2026-02-09
Levels of disagreement in political discussions
Disclaimer
Main
- I have often been too casual about these distinct levels of disagreements in political discussions, so I wanted to flag this explicitly.
- I initially made this post very abstract, but now I think this is better explained using an example.
- Example
- "This person deserves to be killed"
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be killed. It should be illegal, but because the govt won't make it illegal, I am currently part of a group that is actively killing them"
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be killed. It should be illegal, but because the govt won't make it illegal, I am currently actively forming a group. When we are sufficiently powerful, we will either get the govt to kill these people or kill them ourselves"
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be killed. It should be illegal, but the govt won't make it illegal. I don't plan to do much about it besides voting for this and telling people around me to vote for this."
- If you want an even stronger version of all the above examples, replace the verb "kill" with "rape" or "torture". If you want a weaker version of all the above examples, replace the verb "kill" with "imprison"
- "This person deserves to be cut off or ostracised"
- "I think making gambling apps is immmoral and people making them deserve to be ostracised from society. I don't think it should be illegal. I am part of a group that has removed them, and we are actively trying to get all the other groups in society to ostracise them too."
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be ostracised from society. I don't think it should be illegal. I am actively trying to get my group to ostracise them."
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be ostracised from society. I don't think it should be illegal. I have cut them off personally. Beyond this, I am not actively doing anything about it."
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be removed from my group. I don't think it should be illegal. We have removed them from our group."
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be removed from my group. I don't think it should be illegal. I am actively trying to convince my group to remove them."
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be removed from my group. I don't think it should be illegal. I have cut them off personally, and am not doing much beyond that"
- "I think making gambling apps is immoral and people making them deserve to be cut off from my life. I don't think it should be illegal. I have cut them off personally." (or I am atleast seriously considering it)
- Finacial incentive/disincentive
The problem
- I think some of the biggest problems with politics in general are causally downstream of the fact that you don't actually know where exactly someone is on this ladder.
- Often they won't actually specify in full and complete detail where exactly they are on this ladder. There are incentives to not want to specify your full position.
- Even if they do, you have no reason to believe them. Like I said, there are incentives to not want to specify your full position, and you are also aware, atleast in theory, that this is true, even if you have no idea what the exact incentives are.
- Like, not only do you not believe if they are being honest to you, but you might also not believe if they're being honest with themselves, or are likely to modify their stance later, and so on.
- Based on all sorts of stuff I don't yet understand very well, their brain will then implicitly assign probabilities of you being way higher on the ladder than you claim you are.
- Some hypotheses that are popular, but which I don't really know how to verify the truth of.
- Maybe they use groupthink to assign these implicit probabilities. As in, they are literally copy-pasting the probabilities of someone else in their group without even realising it.
- Maybe they are projecting their own personal experience on any one of the people involved in the situation. If they feel currently threatened or have felt so in past, they might use this to make assumptions of whether you are threatened.
- Specific sub-case that I have more confidence in, because of first-hand experience:
- If they are themselves socially isolated, there's more likelihood that the implicit probabilities they are assigning are skewed as a result.
- Assume Alice has been socially cut off by Bob in one in-person situation. Assume Carol is now facing an entirely different situation where David is trying to get his group to isolate Carol in-person. Assume Alice reads about Carol's situation over the internet. It seems possible that Alice will now empathise with Carol extra hard, and side with Carol blindly. In the exact opposite direction, it seems possible Alice will learn from her own experience that cancelling people is an effective strategy, and that this is just how power works in this new landscape. In which case Alice might actually empathise with David extra hard, and side with David blindly.
- Maybe they are using any number of implicit signals you are giving out, to correctly predict that you are facing pressure to not reveal your full position.
- Incomplete
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