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How Committed Are You to Facts?
I think a fairly reasonable way of describing the ideal way to come up with political positions is this:
- Use empirics, reason, and philosophy/theology to determine your core values
- Search out for facts to help you understand what courses of action best help you maximize those values, make the best trade-offs, etc.
I’d like to believe all of us are pretty committed to being based in fact. Especially with respect to the opposite commitment, which is not caring at all about facts.
But how committed are you, really?
The Hidden Agreement Within America’s Political Chasm
Here at ReConsider we like to harp on the idea that behind the mass of negativity and hyperpartisanship that dominates American politics, there are mostly shared values.
In Wedged we demonstrated this agreement in case studies. We showed that on even divisive issues such as guns, abortion, and taxes, most people will agree on core values most of the time. We posited that this agreement on values probably extended to other issues.
We eagerly awaited a broader study.
And then we got one!
Did Your Angry Tirade Work?
Anger in politics is common. What is strange is that people defend getting angry as if it is a strategy, rather than an unfortunate product of our emotions getting involved.
How to Combat the “Fake News” War
rump is a big fan of calling various news networks “fake news,” especially when they report something about him he doesn’t like, such as poll numbers. Having a president so antagonistic against the media is certainly new in American politics, even though yellow journalism has been a thing for years, and Republicans coined the term “liberal media” years ago.
What can be done about it?
What Policy We Want Changes by Which Tribe Supports It
A lot of people feel pretty strongly about their political opinions. Often we feel like they are quite set in stone; based on some very deep values that won’t change much.
A lot of people also feel like their opinions are based on well-thought-out logic and reasoning, from gathering evidence.
However, there’s substantial evidence to suggest that when another tribe’s opinions solidify on an issue, our tribe runs away–and we join them. Our opinions on important issues are often fluid and fickle, changing with political wind more than sound thinking.
Go Home 2016, You’re Drunk
Everything’s falling apart! The breakdown of multilateral institutions! Anti-establishment candidates are popping up everywhere! Russia is escalating! China! Syria! Turkey! Terrorism!
What’s it all look like in the long-term?
I Have a Hypothesis On How Your News is Politically Biased
So I think the common narrative about political bias is this: if your news is biased, they tell a story a certain way, or inject a lot of opinion into something. So you might be thinking of talk radio or podcasts or online articles that are telling you quite obviously, “here’s what you should thing! So and so is terrible! Anyone that disagrees with me is an idiot!” That kind of stuff.
But you’re probably pretty clever and you probably have some sense of when that’s happening, even when it’s people that you’re prone to agree with. But I think the way that smart people develop political bias is more nuanced.
“Old People Shouldn’t Vote!” And The Selfish Democracy
It’s not just left vs. right or something else, but young vs. old. It’s not just as if these folks have different interests, but that old people must be fundamentally unfit to vote, or necessarily make bad decisions, because of their age.
On Black and Blue Lives Matter: Breaking Down the Data
In the wake of the recent shootings, people have asked me a bunch about my opinions on Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter, and race relations.
I think for me it is all pretty complex and my views about specific aspects of the movements and what’s the state of race relations in the US compared to some other time is pretty muddled. I think most people would agree that we don’t want unarmed people of any color killed by police, we don’t want shootings, we don’t want police getting murdered. So I wish we could have a kumbaya about that, but I know we’re not there as a nation right now.
All I can really provide are facts that can hopefully help us to think about policy. So below I’ll provide my excerpt on some of the facts about killings of and by police from Wedged.
–Erik
Methinks the Other Party Thinks You’re an Idiot
A friend started a conversation with me about the Vox article “The Smug Style in American Liberalism“, but he thought “smug” applied pretty well to both edges of the political spectrum. I thought about it and I think he may be right.