Political Allegiance Is Fairly Cool

Sorta contra Mon0, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Scott Alexander

Noted Pro-Masturbation Substacker

Mon0

argues that we should Refuse Political Allegiance. They write that partisanship poisons our rationality:

When people “pick a side” (or better: when a side is handed down to them by their parents) something strange starts to happen. People begin to believe that their morals come from their political ideology. That the ethical beliefs they hold aren’t just aligned with their political group, but are actually transmitted by the political movement itself.

It’s not “I believe in this party because it reflects my values.” It becomes “these are my values because this is what my party believes.” There’s a kind of moral inversion—where instead of using your ethics to judge politics, politics becomes the thing that tells you what’s ethical.

This is a good and true point, and it’s been made in these circles before. As early as 2007, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote that Politics is the Mind-Killer:

Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there’s a Blue or Green position on an issue.

And in the early days of Slate Star Codex, Scott Alexander paid it some mind in I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup:

Ethnic differences have proven quite tractable in the face of shared strategic aims. Even the Nazis, not known for their ethnic tolerance, were able to get all buddy-buddy with the Japanese when they had a common cause.

Research suggests Blue Tribe / Red Tribe prejudice to be much stronger than better-known types of prejudice like racism.

I agree that all of this is bad. I think the effect Yudkowsky and Alexander describe is largely responsible for all the old woke excesses of the 2010s, and all the new woke excesses of the 2020s.

But I don’t think that Mon0’s solution is the right one. They write of four reasons we should shun political affiliation:

1. Discussions become “less vitriolic and more productive.”

2. It becomes easier to admit to mistaken views and abandon them.

3. Mix-and-matching becomes a live option: if you want to be an anarcho-capitalist and an Islamo-monarchist, knock yourself out.

4. You’re made to think hard about your real values absent social desirability bias.

These are certainly good reasons! And I’ll emphasize that it’s an especially important discussion norm to disconnect yourself from your tribes in general—no more “as a black queer disabled Muslim transgender marginalized BIPOC, I believe…” and no more “as a registered Republican for 40 years, I believe…”—you should just say the things you believe.

Even so, practically speaking, I believe partisanship is an important good. Mon0 admits there’s some instrumental value to tribe-ifying yourself:

Belonging to a group has real benefits—companionship, protection, a sense of identity. Humans are social creatures; we like having a tribe. There’s comfort in knowing someone has your back.

But this doesn’t go nearly far enough!

For one, elections (at least in the United States) tend to be really close. I worked on the fringe of a group last summer that did a lot of research into the tractability of influencing the presidential race. They produced this table to demonstrate just how tight election margins are getting:

source

Granted, the eventual 2024 margin was closer to 200,000 votes—but in a country with more than 150 million total voters, and more than 30 million just in the swing states, that’s not a ton. Growing one tribe even a very small amount could have a huge impact.

Relatedly,

Matthew Yglesias

wants Democrats to build a big tent. Even among all the rationalists who disavow both the Red and Blue Tribes, who shun political affiliations, I think there’s broad agreement on a few (real, moral) values: namely, principles like Orange Man Bad and Rule Of Law Good.

Our political system being what it is, it’s hard to reliably accomplish goals related to Orange Man Bad without accepting some degree of labeling—voting for Democrats, even (God forbid) donating to and volunteering for their campaigns.

This is compatible enough with Mon0’s anti-affiliation position—just vote for the Blue tribe, don’t identify with it—until the dissonance hits. One moment, you’re filling out the bubble next to Kamala Harris’ name, the next you’re being tied up and captured by your audience, sprinting up the contrarianism treadmill, and wondering how it all went wrong.

Ultimately, Mon0 is giving the political label too much power. There’s no inherent problem with calling yourself a big-tent anti-Trumpist, and then also holding very heterodox and mixed-up views and engaging in open debate with those who disagree. In fact, you positively should do this!

First, work to figure out your values—but once you have a decent idea of what they are, you should declare them in clear, verifiable, and sticky terms—should identify yourself with one tribe or another. The ever-escalating-edginess mechanism is real. If you’re anything close to a public intellectual, or really anyone prone to fits of contrarian fancy, you should be setting strong Schelling points for your future self.

Call yourself a Libertarian now, and you’ll be less tempted to celebrate the extrajudicial kidnapping of legal residents later.

Dude, Europe is not a real place.