EY "Politics is the Mind Killer" sighting at Washington Examiner and Reason.com

buybuydandavis

Original at Washington Examiner

http://washingtonexaminer.com/down-with-politics/article/2508882#.UGSscI0iYZm

...

Politics makes us worse because "politics is the mindkiller," as intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it. "Evolutionary psychology produces strange echoes in time," he writes, "as adaptations continue to execute long after they cease to maximize fitness." We gorge ourselves sick on sugar and fat, and we indulge our tribal hard-wiring by picking a political "team" and denouncing the "enemy."

But our atavistic Red/Blue tribalism plays to the interests of "individual politicians in getting you to identify with them instead of judging them," Yudkowsky writes.

...

Examiner Columnist Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of "The Cult of the Presidency."

Repost at Reason.com

http://reason.com/archive/2012/09/25/why-politics-are-bad-for-us

Original at Washington Examiner

http://washingtonexaminer.com/down-with-politics/article/2508882#.UGSscI0iYZm

...

Politics makes us worse because "politics is the mindkiller," as intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it. "Evolutionary psychology produces strange echoes in time," he writes, "as adaptations continue to execute long after they cease to maximize fitness." We gorge ourselves sick on sugar and fat, and we indulge our tribal hard-wiring by picking a political "team" and denouncing the "enemy."

But our atavistic Red/Blue tribalism plays to the interests of "individual politicians in getting you to identify with them instead of judging them," Yudkowsky writes.

...

Examiner Columnist Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of "The Cult of the Presidency."

Repost at Reason.com

http://reason.com/archive/2012/09/25/why-politics-are-bad-for-us

At risk of sounding simplistic, the alternative to non-unanimous decision procedures (the realm of political society) is unanimous decision procedures (the realm of civil society).

Or living without using decision procedures at all, which is quite feasible in small groups under ~150 people. There will always be disagreement about "rights" and the like, but small groups can more easily hash out such disagreements through informal ethics (i.e. managed de-escalation of conflict). Political conflict persay only seems to arise in larger groups.

Can you summarize your reasons for believing that small groups don't use decision procedures, as opposed to believing that small groups use informally specified decision procedures? My experience of decision-making in small groups is that while it can be consensual, it is more often an informal oligarchy... that is, there's a few people who really matter, but nobody ever comes right out and says that.

3Jayson_Virissimo14y

Individuals (and in some cases, families) deciding for themselves what to do is a special case of a "unanimous decision procedure".