by knowing you're a libertarian anarchist).
People who post on your blog are the same people who post and engage in arguments with other people in other venues. Other people who don't think the way you do.
So their responses are unfair to you, but understandable given their experience (and their own lack of nuance).