Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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kmich
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Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Post by kmich »

Why People are Irrational about Politics - Michael Huemer

Below are Huemer's abstract, introduction, and summary. Read the additional 6 sections at the link if interested in how he supports his argument. Discuss and dispute as you wish...
Abstract: I look for explanations for the phenomenon of widespread, strong, and persistent disagreements about political issues. The best explanation is provided by the hypothesis that most people are irrational about politics and not, for example, that political issues are particularly difficult or that we lack sufficient evidence for resolving them. I discuss how this irrationality works and why people are especially irrational about politics.

1. Introduction: The Problem of Political Disagreement

Perhaps the most striking feature of the subject of politics is how prone it is to disagreement—only religion and morality rival politics as a source of disagreement. There are three main features of political disagreements I want to point out: (i) They are very widespread. It isn’t just a few people disagreeing about a few issues; rather, any two randomly-chosen people are likely to disagree about many political issues. (ii) They are strong, that is, the disagreeing parties are typically very convinced of their own positions, not at all tentative. (iii) They are persistent, that is, it is extremely difficult to resolve them. Several hours’ of argumentation typically fails to produce progress. Some disputes have persisted for decades (either with the same principals or with different parties over multiple generations).

This should strike us as very odd. Most other subjects—for instance, geology, or linguistics, or algebra—are not subject to disagreements at all like this; their disputes are far fewer in number and take place against a backdrop of substantial agreement in basic theory; and they tend to be more tentative and more easily resolved. Why is politics subject to such widespread, strong, and persistent disagreements? Consider four broad explanations for the prevalence of political disagreement:

A. The Miscalculation Theory: Political issues are subject to much dispute because they are very difficult issues; accordingly, many people simply make mistakes—analogous to miscalculations in working out difficult mathematical problems—leading them to disagree with others who have not made mistakes or have made different mistakes leading to different conclusions.

B. The Ignorance Theory: Rather than being inherently difficult (for instance, because of their complexity or abstractness), political issues are difficult for us to resolve due to insufficient information, and/or because different people have different information available to them. If everyone had adequate factual knowledge, most political disputes would be resolved.

C. The Divergent-Values Theory: People disagree about political issues principally because political issues turn on moral/evaluative issues, and people have divergent fundamental values.

D. The Irrationality Theory: People disagree about political issues mainly because most people are irrational when it comes to politics.

Political disagreement undoubtedly has more than one contributing cause. Nevertheless, I contend that explanation (D), irrationality, is the most important factor, and that explanations (A) - (C), in the absence of irrationality, fail to explain almost any of the salient features of political disagreement.

8. Summary

Based on the level of disagreement, human beings are highly unreliable at identifying correct political claims. This is extremely unfortunate, since it means that we have little chance of solving social problems and a good chance of creating or exacerbating them. The best explanation lies in the theory of Rational Irrationality: individuals derive psychological rewards from holding certain political beliefs, and since each individual suffers almost none of the harm caused by his own false political beliefs, it often makes sense (it gives him what he wants) to adopt those beliefs regardless of whether they are true or well-supported.

The beliefs that people want to hold are often determined by their self-interest, the social group they want to fit into, the self-image they want to maintain, and the desire to remain coherent with their past beliefs. People can deploy various mechanisms to enable them to adopt and maintain their preferred beliefs, including giving a biased weighting of evidence; focusing their attention and energy on the arguments supporting their favored beliefs; collecting evidence only from sources they already agree with; and relying on subjective, speculative, and anecdotal claims as evidence for political theories.

The irrationality hypothesis is superior to alternative explanations of political disagreement in its ability to account for several features of political beliefs and arguments: the fact that people hold their political beliefs with a high degree of confidence; the fact that discussion rarely changes political beliefs; the fact that political beliefs are correlated with race, sex, occupation, and other cognitively irrelevant traits; and the fact that numerous logically unrelated political beliefs—and even, in some cases, beliefs that rationally undermine each other—tend to go together. These features of political beliefs are not explained by the hypotheses that political issues are merely very difficult, that we just haven’t yet collected enough information regarding them, or that political disputes are primarily caused by people’s differing fundamental value systems.

It may be possible to combat political irrationality, first, by recognizing one’s own susceptibility to bias. One should recognize the cases in which one is most likely to be biased (such as issues about which one feels strongly), and one should consciously try to avoid using the mechanisms discussed above for maintaining irrational beliefs. In the light of widespread biases, one should also take a skeptical attitude towards evidence presented to one by others, recognizing that the evidence has probably been screened and otherwise distorted. Lastly, one may be able to combat others’ irrationality by identifying the sort of empirical evidence that would be required to test their claims, and by taking a fair-minded and cooperative, rather than combative, approach towards discussion. It remains a matter of speculation whether these measures will significantly alleviate the problem of political irrationality.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Good stuff. Just a thought.

Irrational behavior so far is and has always been the story of life. Animals and plants "mindlessly" co-exist and compete without any central command or reason. Yet it produces all kinds of incredibly "reasonable" things. Amazing structure and function evolved where it is hard not so see a reasonable sort of central intelligence creating it all. But no scientific research has found any such central, rational intelligence. On the contrary, irrational chaos somehow creates what seems to be rational and intelligent. So we have a situation where irrationality and chaos are leading, with rationality and its controlling tools being mere byproducts with only limited powers. One could argue that too much rationality can be dangerous and ultimately self-destructive like any monopoly. The most rational people have always been dictators because there is a simple mathematics to power.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Parodite wrote:Good stuff. Just a thought.

Irrational behavior so far is and has always been the story of life. Animals and plants "mindlessly" co-exist and compete without any central command or reason. Yet it produces all kinds of incredibly "reasonable" things. Amazing structure and function evolved where it is hard not so see a reasonable sort of central intelligence creating it all. But no scientific research has found any such central, rational intelligence. On the contrary, irrational chaos somehow creates what seems to be rational and intelligent. So we have a situation where irrationality and chaos are leading, with rationality and its controlling tools being mere byproducts with only limited powers. One could argue that too much rationality can be dangerous and ultimately self-destructive like any monopoly. The most rational people have always been dictators because there is a simple mathematics to power.
It is important not to confuse terminology. Sentience or "mind" is not equivalent with rationality. Rationality can be either epistemic or instrumental. epistemic rationality being what one displays when one believes propositions that are strongly supported by one's evidence and refrains from believing propositions that are improbable if supportive evidence is not available. Instrumental rationality consists in applying the correct means in the environment to attain goals. While it is clear that sentience is a necessary condition for epistemic rationality to operate,that is not necessarily even the case with instrumental rationality. The most primitive biological organisms that would not be considered conscious or sentient, demonstrate coherent goal directed behavior. If "irrational behavior" was the "story of life" as you say, there would be no life, creatures would not engage in behavior consistent with their environments to fulfill the goals of survival and reproduction. In addition, rationality is hardly equivalent to "intelligence" in the epistemic sense where it would apply. From the above article:
An interesting implication emerges from the consideration of the mechanisms of belief fixation. Normally, intelligence and education are aides to acquiring true beliefs. But when an individual has non-epistemic belief preferences, this need not be the case; high intelligence and extensive knowledge of a subject may even worsen an individual’s prospects for obtaining a true belief (see chart below). The reason is that a biased person uses his intelligence and education as tools for rationalizing beliefs. Highly intelligent people can think of rationalizations for their beliefs in situations in which the less intelligent would be forced to give up and concede error, and highly educated people have larger stores of information from which to selectively search for information supporting a desired belief. Thus, it is nearly impossible to change an academic’s mind about anything important, particularly in his own field of study. This is particularly true of philosophers (my own occupation), who are experts at argumentation.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Post by Simple Minded »

kmich wrote:Why People are Irrational about Politics - Michael Huemer

Below are Huemer's abstract, introduction, and summary. Read the additional 6 sections at the link if interested in how he supports his argument. Discuss and dispute as you wish...
Abstract: I look for explanations for the phenomenon of widespread, strong, and persistent disagreements about political issues. The best explanation is provided by the hypothesis that most people are irrational about politics and not, for example, that political issues are particularly difficult or that we lack sufficient evidence for resolving them. I discuss how this irrationality works and why people are especially irrational about politics.
Excellent stuff kmich. Thanks for posting. It is similar to confusing hard science with soft science. Easy to define needs and build a bridge or a hammer to fill those needs. Trying to determine if the bridge or the hammer are fair is a ridiculous concept.

"Hey, racist, 1%er! Someone else had a need for the wood, metal, and concrete you used to build your bridges and hammers. You're an evil SOB!"

Getting rid of confirmation bias, or hierarchy of needs/wants/desires based on personal perspective will always be impossible. Designers created a scalpel, and you used it to perform a necessary surgery. Someone will always argue that the steel, labor, and genius "should have" been used elsewhere.

Freedom of association is a right. Discrimination is wrong. :?

Personal cost always determines perspective. How does one determine group cost? Is it possible?
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Simple Minded wrote: Getting rid of confirmation bias, or hierarchy of needs/wants/desires based on personal perspective will always be impossible. Designers created a scalpel, and you used it to perform a necessary surgery. Someone will always argue that the steel, labor, and genius "should have" been used elsewhere.

Freedom of association is a right. Discrimination is wrong. :?

Personal cost always determines perspective. How does one determine group cost? Is it possible?
Don't think so. Our needs and aspirations are universally contradictory, aren’t they?

We want safety and security but, at the same time, want freedom from constraints and excitement. We want peace, but we also support state violence. We value justice, but we also value mercy. We value thrift but we also want the latest stuff, and so on. We are anything but consistent beings, but instead are subject to a wide variety of different and often contradictory needs, conditions, and experiences.

Living with our pervasive ambivalence and ambiguities is challenging and can provoke a loss of our sense of identity and meaning, so we adhere to certain beliefs and disregard evidence that reveal our contradictions. We do so by employing the strength of our convictions and our capacities for intelligent rationalization to mask over and deny our confusion. The deeper the need for consistency in relation to our internal contradictions, the more dogmatic and potentially aggressive we become.

Of course, this leads us into all kinds of conflicts and problems from the trivial to the terribly tragic. This is why divided government is the best circumstance for political stability with important qualifications. Both sides will hold a measure of truth and falsehood, and neither side will have a monopoly on the best courses of action. Awareness of this, in a spirit of a rational humility, is essential for balancing advancing agendas with necessary compromises. Our founders were well aware of this and reflected this in their writings but not always in the behavior.

In any case, if the absence of this awareness and modesty regarding our opinions makes agreements impossible, government will fail to function. Single party rule will likely also lead to failure due to the lack of checks on their own irrationality. Failure of governments in history typically forms the seedbed of tyrannies from the Ancien Régime to the Weimar Republic. Tragic outcomes, indeed.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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maybe rationality is over rated, an amusing fixation of an antisocial group of people who scramble around trying to turn science into a religion.

their was a study done on pigeons in which they had 2 buttons presented to them - 1 button consistently dropped a small portion of food, the other inconsistently dropped a large portion, it was setup so the constant small portions created more food than the inconsistent large portions.

the pigeon preferred the button that had the large portion even though that meant less food, we all want to hit the jackpot it seems.

pigeons and humans are highly successful critters on this planet, who can argue with the science on that.

reminds me of that thing about odin sitting on the high chair, seeing everything, knowing everything and then getting depressed, sometimes optimism requires stupidity.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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noddy wrote:maybe rationality is over rated, an amusing fixation of an antisocial group of people who scramble around trying to turn science into a religion.

their was a study done on pigeons in which they had 2 buttons presented to them - 1 button consistently dropped a small portion of food, the other inconsistently dropped a large portion, it was setup so the constant small portions created more food than the inconsistent large portions.

the pigeon preferred the button that had the large portion even though that meant less food, we all want to hit the jackpot it seems.

pigeons and humans are highly successful critters on this planet, who can argue with the science on that.

reminds me of that thing about odin sitting on the high chair, seeing everything, knowing everything and then getting depressed, sometimes optimism requires stupidity.
Intermittent reinforcement is always stronger than continual reinforcment regardless of the size of the reinforcement.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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noddy wrote:maybe rationality is over rated, an amusing fixation of an antisocial group of people who scramble around trying to turn science into a religion.
Perhaps, so it is important to remember that while rationality Is a necessary human capability, it is not one that has a primary function in a variety of worthy human encounters and experiences: appreciating some fine jazz, awe struck on a starlit night, the warmth of looking into the eyes of someone you love, the raptures of worship and prayer, etc.
noddy wrote:their was a study done on pigeons in which they had 2 buttons presented to them - 1 button consistently dropped a small portion of food, the other inconsistently dropped a large portion, it was setup so the constant small portions created more food than the inconsistent large portions.

the pigeon preferred the button that had the large portion even though that meant less food, we all want to hit the jackpot it seems.

pigeons and humans are highly successful critters on this planet, who can argue with the science on that.
Skinner’s laboratory experiments were designed to determine relative rates of operant behaviors and their resistance to extinction under various schedules of reinforcement. The variable ratio schedule (VR), likely the one you are referring to in describing the pigeon’s preferred button, has the highest rate of response and the greatest resistance to operant extinction. That is why slot and gaming machines are set to VR schedules so gamblers will keep pressing the buttons and pulling levers while mostly losing money to the house which the machines are programed to favor.

However, Skinner boxes and casinos demonstrate instrumental irrationality under very special and controlled conditions. Their generalizability has been shown to be frequently problematic outside these special conditions within natural environments. To increase rates of response and increasing durable motivation to respond may be quite functional in other, more realistic situations where one experiences agency with variable rates of reinforcement. That may be partly why, as you say, “pigeons and humans are highly successful critters on this planet.”
noddy wrote:reminds me of that thing about odin sitting on the high chair, seeing everything, knowing everything and then getting depressed, sometimes optimism requires stupidity.
Being a Norse god is one thing, navigating the challenges of human existence is quite another. Numerous studies, after controlling for the effects of correlated confounds, have found that lower hope scores (but not optimism) were correlated with several dimensions of lower reported health, including frequency and severity of illness. The optimists have less symptoms measured both subjectively and objectively. Optimism is connected to better immune functions (with the exception of the presence of uncontrollable stressors) and a faster rate of recovery. Optimists live longer compared to less optimistic people. Optimism while perhaps “stupid” from an epistemic perspective, may demonstrate instrumental rationality.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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The question (and problem in a way) here seems to be how we relate to things, real or perceived to be real, beyond our immediate local environment and sense perceptions.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/ ... comments=1
People tend to get highly emotional about issues they regard as matters of morality, and they generally attempt to avoid or even punish individuals they regard as immoral. The heated response to moral issues is the exact opposite of what many people consider rational behavior.

Or so many of us would like to think. As it turns out, a new study indicates that people regard rationality itself as a matter of moral behavior. While the study identifies a group of people who tend to take a strong and persistent moral stand about rationality, it also shows that the even the control populations tend to do this. The results could go a long way toward explaining why people have self-segregated over ideological issues and respond so heatedly to policy issues.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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noddy wrote:http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/ ... comments=1
People tend to get highly emotional about issues they regard as matters of morality, and they generally attempt to avoid or even punish individuals they regard as immoral. The heated response to moral issues is the exact opposite of what many people consider rational behavior.

Or so many of us would like to think. As it turns out, a new study indicates that people regard rationality itself as a matter of moral behavior. While the study identifies a group of people who tend to take a strong and persistent moral stand about rationality, it also shows that the even the control populations tend to do this. The results could go a long way toward explaining why people have self-segregated over ideological issues and respond so heatedly to policy issues.
Good post. The article addresses the contemporary dominance of value-rational action derived from the categories of Max Weber. Weber, who wrote the seminal work on what is called “Rationality” in Economy and Society, attempted to encompass all forms of social behavior by defining “rationality” as that which is consistent with any motivational set. These included, among others (traditional, instrumental), affectual action, or “rational” action guided by the immediate demands of an emotional state as well as value-rational action the self-conscious conviction that the action has a value inherent to itself, independent of any outcome it might or might not have.

But there is the crux of the problem in Weber’s system. There is no particular reason what is “rational” from the affectual and value demands should be "rational" from the instrumental and epistemic requirements emphasized in the OP. Peoples throughout history have shown the capacity for collective madness and self-destruction for “God’ and “country,” or whatever value laden ideal or passion they happen to hold at the time.

Weber appeared aware of these conflicts in his criticisms of capitalism and the conflicts between the religious and material aspirations of the age, but saw himself as ultimately a scientist so was unable to fully appreciate the perennial problem of human motivational conflict and incoherence. Our motives often conflict as I noted above so what may be “rational” from one social motive may be “irrational” from another in Weber’s terminology. But this leads to motivational incoherence which, IMHO may be a better term than “political irrationality.” This is magnified greatly in the growth of the modern state and may ultimately be its undoing. The necessary humility to remedy our conflicts cannot be institutionalized.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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The most baffling part to me is there are 1) things we know, 2) things we know we don't know, and 3) things we don't know we don't know.

This threesome of all-kinds-of-things seems to be different for everybody, but how different is a typical 2) thing. Well, at least for me; in a rational mode (that I consider rational, honest and fact based from my own point of view) I have to acknowledge to myself that I cannot be sure about others even having similar experiences and thoughts as I do to begin with. The felt certainty that they do.. is more irrational than rational so to speak.

The danger of the rational is that it forces the irrational to be more crazy than it can handle. You go mad. To try interfere with healthy madness (healthy as in "innocent until proven proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt") can be very destructive.

It also seems that whatever my rational considerations and conclusions on such matters are, the irrational (which I define not as crazy/immoral/or other... but rather as things occurring independently from (or despite) my own perceived rational considerations and believed impact they have on reality and my choices in particular) in general is doing fine even without us. So the rational, at some level, has to have faith in the irrational. For some it works to put a rational face on the irrational, or making it a Persona in a mystical story, or even as a Persona non Grata if necessary. (not that I think necessity is always necessary)
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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I know I am rational. Sadly, everyone else is fu*king insane.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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YMix wrote:I know I am rational. Sadly, everyone else is fu*king insane.
That's what my driving instructor explained during the first lesson as the key for safe driving. Just assume the others to be drunk, insane or both. :)
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Parodite wrote:
YMix wrote:I know I am rational. Sadly, everyone else is fu*king insane.
That's what my driving instructor explained during the first lesson as the key for safe driving. Just assume the others to be drunk, insane or both. :)
apparently this approach works for election analysis aswell.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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kmich wrote:
noddy wrote:http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/ ... comments=1
People tend to get highly emotional about issues they regard as matters of morality, and they generally attempt to avoid or even punish individuals they regard as immoral. The heated response to moral issues is the exact opposite of what many people consider rational behavior.

Or so many of us would like to think. As it turns out, a new study indicates that people regard rationality itself as a matter of moral behavior. While the study identifies a group of people who tend to take a strong and persistent moral stand about rationality, it also shows that the even the control populations tend to do this. The results could go a long way toward explaining why people have self-segregated over ideological issues and respond so heatedly to policy issues.
Good post. The article addresses the contemporary dominance of value-rational action derived from the categories of Max Weber. Weber, who wrote the seminal work on what is called “Rationality” in Economy and Society, attempted to encompass all forms of social behavior by defining “rationality” as that which is consistent with any motivational set. These included, among others (traditional, instrumental), affectual action, or “rational” action guided by the immediate demands of an emotional state as well as value-rational action the self-conscious conviction that the action has a value inherent to itself, independent of any outcome it might or might not have.

But there is the crux of the problem in Weber’s system. There is no particular reason what is “rational” from the affectual and value demands should be "rational" from the instrumental and epistemic requirements emphasized in the OP. Peoples throughout history have shown the capacity for collective madness and self-destruction for “God’ and “country,” or whatever value laden ideal or passion they happen to hold at the time.

Weber appeared aware of these conflicts in his criticisms of capitalism and the conflicts between the religious and material aspirations of the age, but saw himself as ultimately a scientist so was unable to fully appreciate the perennial problem of human motivational conflict and incoherence. Our motives often conflict as I noted above so what may be “rational” from one social motive may be “irrational” from another in Weber’s terminology. But this leads to motivational incoherence which, IMHO may be a better term than “political irrationality.” This is magnified greatly in the growth of the modern state and may ultimately be its undoing. The necessary humility to remedy our conflicts cannot be institutionalized.
amusingly enough i was reading into a student of Max Weber just recently - Robert Michels and his breakdown of human institutions as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law," democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.
alot of people perceive (real or not) this in the current system, which does bring a wildcard into the 'rational' analysis.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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noddy wrote:
kmich wrote:
noddy wrote:http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/ ... comments=1
People tend to get highly emotional about issues they regard as matters of morality, and they generally attempt to avoid or even punish individuals they regard as immoral. The heated response to moral issues is the exact opposite of what many people consider rational behavior.

Or so many of us would like to think. As it turns out, a new study indicates that people regard rationality itself as a matter of moral behavior. While the study identifies a group of people who tend to take a strong and persistent moral stand about rationality, it also shows that the even the control populations tend to do this. The results could go a long way toward explaining why people have self-segregated over ideological issues and respond so heatedly to policy issues.
Good post. The article addresses the contemporary dominance of value-rational action derived from the categories of Max Weber. Weber, who wrote the seminal work on what is called “Rationality” in Economy and Society, attempted to encompass all forms of social behavior by defining “rationality” as that which is consistent with any motivational set. These included, among others (traditional, instrumental), affectual action, or “rational” action guided by the immediate demands of an emotional state as well as value-rational action the self-conscious conviction that the action has a value inherent to itself, independent of any outcome it might or might not have.

But there is the crux of the problem in Weber’s system. There is no particular reason what is “rational” from the affectual and value demands should be "rational" from the instrumental and epistemic requirements emphasized in the OP. Peoples throughout history have shown the capacity for collective madness and self-destruction for “God’ and “country,” or whatever value laden ideal or passion they happen to hold at the time.

Weber appeared aware of these conflicts in his criticisms of capitalism and the conflicts between the religious and material aspirations of the age, but saw himself as ultimately a scientist so was unable to fully appreciate the perennial problem of human motivational conflict and incoherence. Our motives often conflict as I noted above so what may be “rational” from one social motive may be “irrational” from another in Weber’s terminology. But this leads to motivational incoherence which, IMHO may be a better term than “political irrationality.” This is magnified greatly in the growth of the modern state and may ultimately be its undoing. The necessary humility to remedy our conflicts cannot be institutionalized.
amusingly enough i was reading into a student of Max Weber just recently - Robert Michels and his breakdown of human institutions as

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

The "iron law of oligarchy" states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations. The relative structural fluidity in a small-scale democracy succumbs to "social viscosity" in a large-scale organization. According to the "iron law," democracy and large-scale organization are incompatible.
alot of people perceive (real or not) this in the current system, which does bring a wildcard into the 'rational' analysis.
Yes, this process is a "wildcard," but, in spite of that hazard, I still will attempt a "rational" analysis for what it may or may not be worth.

Social-Political systems are not unlike biological ones. As biological organisms age, cells die and are replaced. Most, but not all mistakes during replication are corrected by DNA polymerase. Since not all errors are corrected, they accumulate over time until the system can no longer function through various levels of organization as they break down and we age. This process of accumulation of cell death and errors can be accelerated by disease, trauma, etc.

Similarly, political-social systems are dynamic and constantly attempt to manage challenges and changes, but, in spite of their efforts, through their own conflicted motives and consequent instrumental and epistemic irrationality, errors will accumulate. In periods of rapid change such as our modern era, this process accelerates and mistakes pile up. Systems fail, break down, and die.

I recoil a bit when the term “iron law” is used since it has the feel of Marxist cant, “iron law of wages, class, and such,” likely due to my family’s experiences with Stalinism. However, it is true that a human species that has survived through collective behavior will always require some concentration of power around assorted leadership configurations including oligarchies, dictatorships, monarchies, military juntas, as well as democracies liberal and illiberal and perhaps others leadership systems yet to be conceived.

Concentrations of authority are inevitable, but no power, individual or group, has ever been able to retain the sustained brilliance and creativity to meet leadership challenges effectively in perpetuity. The accumulation of mistakes and the breakdowns, like those within organisms, are inevitable manifesting a form of “iron law” if you wish.

Consequently, democracies can be compatible only for a limited period of time within large or small scale organizations. Organizations are subject to the same process of breakdown regardless of size. Larger systems can make more errors but can also absorb more due to their diffuse complexity, and while the smaller systems will make fewer errors, the errors can be more dangerous and potentially catastrophic due to their simplicity and limited options.

Concentrations of power and leadership for the human species are inevitable as are their failure. This is why checks, balances, and a viable opposition are essential for a relatively sustainable society as well as the necessary struggles with their conflicts, gridlocks, and periods of disorder. Utopias are air castle constructions. Politics is simply the act of crafting temporary, imperfect solutions for recurrent human evils.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Post by noddy »

kmich wrote:

I recoil a bit when the term “iron law” is used since it has the feel of Marxist cant, “iron law of wages, class, and such,” likely due to my family’s experiences with Stalinism.
.
of course , id never take any political hyperbole seriously, its an absurdity of borderline tourettes.
kmich wrote:
However, it is true that a human species that has survived through collective behavior will always require some concentration of power around assorted leadership configurations including oligarchies, dictatorships, monarchies, military juntas, as well as democracies liberal and illiberal and perhaps others leadership systems yet to be conceived.
Concentrations of authority are inevitable, but no power, individual or group, has ever been able to retain the sustained brilliance and creativity to meet leadership challenges effectively in perpetuity. The accumulation of mistakes and the breakdowns, like those within organisms, are inevitable manifesting a form of “iron law” if you wish.
the interesting aspect of his speil wasnt so much the accumulation of mistakes as the need for collecting like mindeds to actually get things done - this of course generates an oligopoly of insiders with power, as a natural course of action.

its a reasonably coherant viewpoint on one of the mechanisms our democracies get stale I think.
kmich wrote:

Consequently, democracies can be compatible only for a limited period of time within large or small scale organizations. Organizations are subject to the same process of breakdown regardless of size. Larger systems can make more errors but can also absorb more due to their diffuse complexity, and while the smaller systems will make fewer errors, the errors can be more dangerous and potentially catastrophic due to their simplicity and limited options.

Concentrations of power and leadership for the human species are inevitable as are their failure. This is why checks, balances, and a viable opposition are essential for a relatively sustainable society as well as the necessary struggles with their conflicts, gridlocks, and periods of disorder. Utopias are air castle constructions. Politics is simply the act of crafting temporary, imperfect solutions for recurrent human evils.
it was just an aside triggered by your mention of Max Weber within the context of Irrational Politics, utopias are not on my agenda.

Im personally dubious of demanding rationality from our politics, our passions and ego's demand more.. more.... more...
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence
Abstract

People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. Trials with greater belief resistance showed increased response in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex. We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD signal in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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kmich wrote:Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence
Abstract

People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. Trials with greater belief resistance showed increased response in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex. We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD signal in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.
I dunno. I would not be surprized if this localized brain activity attribution stuff turns out to be little more than 21st century phrenology. It's as if everybody decided the wind was caused by all the trees bending over at same time.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Nonc Hilaire wrote:
kmich wrote:Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence
Abstract

People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network—a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. Trials with greater belief resistance showed increased response in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex. We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD signal in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.
I dunno. I would not be surprized if this localized brain activity attribution stuff turns out to be little more than 21st century phrenology. It's as if everybody decided the wind was caused by all the trees bending over at same time.
Of course, the title is "Neural correlates...," and correlation is not causality. While brain function is a necessary condition for conscious activity, that does not mean that brain activity is necessarily a causal origin for my rigidity of political opinion any more than the engine in my car is the causal explanation for my driving to visit my aging aunt Svetlana.

Contemporary neurosciences conduct research limited by their methodological instruments: imaging, electrophysiology, neurochemistry, and behavioral test measurements. We can only assess brain "hardware" and its tangible matter with these tools. This unfortunately leads some, but thankfully not all, researchers to mistake their assumptions derived from nothing more than instrumental limitations for principles of metaphysics and epistemology, such as the assertion "consciousness can be nothing more than electrical/chemical brain activity." A. N. Whitehead called such reifications "the fallacies of misplaced concreteness." Most scientists have little or no formal training in logic or philosophy.

The article was interesting in that it suggests that we may have evolved the brain hardware that provides the conditions for irrationality in politics long before our historical or political lives, since natural selection is a much longer term development. Why? Perhaps more ancient, primitive conditions may have demanded more immediate and stable understandings to respond to immediate threats and the urgent warnings of others for our primeval survival.

Critical thinking may have been a very recent historical, cultural development that requires much more effort than the dogmatic tendencies that natural selection wired up for us. In a more hopeful vein, the individual variations in the study suggested that new system supports for more reasonable and impartial responses may be in development.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Quillette | In praise of ignorance
Our intolerance of ignorance hides questions of great practical significance behind veils of ideology, turning these questions, and the human lives that ride on them, into mere opportunities to signal our group membership. To have a chance at solving our problems we must not condemn each other for openly stating our ignorance. Those with the audacity to admit that they have nothing intelligent to say about a difficult topic should be praised for refusing to further erode our common epistemic standards, not scorned for failing to toe some party line. To paraphrase Woody Allen, the most beautiful words in the English language are not “I love you,” but “I don’t know.”
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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Typhoon wrote:Quillette | In praise of ignorance
Our intolerance of ignorance hides questions of great practical significance behind veils of ideology, turning these questions, and the human lives that ride on them, into mere opportunities to signal our group membership. To have a chance at solving our problems we must not condemn each other for openly stating our ignorance. Those with the audacity to admit that they have nothing intelligent to say about a difficult topic should be praised for refusing to further erode our common epistemic standards, not scorned for failing to toe some party line. To paraphrase Woody Allen, the most beautiful words in the English language are not “I love you,” but “I don’t know.”
Why, thou say'st well. I do now remember a saying: 'The
fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be
a fool.'- William Shakespeare As You Like it, Act 5, Scene 1
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Post by noddy »

People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views.
this seems self evident to me because facts are meaningless without priorities.

the simplest example is creatures breaking out of the zoo - nothing rational about losing guaranteed feeding, shelter and healthcare , yet any facts presented about these topics are irrelevant.

the critter had other priorities.
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Re: Why People Are Irrational about Politics

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kmich wrote:Contemporary neurosciences conduct research limited by their methodological instruments: imaging, electrophysiology, neurochemistry, and behavioral test measurements. We can only assess brain "hardware" and its tangible matter with these tools. This unfortunately leads some, but thankfully not all, researchers to mistake their assumptions derived from nothing more than instrumental limitations for principles of metaphysics and epistemology, such as the assertion "consciousness can be nothing more than electrical/chemical brain activity." A. N. Whitehead called such reifications "the fallacies of misplaced concreteness." Most scientists have little or no formal training in logic or philosophy.
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