Comment by tdb7893

Comment by tdb7893 a day ago

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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

rf15 a day ago

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.

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  • tdb7893 a day ago

    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...

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    • bodiekane a day ago

      I think you're taking the graph way too literally.

      The Republicans and Democrats are both coalitions made up of many different groups, and their policies are constantly shifting depending on which individuals get elected and which of those sub-groups hold more power, as well as due to different sub-groups shifting allegiances.

      It's statistically almost impossible that someone would agree 100% with the platform of the Republicans or Democrats at any given moment. Even if you just pretend there are exactly two stances on a given issue (R or D) you'd still be looking at like 2^1000 different possible outcomes (for 1,000 different issues). The more perfectly someone claims to align to one party, the more likely it is that they're doing so out of tribalism than because they actually matched the exact one-in-a-zillion set of opinions.

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      • tdb7893 a day ago

        The graph isn't "agrees with Republican" and "agrees with Democrat" as the axis (I also would say you can agree with people and still be a free thinker, viewing positions as independent doesn't really make sense, there's underlying ideology that heavily correlates them but all of this is besides the point). The idea that the far left is agreeing dogmatically with the democratic platform is clearly factually incorrect to anyone who has met people actually on the far left (they rarely even agree with other people on the far left) and a similar thing can be said about the far right.

        The really obvious example of this is look how much of a thorn in the side of the Republican Congressional leadership the far right has been. Agreeing rigidly with a party will not put you at the edge of the graphs at all (for most parties globally it would put you somewhere in the middle)

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      • gonzobonzo a day ago

        Even more so when you see how quickly these coalitions will shift their beliefs or take on new beliefs when they’re signaled to do so by leaders of the coalition.

        You often see this in real time during political conversations (both online and offline). Someone will say, “No one on my side ever said X, that’s a vicious smear perpetrated by the other side.” Someone will response with an example of a prominent leader on their side saying X. The first person will suddenly do a 180, and start explaining why X is just a commonsense position and it’s silly for anyone to be offended by it.

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  • whiteboardr a day ago

    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".

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  • n4r9 a day ago

    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.

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  • bell-cot a day ago

    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.

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  • rob74 a day ago

    > 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).

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shw1n a day ago

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"

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  • shawndrost a day ago

    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.

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    • shw1n a day ago

      Ironically this seems like an example of the tribalism my essay is about -- I agree with his essay, but only partially agree with the graph

      I think the hump could be slightly shifted left or right, but the points on the graph are the averages of an individual's entire collection of views

      I don't believe an independent thinker would come up with a set of views that perfectly match the left or right's doctrine since at least some of those views are somewhat arbitrary -- in that sense I agree with him

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      • jampekka a day ago

        There are also centrist doctrines. Even explicit ones like the radical centrism.

        A major problem is trying to project a hugely multifaceted phenomenon like political outlook into one, or even few, dimensions. And then even discretizing the one dimension. And then categorizing (other) people's thinking or ideologies into these.

        Another problem is assuming that there is some universal "optimal" or even good policy. Instead there can be even fundamentally contradicting interests or goals between e.g., dare I say, classes which can lead to well informed

        I'm not claiming you don't appreciate these, but the conclusions to me seem to require such problematic assumptions. The intent is likely something like trying to simplify complex phenomena into something manageable (i.e. an ideology), but these tend to be very leaky abstractions.

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      • duffmancd a day ago

        I think the issue might stem from the fact that (as I read it) the essay is talking about "for the people who are moderate (in the middle of the left/right axis), some are distributed higher on your graph, while some are lower". Which says nothing about "for the people who are distributed higher on the graph, how many are in the middle of the left/right axis". Your graph makes explicit an answer to the second question which the essay avoids. (There is a bit of an implication in the last two paragraphs, but PG is explicit it's only about people he knows).

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      • hgomersall a day ago

        You even say so in your essay. I'd say an issue is people picking up on the graph but ignoring what you wrote.

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    • leoedin a day ago

      I don't think the graph agrees with the essay.

      In the essay, the "unintentional moderate" is defined as someone who holds all kinds of views, some from the far left, some from the far right, some from the middle - but by chance the average of their views makes them a moderate.

      I had to go looking for that, because the graph doesn't show that at all. I think the graph is a bad take on the ideas in Paul Graham's article.

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  • trinsic2 a day ago

    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.

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musicale a day ago

Yes, you're misreading it. Independent thought vs. groupthink is the vertical axis.

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  • Lendal 17 hours ago

    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.

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    • musicale 6 hours ago

      I was thinking that as well until I read the caption on the graph, which I might still take issue with, but which was also a bit more nuanced since it was trying to visualize someone else's viewpoint.

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thinkingemote a day ago

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.

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chromatin 21 hours ago

Yes, that also struck me as nonsensical.

If he were really trying to demonstrate a 2d Gaussian, it would instead be a circle or elipse of points with highest density at the origin.

perhaps in the end he was not

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dragonwriter a day ago

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

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  • shw1n a day ago

    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'"

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