Why I don't discuss politics with friends
(shwin.co)475 points by shw1n 2 days ago
475 points by shw1n 2 days ago
I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I’ll be honest that I’m Jewish and certain posts about Palestine where friends or non Jewish family have specifically expressed values that I find anti-myself I have completely cut out of my life. (not all beliefs about pro Palestine are anti-semetic, but most are) But I believe that most views at the party level are just different priorities or different view points and tolerance is necessary, because they are not directly in conflict.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I thought the GOP was pretty clear throughout the election cycle, from President to local office, that their desired world can only come to be through a drastic restructuring of the Constitutional status quo ante.
I don’t know that “I only voted for (e.g.) tax cuts, everything else is collateral damage and I’m not culpable for it,” is a defensible moral stance.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.
It doesn't matter if the opposing party advocates for raising taxes or even eating kittens.
That's true even if realistically, there are no other parties capable of winning. You can support a third party, abstain out of protest, or even begin a grass-roots campaign to start yet another party. You can even try changing the FooBar party from within, so long as you don't vote for them until sufficient change has occurred.
Voting for a party explicitly demonstrates at least acceptance of if not outright support for its platform. You don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies because the FooBar party also includes a modest tax cut in its policy agenda that you really want.
Virtually no independent thinker is going to support either major party's platform, for the simple reason that both parties have a collection of inconsistent policies that are an incoherent ideological mishmash. Therefore you do not so much vote FOR a party as you instead hold your nose and vote AGAINST the other one.
I disagree, but I think moral purity is a less ethical way of living than practical action - best exemplified by the story of the Good Samaritan.
Similarly to “silence is complicity.” Refusing to oppose a party by choosing the other is indicating acceptance of what they will do.
This is a fundamental difference with how people on the (American) left and people on the right view politics. Those on the right frequently vote based on a single or a few issues, ignoring the rest of the platform that may be unpalatable. While those on the left frequently view voting as an endorsement of the whole person. Any unwanted policy tends to be a turn off. It's why you say "you don't get to absolve yourself of support for kicking puppies" while the right does just that. You would be better served understanding the values and motivations of your opposition rather than projecting your values onto them and judging them based on a strawman.
> than applying purity tests to your friends and family
It's more about watching people pivot towards unquestionable evil. "Empathy is a sin" is such a deep, dark line in the sand. I'm not going to just stand there and watch you cross it.
I think there is value in trying to understand the other "tribe". If for nothing else, then for practical reasons in figuring out how to defeat the other tribe at the next encounter.
I also think especially in today's political environment, political beliefs at least partially reflect an individual's core values. In some cases I may not want to associate with people that have fundamentally opposing core values to my own. For example this guy's interviews with his parents: https://www.tiktok.com/@thenecessaryconversation
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for
I don't know, man. If they're really your friends, those should be non-negotiable.
Didn't these friends and family essentially apply purity tests to us?
I've cut off my aunt who still claims the 2020 election was stolen. The data I worked with to support fragile communities was removed/altered in the transition (CDC Social Vulnerability Index). I've already lost my job in the federal purge. I have a [former] coworker who was born intersexed that cannot be legally recognized by the government. I'll likely lose my right to marry due to my aunt's beliefs. My boyfriend will likely lose access to lifesaving medication with cuts to funding. My grandma is paying for hospice care with social security and claiming Trump is fixing the country. I'm renewing my passport; several friends have already left the country.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
I'm sure there were people who voted for the Republican party in the last USA election for purely economic reasons. However, "anti-woke" policies were absolutely the most important issue for a lot of people. Just this week the attorney general in my state posted an "April Fool's Day Joke" where the "joke" was him standing next to a LGBT flag.
Most views on Palestine are just different priorities or different viewpoints too. You can equally say that not all support for Trump is rooted in misogyny and xenophobia, but most is. Perhaps you should not recommend that other people engage in such tolerance when you won’t.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Well, Alabama outlawed abortion except for life of the mother. A federal judge had to rule that the state can't prosecute doctors and reproductive health organizations for helping patients travel out of the state to obtain abortions. The Project 2025 plan is for the Republican controlled Congress to at some point pass the most restrictive federal abortion law they can get away with.
That is stripping away the rights of women to choose. There are many religious conservatives who support this.
That's one possible framing. But from their perspective, they are defending the lives of innocents from those who wish to do them harm. If one accepts their framing of the issue, that's a righteous cause indeed. Why is your framing accurate, and theirs inaccurate?
You're doing what so many people do in the abortion debate, and begging the question. You can't simply sidestep deep differences of opinion on moral issues by declaring your position to be right and theirs wrong. It's wilful ignorance of a whole lot of nuance that exists on this topic, nuance that must be engaged with if one wishes to be effective in having a discussion.
Their framing needs to acknowledge that the fetus is part of the mother's body, not an independent life, and that child birth has risks. Thus the autonomy of the mother over her own body has to be part of the discussion. Their framing can't depend on a soul entering at conception, or God/their sacred scripture telling them abortion is murder. That's not a rational or legal basis for compelling other people who don't believe that way.
If they want to enter a scientific discussion on viability and neural development for when to start placing limits on abortion, and how making victims of rape or incest carry to term is ethical, then we can have a meaningful discussion.
Otherwise, they can feel free to go have their own theocratic community in the wilderness where they don't choose to have abortion. Also known as Alabama these days, unfortunately for those stuck wandering the wilderness with them.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
In some markets, about one third of the entire Trump campaign advertising was fear-mongering about how dangerous LGBTQ people are. They wouldn't have spent so much on this if they didn't think it was a uniquely important to their constituents.
I think you're unequivocally wrong if you don't think that Conservatives in the US are above voting for a single issue.
I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.
> I don't know enough about the Palestine/Israel conflict to be able to make an informed opinion on it, so I won't comment on that.
Wise, given the guilt & political climate. But, see also:
Progressive except Palestine (also known as PEP) is a phrase that refers to organizations or individuals who describe themselves politically as progressive, liberal, or left-wing but who do not express pro-Palestinian sentiment or do not comment on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
The issue is that I feel like there's an awful lot of opinions on this, and it's difficult for me to find objective information on this stuff.
I tend to be pretty progressive, so it's probable I would be more on the Palestine side, but I try not to express strong opinions on things that I haven't done at least a cursory amount of research on, and I also don't really want to be labeled an antisemite or racist or anything like that.
> I think essentially tolerating other peoples opinions and trying to understand where they are coming from is more useful than applying purity tests to your friends and family.
Most of the time this is just being an enabler, who excuses, makes up rationales and blames "the other side" for not being nice enough to extremists. Especially when we talk with about fascist close groups. People who say this achieve only limitations on the opposition to extremists. They rarely or never manage to move extremist into the center.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Why are you so sure? There are plenty of conservatives who openly talk about it. It is not being tolerant when you decide that no one is allowed to do that observation. You are not being neutral here, you are biasing the discussion toward the extremism when you do it.
> I’m pretty sure that they weren’t voting for those candidates for the express purpose of stripping away those rights and there were other policies and values that they were voting for.
Sure. But this is that age-old meme: You know those people (most people?) in 1930s Germany who supported the Nazi party but they perhaps weren't really for annexations and genocide. You know what they call those people? Nazis.
People who voted for Trump are responsible for the fate of Ukraine, the demise of Nato, the fallout with Canada and Mexico, the inevitable inflation and economic turmoil of tariffs etc. And that's of course even if they only voted for Trump because they hold "traditional republican values", or because of single issues like gun rights, migration or taxes.
> tolerance is necessary
Tolerance stops at intolerance. You can never tolerate intolerance. Apart from that, politics also relies on a few fundamental things like the reliance on facts and experts, and respect for the rule of law. Obviously you can't ever tolerate "politics" which starts to tamper with either of these. Luckily I can keep a tribe which consists of people who agree with this, which can vote for any party in my parliament, and is 98% of the population. I'd hate to be in the US though where the tribes cut down the middle of the population.
I actually agree, I don't think people should merely dismiss differences on issues that strike at core values -- I think it's okay to cut friends/family off on huge differences in values. I have actually done this to both left and right-leaning friends.
But what I'm arguing is that most people do not actually come to these values by way of thinking, but rather by blindly adopting them en masse from their chosen tribe.
And when they choose not to be open to the possibility they might be wrong, then they have a religion, not a intellectually-driven view.
This is okay if acknowledged imo, as per this sentence in the piece:
"If someone is self-aware enough to consciously acknowledge their choice to remain in the bubble, that’s totally fair. I respect it like I’d respect anyone who chooses to participate in a more traditional religion. My issue is when this view is falsely passed off as an intellectually-driven one."
I can appreciate comparing these immovable political stances to a "religion".
One thing I've noticed, as people get more entrenched in their viewpoint, is that they stop accepting the possibility that they're wrong, and this flawed thinking starts to extend to the wildest corners of their position.
"Well, if I'm right about the person, the person is right about everything too. And anyone who disagrees with me is therefore wrong about EVERYTHING."
It's a very shallow viewpoint, and some people just refuse to accept that they're wrong sometimes.
One way people keep themselves in bubbles is by dismissing counter opinions as being tribal or trendy. Some opinions may appear that way because the people that have them seem similar. But it could also be due to them having similar backgrounds that led them to those opinions. For example, most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's not group think, it's based in evidence that they have studied. From the outside, it might seem like group think.
My method to discern between beliefs with intellectual backing and those from the community is by presenting them with some bizarro counterargument. If they copy/paste specific phrases and keywords, it's from the community. If they engage with the argument and refute it, then they have given them proper thought.
> For example, most doctors believe in vaccines, but that's not group think, it's based in evidence that they have studied. From the outside, it might seem like group think.
I'm willing to bet that in most cases, that is groupthink. It's hard to tell, because the conclusion is identical to one based on evidence, so you can't infer from the opinion whether it's groupthink or not.
Sometimes you can tell by how someone holds a belief. Defensiveness, unwillingness to consider ways in which their chosen belief is not 100% wholly good, or shouting someone down are evidence of groupthink. For example: if someone brings up that in the past some inactive virus vaccines contained live viruses and a doctor claims that it never happened and could never happen, that's either groupthink or just a doctor sick of arguing with uninformed patients who has given up bothering with explaining the intellectual basis of his beliefs.
My personal suspicion is that the 1% don't exist, that everyone's opinions and beliefs are a mishmash of tribalism and intellectual conclusions, it's just that the balance is very different in different people. I try very hard to make my stances intellectually based and evidence-driven, yet I continually discover that more and more of my deeply held policy positions aren't as clear cut and the real world is more nuanced than I thought.
It's not like nuance is a binary thing (by definition!)
Ah, for some reason, this is the comment that reminded me specifically of Nietzche's Master-Slave Morality[1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master%E2%80%93slave_morality
If you remove yourself from a group, how will they change their minds without a dissenting opinion? I had to do it myself eventually, for my own sanity, but I believe this is still a real problem I am no longer addressing among my loved ones.
In my case, my goal isn't to change anyone's mind. It's to preserve sanity -- I can't in good faith "pretend" to get along and have normal conversations when people are actively engaging in behavior that directly harms myself and others.
Could you give an example of behavior that "directly" harmed yourself or others which caused you to sever ties?
Politics is almost always indirect, usually with multiple levels of indirection.
I'm jealous of you. I've got a limited number of family members and friends and find it difficult to get more of either. I don't think I'm in a position to burn them on politics so I'll just have to take them as they are.
Wow. This is well put. Thanks. I wonder how those so quick to write others off will reflect on it at the end of life.
+1. I had to cut a lot of people out of my life after seeing the Democrats' response to October 7th. I cannot be friends with anybody who votes for candidates that support exterminating Jews.
The question then becomes how to convert a member of a tribe to ones own correct tribe. It's a very tough question to answer.
It's like spycraft during the cold war. A double agent must pass as being in both tribes for the good of their country. They literally isolate themselves from their homelands tribe to embed themselves in another. They are forever changed. They can't go back. In other words: to change another changes oneself too. It weakens ones own group identity.
Almost all people would never want to risk their identity to change another person for the good of their group. It's very risky and very painful.
Another way that the article suggests is to let people change themselves.
Lol. "Liberal" people create an echo chamber by eliminate opposing opinions and then are surprised that people elect far-right candidates.
> Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected
It wasn't hiding from uncomfortable things, opinions and people, that created the world where you can even think about women or minority rights, or even know how to write to express your opnions. So this approach will not create the world you described.
indeed. This kind of attitude is contrary to what is needed to produce the sort of world desired.
The conceptualization of what fundamental even means is very much subjective, so posing such a condition to dialogue is, in principle, the negation of possibility of improvement on either side.
this is the core kernel of what a tribe even is in my opinion: pose a subjective condition, divide people based on it.
The subtle art of not giving a f** had a great chapter on the importance of deciding your values, that is, what's important to you. The parent advice clearly stated what's important: living in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected.
Clearly defined values are fine until we get more specific though. What values? Whose responsibility? And what's holding is back from achieving what we want even if our party is in charge? Is it a matter of excluding people who disagree with us? More money? Or is the utopian vision we're attempting not presently achievable?
So is an agreement on fundamental rights for everyone what you want to live your life on? Or do you have other priorities in the meantime where you can agree with people on more immediate matters?
How does having less friends actually benefit you though? It just seems dumb, because presumably you were friends for some reason.
I don't see how cutting them out creates a positive. It's like "Javy thinks men can become women", now I have one less person to play disc golf with.
What's the point of that? People can have different opinions, it's not their only character trait.
I don't have friends for the sake of "having friends". I choose the people I want to hang out with because I enjoy their company and like/respect them. Being around them makes me happy.
Similarly, people I dislike (rude or mean people, for example) make me unhappy when I'm around them. Cutting them out of my life is a net benefit there too, because I'm happier without them.
> how does having less friends benefit you?
Quality over quantity for a start.
> people can have different opinions
Not every opinion deserves the same level of tolerance, respect or acceptance. If someone I know starts goose-stepping I’m not going to write it off a “just a difference in opinion.”
The other comment I made here was flagged, though it very clearly doesn't have anything in violation of the rules. It's clear that people here are using flagging to try to censor opinions they don't like.
Elsewhere in this thread I've said that you can have non-judgemental, solicitous conversations with anyone, just to learn how they feel or think about something.
But I agree with parent that it's perfectly justifiable to draw lines that limit potential relationships. You're not obligated to welcome everyone or tolerate views in others that have unbearable consequences for yourself. Vote with your feet.
I haven't talked to my grandmother since Trump won the first time in 2016.
It wasn't just that she voted for him, but the fact that she actively supported all of his policies around immigration, including mass deportations that would have included my wife (who was on DACA at the time). She has also said some extremely disturbing stuff about what should happen to gay people that I don't even know that I can post without breaking some form of TOS, which would be horrible already, but slightly worse to me because my sister is gay.
It's easy to say "just be neutral and don't talk about politics around her", but there are some issues with that.
First, you don't know my grandmother; no matter how much I try and avoid any political subject she will keep bringing it up. She will divert a conversation about my job as a software engineer to somehow a rant about how Mexicans are stealing American jobs (this actually happened). I could just roll my eyes and bite my tongue, but this brings me to my next point:
Second, neutrality isn't neutral. I don't really know who started this myth that somehow avoiding the subject is "not taking a side", it's just a lazy way to endorse the status quo. If I keep trying to be amicable with people who actively want my wife to be deported, then that's sort of signaling to my wife that I don't give a shit about what happens to her. I don't want to signal that, because it's not true. At that point, my only option is to either stop talking to my grandmother or talk to her and constantly push back she says something racist or horrible, which isn't productive.
Before you give me shit over this, all of you do this. You all draw the line somewhere. You probably all draw it at different points than I do, but you absolutely do draw the line. If your best friend suddenly joined the Klan and became the Grand Wizard, you probably wouldn't continue being friends with them, even if you could avoid talking politics, because that would signal that you're ok with their racism. You also probably wouldn't be friends with Jeffrey Dahmer even if you could avoid the whole "killing and eating people" topic.
As it stands, I don't really feel bad for cutting her off. I absolutely do not make a concession for age on this. If you're going to live as a grownup in 2025 then it's not wrong to judge someone by 2025 standards. I don't give a fuck what the world was like when you grew up, you have to live in the world as it is now.
And I say this with all sincerity: I'm also disappointed in my friends continually voting for Democratic candidates after Obama, as it's clear the DNC will do nothing as long as they can rely on these votes. They put up losing and awful candidates while supposedly our democracy depends on it.
If I were to cut them off as friends for being part of the problem, that sounds unreasonable right?
Why does it sound unreasonable? If it's problem that affects you deeply enough, if you sincerely believe that they're a core part of that problem, then I don't see why the person you replied to would be opposed to it.
Whataboutism is outsider tribe X also does thing B therefore B is not to be argued about.
Instead maybe consider that it's thinking in tribes that's the issue at root.
Personally I think it's impossible to stop being in a tribe. One should, if free, only be able to choose the tribe to join. We can't choose not to join a tribe. Most people either are not free to choose or not willing to consider that they can choose. Freedom to choose a tribe is very scary.
Looking at how other countries do politics might help. For example did you know that conspiracy and paranoia is a characteristic strategy used in American politics? It's not used as much in other parts of the world.
It's incredibly difficult for a person to see themselves as being paranoid or to believe in a conspiracy theory. But paranoid people who believe in conspiracy theories make great tribe members. It is literally a way to make people think of things as "us vs them"
> The only people I have seen preaching moderation and apolitical discussion are those who voted for a particular candidate and either regret it and are too proud to admit it or are in peak cognitive dissonance.
Hello. I preach moderation and apolitical discussion. You were vague about what "particular candidate" you meant, but if you meant Trump I didn't vote for him. In fact I did not cast a vote for any presidential candidate this year because none of them was someone I wanted in office. So, you now have seen at least one person who does not match your description.
I preach moderation and apolitical discussion because the toxicity of political discussion is tearing our country in two. It is the single biggest threat our society faces today. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences (which starts with genuine attempts to reach each other even when others' actions seem reprehensible to us), this country will die. People do not, as a rule, choose evil. They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends. But to round that off as "they are evil" is intellectually lazy and toxic to a civilized society.
> You cannot not discuss politics when the political scene that dictates your daily life is governed by objectively evil people and subjectively less evil people on the other side of the aisle.
If people were objectively evil, they would be considered evil by all. The fact that this has not happened is by itself proof that these people are not objectively evil, and that their evil is a matter of subjective views. If you wish to change others' views, the first step must be to recognize this so that you can formulate a plan of persuasion. Blasting people as "objectively evil" feels good, but accomplishes nothing.
> I preach moderation and apolitical discussion because the toxicity of political discussion is tearing our country in two. It is the single biggest threat our society faces today. If we cannot learn to resolve our differences
No, MAGA led by Trump, assisted by the Heritage Foundation and the tech billionaire Yarvin disciples are the biggest threat, because they have power and are in the process of implementing an autocratic takeover. It's crazy to me how many moderate, apolitical people don't see this. But I was that way a few months ago and started paying attention.
> They are often mistaken about what is good, or disagree with each other on the best way to achieve good ends.
I don't think there is any agreement to be had anymore. They don't care about the Constitution, they just want a king/CEO to force things through. What can you say about a president talking about a third term, making Canada a 51st state, claiming Greenland will 100% join the US, saying allies have been ripping us off, deporting people without due process because they had suspicious looking tattoos, calling for impeachment of judges because they ruled against Trump. Refusing to pay agencies what Congress already approved. Forcing big law agencies into making deals.
Rand Paul gave a speech tonight about how the president doesn't have the power to tax the American people, which is what tariffs are. MAGA is out to win the culture and political war. Permanently. Wake up.
Have they eaten two plates of food and enjoyed two drinks and then announced, “I’m a proud republican and support Trump 1000%?” Because that’s what we’re getting and we’re banning neighbors and friends we’ve had for 25 years over it.
I guess I just don't see "tribalism". I know it's a popular description though for the divisiveness we find ourselves in politically.
But I consider the things important to me, the beliefs, the issues: and they, all of them, align with a progressive, left-leaning ideology. I'm not just glomming on to everything one "tribe" or another stands for ... one group actually reflects everything I believe. (I think I could split a few hairs here and there, but we're still talking perhaps 95% alignment.)
But I don't think that is too surprising. Others, smarter than me, have gone into great detail about the underpinnings of left-leaning or right-leaning world views in people. Fear of change, empathy ... a number of ideas have been put forth. By this reasoning it naturally follows that those of a certain "personality" will also share common beliefs, ideologies.
The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels dismissive.
My thought is that if someone aligns exactly with X political ideology, they aren’t really thinking for themselves and are just adopting whatever their tribal group believes about X subject. I see this all the time - collections of beliefs that otherwise have nothing to do with each other, but are adopted by the same people because “that’s what X group thinks about it.” This is very rarely a conscious thing.
This becomes even more obvious when you look at how these collections of beliefs have changed over time, which to me just shows how they aren’t based on any fundamental intrinsic personality traits but are trendy and groupthink-based. Ditto for geographic differences.
So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.
In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
Maybe one counter indication of tribalism is how often you disagree with your "tribe". I'm fairly left leaning too, but I also find myself disagreeing with a lot of left leaning policies or talking points. Maybe that's a good sign.
Arguing with leftists all the time is the sure sign that you're a leftist.
(seriously, this is a significant asymmetry between the two that has been there for at least a century. There isn't one lockstep leftism, there's thousands of micro factions arguing about most things)
It's only a good sign if they're able to speak out, and aren't terrified of expressing their dissent in public.
Both the left and the right seem captured by a small minority of radicals, using social media echo chambers/purity spirals to shut down often-quite-reasonable disagreement. And we're clearly past the point at which we can just ignore 'social media politics', given how much it seems to have led to the current state of things in the US.
At the risk of sounding pessimistic, and as someone who also identifies himself as leftist: If the end result is voting between black/white binary choices, and that act of voting is itself one of the most important self-expression, does the fact that I disagree with them in a few points matter?
this is exactly it, from here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
This essay feels shallow and dismissive to me. The sentiment is that you can't be a smart, independent thinker whilst going too far left or right. As with many of his essays, my take is that PG - who lives a highly privileged life - is basing this opinion on the caricature of reality that he gleans from the media and internet forums. It's easy to think what he thinks when the only representation you see of the far left is mindless "woke"ism.
Firstly, does he think that Marx was dumb? And leading left-wing figures like AOC, Sanders, Varoufakis, Zinn, or Zizek? No, for all you might disagree with them, they're smart and independent. They did not acquire their opinions in bulk. I even admit that right-wing figures like Shapiro, Bannon etc... are smart and independent, even though I think they're snakes.
Secondly, the essay overstates the degree of uniformity within the far left and right. Have you not seen the animosity between anarchists and Trotskyites? They only agree insofar as believing we can do better than capitalism. And those on the far right who have a global free market ideology will be at odds with those who want to restrict movement and apply protectionist tariffs.
[EDITED TO ADD] Thirdly, he presupposes that the distinction between right and left is purely one of logical competence. This is captured by him saying "both sides are equally wrong". But personal values also drive the polarisation. Those on the right tend to highly value tradition, loyalty, and family. Those on the left tend to highly value universal welfare and the environment. It's not really possible to label these "right" or "wrong", they are expressions of our fundamental desires for ourselves and the world. If you start from different axioms, you'll tend to get different corollaries even if perfect logic is applied.
>In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
That doesn't stop them from voting a straight red or blue ticket every time if that's what they've been indoctrinated to do.
We've all encountered some old man who by all accounts should be a republican. They own a small business, have conservative social views, like their guns, minimize taxes, etc, etc. But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they learned to do back in the 1960s. And on the other side is the stereotypical southern white woman who believes in every social thing the democratic party has but still votes red because she was raised in a religious household and came of age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to christians.
This is such a great contrast:
> But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they learned to do back in the 1960s.
and
> but still votes red because she was raised in a religious household and came of age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to christians.
There's no explanation for why the old man votes "blue" other than he learned it in the 60s. OTOH, the woman votes "red" because "she was raised in a religious household" and started voting when The Right was "peddling to christians".
"peddling" -- that's a pretty negative term.
I don't know if it's ironic or demonstrative that an article about how difficult it can be to have political conversations produces a comment thread with such biased viewpoints.
At the risk of sounding very arrogant, I've found this incredibly obvious even when I was just 18 years old. Decades have passed, plenty of my beliefs have changed, but this one hasn't.
The chance that one "ideology", whether it's liberalism, conservatism, anarchism , fascism or any-ism is always the right answer to every single societal question, is 0. It's comparable to the idea of exactly 1 of the (tens of) thousands of religions being the true one, correct in everything, with all of the others being wrong.
And this extends to politics. Where I'm from, the political landscape is very different from the US, with at least 5+ different parties that support different policies in various ways. At the same time, it's similar - there isn't a single one that approaches things on a case-by-case basis, each of them being ideology-based.
> So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.
Absolutely, "centrism" is an ideology in itself. This is also why the usage of the word "moderate" in the article and by PG is very unfortunate. That word too comes with a whole lot of baggage, and saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word, is straight up wrong. We need a different word, but I'm not great at coining those. "pragmatic" is the best one I can come up with. I can feel a "pragmatism is an ideology!" coming, but "the ideology of not looking at things from an ideological perspective" is entirely different from anything else. I'm sure the bright minds here can give better words.
> In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
Very much so. And as the article points out, this is unfortunately a very lonely experience, so it's completely logical that most don't opt for this, instead choosing the warmth of a dogmatic community.
Funny that you say pragmatic, because that’s exactly the word I tend to use when describing my own political beliefs. The best that I have come up with is “pragmatic with a propensity for…” and a few sub-categories that more accurately define what I’d like to see politically happen.
For example - preventionism. It seems to me that many issues could be avoided or eliminated entirely if we tried to prevent them from happening in the first place, rather than choosing between two actions, both with unavoidable negative consequences.
Another is aesthetics. For some reason, the simple desire to make public spaces more beautiful is not really a policy position adopted by any political group, at least in a primary way.
And so maybe the solution is an issue-based political system in which votes and resources go toward specific issues and not parties. (Or work toward eliminating those issues in the first place.)
PG has two different terms for it in his essay: unintentional moderates vs intentional moderates
https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
That's what represents the two circled areas in the graph, though I realize if people don't have that context it could be confusing
added an explanation to clear things up
fwiw, I don't think that's arrogant, I've met plenty of high schoolers that understand this concept
> saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word, is straight up wrong
Agreed. Independent thought usually leads to one being moderate when that person is already living a comfortable life.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The platforms of political parties are amalgamations of specific interests and agendas, and not necessarily a cohesive world view born of an aligned set of principles. Most (all) political parties have positions that conflict logically, spiritually, or practically. Yes, that includes your preferred party on the right or left.
So anyone who’s views align perfectly with a party are probably just parroting what they’ve heard because no sensible individual would arrive at that set of values naturally on their own; it would - and does - take some serious mental gymnastics to hold these contradictory values in your head.
You're correct. Most people's views (i.e. moderates) are ideologically inconsistent with party-line. The loud X/bsky types refuse to decouple, and will double down even if the facts are wrong. Mind you on social media blue-tribe is much further left than the Democratic party.
You don't have to consider yourself part of a tribe. Others will consider you anyway.
You are a man or a woman, young or old, Asian, White, Black, Latino, straight, gay, rich, poor slim, fat, etc.
The technical terms for the first few in that list are sexism, ageism and racism. While it is true people do that, it is considered a bad idea because it doesn't capture reality in a productive and meaningful way. And doesn't seem relevant to keiferski's comment.
The aim should be that people have to voluntarily associate with their tribe. It might be the hermit tribe where all the hermits sign up to be alone together.
Right but that’s because there are more micro interests on the left. It’s still tribal though. If I start to bring up deregulation of building housing, there will be a strong immediate backlash by certain factions on the left. I see it more that there is little room for discussion, within these different groups there are only binary options and if you are with them on all talking points, well you are the enemy.
I once read an interesting article that said in multipolar political systems, coalitions between opinion groups happen after the election; whereas in two-party systems, the coalition forms before the election.
So you get people who think taxation is theft allied with people who Back The Blue. You get people who think life is so sacred abortion should be banned allied with people who'd like to see an AR-15 under every pillow. You get people who think nazi flags and the N word are free speech, allied with people who think books with gay and trans characters should be banned.
And personally I'm pro-environment and think nuclear power has a part to play; I think we should help the homeless by increasing the housing supply and letting builders do their thing; that the police should exist but need substantial reform to stamp out corruption and brutality; and that women's issues like abortion and trans women in abuse shelters should be decided by women, not men like me. But I'm in a political coalition with people who think nuclear power is bad, that we need rent control, that we should defund the police, and so on.
In an electoral system with proportional representation, largely unrelated views would all be different parties, no party would have a majority, and after the election they'd form alliances to build a ruling coalition.
But because of America's electoral system, someone has to take all those views, duct-tape them together and call it a consistent political ideology.
This is a very interesting take, and I agree with your perspective.
I think the "anti-woke" messaging was a particularly effective example, because in reality this means completely different things to many voters (some of those contradictory).
Your nuclear position is interesting, and has become significantly more common over the last decade I feel. Personally, I disagree-- In my view, nuclear power is not on a trajectory where it is ever gonna be competitive (levelized cost) with renewable power. This will lead to renewables "ruining" electricity spot prices whenever they are available which is very bad for nuclear power economics. Nuclear power also shares basically the same drawback with renewables that it wants to be paired with peaker plants for dispatchability (instead of operating in load-following mode itself), but renewables basically just do it cheaper.
At this point, it would basically take a miracle for me to believe in nuclear power again (a very cheap, safe, simple, clean, quick-to-build reactor design) but I don't see this happening any time soon (and honestly the exact same argument applies to fusion power even more strongly-- I think that is an interesting research direction that will never find major a application in power generation).
I will concede however that nuclear power that was built 10-30 years ago (before renewables were really competitive) was and is helpful to reduce CO2 emissions.
> that women's issues like abortion and trans women in abuse shelters should be decided by women, not men like me.
This got me wondering... Thinking in reverse, are there any issues that you think should be decided by men only?
Underlying your thought, seems to be the idea that some people should be excluded from certain political/ideological conversations.
Whereas for me, I see all people as individuals, each with a right to their opinions. Ie, I wouldn't start from a point of separation as this bakes in special interests, sexism, racism, etc.
> This got me wondering... Thinking in reverse, are there any issues that you think should be decided by men only?
Access to viagra?
>This got me wondering... Thinking in reverse, are there any issues that you think should be decided by men only?
Military conscription and field duties would be an example I can think of.
For example, in my European country we have mandatory conscription for men over 17 but there was a referendum a while ago if this should still be kept, and it was funny that women also got to vote on whether men get conscripted or not lol. And guess what, most women (and boomers) voted in favor of the mandatory conscription of young males by quite a margin and unsurprisingly the only ones who voted against but got outvoted, were the young men.
> The anti-abortion people do not care about actual outcomes. There's no interest in safer obstetrics or early years care or preventing school shootings, they're hyper-focused only on abortion.
That is consistent with the position. School shootings are explicitly banned and there'd be a strong consensus that obstetrics should be done to a high standard.
Someone has to draw a line between sperm and human for when the anti-murder laws kick in. The line is fundamentally arbitrary except for 2 logical points (moment of conception and actual birth [0]) that are broadly unpopular choices. It is certainly easy to disagree with any particular line choice but it is all but impossible to rank them theoretically except by letting the political process play out.
[0] Theoretically we could even find a third one and draw the line some time significantly after birth when awareness really starts to build up; but that is a can of worms no-one wants to open because babies are very lovable and probably protected by hard-coded emotions built up from evolutionary pressure.
It's really simple to me:
- abortion should only be allowed if needed because of health or exceptional cases like rape - abortion should not be used as a form of birth control, use condoms or the morning-after pill
I'm fine with states deciding the details. I think it should be mandated that it's always allowed when health is in danger (I believe this is already true), and it should be mandated that even if a state allows abortion "just by choice" (so, as birth control), it should definitely not be allowed after 9 months even.
> The anti-abortion people do not care about actual outcomes.
I'm anti-abortion, but I really, really do care about outcomes. So if you want to discuss this with me, I'd love to.
-
> You get people who think life is so sacred abortion should be banned allied with people who'd like to see an AR-15 under every pillow
I don't understand the problem with this... Not wanting to kill unborn life but still wanting to be able to protect yourself and your family when someone breaks into your house.
It's statements like this that make me question the intellectual honesty of people. It doesn't take much thinking to understand it, right?
The graph in the article of "what the political spectrum actually is" where independent thought was only found in the middle was so funny to me that I had to do a double take. Maybe this is a joke or April Fool's prank or something?
I read the article quickly so maybe I'm misreading it but if that graph is serious it really undermines his position as a thoughtful moderate to me. But maybe he really does believe that everyone on the left and the right only has groupthink. I agree with you that it's definitely not all tribalism
European here. I'm on the left, but I don't hang out much with people from the left: they're really often driven by ideology and cannot for the life of them come up with working political plans to push the needle. They're completely rejecting the complexity of compromise and gradual change towards the ideal, convinced that any act that isn't absolute is a betrayal of their values.
Sure I mean a lot of people on every political leaning don't have practical policies but that's besides the point (people can even have bad independent thoughts so impractical policies aren't inherently relevant). The graph isn't even "often people who disagree with me are tribal" it's "literally only some people near me ideologically are independent thinkers".
Edit: this is the graph, everything outside of a group of moderates is 100% on the "groupthink" side of the graph. It's an inherently condescending way to look at people who you disagree with and a disservice to your point if you're trying to get people to listen to each other. https://images.spr.so/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/j42No7y-dcokJuNg...
This. 100%
Same behaviour, or should we call it helplessness, can be witnessed in democrats responses since this whole thing went into round 2.
I'm shocked on how little actionable and constructive goals are part of the "conversation".
I think you're talking about a subtly different thing. OP was simply saying "it's very possible to be a rational independent thinker and yet be non-centrist". What you're saying is "a lot of people I've met who are more left than me are impractical".
Relating to your point, I would add something based on my experience in the UK. In the last 30 years we've twice had a Labour leader elected. Both times campaigning as a hard-nosed centre-left pragmatist, and with some on the left echoing similar sentiments about compromise and pushing the needle.
Blair admittedly did some good stuff - Lords reform and minimum wage. But he also introduced and then tripled university fees, greatly expanded private initiatives in the public sector, and engaged in an activist interventionist foreign policy culminating in the invasion of Iraq. These are changes whose ill effects we're still reeling from as a country.
Starmer is looking to shape up very similarly, from his U-turns on private school charitable status, tuition fees and the two-child cap, to his reluctance to condemn the Gazan genocide and cuts to disability allowance.
Was it better to have these as prime minister Vs the conservative candidate? Yes, probably. Can they really be said to be pushing the needle? I doubt it.
American here. Otherwise, fairly similar.
Not saying that our right is much better. Their top "virtue" seems to be competent campaigning & hard work in pursuit of political power. (Which, obviously, worked for them.) Vs. our left seems too busy holding low-effort ideological purity beauty contests to particularly care about being in power.
I've heard that some of the brighter voters, who voted for Democrats due to "Trump is the worst choice" arguments, are waking up to just how low-functioning the Dem's are. Not saying that that'll do any good - but it's nice to hear.
> They're completely rejecting the complexity of compromise and gradual change towards the ideal, convinced that any act that isn't absolute is a betrayal of their values.
Interestingly enough, this also describes a member of the Trump Party (formerly known as the Republican Party).
it was meant as a visual specifically for Paul Graham's article here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
I should probably generate a new one or just remove since it appears to have sent this message to multiple people
But yeah I don't think it's entirely tribalism, but I do largely agree with PG's essay, though I'd understand a contesting of his statement that "the left and right are equally wrong about half the time"
But which is it? Do you agree with Graham's essay and your own graph, or do you disagree?
It sounds like you believe in the graph, but don't want to turn people off. Just own your belief.
FWIW I think you should disagree with Graham's essay and your own graph. Saying that "left" and "right" were both 50% wrong is like saying the same about "federalist" and "anti-federalist". Even if the sides are 50% wrong, the free thinkers would be widely distributed.
I read that I think he means it is tribal thinking if you have a desire to convince instead of search for truth in a curious way.
I didnt read that people on the left or the right are always tribal. But yeah, its easy to go that way when you are not able to see the truth in opposite viewpoints.
What he means is that according to the graph if you call yourself an "independent thinker" then you can't be an extremist. You are automatically a centrist. All the dots on the "independent thinker" half are all centrist. None are left or right. An interesting bias that he's admitting to. Made me roll my eyes and stop reading right there, and just skim the rest for all the "independent thinker" tropes.
If you want to feel superior and virtue signal, just label yourself an "independent thinker." It's so easy.
It's common in tribalism to see ones own tribe as rational and the other tribes as groupthink.
We can see this in discussions about misinformation today. "Brainwashed masses" is a tribal concept about a tribe.
It's not uncommon for people who decide they have "discovered" the "real political spectrum" by simply adding a new axis to the traditional left-right spectrum to coincidentally idealize one pole on that new axis, viewing all variation on the left-right axis as indicative of distraction from what is important.
Asserting that people varying on the left-right spectrum also cluster around the anti-ideal pole of the idealized axis while everyone closer to the ideal pole clusters around the left-right center is not as common, but reflects the same cognitive bias, though it is particularly amusing when that axis independent thought (ideal) vs. groupthink (anti-ideal), such that freethinkers are asserted to by ideological uniform even outside of the shared commit to "free" thought, while sheepish adherents of groupthink are more ideologically diverse.
(And, yes, that graph is deadly serious -- as well as, IMO, hilariously wrong [0] -- and fairly central to the theme of the post.)
It's even more funny that this "free thinker" is decrying tribalist groupthink, asserting (as already discussed) that free thought exists only in an extremely narrow band in the center of the left-right axis, and talking about how they can't talk politics with anyone outside their group and are "desperate for like-minded folk". The lack of self-awareness is...palpable.
It's even more funny that all the ideas he embraces and purports to have trouble finding people he agrees with are the standard doctrines of the rationalist/EA/longermist faction that is so popular in the tech/AI space (and the conceit of being uniquely free thinking is also common to the faction.)
[0] Actual free thinkers are, IME, distributed widely -- not necessarily evenly, but certainly not clustered in one spot -- across both the left-right axis and a number of other political axes [1][2], such as the authoritarian-libertarian axis, so both the distribution shown and the assertion that the "real" political spectrum is two dimensional with only freethought vs. groupthink added to the classic left-right axis are incorrect.
[1] For a number of reasons, including both differences in life experiences and thus perceived probabilities on various factual propositions, but also on fundamental values which life experiences may impact, but not in a deductive manner, because you can't reason to "ought" from "is".
[2] Free thinkers do differ from groupthinkers in that their positions in the multidimensional space of political values are likely not to fall into the clusters of established tribes, but to have some views typical of one tribe while other others fall out of that tribes typical space (and possibly even into the space of an opposing tribe.) But there are enough different tribes
posting my explanation of the graph from another comment here
"it was meant as a visual specifically for Paul Graham's article here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html
I should probably generate a new one or just remove since it appears to have sent this message to multiple people
But yeah I don't think it's entirely tribalism, but I do largely agree with PG's essay, though I'd understand a contesting of his statement that 'the left and right are equally wrong about half the time'"
One quality of “tribal” that I think gets overlooked is that those that are part of a “tribe” are not willing to be wrong.
I feel like those that are more in the middle - in addition to be “accidentally in the middle” as pg says — they’re open to hearing the other side, and even open to being wrong.
Those that I know that I might define as “tribal” — and that goes for either side — are certainly not open to being wrong, and not even really open to listening to the other side — even a rational discussion.
Some may pretend to listen and maybe even engage in a discussion, but only out of being polite, not out of genuine, open curiosity.
The most visible example of tribalism is when groups fail to update their ideas and beliefs as facts start to come in. You can't escape the religious parallel.
This occurs clear across the political spectrum, but a standout example is record-breaking levels of immigration in European countries like Sweden and Germany. Instead of realizing the policy failure and acting to fix it, the line becomes "it was the right thing to do, it was just done poorly."
It's natural to internalise the groups we belong to. In other words they become me. Or my identity is formed by the group.
When social scientists say something is socially constructed that's approaching this.
It's hard to see oneself apart from the group one belongs to. In fact to separate oneself causes real pain. In the article it says that people don't want to look outside their tribe; I would say that people shouldn't even think about looking outside as it will cause trauma. It would literally cause psychological identity wounds.
One aspect of politics is this pain avoidance.
By definition, reason can only take you so far in politics, as it’s the arena in which decisions must be made without complete information. No matter how well reasoned your arguments, no matter how well informed you are, you’re still going to resist switching allegiances. So, imo, politics is just about 99% loyalty.
Looking at it from a left-right one-dimensional space, the middle would be the non-tribal choice. The political spectrum is however not a one-dimensional space, and countries with multiple political parties, with center parties, can demonstrate that well in polls and self tests. It is perfectly possible for a single individual to be in 50% agreement with every single political party, from left, center and right, agreeing to the individual policies from each party that they find to be correct and disagreeing with policies they disagree with.
As it happens, if I personally looks to what is important to me, I find that from the extremest left to the extremest right, the best political party get 60% support and the worst get 40% support. They all have some policies that I strongly support, and some policies that are terrible, and the middle of the gang is exactly the same.
To take an example. I am in strong support of the green party when it comes to train and bike infrastructure, fishing policies, eliminating lead in hunting ammunition, getting rid of invasive species, and banning heavy fuel oil in shipping. I strongly disagree with their support of using natural gas as a transactional fuel in the energy grid in hopes of green hydrogen (a pipe dream), and their dismantling of nuclear power. I also strongly disagree with their political attempts to mix in the war in Gaza with environmentalism, as if taking up the flag for either side in that war has any relevance in nation/local politics on what is almost the other side of the world. That is one political party out of 8 that my country has, and the story is similar with all the rest.
Looking at this as a non-American. American politics is seems very much tribe minded as an outsider,left vs right. And where someone stands largely can tell you about their views on a lot of other things. At least that's how it is portrayed in media. I know in practice a lot of people are more nuanced.
Most countries have sometimes up to 10 political parties and what party/ies someone supports often does not say much about their views on different social issues. In the USA it seems you can't want a secure border and civil rights for minority groups.
Is it really likely that an intelligent person like yourself could hold 95% intellectual alignment with one of the two lowest common denominators (largest pluralities) in a country on complex political topics? Consider how much each party's platform has changed in the last 20 years, and how much more they will change in the next 20. I would say it's more likely that someone like yourself is quite intelligent and creative and is instead unaware of those deeply ingrained tribal instincts.
Media in the US, especially now via incessant social media feeds, fuels this. It showers us with information showing how the "other side" is bad. So you can have a correct opinion that the other tribe is bad without any quantitative metrics to compare how bad it is compared to your tribe, which is also very bad.
Btw, regarding the basic personality traits thing. I found this paper very interesting [0]. Sort of refutes the "conservatives lack empathy and fear change" angle. On average, I suspect most liberals and conservatives have very similar averages across most personality traits and are mostly just a product of their environment.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34429211/#:~:text=Our%20meta...
I think there sadly exists an overlay in a lot of politics, basically tribalism, but I think the better phrasing is "teams" as in "team sports".
You don't like a team for an ideological reason, usually physical closeness or some other arbitrary connection.
For many, the team is the extent at which they analyze politics. You see this when conservatives will reference historical events in terms of the name of the political party. For example, it's relatively common to see someone say "Oh the Democrats are bad because during the Civil war they were on the side of slavery". Their analysis doesn't include the actual policy or ideology at hand, it's simply the team "Democrats". It doesn't matter to them if the flavor of policies that the early 20th century dems supported are similar or even the same as the policies modern Republicans support. Only the team.
I think there exists multiple layers of "tribalism" or "team sports" in politics that effects people differently. The bottom layer is sadly "<Name of party> good, <name of other party> bad". I think at some point we must acknowledge that some people are simply stupid. If they think making an argument based on the politics of a party 100 years ago is convincing, they might just not have the facilities for critical thinking.
A lot of those people are now @-ing grok on twitter to explain even the simplest of jokes.
I think the claim is that a lot of people stick with the tribe regardless of how closely it matches their world views. It might be dismissive but it resonates. I've seen people keep voting for the same parties even when the policies have shifted very significantly.
Since you are left leaning, presumably American, a good example is the Republicans. The current policies and values of the Republicans seem to be very different than let's say those of 20 years ago. But you don't see a lot of movement, i.e. you don't really see people saying because your actions of policies changed I'm going to re-evaluate my support for you. Maybe the other team is now closer to my world views. It's a lot more common that people just keep voting for their camp or team. I'm sure there are studies, this is very anecdotal. There are also many e.g. single issue voters, they only care about a single issue and nothing else.
Independent thinkers, who dive deep into issues, who challenge beliefs, who weigh multiple issues and considerations, who potentially shift their position when the goal posts have moved or they've evaluated new information, are rare. It's much easier to stay in an echo chamber/team/tribe. We see this all the time, another example is the pandemic. It's lack of nuance.
You see this in the political discourse. Instead of debating things of substance it's more of a rally around the team approach. You're never going to see in-depth discussion/analysis on tax policies, or security policies. Anything that doesn't meet your world view is automatically discredited whether it has merit or not, It's going to be they bad we good/polarizing/conspiracies etc. This pushes people farther apart and I think it also pushes policies farther apart. Maybe sometimes it is that simple but plenty of times it's not.
A lot of this is due to the failure of the American political system: there is simply no room for a third party. A lot of people don't want to vote for "their" party, it's merely a strategic vote in an attempt to keep the worse of two evil out of power.
If you vote for a third-party candidate, you might just as well not have voted at all. The parties will only genuinely start caring about policy when that gets fixed, and voters will only start looking into politics when there is more than one option on their side of the aisle.
There is room for third parties, but it's a hard road and in my lifetime, I've not seen any parties really try to take the road.
You've got to get your party organized at all levels and running candidates in most contests. Everyone seems to want to run a Presidential candidate, but if you're going to run only one election, it should be one you have a chance of winning. A lot of federal office holders previously held state or local office. If you want to seriously contest federal offices, you need to have candidates with elected experience. So, start with local districts, city council/mayorship, maybe county offices. From there, work towards state office. Then you can pick up some house seats, and eventually senate seats too. When the time is right, maybe try some of your seasoned politicians for President.
Thing is you don’t even need a deep dive. Some things sound fishy. Some things are obvious political spin. This alone should stop people from identifying with any party.
world views change with time and parties lead&follow the process at the same time.
that will be shown strongly in a locked 2 party system like the usa has.
you say it is strange that not more people switch camps, but this is not accidental, an extreme amount of effort and resources are spent to maintain this.
> one group actually reflects everything I believe
If you swap “group” for “religion,” this is how I feel about Catholicism. Make of that what you will.
> align with a progressive, left-leaning ideology.
Cooperation and scalability are two objectively good principles that our species can apply effectively... if and only if there is a genuine desire for cooperative, scalable, positive outcomes.
If social/political discourse has degraded to the point that cooperative, scalable, positive outcomes are off the table, look to those who have taken control of the discourse. Propaganda undermines language itself.
The difference between destructive behavior and constructive behaviour... has a bias.
I think it refers to people, who I have run into quite a lot, who when faced with a new fact about politics or the behaviour of politicians, back the team over the idea.
Like if you were to say consider yourself a progressive. I would consider you a progressive, unless you for instance, supported something incredibly conservative that was performed by a "Good Guy" politician on your team.
For instance, we used to have this chap Daniel Andrews. Who was for better or worse, a mild progressive. He took a very hard stance on Covid related issues. Progressives, backed the man regardless. Conservatives criticised his every move. However, his own human rights review, found that he had violated the human rights of citizens in certain circumstances.
If you mention this to his critics, it reinforces their team. But if you mention this (incredibly obvious good faith criticism) to his supporters, not only does it reinforce their team, but they immediately seek to identify you as someone on the other team. A "crazy anti lockdown conservative" or similar. - That for me is the essence of tribalism.
To be fair I think this is a symptom of social media rather than just political awareness.
I've seen another example over the last few days.
Quite a few people who have been vociferously pro-EU and in favour of their protectionism, tariffs and non-tariff trade barriers have been going crazy over the US imposing tariffs, even though the US rates are far lower than the EU's.
A similar group has historically been strongly against government corruption but recently have been attacking efforts to uncover and stop corruption in the US Federal government.
> even though the US rates are far lower than the EU's
What does "far lower" mean to you? Can you give examples? Because to me, the view "Trumps tariffs are only matching what foreign nations already do" is just factually wrong.
Personally, I just think blanket tariffs as a significant form of government income is highly detrimental, from a foreign policy perspective (=> alienates allies, encourages retaliation), as a tax-substitute (because it's basically a regressive "tax-the-rich-less" scheme, which, given meteorically rising wealth inequality, is the last thing we need) and also for economic development (because there is neither the workforce, nor the actual desire, to build up low-margin manufacturing in the US-- making those products 30% more expensive is not gonna change that meaningfully).
> A similar group has historically been strongly against government corruption but recently have been attacking efforts to uncover and stop corruption in the US Federal government.
I don't have a lot of beef in this, personally, but if you're talking about doge:
I just have to look at their website, and what I see are numbers that don't add up at all, containing a lot of cuts for purely policy reasons, wrapped in highly partisan messaging.
I'd be strongly against that even if they advocated for wheelchair accessibility and gay rights on their twitter, or w/e.
Corruption, to me, is if you buy influence on government policy by spending money on officials, and that is exactly what I see under Trump.
Both of these are basically strawman arguments - there are legitimate, non-tribal reasons to be against the actions taken re: tariffs and the purported anti-corruption tasks. For example, a person can be strongly against government corruption but also be strongly against the current efforts/methods being used for a multitude of reasons. And similar for tariffs. (Not having those debates here, just pointing out that I don't believe those examples hold up.)
> US rates are far lower than the EU's.
This is a lie. And no, VAT is not tariff. And no, Trumps formula does not measure tariffs.
> efforts to uncover and stop corruption in the US Federal government.
There were no such efforts. There were efforts to knee cap both transparency and agencies that used to act against corruption. Trumps previous administration was drowning in corruption and there is no reason to think this one is different. Musk is effectively giving government contracts to himself.
You uh seem to have consumed some tribal coolaid lmao.
Always remember that internet conversations are carried by a small group of antisocial losers, and a most of media articles complaining about society are specifically targeting that small but loud group.
An average person has a lot more in common with you than with the imaginary protagonist of this blogpost, who is really smart and wants to show that everyone else is really dumb.
Like other normal people, I discuss politics with friends; both with the ones I mostly agree with and the ones I mostly disagree with. We need to understand game theory and military strategy to have a useful conversation.
> I'm not just glomming on to everything one "tribe" or another stands for ... one group actually reflects everything I believe.
I don't think that's unreasonable, but if you're in the US, you should really re-evaluate if this is true just because there are several significant issues over which the parties have flipped over the past few decades (and more if you go back further).
Obviously you didn't specify a party, but as one example: In the 1990s, the left wing party was where the free speech absolutists were. If you were a big "free speech" enthusiast back then and you still are now, then great! If your views have changed, that's fine, too, but there should be alarm bells going off in your head that your views changed along with the tribe.
>By this reasoning it naturally follows that those of a certain "personality" will also share common beliefs, ideologies
Is this not borne out in your own life experience? Because it sure is in mine.
In the US, you vote for one party or the other. It reduces to tribalism, so why do the extra work to get to the reductive result?
just by being able to understand why you believe what you believe, for each individual view
center-ish is not a requirement, but a correlation -- rarely will someone independently come up with views that 100% match the somewhat-arbitrary positions of the left or right
Tribalism is part metaphor, part euphemism. What it’s really getting at is cult behavior. Agreeing with someone on a lot of things isn’t tribal and isn’t cult.
The actual problems of “tribalism” are exactly those of cults: worship of a leader or ideology, zero tolerance for criticism, cutting you off from other support networks, conspiracies, narratives of doom, promises of salvation, framing enemies as degenerates and deplorables, claiming exclusive ownership of truth and morality…
Red and blue alike have cult wings.
If you think these beleifs are inherent in the temperament of people, that doesnt explain the change of these beliefs over time. Progressive, left leaning ideology had different stances 20 years ago, let alone 50 years or in China or India.
Sometimes this is easier to see from the outside. For example, if the conservative right all independently arrived at the same conclusion based on personality, isnt it strange how the consensus all moves together and changes over time
My impressions were they meant values and you meant policies.
I think you are probably right.
If you find people with shared values, and follow their changing policies, That still seems like tribal behavior to me.
>Others, smarter than me, have gone into great detail about the underpinnings of left-leaning or right-leaning world views in people.
People also change. Until 25 maybe 30,I was left leaning in many issues.
Now I am mostly right aligned.
Martin Luther King was pretty clear what he thought of "the middle":
> I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice
I think holding political opinions on the basis of what a famous (historical) person feels about them is sort of the thing being criticized here.
It's an example of when "not being tribal" is wrong, because one side wanted to keep denying civil rights to a group of people. The correct side was to protest and put pressure on the system. Take the war in Ukraine. There isn't a middle ground between resisting Russian aggression for Ukrainians and fighting back. You either resist, or you get conquered. Not all issues and situations have some happy middle ground where both sides are equal parts wrong/right.
yep, this is the "intentional" moderate which I also classify as tribal
distinctly different from the "accidental" moderate who could harbor indignation against racial prejudice as one of their views
> The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels dismissive.
It's not about where you are on the spectrum. I know neoliberal moderate Democrats, people who would have voted for George H.W. Bush in 1988, who are more tribal about current U.S. politics than any socialist I've met. What makes it unpleasant to talk politics with them is a combination of two things: the narrow set of answers they're willing to accept on every topic, and the anger and suspicion they broadcast at anyone who says anything else. For example, they have an acceptable set of answers for why Trump won in 2024 (racism and sexism) and if you suggest any other contributing factors (like arrogance, elitism, and various screw-ups in the Democratic party) then you must be on the other side, blaming the victims and making excuses for Trump supporters. You can say a dozen things morally condemning Trump and the Republican Party and then make one strategic criticism of the Democrats, and they'll look at you like maybe they can't ever trust you anymore. They'll parade their emotional distress and look at you sideways if you don't have the energy to mirror it. All this without being especially politically informed, politically engaged, or politically radical, or caring if anybody else is informed, engaged, or radical -- they judge themselves and others purely by fervor and narrowness.
> You can say a dozen things morally condemning Trump and the Republican Party and then make one strategic criticism of the Democrats, and they'll look at you like maybe they can't ever trust you anymore.
I think some of this is a consequence of a decade or so of bad faith "wolf in sheep's clothing" online discourse.
I remember way back before Trump's first term, before GamerGate, before the alt-right when people would "joke" about racist and neonazi stuff on 4chan and elsewhere. It was framed as "We're just kidding around because it's fun to be edgy. It's ironic. Obviously, we're not really racist neonazis." People, mostly teens, took the bait and thought it was all in good fun but over time those ideas sunk in and actually stuck.
The next thing you know, we've got white supremacists parading in broad daylight.
If you poke around the dark (and these days not so dark) corners of the Internet, you can literally find people with toxic fringe beliefs discussing how to subtlely soften up their targets with seemingly innocent "just asking questions" when the ultimate goal is to (1) obscure which tribe they are actually a member of and (2) persuade people over to their tribe without them realizing it.
When you're in an environment where people like that do actually exist and participate in discourse, it's reasonable to wonder if the person you're talking to really does share your beliefs or not.
How are those two situations remotely similar? A criticism of the Democratic Party should not be seen as a morally reprehensible "joke" that you have to walk back like "ha ha, just kidding, I would never criticize the party."
The idea that the Democratic Party is a flawed, mundane institution full of fallible people who make mistakes is not a toxic idea that we need to keep out of the discourse lest it "sink in and actually stick." It's more like medicine that the party is trying to administer to itself with one hand while the other hand tries to bat it away.
I think one of the distinguishing characteristics of tribalism is the inability to have low-stakes conversations about politics. To somebody who is deep in tribalism, every private ephemeral one-to-one conversation they have is a vital battle which very well may decide the fate of the world, so their vigilance and inflamed passion entirely justified and rational. Being a part of the tribe ruins their humility, the tribe is important, they are wed to the tribe, any political discussion they have is on behave of the tribe, and therefore very important. Alliance with the tribe confers importance to themselves and they thereby lose their humility. They lose the ability to recognize that the conversation isn't actually important, that they can relax and treat the other person like a human rather than a faceless representative of the enemy who they have a vital responsibility to defeat.
You are right that you don't take part in tribalism, because you first have a value structure and then you looked critically at the political landscape and found where you have the largest overlap.
But tribalism is absolutely an issue in the modern age with huge swathes of population falling into social media echo chambers. People first find their tribe, and then they define their own personality by the views of that tribe, not the other way around.
Just look at all the people spewing "own the libs" or "maga fucktards". A significant portion of the population doesn't vote based on rational analysis, but by being part of a crowd. They don't even care or know what they vote for, as long as they are sticking it to people they perceive as enemies.
I think this is basically the terminal/minimum of the modern social network algo optimization. Everything is maximally polarized, nobody is willing to engage in good faith discussion with people who hold different views. Everyone has a known enemy and known allies and they can be fed what they like to hear and thus continue being addicted.
I don't know how to get out of this :(
The United States especially is having a face to face with tribalism - if you live here and you don't see it you are basically blind.
We have parents posting that they are glad their child is dead instead of getting the measles vaccine, an entire pandemic that was ignored and downplayed, an election denied.
These are all simple examples of tribalism - choosing the tribe over ones own self interest and well being. Most sane people don't offer their children up to Baal.
I think tribalism is being thought of as a pejorative when it isn’t. It merely is a phenomenon. What you describe above about yourself is pure tribalism of how you identify with the liberal tribe and could never even picture yourself as a member of other tribe. This is no different to me than a rabbi or priest talking about the tenets of their faith and how that leaves them no option but to be a member of that religion due to the moral underpinnings of those tenets that they believe in.
Tribal politics happen when we take these various tribes in our society and essentially blind them to their biases to the point where they can’t imagine at all why someone would even be in that other tribe. A complete loss of critical thinking ability emerges once it becomes us and them and not some of us and others of us, one species, no tribes, many ideas.
Do you actually believe all liberals are good and can do no evil? Do you actually believe all conservatives are cartoonishly evil idiots? I’d hope you could see the nuance but your description makes it seem like there is one way but the highway. And the reflexive counter argument from the liberals is “but racism” but then again, explain the phenomenon of the black or latino Trump supporter? Clearly there is more nuance going on in what is sensible to people than what we can gleam out of the black and white painted descriptions from the thought leaders in our tribe.
Just in the last election cycle, we saw tribal Democratic voters try and silence those protesting the Biden administration and then immediately go "we have always been at war with Eurasia" and do the exact same thing for Kamala.
And MAGA goes beyond being tribal: by any objective measure, it's a cult.
Plus you see an awful lot of people who will criticize one side for doing one thing while supporting the other side for doing the exact same thing. Obama, for example, was the Deporter-in-Chief (~3 million deported), Biden continued the Trump policy of using Title 42 to deny asylum claims and Kamala proposed building the very same border wall that all Democrats protested when Trump proposed it in 2020.
I'm a leftist and any leftist will have seen so many liberals who love progressive aesthetics but turn into a jack-booted fascist the second you want to address any of the underlying economic issues. For example, tell people "house prices need to come down" to solve any number of issues such as homelessness and see how they react.
> The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels dismissive.
On this, I 100% agree. There are several reasons why:
1. Intellectual laziness. People think they're "above the fray" by bothsidesing everything;
2. Ignorance. This is particularly an issue for Democratic voters in the US. Both Democrats and Republicans are neoliberals. US foreign policy is bipartisan. Full-throated support for capitalism is bipartisan. But a large segment of Democrats tell themselves they're good people for wearing a pride pin while at the same time thinking homeless people should die in the stree; or
3. Deception. This is particularly the case for Republicans who will try and center their positions by appealing to "common sense" and label Democrats, who are a center-right party, as "the far Left" or "the radical Left".
So, yes, people do use "tribalism" as an epithet to silence legitimate criticisim but there is also tribalism.
I'm 52. For me, there was a time when it was considered impolite to talk about sex, religion and politics. Then it became super fun when done with open/questioning/rational/critical minds, and a lot of progress in my own thinking was achieved from the usually non-threatening but lively debates and fights among friends and family for ideas. Then it shifted in the last ten or fifteen years. When social media started having friends of friends, the tribalism kicked in. It was explained very well in a talk between Maria Ressa and Jon Stewart. She is brilliant, and well worth listening to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsHoX9ZpA_M
Everything is because of increasing wealth inequality, it is the root cause of almost every societal problem. It was easier to have non-threatening debates because everyone felt more secure. When people are stressed and afraid, the debates aren’t just intellectual exercises but things that could mean the loss of real opportunities in their lives. This is a trend that has been going on for a very long time, Pikkety showed mathematically that it’s easier to make money when you already have money and this runaway process is nearing an extreme.
I firmly believe that if wealth distribution today was the same as it was in the 70s-90s, the culture wars would be significantly dampened or non existent. If people could still buy homes, afford to have kids and healthcare, we would all be able to talk about religion, sex, and politics without this extreme tribalism. It’s happening because there are way more “losers” in the economic game now, it’s become a life or death issue, and people are looking for who to blame.
I largely agree. Recently I'm somewhat minded to think the issue is actually about the huge expansion of the rentier class. The problem began with the adoption of neoliberalism and the mainstreaming of the idea that you could reasonably "earn" money by simply having money. Prior classical and Keynesian thought railed against such rent seeking and sought to eliminate it as a parasitic drag on the economy.
Since the decision was made post GFC to bail out the banks and protect capital over the normal person that just wanted a house to live in, the position of the rentiers has been consolidated hugely. We have Rachel Reeves thinking we in the UK can build a growth strategy on the back of financial services (which generally means "rent-extraction services"). A rational system would separate the GDP from the real economy from the income from rent extraction, and seek to eliminate the latter.
To the common man, they see themselves working longer and harder than they used to and getting a smaller and smaller slice of the pie. It turns out when your real outputs have to support a sizeable portion of the population who have dedicated their lives to the art of rent extraction to live like kings, you don't see much of the gain.
I have many contemporaries that have gone into finance. A vast pool of intellectual capability, shuffling money around playing zero sum games, and ultimately protected from loss by the power of the state.
> It was easier to have non-threatening debates because everyone felt more secure. When people are stressed and afraid, the debates aren’t just intellectual exercises but things that could mean the loss of real opportunities in their lives.
You’re right that people feel less secure, but that doesn’t mean that they are correct when they feel that.
By pretty much any measure, I believe that people in 2025 are far more secure than they were in 1975, 1985 or 1995.
> Then it shifted in the last ten or fifteen years. When social media started having friends of friends, the tribalism kicked in. It was explained very well in a talk between Maria Ressa and Jon Stewart.
Also by Jon Stewart on Crossfire in 2004: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE&t=310s
The critique about what passes for debate is as apt today as it was then.
Very much this. The world has changed. It used to be that assuming other people have a low capacity for political reason was itself a "political position" - namely elitism. Folks like Orwell come from a long, long tradition of the educated and socially astute working class. Social media turned the joy of everyday political banter, rational scepticism, and good-natured disputation into a bourgeois pissing contest with seemingly life-or-death stakes.
> but lively debates and fights among friends and family for ideas
The missing ingredient is "intellectual honesty". It used to be the case that when you talked to people on the right they would
- refer to events that actually happened and true statements about the world
- accept them in the context of wider events (although there's always been a risk of making policy from one exeptional incident)
- make an argument that followed logically from those
> After seven years in San Diego, my wife and I have decided to uproot our family and move to the Bay Area. While there were many factors (a new job opportunity, family), a significant reason was finding a community of truth-seeking people.
Funny. The lack of truth-seeking and truth-telling is one of the chief reasons I moved away from the Bay Area.
You'll find unquestioning dogmatism everywhere you go unfortunately.
For what it's worth, the odds for rationally evaluating political ideas tend to go up around folks that have gone to universities that are known for some decent level of intellectual rigor.
Still not great though, some of the most dogmatic people I've met in my life were professors and undergrads. But those that were the opposite more than made up for that.
It sounds like you're describing what I know as trait openness?
Discussion of new ideas is an "openness" thing.
Funnily enough personality traits are a strong predictor for political preference. Personality traits are also a predictor of career choices.
I can strongly sympathize. The image with the squares and circles hit home hard, from an early age, it's been pretty lonely. Depending on your environment it can be super hard to find others part of the 1%, so you really need to treasure them when you do find them.
One point of criticism:
The usage of the word "moderate". It seems PG's article is the one to blame here. The word "moderate" when used about politics means something to people in English. And given that meaning, saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate", is straight up wrong. What the article is really talking about is that independent thought leads to a set of beliefs that is unlikely to be a very good fit for any particular ideology, and therefore, political party. That's true! But that's not "moderate". That's.. diverse, pragmatic, non-ideological. Those words aren't ideal either, but "moderate" is definitely not it.
The 99%/1% is also greatly overstated in a way. Firstly, it's definitely dependent on locale, culture, subculture, environment, as the writer already says themselves. More importantly, if you manage to somehow get people 1:1 in an environment where they feel safe, it turns out that many actually aren't that tribal/ideological after all, and they do actually have beliefs that span different mainstream tribes. But then that conversation finishes, and they go back to being a tribe member.
I'm pretty sure there's plenty of experiments that directly show the above. That when you give people policy choices that are non-obvious (e.g. they've never thought about), and then make them vote on them, they'll often vote against their tribe. But if you'd beforehand tell them which tribe voted which way, they'll always vote with the tribe.
I can call something "purple" and then give a specific explanation I mean "computer" by it, but I just shouldn't be using purple like that in the first place. The word "moderate" is too entrenched, gives people an immediate instinctive, emotional reaction based on the established meaning of the word. This is not the word to repurpose here.
I'll provide an opposing viewpoint. In the last 10 years, I've lost friendships and family because people in my life have voted for candidates that stripped rights away from women, minorities, etc.
Having a vast difference between opinions is fine, but some of their decisions are fundamentally against my core beliefs and have done literal harm to many people I know.
For that reason, terminating family and friendships has been absolutely worth it for me.
Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected, we have no common ground, and it's pointless to tiptoe around these insanely harmful beliefs while maintaining a facade of friendship.