For all of the author's bloviating and self-congratulating navel gazing, the article manages to largely overlook values, the only mention of them being to dismissively reduce them to irrational tribalism.

In truth, values and ethics are fundamental to effectively discussing politics. After all, all political decisions are ultimately about how we want to shape the world that we as humans live in. There can be no agreement about economic policy without a shared understanding of the ultimate goal of an economy. No agreement about foreign relations without a shared understanding of the role of nations as representatives for groups of humans, and how we believe one group of humans should interact with another group of humans through the lens of nations.

For the last 20 years at least, the leadership of the two main political parties in the US have largely invested in messaging around the values that they represent. The policies are different too, but over time we've gone from a world where there were at least some cases where the two parties had different policies for how to reach the same goals, and into a world where the parties policies are aiming to realize fundamentally different visions of the world, based on fundamentally different values.

In this world, asking "who did you vote for" isn't a matter of tribalism, but it is a (good) proxy for asking someone "what are your values". If you discover that someone has completely different values from you, then discussing policy isn't going to be useful anyway, because there's no way you'll agree on a single policy when you have different fundamental values.

I'll provide an opposing viewpoint. In the last 10 years, I've lost friendships and family because people in my life have voted for candidates that stripped rights away from women, minorities, etc.

Having a vast difference between opinions is fine, but some of their decisions are fundamentally against my core beliefs and have done literal harm to many people I know.

For that reason, terminating family and friendships has been absolutely worth it for me.

Until we can live in a world where fundamental rights are protected and respected, we have no common ground, and it's pointless to tiptoe around these insanely harmful beliefs while maintaining a facade of friendship.

The crucial question is what is "politics"? Are personalities politics? No. Are parties? No. Are inflammatory issues about race, sex or gender or political correctness or immigration? No!

Here is politics:

Are common American citizens able to afford and obtain reasonable health care?

Are common Americans paid a living wage? Can one person earn enough to have a family?

Do our children have a reasonable opportunity to grow, have a productive life and have a family if they want one?

Is the financial situation getting better for Americans or is the difference between earnings and expenditures growing larger. (Hint do we use code words like 'inflation' instead of calling it like it is).

A functioning democracy requires that the common people are enable to formulate and enact laws that they believe are in their best interests. Do the majority of the laws enacted in all the states meet this requirement?

A functioning democracy requires that the common people are able to use the law and courts to right wrongs. Are the common people able to use/afford access to the courts when wrongs are committed.

Do the common news media act as a forum for the common concerns and issues of the People. (Here's looking at you NYT).

Cuo Bono? If the laws passed are not in the interests of the People, and the courts are not accessible by People, who benefits? If the news media are not a forum for the interests of the People, whose interests do they represent. (Here's looking at you Jeff Bezos).

If advertising funds our primary sources of news, whose interests are represented.

Those are simply things you should discuss with your friends. They are questions not answers. This is not rocket science.

(Article starts off be asserting that they don't talk politics with friends then proceeds to describe how to talk politics with friends?)

Friends are people you should support and build up. You shouldn't try to make them feel bad by winning arguments with them. That said- a healthy society is only possible if individuals can exchange ideas about how to run things and then act collectively (aka "politics"). Sometimes people will have different interests and priorities, that lead to them having different ideas about stuff- most of the time this is totally fine.

This basically comes down to respect and communication skills- but for god's sake people- keep on talking about "politics"!

I guess I just don't see "tribalism". I know it's a popular description though for the divisiveness we find ourselves in politically.

But I consider the things important to me, the beliefs, the issues: and they, all of them, align with a progressive, left-leaning ideology. I'm not just glomming on to everything one "tribe" or another stands for ... one group actually reflects everything I believe. (I think I could split a few hairs here and there, but we're still talking perhaps 95% alignment.)

But I don't think that is too surprising. Others, smarter than me, have gone into great detail about the underpinnings of left-leaning or right-leaning world views in people. Fear of change, empathy ... a number of ideas have been put forth. By this reasoning it naturally follows that those of a certain "personality" will also share common beliefs, ideologies.

The implication instead seems to be that unless you are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum you must be "tribal". That feels dismissive.

I'm 52. For me, there was a time when it was considered impolite to talk about sex, religion and politics. Then it became super fun when done with open/questioning/rational/critical minds, and a lot of progress in my own thinking was achieved from the usually non-threatening but lively debates and fights among friends and family for ideas. Then it shifted in the last ten or fifteen years. When social media started having friends of friends, the tribalism kicked in. It was explained very well in a talk between Maria Ressa and Jon Stewart. She is brilliant, and well worth listening to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsHoX9ZpA_M

I can strongly sympathize. The image with the squares and circles hit home hard, from an early age, it's been pretty lonely. Depending on your environment it can be super hard to find others part of the 1%, so you really need to treasure them when you do find them.

One point of criticism:

The usage of the word "moderate". It seems PG's article is the one to blame here. The word "moderate" when used about politics means something to people in English. And given that meaning, saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate", is straight up wrong. What the article is really talking about is that independent thought leads to a set of beliefs that is unlikely to be a very good fit for any particular ideology, and therefore, political party. That's true! But that's not "moderate". That's.. diverse, pragmatic, non-ideological. Those words aren't ideal either, but "moderate" is definitely not it.

The 99%/1% is also greatly overstated in a way. Firstly, it's definitely dependent on locale, culture, subculture, environment, as the writer already says themselves. More importantly, if you manage to somehow get people 1:1 in an environment where they feel safe, it turns out that many actually aren't that tribal/ideological after all, and they do actually have beliefs that span different mainstream tribes. But then that conversation finishes, and they go back to being a tribe member.

I'm pretty sure there's plenty of experiments that directly show the above. That when you give people policy choices that are non-obvious (e.g. they've never thought about), and then make them vote on them, they'll often vote against their tribe. But if you'd beforehand tell them which tribe voted which way, they'll always vote with the tribe.

I like it. There's an easier answer to "why don't people move from tribe to view". It's because it's painful to question one's own beliefs, and that's how that change happens. In fact such a move appears masochistic to many, since it almost never pays to undermine loyalty in favor of principle.

I hypothesize that we're seeing the influence of the legal system on the public turbo-charged by Citizens United money. An attorney is paid to be a "zealous advocate" for their client. This means never spending effort on anything that might be against the client's interest. Self-reflection is stochastically against their interest, so why even risk it? Considering alternative views might be against your interest, so why risk it? Therefore, in this new zeitgeist, such behavior is not just perverse and painful, but even unethical and wrong.

The problem, of course, is that for this system of adversarial argument you need an impartial judge. In theory that would be the public, but it turns out flooding people's minds with unethical lawyer screed 24x7 turns more people into lawyers, not judges. "The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember it." This could very well refer to the value of dignity, honor, integrity, fairness in debate, respect for one's opponents. These are always under assault, but in the last 10 years they have been decimated to the point people don't remember they ever held sway and young people don't know what politics was like when they did.

I'll just add one thing I learned: what people do is way more important than what they say or what their politics is.

I now find it much more practical to focus on things we can agree on and actually do something about in the real world and try to build from that.

Generic political debates are not very actionable and they are risky for social reasons mentioned in the article, so I think they are largely a waste of time with negative externalities.

> After seven years in San Diego, my wife and I have decided to uproot our family and move to the Bay Area. While there were many factors (a new job opportunity, family), a significant reason was finding a community of truth-seeking people.

Funny. The lack of truth-seeking and truth-telling is one of the chief reasons I moved away from the Bay Area.

The "What [the political spectrum] Actually Is" graph shows more independent thinkers to be unintentional moderates. The chart is a claim that independence leads to moderation. I deny that. The most independently minded thinkers I know frequently drift off into extremes where most tribes dare not tread. The tribalists are so moderate in comparison that I would turn that christmas tree upside down.

This is "both-sides-ism" of the worst sort. It's exactly the sort of navel-gazey pablum that gives technical people a bad name.

The author doesn't recognize that it's not "politics" today. Politics is disagreeing on how to fund road improvements. When one party wants to dismantle the state, remove protections for marginalized groups, disavow alliances, engage in absurd imperialism, and flagrantly disregard the rule of law, we're not talking about mere "politics" anymore.

This is "both-sides-ism" of the worst sort. And it gives one the impression that the author is fine being friends with people who hole absolutely horrible beliefs, as long as he doesn't have to know about them.

An interesting blog post that would probably do well to look into something like Rob Kegan's theories of adult development [0] and looking up some stats on how many people fit into each category. People actually categorise fairly well into a model where ~66% of the population simply don't understand the concept of independent thought and rely heavily on social signalling to work out what is true.

That model explains an absurd number of social dynamics and a big chunk of politics - which is mostly people with a high level of adult development socially signalling to the masses what they are meant to be doing.

The important observation is that it isn't intellectual honesty that is the problem or truth-seeking the solution. It is actually whether someone is capable of identifying that truth != popular opinion. People who form their opinions by social osmosis can still be intellectually honest if they land in the right sort of community, but they fall apart under social pressure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kegan#The_Evolving_Self

> when someone asks "who did you vote for"

I find it astonishing that anyone would ask this. The only time I've ever been asked this question has been by pollsters. In my social circle, anyway, the taboo on this question is very strong.

Curious how many comments say "it's not about tribalism, it's just the other side is evil". Ctrl+f for this very word on the page yields interesting results.

> By far, relationships determine the happiness of ones life, and relationships are not beholden to truth. In fact, they are very commonly built on the opposite. Whether a boss' reprimands are deserved or not, employees bond over a common enemy. Entire groups form on the basis of beliefs, false or otherwise. We have a word for this: “religion".

> Despite organized religion dropping in attendance, religious patterns of behavior are still everywhere, just adapted to a secular world. Health, exercise, politics, work, self-improvement -- these are all things I've seen friends employ their religious muscle into, across all spectrums and political aisles. And as we get older, I'm seeing more and more of my supposedly-secular friends engage in such behavior.

I have a hypothesis that all humans are compelled to indulge in a certain amount of magical thinking. We seem to be hard-wired to believe there is more underlying metaphysical order and pattern to the universe than there actually is.

I presume this is evolutionarily advantageous because it's better to assume you have more agency and ability to predict than you actually do. Over-assuming leads to occasional disappointment and frustration when things don't work out, but under-assuming leads to having less impact than you actually could have.

If that hypothesis is true, then probably the best thing for society is to provide cultural structures that let us indulge than impulse in non-harmful ways, instead of, say, giving it to religions that also tell us to murder gay people.

Sort of like how sports function as a safe pressure release valve for the compulsion towards competition and violence.

This hits too close to home.

A while back I realized that most news stations have a clear bias and eventually started to dive deeper on stories I was interested in.

I try to look into the source material when possible and found time and time again that the 'news' either left out key details or completely misrepresented the source material.

I never bring up politics, but friends will often repeat news stories and occasionally I'll bring up key facts that weren't reported on.

This has never changed anyone's opinion. Usually all it does is make the other person upset or they bring up another story to reaffirm their currently held belief.

Thankfully my relationships are strong enough that I haven't lost any friends over this, but it's incredibly isolating. Feels like brainwashing on a massive scale.

That's not to say that the news isn't to be trusted at all, some things are as reported. But, often times this isn't the case and it's more important than ever to think critically and not take news stories at face value. The division is mostly manufactured and I believe at our core most of us want the same things.

I find it easy to discuss politics with friends. The hard part is listening, being open to persuasion yourself. Walzing into a discussion believing the other ones are stupid people with simple arguments rooted in misunderstandings — yeah, that won't fly.

You can smell it in the article. it's right there. The author thinks he's intellectually superior and arrived at his opinion though a pure intellectual pursuit, where the stupid conversation partners can't follow.

I completely understand how you're not having fruitful discussions.

>> be able to understand and empathize with the various (and often opposing) groups involved in a topic

Interestingly, I have seen Elon (DOGE) and others outside of politics (that mega-church leader) telling the public (dare I say, their followers) that one of the main problems with America is empathy, and that we need to _stop_ empathizing with others.

I had quick scan of the comments but I didn't see anybody else make the point, so here is my 2c.

I believe the problem is the two party systems and how our government is set up, people vote for one tribe or the other. There is no _value_ to being educated on individual issues because ultimately you simply have to choose between 2 people who are affiliated with a party.

How awesome would it be if individuals could vote on specific issues, perhaps only after proving they have a working knowledge of the subject matter.

> a congregation member asking "you believe in god, right?"

That's a very good analogy.

For some, believing in god or not doesn't matter much and they'll go to church mostly to make friends and be part of a community.

For others, being expected (or not) to believe in God is a no go, and losing friends/family holding these expectations will be a price to pay.

We all have our boundaries, and disagreements on some specific topics will be out of them. Cutting friends/family with incompatible stances is just one instance of that IMHO, be it political, religious or anything else that matters enough.

Something I try to remember when discussing politics or playing Scrabble: "You can be right, or you can have friends"

I have often observed something about how we build software; I just realized that my observations are of a more fundamental human problem.

First, people are not good at defining problems. They may describe the problem that they want to solve in terms of an outcome, but often times the outcome that they want also includes some aspect that benefits them personally that is separate from the problem that they are describing.

Second, people are not good at separating problem from implementation. in fact, people are horrible at this. I think people have a very difficult time envisioning that the problem and the existing solution implementation (which itself might be making the problem worse) are separate things. so most people rarely consider and often actively oppose, radically different solutions.

In the political sphere, ideology Influences how one frames the problem that one wants to solve, and limits the universe of acceptable solutions. This exemplifies the two points that I raised above.

For example, when talking about healthcare policy, the two main “sides” in the US, both have ideologies that define outcomes in terms of consumer access to medical services, and which constrain allowable implementations to something that resembles insurance, with key differences being about who pays and what is covered and how much coverage one gets.

Just for the purposes of elaborating on my premise, I would point out that not all healthcare delivery systems in the world are designed around the insurance model, And that such a model includes vested interests, regulatory capture, and often incentivizes many participants to optimize in ways that don’t forward the implicit goal of making more people more healthy.

Please don’t reply with your opinions on my imperfect example; I don’t want to have a healthcare policy discussion. I just wanted to provide an example my main points about how humans approach political problem-solving.

If you don't talk politics with friends, who are you going to talk to about that?

Probably nobody.

Who will win the elections then? The forces whose supporters do talk politics with friends.

The author has a huge blindspot: discussing politics with others where it's not a co-operative search for truth; instead it's an opportunity to let your friends explain themselves. Don't challenge them, ask them questions. Let them talk it out. Offer your own observations not as ways to change their minds but as an invitation to elaborate and explore.

You don't need to share your opinions in every conversation. You don't need to challenge another's beliefs that you disagree with or think are factually wrong. You can bond over listening to them. And they can invite you to share your thinking non-judgementally.

>Most people don't have political views, they have political tribes

Agree with this. Also, I do believe most people are appallingly stupid (I might not not be an exception either), cruel and easy to manipulate, and as a result are incapable of making rational decisions that benefit society as a whole. I try to never ever discuss politics with anyone, it's one of the most damaging and useless activities there is.

Usually, interactions with people on (arguably) political issues just leave me stupefied - no, I don't think people born in certain geographical locations are subhuman because of decisions of their current government; no, I don't hate nor wish death and suffering to anyone; no, I don't think the war is necessary and I don't want anyone to be blown to bits by a drone; no, I don't think artificial lines on a map ("countries") define who is wrong and who is right and worth throwing your only life away for; no, I don't think decisions of the government reflect the opinion of the entire population of that country; yes, I do think people I disagree with are real human beings with capabilities of sense, emotion, and thought just like I am; and the list goes on and on. Anyway, most people have a very different idea on the aforementioned examples. I don't care about the replies, just wanted to offload this filth off my head somewhat.

I believe in the future we will see a much more pronounced split between people who prefer reality to those who prefer un-reality.

Un-reality is the mediated, constructed "reality" that can be conjured up and perpetuated through mediums such as the Internet. It needs constant effort behind it to keep it going because it isn't tethered to actual experience. Un-reality is things like the hyper-partisan views on things that seem like they change on a whim, or extremist views on gender relations. It requires a tribalistic level of affiliation. It is something that has evolved to prize self-perpetuation (e.g. memes) over the views it claims to espouse. (This pattern of growth at all costs also occurs in other contexts, such as business.)

Reality, on the other hand, is the messy, boring, uncontrollable and unmediated thing we experience as humans. It is harder to transmit online because it isn't something that is easily swallowed, but it has a universal appeal to us as we recognize humanity in it. Reality has much bigger downs and ups than un-reality does, that's what makes us want to escape it sometimes. It also has really crappy truths and circumstances in it; there's no respawns or undo.

In some sense, this split already exists: fans of un-reality we often label as too online, implying that they prefer online life to actual life. I believe the biggest difference here lies in the preference for mediated vs unmediated interactions.

I think it's somewhat funny that two of the images in this blog post, the two signs, and the miner, are commonly used to mock faux intellectualism and a feeling of moral superiority.

When did discussing politics with your community become a bad thing? In fact that's the primary place you should talk politics, share new ideas and hone your views. If more people did this they wouldn't be getting radicalized by online bots.

Is this an American thing? No one has ever in my life asked me "Who did you vote for?"

I have had plenty of people behave in a way that made it clear they assumed I agreed with them on political matters/issues that would have us voting the same way (sometimes correctly, sometimes incorrectly) but I have never been asked this question. Is it common or is it a contrivance in service of the article?

I think it's ok to be hypocritical and have friends with different vastly political beliefs, in the end relationships; friendships, lovers, etc are not usually an outcome of rational behavior, so I don't mind having friends who are politically different because it's the unconscious connection that brought us together.

As long as there's respect that's what matters.

Name-calling by commentators dehumanised the debates. I still don't understand why it is considered OK.

"They do it" should not be enough of a reason, but it affects youtube income for individuals, so let the market work, I guess? /sarcasm

In the country where I live, the problem is that it became much of a religious question. People feel like one candidate represents values different than mine, and that by not aligning with them, I'm not an ally. I don't have friends with such different values, but managing family has become a big problem during these times. It's very hard, for example, hearing your mother-in-law defending a change in the constitution that would forbid women to have an abortion, even when raped and at any time of pregnancy, when you have a small daughter. That person is actively trying to make the world a horrible place for my family, according to my values and honestly any sane person.

EDIT: typo.

I hear this soooo often. If you can't talk to friends about your honest opinions without being respectful to one another and also being willing to listen to their reasoning and opinions, what kind of friendship is that?

On average people are incapable of holding a moral position through to the end.

- Bad parenting is bad, we should have a permit for it --> are you ready to get denied the right to try having kids?

- Thou shalt not kill --> except those really bad people I don't like!

- Stealing is bad --> except when you're "starving"

Our perception of good and evil are multifaceted, with most of it happening in our background cognition.

There is a strange "mirror" stopping people from exchanging once a rift has opened. Someone else posited that it might be a fight or flight reaction.

I posit that our cognition is based on negation, and thus the shape of our tool impact our results.

I do worry about seeing more of these posts, as a way of SV people - who bare a substantial burden of guilt for enabling the collective mess we’re in because the ad-tech/algorithm dollars were nice - collectively distancing themselves from facing said guilt.

No idea is this particular person is especially part of the problem, I’m just talking about general vibes.

Further, I mute and unfollow aggressively any family or friends that just constantly post political news/rants etc from Facebook and other social media platforms.

One thing I definitely don't do anymore is discuss politics with any friends or family ONLINE.

It's just not worth it. Publish or tweet something if you have something to say and want to reach a lot of people. Talking to ONE person and risking your relationship has a lousy cost/benefit ratio.

This paints a very binary picture. Either you are in or out. Part of this tribe, or this other tribe (ignorantly or not). The article seems to imply that people can't have opinions on political policies unless they are fully informed on not only global affairs but also philosophy and psychology.

I think reality is different - I don't think there are any absolutes that require "knowledge" of e.g. philosophy to get the "right" answer in politics. Instead the right answer (at least in western democracies) is what the people want, even if they are not fully informed.

I view it very much akin to trial by jury - there are highly informed and experienced judges, barristers, solicitors etc but ultimately it is down to the laymen in the jury to make a decision that they see as just. They might reach the "wrong" decision from the perspective of people who are fully informed on the legal processes and the law of the land etc, but that doesn't matter because it is the jury that makes the decision.

So it is for the electorate too.

I have no experience of voting in the US but it appears that a two-party system really stokes the "us Vs them" vibes. The only alternative you have is to totally switch sides. At least in European democracies there is often a plurality of parties to vote for. I've personally moved between the main 3 parties (and there are probably at least another 1 or 2 other minority parties that have different trajectories...) in the UK as my personal situation has changed over the years, and I think that is a very normal thing here.

People do not change opinions because someone told them to. It has to be a result of a narrative with personal experiences. Which is why FAFO is still a big thing.

Hence, any effort trying to convince friends that blue is not green it is not gonna work. Sorry.

I think the groupthink and independent thought axes need to be flipped. Way more toeing the party line and groupthink near the center. The more fringe you get the more independent thought there is. It might be crazy and wrong but it's not groupthink.

Cut a "rationalist centrist moderate" and a fascist who doesn't want to get cancelled because he still needs VC funding and Linkedin connections bleeds.

US politics has been increasingly polarized into positions congruent with facts and policy and our traditional ideals, and positions associated with a general stance of grievance, with an insistent selfishness, with anti-empathy, anti-intellectualism, with "palingenetic ultranationalism". This has been a test of your ideals, of your humanity. It wasn't very hard.

Yes, there is often a lot of nuanced truth in the middle of any argument. But less now, in politics, than in a long, long time. Only a very particular sort of person walks into a liberated Auschwitz and starts shouting "Both sides are too extreme and I'm better than them!" from the rooftops.

Speaking as somebody who spent a lot of time there: A lot of the tropes in the "rationalist" community are inherently conservative-pointing, and it's a general prerequisite for participating there that you have a coherent base of progressive terminal ideals and an attitude suited towards introspection and iteration of your beliefs. Because otherwise you go from zero to Nietzschean ubermensch to Nazi ubermensch to Musk/Thiel brownshirt in no time, having weaponized everything present there to support your priors and idly expand your confidence.

I think there should be a new rule that any time someone writes an article bragging about how he's† a badass independent thinker just like Paul Graham and Eliezer Yudkowsky, he must in the same article identify his major disagreements with Paul Graham and Elizer Yudkowsky. Because to me the authors of these articles seem exactly as tribal as mainstream political and religious groups, they just care about different things. Yeah, I shouldn't be able to guess your views on sex from your views on taxes, but I also shouldn't be able to guess your views on wokeness from your views on AI safety. Yet I can make both predictions with about equal accuracy.

† I have yet to see an article like this written by a woman.

Political discussions for me are like programming. I enjoy them because I like finding bugs in people's logic like I do in programming.

I find a lot of people's political arguments wouldn't compile because of basic logic errors, and I try to point this out. But not many people are interested in this kind of analysis, they instead prefer the tribalist point-scoring like the OP mentions.

I dream of a world where political debates can be syntax-checked. I'm sure you could do it with AI today.

But in the end its all about feelings.

I can't describe how many times I will just go along with someone's passionate ranting on something I disagree with and egg them along because its makes them happy. This is tribalism. I will disagree with the group, and if you saw me you'd think I was the strongest supporter, but I actually vehemently disagree with everything.

There are very few people it's worth having a real discussion with these days.

I don't change my opinion of people for what they think, but it's very rare to find people who reciprocate this.

Excellent post.

It wasn’t always like this. I remember when you could be pro-gun and pro-environment—and still have thoughtful, respectful conversations with people who held different beliefs.

Today, if you’re not fully aligned with every talking point of a political party, you’re instantly labeled either a fascist or a communist. And sometimes it borders on absurd: the moment party leadership shifts its stance, the whole tribe flips with it. It wasn’t that long ago that Republicans staunchly opposed tariffs. Now? They’re all in.

My question is: What changed? When did we become so tribal—and why?

Wrote this after noticing myself repeating the same conversational pattern over the years w/ friends, across the political spectrum

Ah, another apt time to mention one of my favorite papers, Michael Huemer's In Praise of Passivity. https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/papers/passivity.htm

Basically it argues the most moral thing in a democracy is to do nothing at all. You simply can never make a truly well informed decision over such a complex system, not even with several lifetimes of dedicated work towards it.

Generally speaking I don't take anyone's political opinion seriously unless they have read and have a cogent response to this paper. I'll gladly just let them yap away and think I agree with them, regardless of my actual views. It's sort of like not taking philosophers seriously unless they've considered the question of solipsism first.

I don’t discuss politics with anyone anymore. Just wish I had made that decision 30 years ago…

I really resonated with this blog article, and ended up reaching out to Ashwin on LinkedIn to connect. This is probably the most concise and clear description I've read of the problem, and I think sometimes recognizing the problem and really understanding is the first step to turning things around.

Like Ashwin, I don't believe that this is "fixable", in so much that humanity as a whole has a tendency towards tribalism that's innate to being human, and this is part of what allowed societies and civilizations to form, as much as it carries the downsides of interrupting reasoning and creating the conditions for warfare. Rather, I try to seek out people who are able to reason and have discussions.

I definitely appreciated reading this, as it felt very relatable in a way that most things do not.

The article misses one pretty huge thing: up until maybe 10-15 years ago, politics was - mostly - differences around theories of economy, where both sides had valuable arguments for and against them. Out of that, you could cut compromises and work bi-partisan.

Now? It's by far not among differences in economic policies any more. The differences are much more fundamental: the rights of LGBT people to exist, the rights of women to have a life outside of breeding children, minorities having the same rights as the majority. The questions that form the divide are binary in nature, not a spectrum any more. When differences become existential in nature, reconciliation is impossible - either you grant the universal freedoms to everyone or you do not.

> I think there are two main reasons, the first being the sheer intellectual difficulty of crafting an informed political view leads people to tribalism out of convenience.

What's the difference between tribalism and deferring to experts on complex subjects, e.g. climate change? I have a deep skepticism of people who think they can personally reason through any complex topic from first principles. It shows a lack of humility and self-awareness. Nobody has the time to build that kind of expertise in every domain, and there is wisdom in deferring to the hard won experience of others. But the type to think they can reason through everything seems like the type to call this "tribal politics."

Trying to imagine writing 3,000 words about how Paul Graham and I have ascended beyond tribes without realizing I’m just in a tribe with Paul Graham

> And even with all this knowledge, can you empathize with both sides of common issues -- the poor renter vs struggling landlord? The tired worker vs underwater business owner? Rich vs poor, immigrant vs legacy, parent vs child -- the list goes on

To me having just two sides is a uniquely American way of thinking.

Between the renter and landlord there's the homeowner, between the tired worker and business owner there's the public sector/NGO/huge corporation worker/freelancer, rich and poor are relative terms which lie on a scale anyway.

Conflicts that actually have only two parties involved are rare and the very first thing one should do to be able to talk politics, is give up on the notion.

I was predicting within the first 500 words that the author was someone who symphatized with Rationalism. But how could this be? How could someone’s approach to rationality, so-called, be so correlated with their approach to politics?[1] Couldn’t people of many different backgrounds come to the same conclusion and my guess just have a small chance of being right?[2] Is it because of tribalism? No. The philosophy leads to a cluster of opinions. Just following its internal logic.

Apply that to other people and you’ll see how the article might be wrong.

[1] It’s not just the approach. There are a dozen things that are stated axiomatically which are not.

[2] Okay, okay. Being this website there is a SC bias already.

I enjoy debating politics in the way that others enjoy playing chess or a friendly game of bowling. But when the other party gets wrapped around the axle, I don't debate with them anymore. Unfortunately, most seem to be in the latter camp.

One thing I didn't see mentioned, and maybe this is part of being tribal, but politics is often not about the positions you take, but about the game theory of how you stay in power, and convince a group of people about the positions you take.

One thing I hate about the trump administration, and maybe all politics is fundamentally like this, is you can't really disagree with them. You can't really disagree with them because it's really hard to figure out what position they're taking. I find it makes discussing things with family really difficult. I can intellectually agree that "A nation should protect it's borders" and have a nuanced perspective on how much immigration is the right amount, but then I'm never going to square that with what the politicians are actually doing, right? We can't have a nuanced conversation with what the right immigration policy is, when the administration is deporting people without due process, or when the current administration says the problem with immigration is that Joe Biden let judges run wild in 2019.

I strongly disagree with most of this post.

Politics dictates so much of daily life, at every level, that it's important to be able to have conversations about it. It's frankly self-righteous to see yourself as the one person with nuanced opinions in a crowd of simpletons, and while I do think that politics in many liberal democracies has become more polarized, you'll never restore nuanced debate or good-faith disagreement in political discussions by just avoiding the topic.

I'm not advocating for politics being the only thing you talk about with your friends, but if you and your friends are able to have useful discussions about the impact of some policies over others, can have constructive disagreements over reasonable political discourse, and can identify larger problematic trends in politics, a lot of good can come of that.

To have an informed view on any given issue, one needs to:

1. understand economics, game theory, philosophy, sales, business, military strategy, geopolitics, sociology, history, and more

2. be able to understand and empathize with the various (and often opposing) groups involved in a topic

3. detect and ignore their own bias

1) is a lot of work. Just finding out what's going on is hard. Partly because news-gathering organizations are far more thinly staffed than they used to be. There aren't enough reporters out there digging, which is hard work. There are too many pundits and influencers blithering. Read the output of some news outlet, cross out "opinion" items and stories based on press releases or press conferences, and there's not much left. The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, the New York Times, and Reuters still have people who dig for facts. Beyond that, reporters are thin on the ground. If you can only read one thing, read the Economist for a year. Each week they cover some country in detail, and over a year, most of the world gets a close look. (Although at the moment, their China coverage is weak, because their reporters were kicked out of China for doing too much digging.)

Background is necessary. Many pundits seem to lack much of a sense of history. Currently, understanding the runups to WWI and WWII is very useful. Understand what Putin is talking about when he references Catherine the Great and Peter the Great. Geography matters. Look at Ukraine in Google Earth and see that most of the current fighting is over flat farmland and small towns, much like Iowa. Look at Taiwan and realize how narrow and exposed an island it is. There's no room to retreat after an invasion, unlike Ukraine.

As for empathy, there's a huge split in America between the areas above and below 700 people per square mile. Above 1,500 per square mile, almost always blue. Below 400 per square mile, almost always red.[1] This effect dwarfs race, religion, ideology, or income level. It's very striking and not well recognized in public discourse. There's a minimum viable population density below which small towns stop working as self-supporting entities. (On the ground, this shows up as empty storefronts on Main Street and a closed high school.)

On bias, there are many people in the US whose lot has been slowly getting worse for decades now. That's the underlying source of most US political problems.

[1] https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-pol...

I can agree with parts of this article, but I believe it's missing a large part of the puzzle.

The author implicitly assumes that the constraints of our society are fixed and that it's therefore possible to determine which political systems are objectively better or worse. We should be doing that research (like astronomers trying to determine how the universe works) instead of religiously supporting ideological positions.

I fundamentally disagree with that assumption. I think we behave the way we do in large part due to the ideological principles we were raised with. This can be confirmed by observing various closed-off societies sometimes operating on principles that seem completely bonkers to most of us.

If you teach people capitalism/socialism, you build a capitalistic/socialistic system. It's impossible to live inside that system and objectively determine whether it's good or bad, let alone better or worse than other systems.

So in that context, I believe following an ideology is _not_ the opposite of thinking for yourself, as the author puts it. It is a conscious decision based on morality. You decide what your values are and you find a political option that aligns with them.

To be clear, that's still a very imperfect decision to make, many things can go wrong from that point on and I believe this is where the author is correct in many ways. We should reason about it constantly to make sure we're actually doing what we want to be doing and not just blindly repeating things.

The article is titled Why I don't discuss politics with friends but it doesn't explain the why? Unless I missed it. It seems to just talk about the challenges.

Why don't you discuss politics with friends? Are you worried about loss of friends? Do the conversations ruin your day? Do you feel alienated?

Depending on the why, there's different points I'd argue for or against the reasoning. Without that piece, it's kind of hard to discuss the premise of the article without just guessing its implications.

I think one of biggest problems the American voter has is two fold: 1. We have turned politicians into celebrities/heroes. ALL politicians are just like most of us: they are flawed and incomplete individuals who desperately try to hide their flaws. (Under normal circumstances, this isn't so bad. However, to be an elected official with all that power, it's fraud at the very least.

2. Once elected, we refuse to hold the politicians we elected to almost any accountability. (This is very hard to do, no doubt, because of the way the laws have been manipulated to stop this very accountability.)

As for religion in politics: I'm a devoted Christian who is sane enough to know that not everyone will believe the same as I do. I have one vote on election day, to manipulate other people's vote by having my candidate changing laws to thwart the constitution is theft and immoral. (As difficult as it is to say, Christians today should read 2 Peter Ch2, taking it to heart. Stop only glossing over the cheerful faith verses and start reading the one's that call for accountability.)

I agree that "tribalism" exists. I'd add that sometimes political disagreements are actually differences in morality. And there is no way you can persuade someone to change their moral beliefs. Everyone accepts their moral beliefs as "axioms". But I still believe it's worth discussing politics in order to learn what kind of person someone is and their morality.

I always try to stay informed, rationalize well and always try to find arguments for both sides of a theory. I act like a detective in search of the truth or a mathematician confronted with a new conjecture or theory. I try to dig until I can see whether the theory has solid chances to be true or not. I try to make the process as fast as possible, because I don't like to procrastinate or lose time. Most of the time is fine if I know something has 60% chances of being true and I don't need 99.99% because I can back off and review the theory if I am wrong.

That being said, I don't pick a party solely on what I believe is the truth. I also try to see whether my interests align well with that party.

As for discussing politics with friends, most of my experience is the same as the author's. I started having a dislike for very long lawyer-like discussions and arguments that lead nowhere. I kind of detect fast if my discussion partner is seeking the truth, he is proceeding with an archeology or detective like mindset and proceed accordingly.

A lot of the comments in this thread show how difficult it can be to talk about politics. So many strawmen arguments and ad hominims.

This article seems to be saying that religions are tribal by nature because it's made up of humans, and humans are tribal by nature -- ok fair enough. But the subtext I'm getting is that people in religions are less self-aware of it than the author or the people they admire.

People being more interested in comfortable beliefs rather than true beliefs has always been a concern throughout Biblical history. But that doesn't mean it never went unchallenged.

For instance, regardless of what you think of the Bible, it's interesting that Isaiah has the following to say to Judah (emphasis mine) because it shows an ever-present problem with human nature.

    For they are a rebellious people, lying children, children unwilling to hear the instruction of the Lord;
    *who say to the seers, “Do not see,” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us what is right; speak to us smooth things, prophesy illusions”*

Lastly, on a personal note, as a human Christian, I think I have the same biases to groupthink as any other person because I am human. But because Christianity has a reputation, I have found that throughout my life, I've had to work harder to really test (not validate) my beliefs because I am constantly being challenged and, ironically, often ended up more informed about both my beliefs and my interlocutors' beliefs.

In my circle of family and friends, no one strays too far from the center, so I don't find it particularly difficult to navigate disagreement. We've gotten more carried away arguing about completely banal happenings. However, I sense not everyone else feels the same way.

What tends to happen at dinners or whatever is that some outspoken person (socially conservative on a pet issue) monopolizes conversation, and a couple of others keep mum because they don't like confrontation/arguing. The others don't care.

I am guilty of this in one particular case. I have a friend who describes himself as a classical Liberal, and when the subject comes up about pit bulls or the like, will say that "the problem is with the owners not the breed". What am I going to do, take out my crap phone and try to use data like a blunt instrument? I don't care enough to start an argument over it.

politics (and the truth itself) have always been tribal. People discussed things and disagreed in public and that's how they managed to slightly influence each other.

Avoiding to discuss politics is cowardly. It distances people from each other because they maintain a fake facade, and they express their true selves and beliefs only online.

Telling people they don't have political views, that they only belong to a tribe, is a great way to lose friends.

Nice article, the comments in here also reinforced the title.

Like the author, I tend towards being a function that returns the opposite of what the other person believes, rather than having a fixed political opinion. Mostly I lack the confidence to claim that this way or that way is the Right Way To Do Things -- and I'm fascinated (and envious, and also appalled) by those who do.

But on this I differ:

>Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong and you will quite literally make my week.

I don't think I believe this at all. It's certainly not true of myself -- I aspire to it, but my ego is much too fragile. I have spent much time and effort carefully checking the small set of core principles that I do feel justified in calling "correct", and the reason for that is precisely to avoid the unpleasant surprise of discovering that they are demonstrably wrong after all.

I have friends all over the political spectrum. I've read political philosophy ranging from Hegel, Marx, Foucault, Butler, Crenshaw, Gentile, Locke, Rawls, Friedman, Mises, Rand, ect.. I find myself actively engaging in political discussion frequently with these friends. The only friend I've stopped talking over politics were black block during the antifa riots. I viewed his actions as ultimately misguided and dangerous. I ultimately forgave him and now we are friends who actively debate policy in good faith.

It's easy to spot political tribalism - just reference the comments here. They ultimately misrepresent, and have never tried to understand, their opposition's political position. It's kind of sad because it allows them to be manipulated by propaganda and political powers much like my antifa friend.

You should not discuss politics with friends.

You should however discuss politics with close friends -- they probably got close to you because you both share a worldview or they like hearing your worldview (even if it differs from yours).

Closeness means more sharing. That always comes with risks and rewards.

I lived in China in the early-2000s, and one of the things I noticed is that no one ever talked about any sort of politics. Never. It was weird at first, as political discussion is so ingrained in the culture (in the US). Even just regular smalltalk, like, "How's it going, Bob? / It'd be a lot better if the city council would pull their heads out of their asses and fix these potholes!" - there was nothing like that.

I asked a few local friends about it, and got two basic explanations:

1. What's the point? No one is empowered to change anything, so why bother talking about it at all?

2. You can get in big trouble for saying the wrong thing in public.

The weirder thing I noticed is that I kinda enjoyed it. It was nice to not hear a bunch of bitching about the government (not saying the government shouldn't be criticized - it should; just saying it was nice to be completely removed from it for a time).

Not sure if it's still like this in China; I haven't been there in years, but yeah, this was really strange to me when I lived there.

My personal strategies... 1. I try to be indirect on what I think and just describe why some people think one opinion versus another. So I try not to convince people. 2. I try to stick to "is this going to work?" Style arguments when I do state my opinion. I acknowledge when my preferred party does or says something I disagree with. 3. I avoid getting bogged down with "do you agree with x y z??" Controversies that may be anecdotal and I'm not opinionated or familiar with. So I try not to argue the outage of the day.

This generally keeps me from arguing with relatives and in-laws, and on this site. So usually I can discuss differences without things going crazy.

I actually ask my friends what they think and don't judge them for it. Everyone has some way to build up their belief and it's interesting to listen to these.

They often have horrible reasoning but I don't try to talk them out of it, just nod, polite comment, move on.

I don't discuss friends with politicians either

I often talk politics with friends, mostly because we all like to moan about the state of things.

Maybe this doesn't translate to the US, but in the UK (and the largely British friend-group I have here in Australia) in my bubble we don't tend to strongly identify with any political party or politician, rather we tend to look down at the self-serving and/or myopic weirdos in parliament and decry their short-sighted, uninformed policy-making whichever side they're on. And I'm not trying to claim some great enlightened intellectual position for myself here - I think it's probably more common than not.

Tribalism really is the thing one has to individually overcome in order to gain some perspective, then maybe adhere to free thinking, before blooming as a free doer.

For me, it always was a voluntarily long and sinuous and silly and lonely path. It had to be.

An uncertain path as well, and one that was totally worth all the trouble it brought my way.

And as seducing as it is, the reality of crossing path with fellow free thinking/doing individuals always felt like falling for some other tribe.

Because in the end, that's what we do. While not following, we often become leaders of followers. How could it be otherwise is the only question left to answer.

This is a good stance, but with a caveat.

I do have friends who are able to have nuanced views about politics/economics/AI, and generally high-level vague things that concern the entire human civilization.

But I also have friends that can't have those nuanced views, and when you try to engage in good faith discussion with them, they resort to tribalism and are not interested in finding nuance through reasoning.

With those I don't have any discussions about it.

If you are a friend - try to be someone from the first category. Don't engage in tribalism with your friends if you value them (unless your whole group is a bunch of bullies, in which case do whatever).

It’s such a cultural thing. My friend group contains people from all sides of the political spectrum and they bicker like crazy when we go out but they are still friends. It might be a Spanish culture thing though.

If you can’t talk about politics with your friends, then they are not your friends.

Author thinks they are the lone person stuck in the middle between two tribes, but actually they are part of a third tribe that fallaciously believes that it is possible to write better policy, if only we took the time to study reality more and listen to more people and apply more reason etc. In short, Author distinguishes between the two established tribes (in which people make a very limited emotional engagement with the issues) and their tribe (in which people make a stronger emotional engagement). This is a fallacy because:

  * It is not reasonable to expect most people to make strong emotional investments into voting choices that have little direct effect on their lives, and indeed we have a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy to recognize that reality 
  * Reality is far, far more complicated than can be summarized in journalism or articles; many researchers spend their entire careers attempting to learn deeply about *one* area, let alone many areas; much pertinent information is non-public. Policies that are effective in one community are completely counter-productive in another. Believing that you are The Exception and that you Know The Right Way To Run The Country because you "do your research" is the height of hubris.

It’s super sad that the political establishment has managed to polarize people so much that a rational discussion about very important issues is not possible anymore for a lot of people. It’s a dream come true for unscrupulous politicians and oligarchs who can do whatever they want as long their propaganda is strong enough.

Why I don't discuss politics with Hacker News (6,000 comments)

A tribe is a collective brain. That work when people put truth first (Christianity) As the root of our culture fade out, we tilt toward satanism instead (serving self) Thus the tribes and institutions can no longer be trusted, everything fall appart, everyone lie all the time to serve the current advantages.

I would say discard people and institutions that lie to you, shame them. We don't have the time and brain power to find the truth in every decision.

This article is what happens when you absolutely refuse to read anything from hundreds of years of political theory, and try to reinvent everything from first principles the way that self-proclaimed rationalists do. Very little reflection on why certain viewpoints often cluster together other than "it's tribalism, duh".

That's the biggest problem these days - people don't talk about much meaningful - but they do chat and spend ridiculous amounts of time on socials

Welcome to the Bay Area!

The big issue is a lot of people will believe what they want to believe. Most folks are not scientists - they start by assuming their conclusions and will choose the soothing moral and emotional rhetoric over evidence.

Trying to see the world objectively puts you in a category of outliers. The people you become friends with due to proximity in everyday life will not be outliers.

Wow, great article.

I’ve lost respect for so many people because they couldn’t temper their political views. I wish more articles of this kind were published.

I think the bigger problem is the tribal ape brains have been programmed by history's most sophisticated propaganda engines 24/7.

A good discussion. I've personally thought of political adherence similar to football teams. Fans are fans. That's it.

Escaping that tribalism or fandom is important, but you need to hold fast to your own sense of morality along the way.

Applying your own sense of right/wrong to political arguments and policies is a useful way to cut through the noise and distraction that accompanies political discourse.

I feel pretty much the same, except the political situation here (central Europe) is pretty mild. I can't imagine being in the US right now.

> Most people don't want to graduate from tribalism.

Even if you personally want to, others will still judge you based on it. And honestly, there's often enough people out there for you to pick a social circle that aligns with your own interests at least on fundamental issues.

As for the people that you don't choose to be around, e.g. at work, probably read the room first.

for the author, only the centrists, his own group, can display independent thinking.

he assigns all virtues of the world to his group while others seems to be barely more than glorified barbarians.

this is, at best, laughable... and honestly quite reductive and insulting.

this seems to stem from the classic idea of "if everybody was informed and intelligent as i am we would all agree", which i thought had already been disproven long ago. people have different base assumptions. cultures are real things... individual differences matter too.

he also treats ideologies as unified things which is historically false, meanwhile his personal particular set of idea is not an ideology but something akin to objective truth (for which he explicitly argues) or something adjacent to it. any semi-consistent (if that) set of ideas instantly becomes an ideology as soon as you share that set to a group. there are myriads of ideologies that pop-up and die every day... the ones with staying power obviously have accumulated some following but they are rarely all compassing; we have a word for those, cults.

but first thing first, change country and you will get entirely different "centrists" with an entirely different set of ideas. there is no reason there would not be (in his own terms) "accidental" leftists and "accidental" right--ists???

in a locked 2 party system like what you get in the united states, stuff will probably have a tendency to degenerate though. things are way more fluid in countries where you have more democratic choice. there is a lot of fear in the american mix, that doesn't work well with free-thinking.

In my experience the (now ancient) Sequences are not of much use in learning how to change your mind. With only a cursory background in psychology, his advice tends to consist of generic platitudes. Not much practical application.

I’d recommend a short course in mindfulness instead, at whatever point in the spectrum between science and mysticism you’re comfortable with.

I think you're right, it is harder to discuss politics as widely as we once did.

That said, what do you think of money changing what is left/right and group/individual? The outcome of Citizens United to allow obscured spending to create seeming grass roots efforts on any topic that the monied want very effectively moving opinions.

Author says SF Bay Area is truth seeking, but that's far from truth.

More like, it's truth seeking within its echo chamber.

I actively practice not discussing politics but intentionally being member of groups of different political affiliation.

I can only encourage everybody to do the same.

People usually know if you are a „filthy liberal“ or a „closet fascist“ anyways and my experience shows that just knowing you will draw them away from the political extremes.

> Often when someone asks "who did you vote for", what they're actually doing is verifying your adherence to group culture,

They are just checking to which group you belong, not verifying your adherence? It does not seem like a question you ask someone whose you know politics already.

But yes still is a problem

> Bay Area … finding a community of truth-seeking people

I don’t know if I would entirely classify the Bay Area as truth seeking people. It’s eclectic but it definitely felt just as polarizing as living in other parts of the country, but perhaps it’s better defined as moving to live with more like minded people.

I couldn't fathom not discussing politics with friends. Political life is an integral part of modern... well, life. And to the contrary, if there ever existed people you might have good faith conversations with, it should be your friends and family. If not, can you really call them so?

> 1. become truth-seeking

How does one even begin to do that? Looking at people I know who describe themselves as "truth-seeking", it seems that it is a one way ticket to Conspiracyland.

> A reader might fairly ask what my tribe is. I'm not sure.

Oh brother. Self-awareness about your political conditioning and biases should be step 1.

Being unaware of your (intellectual) tribe implies a lack of good-faith understanding about other tribes.

"What's water?" says the young fish.

I'll never forget calling Yang a tool in a group of math nerds back around 2019. Instantly outgrouped. I don't think this alone caused our friendship to crumble, but the fact that we couldn't discuss actual policy makes me tend to agree with this post.

I do my best to avoid talking and or thinking too much about politics. If I do i then realize family members to friends have sold their mind, intelligence, ability to clearly point out right from wrong, etc to political emotional babble from either side.

The writer does not discuss politics with their friends because they do not respect them

In normal times this would be okay.

I have to tell you and most people reading this is that you belong to a tribe of people who only think they are impartial and unbiased and reasoned thinkers, but they actually aren't.

The level of objectivity that we strive for is just really possible.

Adherence to tribal views is how you end up with the space shuttle Columbia crash.

To be honest, I enjoy discussing politics with my friends. They’re all pretty good at discussing it. We have lots of common interests otherwise so it’s easy to just step away and talk about other things in the group Slack instead.

I don't think you can separate the mechanics from the content. Usually people feeling pushback against their political ideas don't realize they are dumb ideas even if they are complex.

Friendship is more of an ideal.

https://www.wilde-online.info/the-devoted-friend.html

I don't converse about politics at all, because conversation is not generally amenable to anything other than some vague virtue signaling in all but the very best of circumstances. For instance, a basic rule of conversation is that unless you have a very good reason, once a conversation wanders away from a topic, you don't drag it back to the same topic. That's great for idly chatting and catching up with friends, and it's a rule for a good reason, but it's quite far from what any sort of thought or an interaction that might actually change my mind on some topic requires.

While I don't disagree that people are quite tribal, I would observe that determining that people are tribal based on conversations can be a bit misleading, because the conversational form is extremely biased towards expressing things that will be indistinguishable from "tribalism", since all you have time to do is basically to put a marker down on the broadest possible summary of your position before the conversation baton must move on. That is, even a hypothetical Vulcan who has gathered all the data, pondered the question deeply, and come to the only logical conclusion, is going to sound tribal in a conversation, because that's all a conversation can convey.[1] Sufficient information conveyance to actually demonstrate the deep pondering and examination of all the evidence is ipso facto a lecture, or at best, a Socratic dialog or an interview, neither of which is a conversation in this sense.

For better and worse (and rather a lot of each), this medium we're working in right now at least affords itself to complete thoughts. It has its own well-known pathologies, like the interminable flame wars descending off to the right endlessly as two people won't let something go, and many others, but at least it's possible to discuss serious matters in a format similar to this, based on writing in text that can be as long as it needs to be without anyone needing to interrupt to maintain basic social niceties. There's a reason the serious intellectual discourse has been happening in books and articles for centuries if not millennia now.

Note how conversationally gauche it would be for me to monopolize a conversation long enough to simply read this post, and by the standards of intellectual discourse this is a rather simple point.

[1]: In fact, most people will read the Vulcan as exceedingly tribal, because no amount of reciting snap counterarguments against the Vulcan's position will cause him/her to so much as budge an inch or even concede that "perhaps reasonable people could think that" or any other such concession. The snap counteragument was encountered a long time ago, and analyzed in the light of all the other data, and they have long ago come to their conclusions on it. If they can be moved, it will take a lot more. This is difficult to distinguish from a maximized tribalist in any reasonable period of time in a conversation.

If you reduce politics to 'what politians do', sure, I avoid it too.

Even when I know that outside of the US, most of us have the same opinions on what the trump admin is doing (especially in the pen and paper RPG community, where not being transphobic is basically a requirement), I still hate comments and discussions about it, probably for the same reason than the author does.

I disagree with his axis though, I've read a lot, and I mean _a lot_ of books and the more I read, the more left I went. And I started almost tea-party libertarian, then liberal-libertarian (because logic, and my class) then I understood power and class and became original libertarian (think Emma Goldman).

But politics are much more than that, it's how society organize, and if you can't talk to everybody about your city evicting the parasites who mismanaged and eventually brought down the waterlines because you're afraid of 'groupthink', you are fucked.

The stance of always taking the opposite because fuck tribalism makes it hard to identify what one’s actual values and opinions are.

We often reach for black and white thinking which makes political discussions difficult. Both sides do it, and it stunts our empathy for why people vote the way they do.

Right. The only sort of person who could write something like this is a person who is not affected (or percieves themselves to not be affected) by "politics."

I find this to be painfully true in the US. Most of the rational discussions I have about politics are with friends from other countries (Soviet Russia, China, Africa, etc).

I'm looking forward to going back to the days when political disagreements were more along the lines of 'I think __TAX__ should be x%, rather than x+y%'

I was really enjoying the article until I realized there is zero attribution to the book _Thinking in Bets_, which IMO this is obviously heavily influenced by.

If you can't discuss politics with them or other personal topics then they're acquaintances not friends. There's a difference.

> How can you prioritize limited resources with deadly consequences without understanding utilitarianism vs deontology (i.e. the trolly problem)?

Can you explain this to me?

People interested in this subject would be wise to pick up the book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua

The author gains a great insight into the social consequences of discussing politics with friends, but I think it might be part of something larger, a sort of intellectual signaling of meta-contrarianism.

At least in the countries where I live, debating politics is less about civic duty and being a citizen, and has become a substitute for sports; people prioritize their passions, and they are not concerned with getting the government to implement the policies it promised in the first place, but with defending a side.

In Germany, we see on state broadcasts every single day discussions about how the USA is bad, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, how some war in a distant place is bad, and so on; and nothing related to local politics.

If you invite someone to go to the municipal legislative service to talk with someone about why we still have underinvestment in kindergartens, even with record revenue, while other groups of society are capitalizing on social benefits, nobody will show up.

Getting in front of a keyboard and brigading online to talk about federal elections and/or officials of other countries is cool: it gives you the latest scandal of the day, you can congregate with people of your chamber, it provides audience for podcasts, and it generates talking points that sound intellectually tasty.

At least for me, the politics that matter most are local politics; and this is the craziest thing: it's the kind of politics where you can do something as an individual, you will have someone to hear you out, and with some effort, you can make a real and direct difference for your community.

Maybe tribalism is ok in some respects, and maybe we should increase it.

For example, it would be fine if the people in the other tribe to do what they want - as long as when the taxes becomes too high, the beaurocracy stifling, the crime rampant, and they have to deal with issues they assumed other people would sacrifice for in order for them to feel good - as long as when it inevitably breaks down, they don't come to MY area learning nothing and try to replicate what they left.

That is a worldwide problem actually.

What percentage of the comments here fall exactly in line with the tribal groupthink the article was about? 90% 95% 98%?

There is some good stuff here, but I generally disagree.

The difference for me is, I don't like everybody, and not everybody has to like me. That's okay, and it's not about disrespect, it's just that I like to surround myself with people who are thoughtful before they are opinionated.

If you know me, and you respect me, and I say something you think is crazy... if they first think you think is "Wait, I thought I respected him, but he's a bad person" instead of "Wait, I respect this person and they're saying something I disagree with. Am I wrong about that?", then, guess what, I'm not actually interested in having a deep relationship.

I studied philosophy in college and grad school. I had to "relearn" how to interact with people outside of the university setting for many of the reasons in this essay. However, upon reading the horrifying "how to win friends and influence people" way of interacting with normal people through flattery and shallow interaction, I thought fuck it, I just don't actually want to be close with people I can't have a real conversation with.

Not everyone gets to the right position right away, that's okay. I'm a strong small-"L" liberal, and I have friends that are conservatives, socialists, and even the occasional anarchist. The difference is that we're all still trying to figure it all out. We're not all pretending that "well if those people didn't exist then we'd have utopia already" because, well, all these system exist all over the earth and it ain't a utopia anywhere. We'll make our points, we'll needle each other in a friendly way, and we'll all say "fuck it, we're doing our best."

That doesn't mean I'm friendly with everyone (remember, I don't like everyone, and not everyone likes me), because there are plenty of political positions that pretty much require people to be unthoughtful. The views need to be consistent, and pretty much anything that end advocating substantial discrimination against certain people over other people isn't going to be internally consistent. Axioms are arbitrary, reason is not.

> 3. Most people don't want to graduate from tribes to views

I checked out of political conversations when I noticed I was teaching remedial civics over drinks and none of us were having fun. So I just sit back and watch people who just want to engage in reality tv style yelling confrontation.

A good friend of mine confessed that he doesn't argue to change other people's mind, he does it to change his own.

"Unbiased" aggregators like Ground News, MSM, and the right blogosphere like Joe Rogan are doing their best to normalize dragging the Overton window to the right with haste. Progressives have a handful of obscure, disconnected, largely-unknown reputable sources with a wasteland of as many or more former progressives and once-promising journalist and journalist-adjacent personalities.

Well that’s an interesting title given he uprooted his family for political [adjacent] reasons