Brendan Miller
But what ACTUALLY IS socialism?
Behind the political games, a lot of the confusion comes down to the fact there is a split in socialism between 1) revolutionary socialism and 2) social democracy. A short thread: Revolutionary socialism (Marx, Lenin, etc) says that to achieve equality, fairness, justice etc we should overthrow democracy and the existing political system, while social …
In defence of the middle-class
An interesting argument from Rules for Radicals is that change never comes the "haves" (benefit from status quo) or "have nots" (crushed by poverty), and so *must* come from the middle-class. And that's what's happened in history. Check out his list of middle-class radicals: I often hear critics attack activists on the basis that they're …
Moral Foundations Theory
1/ "Why do reasonable people disagree so much on political questions?" So much stupidity in politics comes from a failure to take this question seriously. 2/ Weak answers include "they're nasty" (what the Left thinks of the Right), "they're naive" (what the Right thinks of the Left) or what I've called the bad information hypothesis: …
The bad information hypothesis
“[Something] [something] THE MEDIA” is one of the most tiresome arguments in politics — whether it’s the Left complaining about Fox News, Murdoch and the tabloids; or the Right complaining about liberal woke BBC. At root, it's a model of politics I call the "bad information hypothesis": the idea that people have the wrong political …
Do you have a scarcity-mindset towards political action?
This thread between @Samfr and @Martha_Gill is an interesting example of something I think about a lot: the degree to which people have a scarcity-mindset towards political action. Sam mentions he believes there is a policy issue with girls outperforming boys in formal education. Martha argues if there is an unfairness it's offset by the …
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Tragedy of the commons
Politics is a gossipy mess
When I was following politics at school and university, I suffered one particular misunderstanding of news and politics which might be useful to share. Basically, my problem was that I underestimated the role of personality, jealousy, rivalry, pride, revenge, and gossip in politics and current events. One problem was that the high-status people who were …
Unacceptable consequences fallacy
Something that happens a lot in politics is what I call the “unacceptable consequences fallacy”. 🧵 For example, let’s look at the idea that genes play a huge role in determining intelligence, a controversial idea in politics but not in behavioural genetics. One of the reasons this idea is controversial is that it seems to imply …
Elon Musk genius
I know Elon musk has a lot of haters right now but what is the past few years has actually been a GENIUS political strategy that will save the planet? 🧵 Something unique about climate change is how much support is needed to make progress. A large majority of people need to change their behaviour. …