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Basic Principles and Useful Heuristics
Core values are default values that people rely on to make decisions and to guide behavior in the absence of detailed information. But default values aren’t enough to govern wisely, nor are they enough to know what a good policy or politician looks like.
I'm not interested in reducing complicated policy questions to a matter of rights. The devil's always in the details and that's just way too broad. What does a “right” actually look like in practice?
I’m stumbling in the dark here, but every once in a while I see a faint glimmer of light: this way! I take a few tentative steps forward…
“I long to hear that you have declared an independency -- and by the way in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.” - Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams, March 31, 1776
Causal attributions matter, because policy matters. Attacking the wrong problem makes for bad policy.
Facts are nice, but fact-checking posts are not always relevant or helpful, especially when they miss the point of whatever statements are being corrected…That’s rather wishy-washy though. Sometimes a lie is a lie is a lie and it needs to be called out. My advice is …
Note: This is an AI-assisted exploration. I am not assuming that AI summaries tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, nor am I assuming the whole truth and nothing but the truth is knowable or unknowable. Not to imply that the search for truth is a lost cause!
But there’s a lot more to political differences than values or moral intuitions. For one thing, people have different understandings of how the world works: what is and what leads to what. And our intuitions are not independent of how we interpret situations. That is, how we feel about things requires some understanding of “what the hell is going on here”. In other words, emotion requires appraisal and appraisal includes a take on the causal dynamics of whatever we’re reacting to.
Over the multi-month exchange, this individual mocked and misrepresented counter-arguments and never budged from her original position. Nothing could penetrate her fortress of moral certainty or widen her perspective beyond a narrow moral reasoning. She repeatedly brushed off considerations such as evidence of culpability and constitutional protections as nothing but a smokescreen used by bad people to hide their bad values.
“We cannot ask authors to embrace intellectual humility and calibration unless the editors are prepared to follow through—to prefer manuscripts with well-calibrated claims to those that overclaim.…unwarranted bold claims will harm chances of acceptance, and exaggeration will be considered a potential basis for desk rejection. We are looking for excellent research, but we expect even the best research to have flaws, and we want those flaws to be factored into the whole manuscript, including the conclusions drawn.” - Simine Vazire, Editor-in-Chief, Psychological Science
A final question: assuming the not-so-grim future is plausible, what needs to happen between now and then to make it a reality?
One would think if people truly cared about achieving a valued social good - say, the elimination of poverty - they would also sweat over the details as to how to achieve this social good without jeopardizing other social goods. Which means they and their shared-values fellows would be having robust and thoughtful arguments on policy, no consensus expected.
I am not quoting Paxton as the ultimate authority on fascism. No scholar is. Historians and political scientists (aka “experts”) differ in their definitions of fascism and opinions of Trump. However, I have noticed that definitions of fascism have morphed over time, perhaps repurposed to boost present-day relevance and create a tighter fit with current figures or political movements.
According the the College Board, first-time full-time students at public two-year colleges have been receiving enough grant aid to cover their tuition and fees since 2010, on average.
It’s almost Thanksgiving! Time to celebrate! In my case, that means less writing and more charts.
But the fact the some types are strongly Democrat or Republican doesn’t mean that most Democrats or Republicans belong to those types. No type claims the majority of Democrats, Independents or Republicans. For example, less than half the Democrats in the NORC survey were Classical Liberals and less than half the Republicans were Mostly MAGAs.
Grouping people by types also runs the risk of seeing individuals as static, unchanging essences. People and patterns change. Within-group affinities and between-group differences may weaken over time, eventually rendering a whole typology obsolete. But the typologies keep coming, partly because humans love to categorize and partly because new typologies unsettle our certainties and assumptions and help us see the world with fresh eyes. Case in point: the Five Types of Americans, as developed by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago.
When NORC framed the American Dream as a general rule - working hard leads to success or each generation will be better off than the last - respondents were deeply pessimistic. However, they were less gloomy about their own personal futures.
Sensing danger increases vigilance and vigilant behavior discourages criminals by reducing opportunities (easy victims) and increasing costs (time, effort) relative to payoff (money, status, sex). Here are some examples of what I’m talking about…
I’ve often seen “perception” contrasted with “reality” as if they were mutually exclusive: perception versus reality. But perceptions don’t erupt out of nothing. They have some foundation in the real world. In the case of perceived public safety, that foundation includes…