What is reasonable to expect from democracy? Is reversion to the mean inevitable?

A thought about ECCs (essentially contested concepts) recently became quite insistent. It is that ECCs constitute a major part of politics. But despite that, its scope and depth is poorly understood by most of the public. People know what they are talking about, but others may not because their conceptions of concepts are different. People wind up talking past each other and never reaching mutual understanding or stasis.

This helps to exemplify the scope and depth of the issue:

Q: Other than empirical facts, are there any concepts that are common in politics that are not themselves essentially contested concepts or that include an essentially contested concept(s) in how it is described or defined?

A: In politics, it's challenging to find concepts that are entirely free from contestation or don't include essentially contested concepts in their definition. However, some concepts are less contested than others, particularly those that are more procedural or technical in nature. .... While some procedural and technical concepts in politics may be less contested, the field of politics is characterized by the prevalence of essentially contested concepts. As Connolly argues, "conceptual contests are central to politics," and engaging with these contested concepts is itself a dimension of politics

What helped to kick this thought into high gear was my recent foray into knowledge with Perplexity about whether the concept of “rational thinking” was an ECC or not. Its first answer was that rational thinking is not. Then I pointed out that human rationality, at least for politics, is mostly unconscious, intuitive, moral, biased and influenced by various psychological factors and social contexts. Perplexity mulled it over and concluded that rational thinking was an ECC. I was able to ask the right question because I base my conception of humans doing politics mostly on cognitive biology, social behavior and some moral logic. Most people probably would intuitively believe that rational thinking is a simple concept without much to disagree about. They would be mistaken.

So, (1) if concepts like constitutional, democracy, freedom, fair, justice, common sense, honest, corrupt[1], kleptocratic, moral, immoral, Founder’s intent, qualified candidate, transparency, truth, rational, biased, partisan, rule of law, civil liberty, equal protection, due process, theocracy, authoritarianism, free and fair election, election integrity, reasonable compromise, genocide, war, military action, police action, and so on, are all essentially contested, and (2) most people are unaware of what ECCs are, how prevalent they are, and how they shape thinking and belief, then (3) what can reasonably be expected from our democracy? There will be endless disagreements about most things because humans are human. For better or worse, ECCs reflect how the human brain-mind works. They are not going to go away.

Authoritarian regimes deal with ECCs is a pretty direct way using various forms of force like the rule of law, physical violence or intimidation and establishing norms and social infrastructures that defend and maintain the regime, e.g., infrastructure like an authoritarian political party and authoritarian institutions that support authoritarianism. Various forms of authoritarianism include autocracy (dictatorship), plutocracy, theocracy, kleptocracy, military junta, monarchy, aristocracy, single-party rule and regimes that blend two or more of those. 

Here is the question: In view of ECCs and attendant unresolvable disagreements, what can people reasonably expect from American democracy? From what I can tell, there are millions of sincere, well-meaning people who refuse to vote for Harris or Trump because both are bad enough to warrant that course of action. I suspect that for most of those people, very probably nearly all, differences in conceptions of various ECCs plays a non-trivial role in their refusal to vote for either of the two candidates.

To me, ECCs constitute a major weakness that democracy has in spades, while authoritarian regimes deal with them by various forms of force. Maybe that is why most humans have lived under authoritarian regimes for most of human history. Authoritarianism is the norm, while democracy is the rare exception to the rule. America appears to be on the verge of reversion from exceptionalism (democracy) to the mean (authoritarianism). Maybe we can reasonably expect no more than that reversion.

Footnote:

1. A recent supreme decision, Snyder v. United States, basically legalized corruption in politics by applying the labels “gratuity” and “reward” to various forms of payments to politicians and judges for their “good work.” The sleight of hand the court used was that the payment or tip had to come after the politician or judge did something commendable and worthy of a gratuity. I see that as legalization of corruption. The six radical Republicans on the bench who voted for that, see their conception of payments in politics as honest, not corrupt. Agreement on that point will probably never happen for me as long as I am alive. Corruption is an ECC!

Something on the serious side, for a weekend…

 

I like the emails I get from BigThink.com, one of my favorite online sites.  They give you a lot to think about.  Here’s a good one:

Everyday Philosophy: Are Stoicism and Buddhism unhealthy philosophies?

• This week we look at the philosophy of non-attachment and ask how healthy it is.

• To answer our question, we look at the idea of “spiritual bypassing” and how detachment should not be done lightly.

Great questions, IMO.  

Have you ever gotten to the point where you think, “F it!”? That usually happens when we reach some “critical mass” moment, an inflection point, where we are exacerbated and no longer, well, give a “F”.  We’ve been “pushed that far.”  No longer giving a “F” also happens when people reach a point of “desperation.”  Things/situations no longer matter, and you lose all sense of morality, fairness, reason.  You’ve, at least temporarily, had it!

When does detachment cross the healthy border? People often say, “Don’t take things to heart.” “Accept without pride. “Let go.” But at some point, this becomes too much. But where? How do we know?

– Jiri, Czechia

Q1: What do you think?  When does detachment cross the healthy border?

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NOW, LET'S WORK RELIGION INTO THE PICTURE

Welwood: Religion is not therapy

Religion is a great comfort to many people. In fact, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Friedreich Nietzsche, and B.F. Skinner all argued that it’s a defining characteristic of religion to act as a defense mechanism. It’s a balm to soothe our pains and a crutch to keep us from falling.

Q2: Do you have any kind of “spiritual crutch?”  Is there some concept that provides you with a sense of spiritual understanding about your world that helps you cope?

Link to the full article here.

(by PrimalSoup)

First time we’ve ever done it…

No, not that. 😜  My husband and I voted for the first time today using in-person early voting.  Other than in 2020, where we used mail-in ballots because of the pandemic, we’ve always gone to our assigned precinct to vote on actual Election Day. 

It went well. There were a lot of people there at Board of Elections site, but we didn’t have to wait except for about 1-2 minutes to get checked in.

How about you?  Have you early voted yet?  

(by PrimalSoup)

Global warming update; Political parties as a religious group; Trump court documents release

The carbon energy sector apparently has a version of something akin to Project 2025: Trump has vowed to gut climate rules. Oil lobbyists have a plan ready. 

As companies fall short on methane emission reductions, a top trade group has crafted a road map for dismantling key Biden administration rules. An influential oil and gas industry group whose members were aggressively pursued for campaign cash by Donald Trump has drafted detailed plans for dismantling landmark Biden administration climate rules after the presidential election, according to internal documents obtained by The Washington Post. 

The plans were drawn up by the American Exploration and Production Council, or AXPC, a group of 30 mostly independent oil and gas producers, including several major oil companies. They reveal a comprehensive industry effort to reverse climate initiatives advanced during nearly four years of Democratic leadership. At the same time, the documents contain confidential data showing that industry’s voluntary initiatives to cut emissions have fallen short.

That is not surprising. Trump and the GOP have been openly hostile to environmental regulations and the concept of human-cause global warming for a long time. The carbon sector will probably get a good opportunity to vindicate its policy preferences if Trump is elected next month. 

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An NYT opinion (not paywalled) about the persistent near-even split in American politics posits an explanation that I believe significantly explains the divide:

I think the reason for all this is that political parties no longer serve the function they used to. In days gone by, parties were political organizations designed to win elections and gain power. Party leaders would expand their coalitions toward that end. Today, on the other hand, in an increasingly secular age, political parties are better seen as religious organizations that exist to provide believers with meaning, membership and moral sanctification. If that’s your purpose, of course you have to stick to the existing gospel. You have to focus your attention on affirming the creed of the current true believers. You get so buried within the walls of your own catechism, you can’t even imagine what it would be like to think outside it.

When parties were primarily political organizations, they were led by elected officials and party bosses. Now that parties are more like quasi-religions, power lies with priesthood — the dispersed array of media figures, podcast hosts and activists who run the conversation, define party orthodoxy and determine the boundaries of acceptable belief.

A lot of social science evidence supports the idea that the two parties significantly act as religions. In my opinion (and in Perplexity's evidence-based opinion), that is more true for the GOP than the Dem Party. Other major factors are (i) two fundamentally different perceptions of reality that the two sides of the divide appears to be mostly grounded in, and (ii) two fundamentally different mental types or mindsets divided over perceptions of democracy. Both sides claim a pro-democracy stance, but one is arguably a lot less pro-democracy than the other. However, since "democracy" is an essentially contested concept, those differences of opinion are unresolvable and politically dealt with by compromise or force.

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The federal judge in Trump's election interference case has released over 1,500 pages of filings, with some (many?) of the pages redacted. Trump argued that the release constituted election interference. The judge rejected that argument. Some of the judges comments regarding rejecting Trump's complaints and explaining her reasoning:

Defendant’s request does not engage with the six relevant factors for sealing. Instead, he argues that keeping the Appendix under seal for another month will serve other interests. Ultimately, none of those arguments are persuasive.

Setting aside the oxymoronic proposition that the public’s understanding of this case will be enhanced by withholding information about it, any public debate about the issues in this case has no bearing on the court’s resolution of those issues.

Finally, and relatedly, Defendant claims that the “asymmetric release of charged allegations and related documents during early voting creates a concerning appearance of election interference.” Motion at 5. There is undoubtedly a public interest in courts not inserting themselves into elections, or appearing to do so. See id. at 6. But litigation’s incidental effects on politics are not the same as a court’s intentional interference with them. As a result, it is in fact Defendant’s requested relief that risks undermining that public interest: If the court withheld information that the public otherwise had a right to access solely because of the potential political consequences of releasing it, that withholding could itself constitute—or appear to be— election interference. The court will therefore continue to keep political considerations out of its decision-making, rather than incorporating them as Defendant requests. Any argument about “what needs to happen before or shouldn’t happen before the election is not relevant here.” Tr. of Arraignment and Status Conference at 29, ECF No. 232. 

Rather, his objection is to the Appendix’s release “during a highly contested political campaign.” Motion at 4. But a President’s “capacity . . . as a candidate for office” is “unofficial” and does not implicate the concerns animating his official immunity. Id. at 2340; see id. at 2332. Accordingly, the court has repeatedly stressed that “Defendant’s concern with the political consequences of these proceedings does not bear on the pretrial schedule.” Op. & Order at 3, ECF No. 243. (emphases added)

This exemplifies the constant cat and mouse game that Trump plays with the courts. Here the judge argued that (1) releasing the documents is incidental to normal litigation practice, which is true, and (2) not releasing the documents constitutes election interference by Trump himself. That is a fascinating argument. 

Despite cat and mouse, Trump won smashingly and possibly (probably?) decisively when the supreme court held a few months ago that Trump is immune from criminal prosecution associated with crimes committed in the course of undefined "official acts" by the president. Sometimes the mouse wins, sometimes the cat. Sometimes democracy loses.

The following comments reflect how I see the truly frightening situation the federal courts are now locked into:

Peanut gallery denizen: This is a reasonable, just, and well thought out response by the judge. What scares me is that there are judges, I’m looking at you Texas and Florida, that are so deep into the cult that they’d do just the opposite.

Peanut 2: Which is ultimately why Donald’s first presidency was so damaging. I think it’s possible his first presidency ended the Union and we’re just waiting for the right Supreme Court case. His second one, if it occurred, would finish the job. 

Peanut 3: She put into words something which SHOULDN’T need to be said. But she had too, nonetheless, because of the numerous motions incorporating requests to withhold information from this case otherwise available in a normal case. Sealing prosecution and/or defendant arguments is the exception, not the norm.

About the Harris debate with Faux News

I didn't listen to most of it, but read the WaPo and NYT assessments of it. From those descriptions, it sounds like Harris did a really good job. The criticisms from Faux and the radical right generally fit with that assessment.

One thing she did that was outstanding:

• Harris hit back hard when Bret Bair slammed her about immigration and violence. She pointed directly to the Republicans sabotaging their own border control bill. What she apparently did not say was that instead of Joe Biden or herself apologizing to the American family that had a young child murdered by immigrants, Republican hypocrites should be apologizing because they blocked their own border security bill.

And, Harris hit back hard again when Baier showed a video clip of Trump whining about being threatened by alleged bogus Democrat court prosecutions. Harris turned that back against Baier and pointed out how Trump keeps threatening critics, the press and Democrats with prosecutions and jail for simply criticizing Trump. 

Criticisms of Germaine; Why resort to authority over personal opinion?

In the last couple of weeks I have received a fair amount of explicit or implicit criticisms. If I recall right they boil down to six things:

1. Arrogance in how I express myself
2. Seeing the world in black and white, maybe part of the arrogance problem
3. Relying too much on experts to guide my opinions
4. Being way too alarmist about various authoritarian threats to American democracy, the rule of law, and civil liberties from Trump and the MAGA movement (kleptocratic autocracy, plutocracy and Christian theocracy)
5. Being too biased or unreasonable by being trapped in partisan identity politics 
6. Being way too partisan in favor of extreme liberalism, although the labels socialist or communist have not yet popped up

Those criticisms are sincere and come from people of good will, so I take them seriously. In short, they blow me away. I’ve apparently been seriously blind to my own flaws. I thought I was basically the opposite of criticisms #1 and #2. Regarding #4, I thought that I was very careful to lay out a lot of evidence to support my deep fears about America turning into some form of a bigoted, authoritarian kleptocracy. Criticism #5 baffles me because I don’t know what identity I am trapped in.

However, there is both truth and misunderstanding behind criticism #6. I am very partisan from in favor of pragmatic rationalism and its core moral values. But pragmatic rationalism is not liberalism or politically left. It is something else. I thought it was mostly centrist. Assuming I was an exemplar of pragmatic rationalism and being usually in accord with majority public opinion about most things with poll data, centrism felt like a reasonable label. However, Perplexity convinced me I am not a centrist. Instead, Perplexity gave what I believe is a more accurate description of my brand of politics:  

“Pragmatic rationalism, as presented by Germaine, aims to transcend conventional political labels and ideologies. It focuses on using cognitive biology and social behavior insights to counteract biases and promote more rational decision-making in politics and policy. 

While Germaine may touch on issues that align with various points on the political spectrum, his overall framework appears to be an attempt to create a meta-ideology that critiques and aims to improve upon traditional political thinking.

Given this information, it would be most accurate to describe Germaine’s political stance as: Unconventional/Alternative: Rather than fitting into established categories like far left, left, or centrist, Germaine’s pragmatic rationalism represents an attempt to forge a new approach to politics based on cognitive science and rational analysis.”

In my opinion, that nails it. That is me, and I am partisan about it. 

Q: What other criticisms reasonably apply to Germaine and/or pragmatic rationalism?

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Personal opinion vs. expert opinion 

This post raises the question, as one critic put it about criticism #3, “why debate if it comes down to dueling AUTHORITIES to dismiss personal analysis and verification. .... why debate seriously if one cannot produce their own analysis and verification, relying on dueling authorities, dismissing each other as posters...or worse, assigning authority based on partisan and identity bias?”

Accompanying that question was a personally concerning assertion of insult, “I'll say it again: what if I show extreme investing success vs Suzie Orman or Robert Kiyosaki, being called a clown relative to them. And by the way...that is EXACTLY what some more or less have said in our community .... asserting I’m a clown vs their authorities...this from some posters perceived to be authoritative by many members of this community.”

Maybe unreasonable reliance on expert opinion is a big personal blind spot. And I very much I hope I did not call the commenter a clown because it is insulting. If I did, I’m truly sorry.

Rethinking the line of argument that commenter has been asserting here for a long time, I can see how arguing that successful active investing can be a significant source of personal wealth. That seems to be a solid truth. What I have no feeling for at all is (1) how one can reliably do that (the commenter makes it sound fairly easy), and (2) how to translate personal financial success into a political force that would stand in defense of morally vastly superior pluralist, secular democracy** to some form of morally rotted corrupt authoritarianism. 

** Yes, democracy over authoritarianism evinces solid partisanship and my moral logic. I am a partisan.

For me, there is a big disconnect between the goal of pragmatic rationalism, namely counteracting biases and promoting more rational decision-making in politics and policy. How to bridge that gap? Not all successful stock market investors will be pro-democracy. Some will be pro-authoritarian. What glue is there to tie financial success with democracy?

Hence my deep confusion about what role successful investing would have as a political strategy or mindset. But I do often adopt the opinions of what I believe are well-meaning, honest experts in various aspects of politics because I am not an expert. I know that experts are often or usually wrong in their predictions, a situation that is so well documented that I consider it to be a fact, not a debatable truth (book review 1, book review 2, book review 3).

Q1: What am I missing here by not seeing major connections between secular democracy politics and personal success in finance? I think I am missing something, but cannot put a finger on it.

Q2: How often should individual analysis and opinion trump expert analysis opinion, sometimes, usually, all the time, etc.?