alt Hacker NewsWhy I don't discuss politics with friends
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> Bay Area … finding a community of truth-seeking people
I don’t know if I would entirely classify the Bay Area as truth seeking people. It’s eclectic but it definitely felt just as polarizing as living in other parts of the country, but perhaps it’s better defined as moving to live with more like minded people.
I couldn't fathom not discussing politics with friends. Political life is an integral part of modern... well, life. And to the contrary, if there ever existed people you might have good faith conversations with, it should be your friends and family. If not, can you really call them so?
In my experience the (now ancient) Sequences are not of much use in learning how to change your mind. With only a cursory background in psychology, his advice tends to consist of generic platitudes. Not much practical application.
I’d recommend a short course in mindfulness instead, at whatever point in the spectrum between science and mysticism you’re comfortable with.
> A reader might fairly ask what my tribe is. I'm not sure.
Oh brother. Self-awareness about your political conditioning and biases should be step 1.
Being unaware of your (intellectual) tribe implies a lack of good-faith understanding about other tribes.
"What's water?" says the young fish.
The writer does not discuss politics with their friends because they do not respect them
> 1. become truth-seeking
How does one even begin to do that? Looking at people I know who describe themselves as "truth-seeking", it seems that it is a one way ticket to Conspiracyland.
I'll never forget calling Yang a tool in a group of math nerds back around 2019. Instantly outgrouped. I don't think this alone caused our friendship to crumble, but the fact that we couldn't discuss actual policy makes me tend to agree with this post.
Adherence to tribal views is how you end up with the space shuttle Columbia crash.
I do my best to avoid talking and or thinking too much about politics. If I do i then realize family members to friends have sold their mind, intelligence, ability to clearly point out right from wrong, etc to political emotional babble from either side.
If you can't discuss politics with them or other personal topics then they're acquaintances not friends. There's a difference.
To be honest, I enjoy discussing politics with my friends. They’re all pretty good at discussing it. We have lots of common interests otherwise so it’s easy to just step away and talk about other things in the group Slack instead.
In normal times this would be okay.
Friendship is more of an ideal.
I have to tell you and most people reading this is that you belong to a tribe of people who only think they are impartial and unbiased and reasoned thinkers, but they actually aren't.
The level of objectivity that we strive for is just really possible.
for the author, only the centrists, his own group, can display independent thinking.
he assigns all virtues of the world to his group while others seems to be barely more than glorified barbarians.
this is, at best, laughable... and honestly quite reductive and insulting.
this seems to stem from the classic idea of "if everybody was informed and intelligent as i am we would all agree", which i thought had already been disproven long ago. people have different base assumptions. cultures are real things... individual differences matter too.
he also treats ideologies as unified things which is historically false, meanwhile his personal particular set of idea is not an ideology but something akin to objective truth (for which he explicitly argues) or something adjacent to it. any semi-consistent (if that) set of ideas instantly becomes an ideology as soon as you share that set to a group. there are myriads of ideologies that pop-up and die every day... the ones with staying power obviously have accumulated some following but they are rarely all compassing; we have a word for those, cults.
but first thing first, change country and you will get entirely different "centrists" with an entirely different set of ideas. there is no reason there would not be (in his own terms) "accidental" leftists and "accidental" right--ists???
in a locked 2 party system like what you get in the united states, stuff will probably have a tendency to degenerate though. things are way more fluid in countries where you have more democratic choice. there is a lot of fear in the american mix, that doesn't work well with free-thinking.
People interested in this subject would be wise to pick up the book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua
I don't think you can separate the mechanics from the content. Usually people feeling pushback against their political ideas don't realize they are dumb ideas even if they are complex.
We often reach for black and white thinking which makes political discussions difficult. Both sides do it, and it stunts our empathy for why people vote the way they do.
Right. The only sort of person who could write something like this is a person who is not affected (or percieves themselves to not be affected) by "politics."
I was really enjoying the article until I realized there is zero attribution to the book _Thinking in Bets_, which IMO this is obviously heavily influenced by.
I find this to be painfully true in the US. Most of the rational discussions I have about politics are with friends from other countries (Soviet Russia, China, Africa, etc).
I'm looking forward to going back to the days when political disagreements were more along the lines of 'I think __TAX__ should be x%, rather than x+y%'
If you reduce politics to 'what politians do', sure, I avoid it too.
Even when I know that outside of the US, most of us have the same opinions on what the trump admin is doing (especially in the pen and paper RPG community, where not being transphobic is basically a requirement), I still hate comments and discussions about it, probably for the same reason than the author does.
I disagree with his axis though, I've read a lot, and I mean _a lot_ of books and the more I read, the more left I went. And I started almost tea-party libertarian, then liberal-libertarian (because logic, and my class) then I understood power and class and became original libertarian (think Emma Goldman).
But politics are much more than that, it's how society organize, and if you can't talk to everybody about your city evicting the parasites who mismanaged and eventually brought down the waterlines because you're afraid of 'groupthink', you are fucked.
I don't converse about politics at all, because conversation is not generally amenable to anything other than some vague virtue signaling in all but the very best of circumstances. For instance, a basic rule of conversation is that unless you have a very good reason, once a conversation wanders away from a topic, you don't drag it back to the same topic. That's great for idly chatting and catching up with friends, and it's a rule for a good reason, but it's quite far from what any sort of thought or an interaction that might actually change my mind on some topic requires.
While I don't disagree that people are quite tribal, I would observe that determining that people are tribal based on conversations can be a bit misleading, because the conversational form is extremely biased towards expressing things that will be indistinguishable from "tribalism", since all you have time to do is basically to put a marker down on the broadest possible summary of your position before the conversation baton must move on. That is, even a hypothetical Vulcan who has gathered all the data, pondered the question deeply, and come to the only logical conclusion, is going to sound tribal in a conversation, because that's all a conversation can convey.[1] Sufficient information conveyance to actually demonstrate the deep pondering and examination of all the evidence is ipso facto a lecture, or at best, a Socratic dialog or an interview, neither of which is a conversation in this sense.
For better and worse (and rather a lot of each), this medium we're working in right now at least affords itself to complete thoughts. It has its own well-known pathologies, like the interminable flame wars descending off to the right endlessly as two people won't let something go, and many others, but at least it's possible to discuss serious matters in a format similar to this, based on writing in text that can be as long as it needs to be without anyone needing to interrupt to maintain basic social niceties. There's a reason the serious intellectual discourse has been happening in books and articles for centuries if not millennia now.
Note how conversationally gauche it would be for me to monopolize a conversation long enough to simply read this post, and by the standards of intellectual discourse this is a rather simple point.
[1]: In fact, most people will read the Vulcan as exceedingly tribal, because no amount of reciting snap counterarguments against the Vulcan's position will cause him/her to so much as budge an inch or even concede that "perhaps reasonable people could think that" or any other such concession. The snap counteragument was encountered a long time ago, and analyzed in the light of all the other data, and they have long ago come to their conclusions on it. If they can be moved, it will take a lot more. This is difficult to distinguish from a maximized tribalist in any reasonable period of time in a conversation.
> How can you prioritize limited resources with deadly consequences without understanding utilitarianism vs deontology (i.e. the trolly problem)?
Can you explain this to me?
Well that’s an interesting title given he uprooted his family for political [adjacent] reasons
Maybe tribalism is ok in some respects, and maybe we should increase it.
For example, it would be fine if the people in the other tribe to do what they want - as long as when the taxes becomes too high, the beaurocracy stifling, the crime rampant, and they have to deal with issues they assumed other people would sacrifice for in order for them to feel good - as long as when it inevitably breaks down, they don't come to MY area learning nothing and try to replicate what they left.
That is a worldwide problem actually.
What percentage of the comments here fall exactly in line with the tribal groupthink the article was about? 90% 95% 98%?
The author gains a great insight into the social consequences of discussing politics with friends, but I think it might be part of something larger, a sort of intellectual signaling of meta-contrarianism.
At least in the countries where I live, debating politics is less about civic duty and being a citizen, and has become a substitute for sports; people prioritize their passions, and they are not concerned with getting the government to implement the policies it promised in the first place, but with defending a side.
In Germany, we see on state broadcasts every single day discussions about how the USA is bad, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, how some war in a distant place is bad, and so on; and nothing related to local politics.
If you invite someone to go to the municipal legislative service to talk with someone about why we still have underinvestment in kindergartens, even with record revenue, while other groups of society are capitalizing on social benefits, nobody will show up.
Getting in front of a keyboard and brigading online to talk about federal elections and/or officials of other countries is cool: it gives you the latest scandal of the day, you can congregate with people of your chamber, it provides audience for podcasts, and it generates talking points that sound intellectually tasty.
At least for me, the politics that matter most are local politics; and this is the craziest thing: it's the kind of politics where you can do something as an individual, you will have someone to hear you out, and with some effort, you can make a real and direct difference for your community.
"Unbiased" aggregators like Ground News, MSM, and the right blogosphere like Joe Rogan are doing their best to normalize dragging the Overton window to the right with haste. Progressives have a handful of obscure, disconnected, largely-unknown reputable sources with a wasteland of as many or more former progressives and once-promising journalist and journalist-adjacent personalities.
There is some good stuff here, but I generally disagree.
The difference for me is, I don't like everybody, and not everybody has to like me. That's okay, and it's not about disrespect, it's just that I like to surround myself with people who are thoughtful before they are opinionated.
If you know me, and you respect me, and I say something you think is crazy... if they first think you think is "Wait, I thought I respected him, but he's a bad person" instead of "Wait, I respect this person and they're saying something I disagree with. Am I wrong about that?", then, guess what, I'm not actually interested in having a deep relationship.
I studied philosophy in college and grad school. I had to "relearn" how to interact with people outside of the university setting for many of the reasons in this essay. However, upon reading the horrifying "how to win friends and influence people" way of interacting with normal people through flattery and shallow interaction, I thought fuck it, I just don't actually want to be close with people I can't have a real conversation with.
Not everyone gets to the right position right away, that's okay. I'm a strong small-"L" liberal, and I have friends that are conservatives, socialists, and even the occasional anarchist. The difference is that we're all still trying to figure it all out. We're not all pretending that "well if those people didn't exist then we'd have utopia already" because, well, all these system exist all over the earth and it ain't a utopia anywhere. We'll make our points, we'll needle each other in a friendly way, and we'll all say "fuck it, we're doing our best."
That doesn't mean I'm friendly with everyone (remember, I don't like everyone, and not everyone likes me), because there are plenty of political positions that pretty much require people to be unthoughtful. The views need to be consistent, and pretty much anything that end advocating substantial discrimination against certain people over other people isn't going to be internally consistent. Axioms are arbitrary, reason is not.
> 3. Most people don't want to graduate from tribes to views
I checked out of political conversations when I noticed I was teaching remedial civics over drinks and none of us were having fun. So I just sit back and watch people who just want to engage in reality tv style yelling confrontation.
A good friend of mine confessed that he doesn't argue to change other people's mind, he does it to change his own.
It looks like unintentional moderate and intentional moderate on chart switched, unless I'm misunderstanding?
Something I have observed also, and why I'd consider myself a sort of pragmatic centrist.
If your friends are the sort that stick to tribes instead of thinking independently get smarter friends.
Must be nice.
Only the favored majority have the privilege of deciding not to talk about politics.
Additional point: Politics and Ideologies have long tail effects, which makes arguing over them often an exercise in futility. We're arguing over the next footstep in a race that's got infinity left to run.
Russia is/was a global powerhouse under (its version of) Communism.
The US reached (essentially) global domination under Capitalsm.
China is in line to be the next hegemony under an odd combination of Communism, Authoritarianism and (serving Western) Capitalism.
Little old Germany wasn't far from conquering the world under what began as some form of Socialism.
Any of the -isms can be argued against by mentioning -ism-subscribing regimes that have fallen. Where this falls down is that each regime has its own way of corrupting the ideals of the -ism to favour of those 'at the top' or 'with the power to decide'.
Trickle-down (voodoo, for Ferris Bueller fans) economics seems to raise its head regularly despite not having a great track record for an entire population. I think the reason is that its popular with the powerful, so its track record with the population at large is a feature not a bug.
Who is right? What does it mean to be right?
What are the Acceptance Critiera?
is "becoming truth seeking" not some sort of religion - like the sports team - and the bay area is your tribe? Perhaps you were already suggesting this in your article and I've missed this - if so I apologise.
you seem to suggest that truth-seeking > tribalism, and we should pity the poor fools who are about tribalism. In this way, you're being tribalist against tribalism, no?
If ignorant tribalism brings people community and happiness, isn't that just as valid and commendable as truth-seeking?
Truth-seeking might provide a level of understanding of the world which is of value to your operating in life. It is not necessarily a sublime good of it's own right. Too much of it will alienate you from your mates.
I'd wager types like you might find on HN, Bay Area, could do with a little less seeking, in fact.
The Underground Man comes to mind, and presents the extreme of this spectrum. But then maybe he'd find mates in an area filled with other Underground Men?
Timur Kuran writes about this idea (preference falsification) in "Private Truths, Public Lies".
He explains that its this idea that had kept the Soviet Union (this bad idea/system) from dying sooner. People thought it was the system of oppression but in reality it was people who hated the system showed approval. https://youtu.be/xzjqjU2FOwA?si=aTG0GnJKVDoK_-qb&t=819
"Accordingly, for all the hardships of life under communism, they remained politically submissive for years on end." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification
Everything is political, so have a nice time discussing the weather with your friends.
im a nuance enjoyer when it comes to politics too but i wouldnt say i know adequate amounts about economics, politics, game theory, etc. i might know slightly more about my preferred fields than the average person, but im still woefully incompetent. so im always hesitant to lay judgement. especially because politics is such a complex system. its difficult to make the probabilities the author speaks of unless you make a bunch of assumptions. which is terrible and miserable. things get even worse when you think about things at a global vs local political level, which are just completely different in dynamics.
i hate rationalists because it's like. you cant logically reason your way out of this one buddy. the system is far too complex for rationalism to work. sometimes its easier to just align with the groupthink and focus on other things you deem more important. hanging out with friends vs spending all day in your room teaching yourself about tribal relations in central africa so you can have your own unique opinions on us foreign policy.
Does the author really believe anyone can transcend tribalism?
I think you're right, it is harder to discuss politics as widely as we once did.
That said, what do you think of money changing what is left/right and group/individual? The outcome of Citizens United to allow obscured spending to create seeming grass roots efforts on any topic that the monied want very effectively moving opinions.