For one thing, political beliefs are heritable. And strongly influenced by your environment. Not perfectly so--I grew up in Manhattan, the child of Democrats, and somehow ended up as a right-libertarian. But there's a strong correlation between what your parents and friends think
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You can see this in the fact that beliefs about political issues cluster in obviously irrational ways. Animal rights and abortion rights should be on the opposite sides of the political spectrum. Instead they're bundled.
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(True story: when I was in college, I was a vegetarian. One of my vegetarian friends decided to become a vegan. Then changed his mind because he decided that this would logically commit him to becoming pro-life.)
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There's no reason that your views on gay rights and the environment should be correlated. But they are. So are views on taxes and women's lib. And on and on--these are not some systematic framework worked out from first principles.
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They look a lot more like cultural beliefs: socially transmitted, vehemently and emotionally defended. Tribal. And of course, they have strong demographic correlations.
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Second, for you science-lovers out there, this is not how psychology tells us that we actually reason to political conclusions. As Jonathan Haidt says, our reason is a tiny rider on the vast elephant of our emotions. We decide what to believe, and then reason backwards to "Why?"
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That's not to say that argument is fruitless, that society can't have better and worse ideas, that we cannot reason together. But that this process is difficult, and has a heavy, heavy cultural and tribal element to it.
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That tribalism cannot be handwaved away, or banished by clicking your heels and repeating "Markeplace of ideas" three times.
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In fact, we all know this is true. Because we can see all those people on the other side of the political spectrum doing it *all the time*! They don't even really reason, do they, just check their tribal identity. I have some bad news for you guys: your side reasons the same way
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You reason this way. No one is immune. You have a fleshy brain in your head, not a supercomputer.
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arguably some people do it less; for example, people on the Asperger's / autistic spectrum. I think that my beliefs, while certainly not without SOME contradictions, are less tribal than most (pro-life, anti-death penalty, pro-meat eating but anti-factory farming).
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