My interpretation: If you think it’s obvious that one side is thoroughly good and the other side is thoroughly evil, don’t go in to politics. There are already lots of people like you in politics, and your marginal impact will be small.
I think you’ll have to do much more to establish the futility of partisanship efforts, especially if the sources for this are an assortment of op-eds and blogs. Politics is an adversarial game, as opposed to being a tough technical or economic problem, so the traditional ‘neglectedness’ criterion might not apply so well. From what I have seen, game theory models of conflict seem to predict the absence of this kind of effect.
Since you’re convinced that the other side is evil, you’ll be willing to break the rules in order to win. The other side will use this rule-breaking as evidence that your side is evil.
I think there’s a pretty clear alternative here; namely, don’t break rules.
But if you’re someone who can get along with both sides, you should strongly consider going in to politics. Most people who are fair-minded enough to see the merits of both sides find conflict stressful, and avoid politics for that reason. But politics desperately needs people like this.
This is not clear; there are large coalitions of centrist Republicans and blue dog Dems who are around the middle of many issues. And you’ll find that many of them are grossly unpopular both with people on the opposing side and with the hard liners in their own party. Moreover, the value of getting them elected is lower than if you got a solid candidate in office.
Systems are hard. Institutions are hard. If your goal is to replace the current systems with better ones, then destroying the current system is 1% of the work, and building the better ones is 99% of it. Throughout history, dozens of movements have doomed entire civilizations by focusing on the “destroying the current system” step and expecting the “build a better one” step to happen on its own. That never works.
My view: agents in our political system are incentivized to make people think governance is an easy problem, and all the difficulties are caused by people of the opposing faction. I don’t think this is actually true.
I think there’s a pretty clear alternative here; namely, don’t break rules.
I’m less worried about partisans going in to politics if this is their philosophy. But “don’t break rules” is not a simple principle. There are lots of legal ways to behave in an underhanded way. I expect a partisan is more likely to (a) see the behavior of their opponents as underhanded even when it isn’t (b) engage in behavior their opponents will see as underhanded without realizing it (c) rationalize underhanded behavior as justified.
In general, I am much more optimistic about trying to change the rules of the game than playing the game. If you’re playing to win, your actions are often predetermined by the game’s structure. My model: someone who works to make the game better for everyone, in a way that doesn’t strongly favor one side or the other, often finds this surprisingly tractable due to lack of opposition.
No, an ad hominem would be if I said, “Scott Alexander is a loon, and he’s saying that politics has lots of toxoplasma; therefore, politics must not have lots of toxoplasma.” But that’s not what I’m saying. I am saying “you’re backing up your argument by taking a bunch of blogs and op eds as evidence, but blogs and op eds aren’t a very good authority so you haven’t supported your claims well.”
Something more effective would be to just reference, say, the Pew study looking at American political attitudes. That would be a good data point, and it would be easier than pouring through an op ed. That way we know that you’re supporting your argument with good evidence and we can immediately see how it’s relevant to the issue at hand. And we aren’t being told to accept the elaborate narratives and points of view of bloggers and editors at face value.
I agree with these sentences from Scott Alexander:
Well the 1% and 99% figures are clearly over-exaggerated. And I don’t think this is much of an issue at all with typical political cycles. SCOTUS rulings, for instance, get made and overturned with fairly equal difficulty (just have the president and senate appoint judges with the right views; it’s essentially symmetric). Major legislation gets repealed, but rarely; even the ACA might be preserved in part, because of the need for it and the reliance upon it.
On the flip side, making new institutions is not particularly difficult; it’s practiced all the time with passing new laws, establishing new agencies, etc., and this does not seem to be an overwhelmingly difficult practice to me. Most of American governmental history has been the successive construction of new and better government institutions against resistance, not a destructive war in which institutions are constantly created and destroyed.
I think it would be worthwhile to take a more detailed look at legislative history in order to pursue this line of thought.
If you’re playing to win, your actions are often predetermined by the game’s structure.
Whew, I hope you don’t expect everyone to read through that when they see your comment. I see that and I hear, “If you’ve read Scott’s winding 10,000 word essay, you’re in my ingroup and you get to know what I believe and why I believe it. If you haven’t, then come back to me after you’ve finished; otherwise, you don’t know enough to refute my argument, because I’m using it as a source.”
Scott’s essay is about game theoretic problems between actors leading to inevitable conflict. I’m not sure in what sense you use the term ‘predetermined’ but it certainly isn’t the case that pushing a side in partisan politics leaves the world no different.
My model: someone who works to make the game better for everyone, in a way that doesn’t strongly favor one side or the other, often finds this surprisingly tractable due to lack of opposition.
This, again, is something that would warrant an investigation of policymaking history, especially since you’re citing a blog by someone who, as far as I know, has not played a key role in any policy shifts, despite presenting it as their chosen strategy.
The institutions discussion seems to have gone off the rails. Our original disagreement was about whether governance constitutes a tough technical and economic problem. I think it does. You apparently think it doesn’t. I don’t think we’re going to make progress resolving this disagreement easily.
Our original disagreement was about whether governance constitutes a tough technical and economic problem.
No, our original disagreement was over whether partisan political activity is better than trying to systemically reform political arenas.
You apparently think it doesn’t.
No, I just think that partisan political activity is a good avenue of improving governance. I’m not making any broad claims about governance being easy or not.
I don’t think we’re going to make progress resolving this disagreement easily.
Of course not, if you want to pursue a discussion about policymaking without actually referring to legislative history.
I think you’ll have to do much more to establish the futility of partisanship efforts, especially if the sources for this are an assortment of op-eds and blogs. Politics is an adversarial game, as opposed to being a tough technical or economic problem, so the traditional ‘neglectedness’ criterion might not apply so well. From what I have seen, game theory models of conflict seem to predict the absence of this kind of effect.
I think there’s a pretty clear alternative here; namely, don’t break rules.
This is not clear; there are large coalitions of centrist Republicans and blue dog Dems who are around the middle of many issues. And you’ll find that many of them are grossly unpopular both with people on the opposing side and with the hard liners in their own party. Moreover, the value of getting them elected is lower than if you got a solid candidate in office.
This is a DH1 argument.
I agree with these sentences from Scott Alexander:
My view: agents in our political system are incentivized to make people think governance is an easy problem, and all the difficulties are caused by people of the opposing faction. I don’t think this is actually true.
I’m less worried about partisans going in to politics if this is their philosophy. But “don’t break rules” is not a simple principle. There are lots of legal ways to behave in an underhanded way. I expect a partisan is more likely to (a) see the behavior of their opponents as underhanded even when it isn’t (b) engage in behavior their opponents will see as underhanded without realizing it (c) rationalize underhanded behavior as justified.
In general, I am much more optimistic about trying to change the rules of the game than playing the game. If you’re playing to win, your actions are often predetermined by the game’s structure. My model: someone who works to make the game better for everyone, in a way that doesn’t strongly favor one side or the other, often finds this surprisingly tractable due to lack of opposition.
No, an ad hominem would be if I said, “Scott Alexander is a loon, and he’s saying that politics has lots of toxoplasma; therefore, politics must not have lots of toxoplasma.” But that’s not what I’m saying. I am saying “you’re backing up your argument by taking a bunch of blogs and op eds as evidence, but blogs and op eds aren’t a very good authority so you haven’t supported your claims well.”
Something more effective would be to just reference, say, the Pew study looking at American political attitudes. That would be a good data point, and it would be easier than pouring through an op ed. That way we know that you’re supporting your argument with good evidence and we can immediately see how it’s relevant to the issue at hand. And we aren’t being told to accept the elaborate narratives and points of view of bloggers and editors at face value.
In any case I would encourage you to avoid calling out fallacies as a rhetorical strategy, as explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/1lh4ip/what_is_the_name_of_this_type_of_logical_fallacy/cbz62ls/
Well the 1% and 99% figures are clearly over-exaggerated. And I don’t think this is much of an issue at all with typical political cycles. SCOTUS rulings, for instance, get made and overturned with fairly equal difficulty (just have the president and senate appoint judges with the right views; it’s essentially symmetric). Major legislation gets repealed, but rarely; even the ACA might be preserved in part, because of the need for it and the reliance upon it.
On the flip side, making new institutions is not particularly difficult; it’s practiced all the time with passing new laws, establishing new agencies, etc., and this does not seem to be an overwhelmingly difficult practice to me. Most of American governmental history has been the successive construction of new and better government institutions against resistance, not a destructive war in which institutions are constantly created and destroyed.
I think it would be worthwhile to take a more detailed look at legislative history in order to pursue this line of thought.
Whew, I hope you don’t expect everyone to read through that when they see your comment. I see that and I hear, “If you’ve read Scott’s winding 10,000 word essay, you’re in my ingroup and you get to know what I believe and why I believe it. If you haven’t, then come back to me after you’ve finished; otherwise, you don’t know enough to refute my argument, because I’m using it as a source.”
Scott’s essay is about game theoretic problems between actors leading to inevitable conflict. I’m not sure in what sense you use the term ‘predetermined’ but it certainly isn’t the case that pushing a side in partisan politics leaves the world no different.
This, again, is something that would warrant an investigation of policymaking history, especially since you’re citing a blog by someone who, as far as I know, has not played a key role in any policy shifts, despite presenting it as their chosen strategy.
The institutions discussion seems to have gone off the rails. Our original disagreement was about whether governance constitutes a tough technical and economic problem. I think it does. You apparently think it doesn’t. I don’t think we’re going to make progress resolving this disagreement easily.
No, our original disagreement was over whether partisan political activity is better than trying to systemically reform political arenas.
No, I just think that partisan political activity is a good avenue of improving governance. I’m not making any broad claims about governance being easy or not.
Of course not, if you want to pursue a discussion about policymaking without actually referring to legislative history.
You said: “Politics is an adversarial game, as opposed to being a tough technical or economic problem”. I was responding to that.
I’m tapping out of this discussion.