March 2025
For as much as I enjoy analyzing politics[1], I'm even more against discussing it with friends. This policy arose from three patterns observed over the years:
- Most people don't have political views, they have political tribes
- Developing the political reasoning skills to graduate from tribes to views is incredibly difficult
and the kicker:
- Most people don't want to graduate from tribes to views
Often when someone asks "who did you vote for", what they're actually doing is verifying your adherence to group culture, like a congregation member asking "you believe in god, right?" loudly in church.
The insidious nature of this question comes from the false representation as earnest, intellectual discourse. Many who ask it may truly believe they’re engaging earnestly, but their responses quickly reveal an angle more akin to religious police.
Most vulnerable to this behavior are the intellectually honest + socially clueless, who engage in good faith, unaware of the pending social ambush.
Why does this happen?
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.
To have an informed view on any given issue, one needs to:
- understand economics, game theory, philosophy, sales, business, military strategy, geopolitics, sociology, history, and more
- be able to understand and empathize with the various (and often opposing) groups involved in a topic
- detect and ignore their own bias
How can you prioritize limited resources with deadly consequences without understanding utilitarianism vs deontology (i.e. the trolly problem)?
Understand China-US relations without understanding communism vs capitalism, the fear of tyranny vs the threat of invasion, or how and where computer chips are made?
How military power dictates realities, economies affect happiness, or how frivolous lawsuits can protect consumers? How companies are built, how elections are won, or the role nuclear families and 30-year fixed mortgages play in America?
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
Each side has both villains and victims. Both landlords and renters can be perpetrators and innocent. Both workers and business owners can be exploited and stolen from.
Yet most people can only identify with one narrative, usually one they've experienced or have a connection to. To acquire, then properly apply this knowledge while honestly detecting your own bias is such an undertaking it's no wonder I only know one or two people capable of it[2].
So it's no surprise humans resort to what’s worked for thousands of years: find our tribe and rep their beliefs, hard.[3]
[2] While it's usually people with significant life experience through business or intense study, I've been pleasantly surprised by friends who've seemed to develop this ability without either of those things
[3] A reader might fairly ask what my tribe is. I'm not sure. A friend and I theorized one reason I might be more tribalism-allergic than others is due to a lack of tribe. Being quite culturally American while ethnically Indian, there isn't really a place in the world I can go where I fit in. In India I'm seen as American, in America I'm seen as Indian -- and it's perhaps this lack of tribe that's contributed to this viewpoint.
[4] One theory I have for this is reduced practice in critical thinking. As we get older, unless your job requires it in particular or you regularly switch industries, many roles are just pattern-based rinse and repeat. The other explanation is the community/identity that I cover later
[5] Note, there are other reasons people stick with tribalism, such as playing status games -- but this seems derivative of the community/identity angle
[6] Interestingly, I've noticed people who demonstrate this sort of political tribalism also tend to be big sports fans -- which could make sense if you view it as a form of regularly practiced tribalism.
[7] Worth noting, however, that knowingly choosing a false belief essentially makes ignorance a value, something I understand but personally can’t accept
[8] Few things give me greater joy than a discovery-ridden conversation with smart friends, and this is only enhanced if I learn something I previously believed to be true is actually wrong. Seriously, come prove some core belief I have as wrong and you will quite literally make my week.
[9] Fully understanding I can be the one in the wrong -- however, when this is the case, the person explaining is usually able to:
- understand my argument
- convey their disagreement in good faith without circular reasoning or rhetorical tricks
[10] In general, I find writing is a much more intellectually honest medium than verbal discussion. Unless both debaters are skilled and intentionally trying for honest debate; the lack of record, tonality, and audience quickly devolve a conversation into the he-said-she-said, gaslighting, fallacy-ridden spectacle we see in presidential debates. But writing offers a reprieve: an idea can be articulated fully, without interruption, can be referenced and re-read. Indeed, writing seems to be the bane of gaslighters and ideologues and the bastion of the intellectually curious.
[11] I do think some small percentage people genuinely want to be truth-seeking but just lack the ability to detect their own bias. It’s these I hope this essay inspires to put the effort into learning, but spotting these among the tribalists I find hard.
[12] At 23 I quit my job, fed up with the bay, and bought a one-way ticket to Australia. After meeting my wife there and moving back, I did it yet again by explicitly taking a job in San Diego.
[13] Not a reference to the book, which I haven’t read — this is just a phrase I use
[14] I encourage everyone to learn poker to a level where they're assigning probabilities to see this system in direct action. Tribalists will often deal in absolutes: "he's 100% gonna fail", "she's doing it because she's evil", "housing always goes up". But you'll notice they rarely put their money where their mouth is.
[15] Many people will make the post-modernist argument "there is no objective truth". I strongly disagree. If you're reading this post, that means you're using technology built on objective truth. You're only alive because your ancestors sought out objective truth to find food and survive. Yes, there are many instances where the only accounts of an incident are heavily biased, but that does not mean objective truth doesn't exist. Some actions were taken, with some combination of intentions at the time -- even if we can't realistically discover them, acknowledging their existence, and pursuing them with probabilistic guesses, is much more honest than just throwing our hands up and saying "everyone is correct" or just picking the one we like best.
[16] This is based on my favorite method for fixing mistakes in sports, over-correcting. if I'm hitting too far left, I try and make the "opposite" mistake by hitting too far right. Then it's just a matter of honing in, or "oscillating" until I'm dialed in. In my experience the same works for reasoning.
[17] Another favorite line from Paul Graham’s “Two Kinds of Moderate”
