While I agree with lots of what you say I have a few major issues.
0) Experiment just isn't sufficient to overcome ideological pressures. In particular, the issue is that each voter has sufficiently small influence that their interests are more to display their moral values than in picking working policies.
As such you frequently have cases like you do with rent control or kinds of DEI policies where despite clear evidence against the claim in experiments the incentivizes of the individual are to show their commitment to the values of the ideology by advocating bad policies (bc those are policies which the other side would never favor while the ones which do work aren't sufficiently discriminatory on values)
1) Obviously all aspects of human biology and culture are subject to the *constraint* of evolution. However, that doesn't mean that most of those aspects are primarily determined by evolutionary pressures. Most aspects of our lives just aren't under strong selective pressure and it's not clear why we can assume that most aspects of ideology are.
And even if we could it's far from clear that what determines the ideology's success is the benefit it offers to the group or has anything to do with it being correct. For instance, often a selfish behavior (help those with that ideology and screw those without it) can actually drive adoption of bad ideas because advertising them is an expensive signal of group membership. As such there is no reason to believe that on net there will be selection for the ideology that in some sense has workable ideas rather than bad ones.
2) Given the failure of 1 actual evidence is needed to show that in fact it's collision with reality that is mostly why ideogies fail.
Indeed, this seems to be false in the case of religion. Your theory should predict that virtually no religion that advocates prayer as a mechanism for achieving goals would succeed long term against a religion that says: go out and do something.
If you try and invoke higher order effects (eg signalling benefits of prayer or something) you can do that but then the claim fades into the trivial statement that those ideologies which in fact persist are the ones that persist.
Thanks for the comments. I appreciate that you took the time to listen/watch the entire episode. You have clearly thought through this.
Let me answer each point separately
0) Agreed. Though I believe that there is an alternative, I am not optimistic that it will overcome ideologies. Ideologues will never be convinced by evidence or results. I do think it is possible to adopt policies that focus on experimentation and results rather than on ideologies.
My hope that a critical mass of "normies" want policy to focus on results out of their own self-interest and collective interest. Obviously, that is not going to happen right now.
1) I do not believe that I said that most aspects of ideology are determined by evolutionary pressure. I did not even use the phrase. My main claim is that ideologies are expressions of non-rational psychology.
Yes, ideologies undermine the group. I said that in the video. My video is about why ideologies fail. I am not claiming that the best ideology will naturally triumph. The reason is that the non-rational psychological processes never go away. For example, Woke ideology has replaced Communism.
I do believe that the case of Liberal Democratic Capitalism is a set of ideas (and perhaps an ideology) that has stood the test of time because it works. Other competitor ideologies have failed because they conflict too much with reality.
2) Let me give one example. Communism clearly failed because it could not generate economic growth over the long run. Yes, Communism still exists, but it was never able to create the type of society that its supporters were trying to do. Fascism and National Socialism are also examples of failed ideologies.
My video is not about religion. Religions are typically not trying to reshape societies to create a certain end state in the material world. They are typically concerned with the hereafter and how individuals should conduct themselves. Because they are not focused on the material world, they are not as constrained by it.
So I guess the crux of my question is in what sense are you saying more than the obvious claim that: ideologies whose methods don't bring about their goals won't bring about their goals via those methods?
That's true but kinda trivial. I mean as you observe communism hasn't disappeared as a force. So it seems like an argument against the claim that one can defeat or shift what ideological views are held because of collision with reality -- at least if you mean more than the above trivial sense of defeat.
I think this episode is full of non-obvious claims.
Again I did not claim that an ideology would disappear, although many do for all practical purposes. My claim is that they cannot achieve their chosen goal because they stem from non-rational psychology. That is an epic failure regardless of how many people believe.
My point is that there seems to be something of an ambiguity in what you mean when you say that ideologies are defeated by a collision with reality.
It seems like you want to claim:
a) When an ideology makes claims that are in conflict with reality, eg that a adopting a communist system will lead to a worker paradise, that ideology will cease to have large numbers of followers and will no longer be able to influence the actions of power brokers etc..
But communism seems like a counterexample to this. Lots of people still express support for it and it stills influences the choices of large countries so you instead say something like:
b) The ideology fails to achieve it's desired goals. Well yes, but that isn't what you really want to show. Your argument seems to require a but im not convinced you show more than b.
Yes, I show B. That is non-obvious claim. Virtually all strong believers of an ideology believe that the ideology can achieve its goals.
I am not trying to show A, nor is it necessary.
It does not matter how many people believe in an ideology, but ideologues believe that if they can just convince more people they will succeed. But it does not matter.
Yes, to the extent an ideology makes predictions about the world (in contrast to those which merely make value claims, eg, gov should maximize welfare or protect individual rights) those predictions can be checked. That's almost a truism.
Indeed, I think that the whole reason people debate over ideology is because they believe that they can look at evidence to support their claims to truth.
However, in practice it's not at all clear that this offers an effective means of changing minds, i.e., that an ideology which often is seen to get things wrong will become less popular. As you yourself point out there are all sorts of ways people excuse such failure.
Moreover, you can't assume those excuses are necessarily wrong. Sometimes it really is true that an ideology is correct and it's just that the times it's been tried weren't really good attempts or were married by other harmful issues.
--
To summarize doesn't this just leave us in the position everyone agrees with: you should decide what is true by looking at the evidence. And all the debate is just over what is the correct way to interpret it?
Thanks for the reply. Mostly my point 1 was raised to support 2 but also I guess I don't understand in what sense you are then claiming that ideology is particularly non-rartional. I mean in what sense is this not a fully general argument (probably true) that most beliefs by most people most of the time are held for non-rational reasons?
Regarding 2 I understand you aren't speaking about religion but my point is that the same arguments would seem to predict the wrong thing in the case of religion so that calls them into doubt in this case. However, communism is an equally good example so let's discuss that in another comment.
I do not know what percent of human beliefs are rational or non-rational.
I do believe that most people start with assumptions that they never tested and they are often non-rational. I believe that people generally have non-rational goals, but they often are very rational in achieving the goal. It is only when they get the wrong result that they are forced to recalibrate.
My main point is that most people believe their political preferences are based on rationally thinking through all the issues when that is clearly not the case. This makes them very intolerant of other people's views.
I believe we all need a lot more humility and a willingness to focus on results.
While I agree with lots of what you say I have a few major issues.
0) Experiment just isn't sufficient to overcome ideological pressures. In particular, the issue is that each voter has sufficiently small influence that their interests are more to display their moral values than in picking working policies.
As such you frequently have cases like you do with rent control or kinds of DEI policies where despite clear evidence against the claim in experiments the incentivizes of the individual are to show their commitment to the values of the ideology by advocating bad policies (bc those are policies which the other side would never favor while the ones which do work aren't sufficiently discriminatory on values)
1) Obviously all aspects of human biology and culture are subject to the *constraint* of evolution. However, that doesn't mean that most of those aspects are primarily determined by evolutionary pressures. Most aspects of our lives just aren't under strong selective pressure and it's not clear why we can assume that most aspects of ideology are.
And even if we could it's far from clear that what determines the ideology's success is the benefit it offers to the group or has anything to do with it being correct. For instance, often a selfish behavior (help those with that ideology and screw those without it) can actually drive adoption of bad ideas because advertising them is an expensive signal of group membership. As such there is no reason to believe that on net there will be selection for the ideology that in some sense has workable ideas rather than bad ones.
2) Given the failure of 1 actual evidence is needed to show that in fact it's collision with reality that is mostly why ideogies fail.
Indeed, this seems to be false in the case of religion. Your theory should predict that virtually no religion that advocates prayer as a mechanism for achieving goals would succeed long term against a religion that says: go out and do something.
If you try and invoke higher order effects (eg signalling benefits of prayer or something) you can do that but then the claim fades into the trivial statement that those ideologies which in fact persist are the ones that persist.
Thanks for the comments. I appreciate that you took the time to listen/watch the entire episode. You have clearly thought through this.
Let me answer each point separately
0) Agreed. Though I believe that there is an alternative, I am not optimistic that it will overcome ideologies. Ideologues will never be convinced by evidence or results. I do think it is possible to adopt policies that focus on experimentation and results rather than on ideologies.
My hope that a critical mass of "normies" want policy to focus on results out of their own self-interest and collective interest. Obviously, that is not going to happen right now.
1) I do not believe that I said that most aspects of ideology are determined by evolutionary pressure. I did not even use the phrase. My main claim is that ideologies are expressions of non-rational psychology.
Yes, ideologies undermine the group. I said that in the video. My video is about why ideologies fail. I am not claiming that the best ideology will naturally triumph. The reason is that the non-rational psychological processes never go away. For example, Woke ideology has replaced Communism.
I do believe that the case of Liberal Democratic Capitalism is a set of ideas (and perhaps an ideology) that has stood the test of time because it works. Other competitor ideologies have failed because they conflict too much with reality.
2) Let me give one example. Communism clearly failed because it could not generate economic growth over the long run. Yes, Communism still exists, but it was never able to create the type of society that its supporters were trying to do. Fascism and National Socialism are also examples of failed ideologies.
My video is not about religion. Religions are typically not trying to reshape societies to create a certain end state in the material world. They are typically concerned with the hereafter and how individuals should conduct themselves. Because they are not focused on the material world, they are not as constrained by it.
Anyway, thanks for the comment.
So I guess the crux of my question is in what sense are you saying more than the obvious claim that: ideologies whose methods don't bring about their goals won't bring about their goals via those methods?
That's true but kinda trivial. I mean as you observe communism hasn't disappeared as a force. So it seems like an argument against the claim that one can defeat or shift what ideological views are held because of collision with reality -- at least if you mean more than the above trivial sense of defeat.
I do not understand your first paragraph.
I think this episode is full of non-obvious claims.
Again I did not claim that an ideology would disappear, although many do for all practical purposes. My claim is that they cannot achieve their chosen goal because they stem from non-rational psychology. That is an epic failure regardless of how many people believe.
My point is that there seems to be something of an ambiguity in what you mean when you say that ideologies are defeated by a collision with reality.
It seems like you want to claim:
a) When an ideology makes claims that are in conflict with reality, eg that a adopting a communist system will lead to a worker paradise, that ideology will cease to have large numbers of followers and will no longer be able to influence the actions of power brokers etc..
But communism seems like a counterexample to this. Lots of people still express support for it and it stills influences the choices of large countries so you instead say something like:
b) The ideology fails to achieve it's desired goals. Well yes, but that isn't what you really want to show. Your argument seems to require a but im not convinced you show more than b.
If every person on planet earth believed in Communism, it would still fail.
This is one of my favorite sayings because I think it sums it all up in a pithy way:
It does not matter what you believe.
It does not matter how many others you can convince to agree with you.
Reality always wins.
Ideologues hate it because they know it is correct, but they cannot admit it without undermining their entire world view.
I do not understand your line of reasoning.
Yes, I show B. That is non-obvious claim. Virtually all strong believers of an ideology believe that the ideology can achieve its goals.
I am not trying to show A, nor is it necessary.
It does not matter how many people believe in an ideology, but ideologues believe that if they can just convince more people they will succeed. But it does not matter.
Yes, to the extent an ideology makes predictions about the world (in contrast to those which merely make value claims, eg, gov should maximize welfare or protect individual rights) those predictions can be checked. That's almost a truism.
Indeed, I think that the whole reason people debate over ideology is because they believe that they can look at evidence to support their claims to truth.
However, in practice it's not at all clear that this offers an effective means of changing minds, i.e., that an ideology which often is seen to get things wrong will become less popular. As you yourself point out there are all sorts of ways people excuse such failure.
Moreover, you can't assume those excuses are necessarily wrong. Sometimes it really is true that an ideology is correct and it's just that the times it's been tried weren't really good attempts or were married by other harmful issues.
--
To summarize doesn't this just leave us in the position everyone agrees with: you should decide what is true by looking at the evidence. And all the debate is just over what is the correct way to interpret it?
Thanks for the reply. Mostly my point 1 was raised to support 2 but also I guess I don't understand in what sense you are then claiming that ideology is particularly non-rartional. I mean in what sense is this not a fully general argument (probably true) that most beliefs by most people most of the time are held for non-rational reasons?
Regarding 2 I understand you aren't speaking about religion but my point is that the same arguments would seem to predict the wrong thing in the case of religion so that calls them into doubt in this case. However, communism is an equally good example so let's discuss that in another comment.
I do not know what percent of human beliefs are rational or non-rational.
I do believe that most people start with assumptions that they never tested and they are often non-rational. I believe that people generally have non-rational goals, but they often are very rational in achieving the goal. It is only when they get the wrong result that they are forced to recalibrate.
My main point is that most people believe their political preferences are based on rationally thinking through all the issues when that is clearly not the case. This makes them very intolerant of other people's views.
I believe we all need a lot more humility and a willingness to focus on results.