A podcast with me and Andrew Heaton. He was a good interviewer. At one point, I remark that the Intellectual Dark Web (I don’t call it that) has a large number of people with a background in psychology and comedy. I wonder why having a background in comedy makes someone potentially receptive to the view that shutting down opposing views is wrong.
Category Archives: Three-Axes Model
Maintaining political sanity
Channeling anthropologist Clifford Geertz, Timothy Taylor offers this advice.
- What effort do you make to see yourself as those from the other sides of the partisan divides see you?
- Do you have the “merest decency” to see those with other political beliefs as sharing a nature with you?
- Do you see yourself and your political beliefs “as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases”?
- To what extent is your objectivity a matter of self-congratulation?
- To what extent is your tolerance a sham?
In a similar spirit, I wrote,
I wish that people could treat their political beliefs the way that they treat their religious beliefs: as ideas and values that they find appealing, but which are by no means the one true way.
TLP watch: the “caravan”
On Twitter, Russ Roberts writes,
The caravan is a perfect example of @KlingBlog’s great insight into politics and ideology, the three languages of politics
He refers to the caravan of migrants trying to cross from Central America to the United States. Indeed, from a progressive point of view, the main point is that the migrants are an oppressed class and those who want to stop them are oppressors. From a conservative point of view, the main point is that clear national borders are part of civilization and crossing those borders without permission is barbarism. And from a libertarian point of view, national borders are used to keep people from engaging in voluntary exchanges: between worker and employer; between landowner and tenant, or buyer. I am pretty certain I could find all three types of commentary on the caravan.
A more subtle point is that the three languages help explain what gets into the news and sticks there. If an event can arouse strong outrage on all three dimensions, it sticks, regardless of its long-term significance, or lack thereof. So the NFL football players kneeling during the national anthem was a major story, as is the caravan. For a story to gain prominence, it helps if it can be quickly and easily digested into outrage along the three axes.
I cringe that these melodramas are classified as “politics.” We need a different term. Perhaps “outrage theater.”
Revisiting the Hidden Tribes poll
Several commenters did not like the poll, and a reader suggested that I try the Hidden Tribes quiz. Ugh! What a terrible survey instrument.
I would like to believe that there is a large portion of the population that is tired of hyper-partisanship. But if there is such a majority out there, this poll is not a credible way to find it.
I would trust a survey based on my three-axes model more than I would trust the Hidden Tribes report. If the general public is more centrist or nuanced, that would show up as a lot of people not consisting aligning with any one axis.
The non-polarized segment of America
It’s large, according to a study by Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon, helpfully summarized by Yascha Mounk, who writes,
According to the report, 25 percent of Americans are traditional or devoted conservatives, and their views are far outside the American mainstream. Some 8 percent of Americans are progressive activists, and their views are even less typical. By contrast, the two-thirds of Americans who don’t belong to either extreme constitute an “exhausted majority.” Their members “share a sense of fatigue with our polarized national conversation, a willingness to be flexible in their political viewpoints, and a lack of voice in the national conversation.”
If Lilliana Mason and Ezra Klein are correct in forecasting a future alignment between a Social Justice party and those who are opposed, the Social Justice party has little chance. Which means they are not correct.
The paper offers this ideological picture:
– Progressive Activists: younger, highly engaged, secular, cosmopolitan, angry.
– Traditional Liberals: older, retired, open to compromise, rational, cautious.
– Passive Liberals: unhappy, insecure, distrustful, disillusioned.
– Politically Disengaged: young, low income, distrustful, detached, patriotic,
conspiratorial.
– Moderates: engaged, civic-minded, middle-of-the-road, pessimistic, Protestant.
– Traditional Conservatives: religious, middle class, patriotic, moralistic.
– Devoted Conservatives: white, retired, highly engaged, uncompromising,
patriotic.
I am skeptical of this breakdown. Where do African-Americans or Hispanics fit? Libertarians and others who with some beliefs that align left and other beliefs that align right?
Still, this report is catnip for me, with all sorts of interesting nuggets. Another excerpt:
The old left/right spectrum, based on the role of government and markets, is being supplanted by a new polarization between ‘open’ cosmopolitan values and ‘closed’ nationalist values. Insurgent populists, usually advancing a strident ‘closed’ agenda, are disrupting many political establishments. Yet we also find in each country that somewhere between 40-60 percent of people do not identify unambiguously with either the open or closed ends of the spectrum, and many are disturbed by the increasing sense of division in their country.
Yoram Hazony from a three-axes perspective
How would one evaluate a government, and what does this imply about nationalism vs. trans-nationalism?
For a conservative, the question is how well the government preserves the civilization of the people within its jurisdiction. According to Hazony, this is most likely to occur within a nation-state, that is a state that consists of people with a shared culture. Trans-nationalism threatens to imperil national civilizations.
A progressive might ask whether a government sides with the oppressor or the oppressed. A government must have enough power to overcome oppressors. This might require trans-nationalism, in order to overcome oppressors in particular nations. But nationalism may suffice.
A libertarian might ask whether a government limits its use of coercion. Trans-nationalism sounds like coercion carried to a higher degree. Even nationalism may be too coercive. It should be easy for people to exercise exit. In the United States, federalism was supposed to ensure relatively easy exit, but that is no longer the case.
Thanks to Yuval Levin for suggesting applying the three-axes model to the issues raised by Hazony.
Closing your mind
Nat Eliason writes (better link?),
Every time you laugh with your friends about “how stupid Trump voters are,” you do a few things:
You further cement the idea in your head that Trump voter = stupid.
You create greater social consequences for those around you voicing anything pro-Trump, thus encouraging greater homogenization of your social group.
You reduce your ability to reasonably engage with ideas that don’t fit your group’s narrative.
I wrote The Three Languages of Politics in part because I realized that most political statements are made for the purpose not of opening anyone’s mind but instead for the purpose of closing the minds of people on your side. Even though President Trump does not fit into my original three axes, the reaction to him is an example of this mind-closing phenomenon.
I keep thinking that I ought to write something on the topic of socialism. But I don’t want to just write something that would closes the minds of those of you who already oppose socialism. I would want to write something that would engage with and open the minds of those who support socialism.
TLP watch
A kind review from Tristan Flock.
In The Three Languages of Politics, Kling argues that to understand our political opponents, we need to update the way we frame disagreements. Liberals, conservatives, and libertarians each have their own tribal language, which often baffles and infuriates outsiders. Until we grasp the nuances and assumptions of each language, mutual understanding is impossible. Fortunately, Kling provides a simple framework for making sense of these semantic differences.
My review of Lilliana Mason’s book
The book is Uncivil Agreement. I conclude,
Consider the persuasive case she builds that citizens’ political behavior is driven primarily by group emotions and tribal loyalty. This would seem to me to support a libertarian view that a better society is one in which most decisions are kept out of the realm of politics altogether. Making good choices is hard enough even for the most rational of centralized decision-makers. If the underlying political behavior is not even rational to begin with, then the prospects for beneficial government intervention must be even more remote.
I thought that the political psychology in her book was very consistent with what I wrote in TLP.
Here is an interview of Mason by Ezra Klein, which struck me as very worth a listen. Neither of them seems to have found that the research moves them in a libertarian direction.
So far, the book still ranks at the top of my list of non-fiction books of the year.
De-coupling vs. post-modernism
scientists depend on what rationality researcher Keith Stanovich calls “cognitive decoupling.” Decoupling separates an idea from context and personal experience and considers it in the abstract. It is the approach used in the scientific method, when performing thought experiments, and when generalizing principles from individual examples. . .
The contrary mode of thinking sees every argument embedded in a particular context. The context of an idea includes its associations, implications, and the motivations and identities of those who advance it.
Pointer from a commenter. I recommend the entire article.
My thoughts:
1. The “contrary mode of thinking” strikes me as post-modernism.
2. It seems to me that “decouplers” and post-modernists must unavoidably talk past one another. The decoupler thinks that decoupling is necessary for rationality. The post-modernist thinks that decoupling is impossible.
3. This language can be used to re-cast my 2003 essay criticizing Paul Krugman. We might now say that my claim was that economists are trained to decouple, and instead he was doing the opposite.
4. The term “outgroups”in the article is illustrated by a chart in which coastal progressives are the primary outgroup for the Intellectual Dark Web. Of course, since coastal progressives wield the post-modernist cudgel.
5. In fact, I had come to think of the left as always refusing to decouple. But there are those on the left who are ardent decouplers, and they are in the IDW. I suppose that by the same token there must be people who, even though they are on the right, routinely deploy post-modernist arguments.
I still have not finished processing the Falcovich piece, and again I thank the commenter for the pointer. This will not be my last word on the topic.