Why I don't discuss politics with friends

I really dislike many of the "rationalist" political blogs you see in the tech sphere lately.

- They are often not shy about flirting with fascism and fascist ideologies

- They ignore that the purpose of politics is often to be deliberately irrational, or to balance "irrational" acts based on commonly-held values with other higher-level planning. E.g. Nobody likes a technocrat, because a technocrat would let a kid who fell down a well die there, since the cost of rescuing them could technically save the lives of 3 others someplace else

- They often re-hash arguments which have been had and settled like 200 years ago, and act as if those arguments are irrelevant today, "since AI and Crypto changed everything". Act as if Thomas Malthus would have had his world rocked by Dogecoin.

It just feels like there's a million "rationalist" JavaScript developers with political blogs lately who know virtually nothing about the foundations of economics or political science. What's more, they're all so good at critical thinking, they all agree with each other too!

I always wondered, what those Pinkerton man thought, when they attacked union members with machine guns for their masters in the guilded age.

For me, "avoid being dogmatic yourself" is failing to bring home one very important point to avoid being dogmatic: understand that you are equally susceptible from the mistakes/misunderstandings that you blame others for.

An example in this article is the following part

> my angle ... becomes that of opposing their tribalism. Unfortunately ... most people just view me as the opposite of their own tribe

But this part totally fails self-reflection: it talks about your "conservative friends" and your "liberal friends". They are labelled "conservative" or "liberal". How does the author know that the interlocutor did not act exactly like the author: the interlocutor brought a subject, from their point of view their position on it where pretty neutral and sensible, the author reacts by playing the devil's advocate. They therefore see the author as the "conservative" or "liberal" person, and if they follow the author's strategy, they will play the devil's advocate. And then, THE AUTHOR fails to realize they don't actually care about the conclusion.

The lazy answer is: I'm smarter than them, I can tell when it's the case or not. Or: the subject I bring are not political, they are just common sense and sensible position, but they sometimes bring something I disagree with, and this is not common sense and sensible position.

In both case, it's weak and does not acknowledge the possibilities that you may have done the same mistakes as them from time to time (either classifying a "moderate" as "far" just because they were doing the devil's advocate, or presenting opinions that are not "trivially moderate" from the eyes of your interlocutor). It's a detail, but because of that, I'm not sure the author is as "non dogmatic" as they think they are: they are saying what everybody is saying. The large majority of people don't say "I'm dogmatic and my opinions are crazy" (if they believe their opinions are crazy, then it means they don't believe in their opinions and it is not really their opinions).

I find the most productive political discussions are about history. Most people don’t know any history at all, so a willingness to discuss the reason we have the Third Amendment, or the lasting effects of King Leopold’s dominion in Africa, or the Peleponnesian War, makes for a good discussion, and the distance makes people less emotionally tied to their positions and more willing to accept nuance. If we find we disagree, this also gives us social cover to pretend the topic isn’t intensely relevant to the present day.

Some of the best convos I've had are with ideologues, it just requires authentic empathy and effort, which means letting go of moral presuppositions and being willing to really listen to them without injecting your own judgments & opinions. If people subconsciously think you're trying to do that, it'll trigger their defense mechanisms and the convo will instantly shut down (or devolve into chaos).

People love to talk about what they think is important, but NOT when they think they're being setup or playing into someone else's hand.

Not the best title if that’s your message

Well, I know a lot of people in the US who simply don't want to discuss politics at social events these days.

It was a good essay- thanks for writing it :)

I've sent you a line on LinkedIn.

I believe having a partner with directly opposing political views is unsustainable. Partners with adjacent political views may be manageable, or even preferable to a fully aligned one, but those with directly opposing views are a constant source of drama and tension in your life. Political views often reflect deeply held values and beliefs.

Note that various surveys report young women and young men diverging a lot more politically. Partly because women's rights have become so politicised.

Marrying purely for "love" and ignoring core values, mindset compatibility, what they want in life and so on is a recipe for disaster, or at least some deep regrets down the line. I haven't seen nor heard about a single success story a decade or two down the line. Whom to marry is probably the most important decision in our lives. One of reasons why marrying early is too risky - people still massively change till at least 25-30, it cal still work but chances are smaller.

Its a typical junior mistake to marry for love/lust and not think a bit on top of that, in this case I blame parents who don't have some hard talks with their kids explaining them not-so-rosy parts of adult existence. Like initial enormous physical attraction wanes over time, kids crush most of remaining, and what still remains are 2 people and how they treat relationship and each other with that lust tuned down eventually to 0, under various, often not so nice situations. But our parent's generation didn't figure it all out, in contrary the amount of actually nice relationships in higher ages ain't that high.

I didn't have such prep talk neither, nor do I know anybody who had, and had to figure it all on my own via rough trials and failures till finally figuring myself and women out, and then happy marriage (so far, hard knock on the wood). Its like expecting everybody to be sophisticated engineer, learning them to count on fingers and throwing them out and good luck, I am sure you'll figure it out eventually. Some do, some don't. Most don't I'd say.

Politics feels like an integral part of finding a partner nowadays. Which makes sense—values are important to agree upon.

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.

>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 exactly it, from here: https://www.paulgraham.com/mod.html

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.

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 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.

To be fair, I've rarely seen a group fighting itself more than the progressive left. If tribalism truly exists, it exists mostly on the right.

> 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.

I don't think that's true though. I think you're just listening to the loudest voices.

> trans women in abuse shelters should be decided by women

Who decides whether trans women should be included in the deciding group? It's turtles all the way down.

> 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

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. Occasionally you see journey blogposts from people who've figured this out and left the movement, because their beliefs were really "pro life" not just pro forced birth (and occasional forced death of the mother).

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.

this is probably my favorite comment on this post so far, super interesting

if you can find the article I'd love to read it

> 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.

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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.

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"

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

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.

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

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

> 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

I don't know, man. If they're really your friends, those should be non-negotiable.

> 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.

But.. You're going against your own principles here, you can't say that purity test bad and then have a purity test yourself.

I totally get where you're coming from. But regardless of their reason for voting for a candidate, if the net effect is that 150m+ women lost rights and other horrible outcomes, it's the same as endorsing it.

First you try to argue tolerance and understanding, and then you say that "most pro-Palestine views are antisemitic" and that you cut off all contact with people who hold those views. Your hypocrisy is astounding and you should be embarrassed.

> 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’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.

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.

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.

In this scenario, probably by being personally harmed. On the bright side, the harm being done here is far less targeted than the Nazi party, so fewer people will be able to say they’re still fine.

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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.

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.

It seems to me that when some of your friends want to imprison, institutionalize, or straight-up murder some of your other friends, not taking a side and standing up for the latter group of friends is being a shitty friend.

And maybe "How does this benefit me?" isn't the right question to be asking in this situation.

"Moderates" always like to speak in vague terms as if it's not literal murder being proposed by one side. I literally know a guy who is accumulating firearms, has bumper stickers that say "kill your local pedophile", and thinks all trans people are pedophiles. This is not a person I am going to be friends with just because we play the same kind of guitar music.

> 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.”

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"

Priceless! Maybe you should move to the UK. Might be a job opening on the Guardian newspaper where you'd be welcomed with open arms. They think much the same about the British Conservatives and as for the new Reform Party - I guess they are beyond contempt.

That's some US cultural thing, i think. Possibly because you only have two real political options.

If we're philosophising, the isolated suburb life style precludes having a friend group and forces humans - because they need to belong - into tribal allegiances towards larger groups: political, sports fans, some church, Rust, "AI"...

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.

affordability & inflation & services =/= wealth inequality

On the flip side, one black man has reformed hundreds of KKK members through conversation alone.

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Courtesy:_Daryl_Dav...

Sometimes you have to fight¹, but other times engaging with an open mind² really is the most efficient strategy. Shouting at the opposition only cements them in their own thinking; to change minds you have to understand and engage them where they’re at. And yes, this is way easier said than done and can be quite frustrating.

¹ You probably won’t convince a fascist dictator to change their ways by appealing to their better nature, and it would take too long while irreperable damage is being done.

² Even if the other side believes in something appallingly hateful.

This. People don't realize that by discussing and arguing with certain people you are actually giving credence to their appalling beliefs. This is why antivax and flat earth movements are a thing in my opinion, because people have been willing to argue with those fools.

OTOH, I am the kind of person who feels great joy in discovering that I have been wrong about something, I have learned something better, and I have deepened my understanding. It could be about anything. Challenging my viewpoints is very enjoyable.

It surprises me that most people don't seem to feel that way and I struggle to understand why. Apparently, people often feel angry and alienated by the truth. I think that never makes sense, but I've learned to accept that people simply feel threatened by the truth sometimes and I can't usually convince them otherwise.

I would say as I've gotten older, I've actually tried to be a little more grounded in my beliefs. Our political world is so crazy, that I think sometimes, it can even be hard being committed to basic kindergarten morality. "Look at all these bad people doing bad things and being successful, maybe I should do bad things to be more successful" is a challenge to your viewpoints that is worth cutting off at the roots.

I suppose, but there is no such thing as objective morality, it's all subjective. That’s not to say people shouldn’t feel guilt or hesitate when evaluating their past actions, but we often act based on the best framework we had at the time.

Morality evolves, both personally and culturally, and trying to hold a static identity in the face of that change just leads to more internal conflict. It’s uncomfortable, yeah, but clinging to certainty for safety’s sake can be more corrosive in the long run.

Yep agree with this a lot, identity-shattering is dangerous indeed