Just another political rant.
It’s election year. The year of flooded unsolicited political texts and interrupting ominous TV commercials warning you to vote or suffer dire consequences. Politics is at the top of everyone’s mind. People want to know who you’re voting for and love to get riled up about this stuff like it’s a sports game.
Politics is a unique subject in that anyone can be an expert without any requirements or accreditations—and most people apparently are. It doesn’t matter how much or how little they’ve studied a particular issue and its wide-ranging effects; anyone can have a strong opinion, and most people seem to do.
“they deal with questions that have no definite answers, so there’s no back pressure on people’s opinions. Since no one can be proven wrong, every opinion is equally valid, and sensing this, everyone lets fly with theirs.” -Paul Graham
It’s uncommon to hear someone say that they haven’t done enough research or simply don’t know the right answer. However, this should be a more common answer. We don’t pretend to understand chemistry or physics unless we’ve spent many hours studying it. Even still, expert physicists admit that sometimes they don’t know the answer. Why is politics any different?
As I mentioned, politics is unique. It’s unlike math where 1+1=2, no ifs ands or buts about it. If someone tries to argue that 1+1=5, they’re unquestionably deluded. With politics, however, two opposing takes could actually both be correct. Two opposing takes could both be incorrect. And to add to the complexity, there is no way to be 100% certain without hindsight.
Unless you have a functioning time machine and have already seen it play out in the exact same circumstances, you cannot be 100% certain that a policy will result in an outcome. Even if it’s already happened in the past, that doesn’t guarantee it’ll happen now.
When too many immeasurable factors exist, you can’t accurately calculate a simulated result. The only way to know for certain is to watch it play out. This is why we can’t predict things like the weather, the economy, and sports matches with absolute certainty.
The uncertainty of politics is similar to financial markets. It always has been and still is impossible to predict the financial markets with absolute certainty. If you study the greats, Warren Buffet, George Soros, Paul Tudor Jones, or Peter Lynch, you’ll find that they all make losing bets some of the time. And still, their winning bets weren’t 100% certainly going to win either. Every position has a probability between 0.01% to 99.9%. It theoretically can’t be impossible nor can it be certain.
“We’re right 50.75 percent of the time… but we’re 100 percent right 50.75 percent of the time. You can make billions that way.” – Robert Mercer
Financial markets are complex due to the interworkings and codependencies of different parts of the economy. There are also incalculable factors involved such as psychology, conflict, and weather, among others that greatly, unpredictably, and suddenly affect the markets. What was once an 80% chance of an investment working can go to 0.1% overnight with the breakout of an unanticipated war or a hurricane. And that is totally out of your control and unpredictable.
Politics is inherently characterized by the same entropy. Policies can and do have knock-on effects, adverse effects, side effects, unintended consequences, trade-offs, etc. A policy can be very promising at face value, but until further digging, it is revealed to have a net-negative outcome in practice.
Despite this lack of certainty I still think we should have an opinion and it’s fine to hold a strong opinion. However, more people should be grounded in the reality that they or anyone else are making guesses. Thus, when presented with new information your original guess can and sometimes should change. If this is never the case, perhaps you’re falling into a confirmation bias spiral.
“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” – Warren Buffett
To formulate a good guess, we should strive to gather enough unbiased information to formulate a relatively high probable outcome for what we want to happen. In other words, we should have an informed opinion or an educated guess on what should and will happen. This may sound like the obvious thing to do, but it doesn’t seem to be the common course of action.
Today politics is highly tied to people’s identities. You don’t resonate with a certain party, you are either a Democrat or a Republican. This becomes a big problem. When an opinion is tied to one’s identity then it becomes very difficult to change and easy to manipulate facts no matter what or how new info is presented. Furthermore, once sides are established, the reinforcing tribalist tendencies kick in.
“People believe that they know way more than they actually do. What allows us to persist in this belief is other people. In the case of my toilet, someone else designed it so that I can operate it easily. This is something humans are very good at. We’ve been relying on one another’s expertise ever since we figured out how to hunt together, which was probably a key development in our evolutionary history. So well do we collaborate, Sloman and Fernbach argue, that we can hardly tell where our own understanding ends and others’ begins.” – Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds, Newyorker
Politics is complex and extensive. In order to package it in an understandable fashion, each respective party simplifies its take with a skew catered to its own affiliation. Like CNN with Democrats and Fox News with Republicans. Most sources have their own bias, however slight or blatant. As a result, certain viewpoints are reinforced within a political party attracting people within and detracting people who are not. This, by definition, is propaganda.
In my view, if a person wants to be educated on political current events, they should understand what both sides are saying and what is happening through a neutral lens. Sources like Tangle News and The Free Press provide just that. Only then are you well-positioned to make an educated guess on what can and should happen. Unbridged from the forces of tribalism.
I am subscribed to Tangle’s daily newsletter. They write about current political events, sharing what the right is saying, what the left is saying, and the author’s take—who is independent and seems very rationalistic. The author occasionally changes his mind in hindsight and admits flaws in his prior judgment and thinking. I cannot recommend Tangle enough. I am not paid or affiliated in any way but genuinely think that if more people read Tangle it would do a great service. You may also be interested in the author’s Ted Talk, 3 Ideas for Communicating Across the Political Divide.
With the chauvinistic landscape of today, disagreements quickly escalate into aversion. The left can’t believe that a person supporting Trump could possibly think that way and the right can’t fathom how a person can’t see the danger with Kamala in office. How did we reach such a disconnect?
The great irony of all this is everyone mostly wants the same outcomes. Nobody wants to live in an unsafe country. Everyone wants to afford healthcare. Everyone wants access to quality education. And believe it or not, everyone wants businesses to succeed. Most of the conflict arises about how these will be achieved and by how much. We’re on the same team, fighting for the same things, but vehemently disagree on how to achieve it and by how much. Due to such severe disagreement, we no longer see each other as on the same team.
The most frustrating thing about politics today is the lack of civil discourse and mutual respect. It’s a very hostile environment. Vulgar and distasteful. People of the same partisan get along quite well. They’ll go to parties and conferences together. While together, they’ll mock and insult the other side. Mix people of different views and it can turn sour very quickly. They become oppositions by affiliation just like a gang would.
“Intense political animosity should be avoided because it causes much mental malfunction, even in brilliant brains.” – Charlie Munger
It has become normalized in the United States to post yard signs saying f*** a certain candidate. To celebrate the downfall and misfortunes of another candidate and their supporters. For candidates to trade insults on looks and other trivial matters instead of focusing on policies and abilities as president. How is this not absurd.
I used to make many of the same mistakes I mentioned above. I accepted information at face value, from biased sources, without questioning or further research. I had presumptions about people with opposing views. I was emotional in my reasoning. I was not critical of my own biases and the basis of my information sources. Overall, I was not really forming my own opinion.
I have close friends and family who would be considered far-right, far-left, and somewhere in between. When they speak on politics, I now always make a concerted effort to listen with an open mind and to respect their opinion.
“It’s nearly impossible for any relationship to deteriorate when there is mutual understanding.”
Facts or data usually will not change one’s mind. Insulting or simply not respecting their viewpoint could have the opposite intention; it could strengthen their current opinion.
The first step in political discourse, or any sensitive discourse for that matter, is to listen and understand where they are coming from. They may want the same thing as you but have a skewed plan on how to get there. Or a skewed idea of what people with your viewpoint are like. This is precisely how dangerous ideologies like racism get reinforced within a person. Just plain ignorance and skewed perception or misunderstanding.
A year ago, I came up with a solution to all the political tension we experience today. There is a way to productively coexist with opposing opinions. The solution I discovered is this: If I had to minimize the complexity of all the tension in the world into one magical solution, I think it would be to reach a mutual understanding. Not agreement, but understanding.
I think the lack of civil discourse and listening to each other is the single greatest flaw of modern politics. Perhaps the greatest flaw of society as a whole.
“I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” — Charlie Munger
Economic Motivation 