This is a strange post for me, which I avoided trying to post for a long time. It did not start as a potential Glibs post, but as my attempt to organize my ideas and make a little sense of how well… completely illogical some otherwise competent people can be on certain topics. In my estimation, off course.  As I work in a company full of engineers, I am always amazed on how limited they are outside their narrow specialty and how much they lack intellectual curiosity… and not only about politics related topics.

The very basic issue is, sadly, clear – politics plays a significant role in our society. The more the government grows, so does the importance of politics. What is the problem with politics? People have been debating politics and philosophy for what is, for practical purposes, forever. Times immemorial and such. And no consensus is in sight. Public choice theory has covered this at length, but ain’t nobody got time to read all that. I will give my $0.52 (can never keep up with inflation) and summarize my thoughts.

One of the first things I notice is the amount of ignorance for most people debating things on utilitarian basis is astounding. They have no idea how what they advocate for would work in practice, if the numbers add up, if it has been tried before and what were the results. They have no understanding of how things work in other countries or how they did in the past. And I am talking about people with advanced degrees in engineering or medicine, which are a category the world at large generally considers “educated.” It does not improve things that most of the information out there is often wrong and quite manipulated – how many believe Hoover lowered taxes and had a laissez-faire approach? At this point you simply cannot trust much of what you read without a huge grain of sodium chloride, you need to put in work yourself to find nuggets of truth.

Some say that people should know they are uninformed and somehow defer to “experts”. But if you are uninformed, how can you tell who these people are? And the “experts” have their own agenda and are certainly not disinterested.  It’s a catch-22, something that happens a lot when it comes to politics.

Some people, I noticed, suffer from what I call the “Hey, I’m doing my job!” misconception. First they assume that if they do their job honestly and to the best of their ability, everyone else does as well and, and if everyone else did theirs, especially bureaucrats and politicians, things will go great. It is also a sort of comparative advantage thinking: it is a better use of my time doing say… engineering then worrying to much about day to day aspects of poverty relief, and other people are better suited for dealing with those. I can just outsource good deeds to the government, in a way.

The sad truth is that many people won’t just do their job right, quite the opposite. In fact the exact people who don’t to a good job in a useful field are the ones who use the time not spent doing something productive in order to climb through the ranks of organizations, both private and public. That is how a country ends up led by a bunch of politicians no one would trust with running a news stand. It is how good engineers in corporations end up with incompetent middle managers – because the good engineers spend their time working, while the bad ones spend their time becoming managers. Not to generalize, off course, there are fine managers out there.

People use completely different methods in politics than in their job. If you take a group of really good … let’s say plumbers, you notice they generally reach similar conclusions in their job and how to do most things. These same people can have wildly different views on politics. You will find a socialist, a centrist and a libertarian among this group. Each one believes they are rational and knowledgeable in their politics, but clearly this is not possible for all. And usually it is untrue for most, irrespective of their politics.

For many people some things simply feel right or wrong and they have no intellectual need to go any deeper. Many strong feelings influence things – fear of chaos – without government controlling the economy/morality there is chaos; compassion – think of the children; envy – why are others more successful than me; self-interest; generally dislike of change, feeling of disgust at things and much more. The issue is that feelings are so strong many do not need something else. I am not advocating for a cold rationality in everything, feelings have their place, but must be constraint by reason. Frankly, I sometimes am surprised at the sufficiency of deep down belief I see in some libertarians as well, due to my completely different approach, as I have mentioned in a previous post. Even if the conclusions align with mine.

I had a friend say, during a discussion with other people over beers, “the problem with debating Pie is that he knows all sorts of facts and arguments I cannot counter, but I feel I am right”. He had made no effort to learn new facts or develop new arguments on his own. There was no need, he felt he was right. Two weeks later it was the same – if I am stuck for arguments in a discussion, I spend some time to clarify things. Most don’t. This stops any discussion in its tracks. The modern left embraces this and started seriously pushing feelings and “lived experiences” as having superior worth to logical arguments. My issue with this is that there is no way to come to an agreement. I feel this way, you feel that way, what now? Why is your lived experience more relevant than mine?

The conclusion here is murky. So I leave it with a quote: “Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired.”-  Johnathan Swift

Ok, Pie, tell us what you really think…

I will note that the origin of the thought behind this post was to avoid demonizing opposing opinions, something along the lines of “good people have bad politics”. But as I aged and saw the world around me, it became harder and harder for me to see many people as just misguided… And oh boy this the last couple of years not improve things. It is facile to demonize the other sides – especially when they aggressively advocate for all things one despises – and this should be avoided, but having become a cynical misanthropic bastard I find it more and more difficult.

This causes some sadness in me because there is so much cool stuff in the world, even on a platform like YouTube. Engineering, architecture, art of all types, food, drink and so on. And so much potential. As most, I don’t want to dislike or even hate other people, but sometimes people make this difficult.

Humans are assholes, mostly. Present company included, of course. Well that is a bad word, but people have all sorts of innate issues. They can be narrow minded, tribal, petty, aggressive, violent, unconcerned by others, power hungry, corrupt and all that. There is not point of an exhaustive list, the point is these things exist. Off course people can be kind, generous, selfless, industrious and all that as well. The point is, there is light and there is darkness, and no amount of “education” will create “the new man” in which these things are profoundly altered.

The big question at this point is why are we no closer to consensus? Simply put, it is because there is no way to reach it. If there was, we would be there after the odd 5000 years. If we are not there yet, we are not getting there anytime soon. Values play the significant role here, and these are acquired in various ways and, as some research shows, some may be innate or genetic if you will.

For a typical example, a libertarian with a deontological belief in maximizing liberty will not be swayed by arguments that reducing liberty is better for say some statistical indicator of social well being – even if that were true. If the main desired outcome, the end in itself, is liberty, other outcomes are secondary and as such should not come at the expense of the primary. Similarly, a socialist that wants equality of outcome above all, and is honest about it, will not care whether this will come at the cost of liberty or prosperity, as long as that poverty is equally distributed. For someone on the right who thinks vice is bad, arguments about the ills of prohibition hold little sway.

Further complicating things is that values can be foundational, deep and personal. So deep that people do not even try to analyze them by. This is one reason debates get so heated. One thing to have an argument attacked, another a deep personal belief, which is like having a part of yourself attacked. Overall most people are not strictly utilitarian or deontologist, but a combination of the two. The thing is that maybe outcomes may be debated somewhat more, but basic values not so much.

I worked all my life with the high tech crowd. And it was a constant disappointment. People tend to be painfully ignorant. I noticed that in friends, family, coworkers. This is, sadly, an objective fact. They know little of things that are not their direct day to day interest and have little curiosity outside a few narrow concerns. And while politics seem to be of great concern to many, this is addressed superficially. Most do not spend time looking for knowledge. For some reason, politics is seen as that area of human life where everyone knows by default.

When I say knowledge, I don’t mean just finding material that confirms what you already believe. That is easy. I mean the actual intellectual effort to engage things outside the ideological comfort zone. Beyond acquiring information, one needs to do additional work to filter, understand, and process it. Spend a few hours once in a while alone, quietly thinking. Most get in hot debates online or in person, they repeat their side’s argument over and over. Few take the time to see if they can debunk their own arguments. Few think of the basics. Why do I believe what I do on issue X and does it make sense? There is little insight beyond the surface. They do not think of second order effects at all. Of how everything influences everything else. Bastiat’s what is seen and unseen always comes to mind…

These are things I thought about for a while. Do not demonize, find a good explanation. But in the end, true as some of the above may be, is just part of the problem. The essence of it is not in not thinking. At all. About anything. But even this is not enough. Heterodox lefties like Jonathan Haidt also say it is about values, and the origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logical reason. His book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion is all about this. But he is excessively charitable, in my view. He speaks of standard values like compassion vs order/hierarchy, fairness and so on.

This sounds good but is mostly nonsense. Left leaning sociologists more correctly asses conservative wish for hierarchy – especially one where they are on top – and a world perfectly ordered to their liking – without care of who gets wrecked in the process. But they most charitably asses the left saying it is about compassion. More serious studies show the main driving force on the left are envy and self-interest, with compassion – while it exists – coming in third.

Most people are driven by tribalism and self-interest and feelings of superiority much more than by compassion or fairness. For many opinions are just fashion statements, they hold whatever is fashionable in their in group. And this makes them feel better, smarter, and morally superior. And this makes them petty tyrants and revel in imposing their will on unwilling others. A cursory reading of left twitter and comments on papers like the Guardian proves this. Envy, self-interest rule and superiority to the “others” rule supreme. Compassion is barely noticeable and even with that NIMBY sometimes rules supreme… Help the poor sure, not with my money and not in my neighborhood and not with any effort from me, but yes help the poor, tax the rich or something, richer than me anyways.  And going on the right, it is not much different.

Here I should have some sort of conclusion or other, but I do not as I am not optimistic. Articles like this have been written thousands of times, probably, with little to show, other than maybe make the author feel good about themselves (similar to my previous post on keeping an open mind). So why write it? Well why does anyone do anything? Boredom I suppose. And whisky.