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I am neither confemning or condoning. There are incentives put in place by our actions, those incentives lead to where we are today. A principled political consultant gets out competed and replaced. Politicians who are truthful and humble are outcompeted buy those who are not.
Those are the outcomes of our actions as voters and our actions as voters are downstream of the psychological make up of humanity.
Whether that is good or bad is irrelevant really. It simply is.
There isn't anything any individual can do about it, its a massive coordination issue, and there is no-one outside of humanity that can coordinate a better outcome.
The good news is this equilibrium is still better than the alternatives. Political engagement ebbs and flows and people are always very good at tricking themselves into thinking this time it will be different. This time the politicans will be better.
We had terrible disengagement in the 70s and it came back. No reason to think it won't happen again. Our ability to fool ourselves is one of our greatest strengths.
I don’t understand what’s so hard about condemning lies. To be clear, you think that Trump’s, above average tendency to lie, is morally perfectly fine, even required of a politician.
I don’t accept the responsibility of ‘us voters’. I don’t vote for liars generally. Some politicians lie more than others, and in different countries, at different times, politicians’ lies are more or less normalized.
Lies are a social technology with a purpose. In and of themselves lies are neither good nor bad in my opinion.
Trump doesn't really lie more than your average politician but he does lie differently. More the lies your boastful uncle tells than the more crafted non lie lies politicians generally aim for.
At a population level it doesn't matter if some individuals don't vote for liars, if the majority do.
When you say that politicians are not decent people and should never be trusted, that’s not condemnation, or normative in any way?
A society’s tolerance of lies, or politicians’ moral status in that society, are not all-or-nothing propositions.
For most people whether politicians are decent people personally is irrelevant. And never to trust them is just based upon their incentives and behaviors. They lie because we reward them for lying. But we can still be aware of that fact.
Thete is no point in condemning them. They are what we have chosen. Our politicians are downstream of our tolerance (and reward) of lies. They are a symptom not a cause.
If you want to get a more truthful and honest society that may be a worthy goal, and then you will get more truthful politicians. But you can't do it the other way round. Its the wrong way to look at it.
You argue for tolerating lies, which you say is upstream of politicians’ tendency to lie, so by that logic you cause lies. You defend the dishonesty of politicians even though you are clearly bothered by it. You choose to ignore your moral instincts for this sophistry.
for 95% of politicians if they did not lie they would immediately lose the next election, the average person is just not very intelligent and get swept up by charisma easily* so lying is a dominant strategy. And they can't just all agree to cooperate in the claimed prisoner's dilemma, there are a lot of people who want to be politicians who would happily lie and win anyway. The most obvious lie politicians tell is that they personally support policies because they have good effects, when those policies are actually ones that they think will get them elected. Trump probably doesn't actually like medicare and social security, and doesn't actually think abortion should be left up to the states. Kamala is not proud of being a border prosecutor.
*originally phrased as 'stupid and gullible', which I think is literally true but just saying that seems antagonistic
Some of your theses I disagree with:
Every lie is the same. It’s one thing to imply you’re just a regular guy by pretending to love fast food or a popular policy, more than you really do. It’s another to knowingly tell straight lies like ‘I grew up poor’, ‘The election was stolen’, ‘Our poll says Kamala wins’.
Evil always wins, who lies more wins more. A society where ‘lying is dominant’ would be more like Mao’s China, or even worse. There’s far too much truth and negative feedback on lying in our society for this to be our situation.
the cafeteria tray theory of morality. I don’t believe that if you refuse to eat the baby, the next guy will eat the baby.
Isn't the first kind of lie worse? It's about the actual policies you'll implement, what they will do, adn why you believe in them. The second kind of lie doesn't have any similarly direct impacts.
I'm specifically talking about electoral politics. There's less tolerance for lying in other areas. The reason we have representative democracy is that the politicians can be smarter than the voters, and lie less in private.
No i am making a direct empirical claim about people who actually exist in the world. If you start saying stuff like "I am voting for this policy because my constituents want it even though I think it's wrong", you will be replaced by someone who doesn't do that
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