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: "they've been brainwashed"
3/ A more useful answer is from @JonHaidt who argued that different people are instinctively sensitive to different moral ideas, almost like some people might have a sweet tooth and love chocolate, while others are indifferent to chocolate but really love savoury snacks.
4/ This is Moral Foundations Theory and it's a useful way of looking at politics. Here are the tastes, each of which is thought to originate in a particular evolutionary challenge:
5/ The theory is that people of different political persuasions have different tastes, with a lot of agreement between Left & Right over the importance of care/harm, but conservatives much more sensitive to ideas of authority, loyalty ("ingroup") and sanctity (purity).
6/ This theory has consequences for persuading opponents. E.g. someone on the Left that supports refugees shouldn't just rely on care/harm ("look at these people suffering") but might also appeal to loyalty ("our great nation was built on welcoming refugees").
7/ I'm open-minded on whether Moral Foundations Theory is right, and there are other ways to model the psychology of Left and Right. But this kind of thinking is helpful because it gets us thinking about persuasion, something often missing in today's politics.
Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 16, 2023.