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

Do you think that most people would choose to define "politics" as "strongly felt affiliations with powerful groups that gain their power from our affiliation, but are too big to actually consider our preferences when using their power" ?

The purpose of tabooing words ought be to disentangle confusing connotations that the original word had. You seem to have chosen to add connotations. You may argue that politics leads to such "strongly felt affiliations" to such "powerful groups", but damn, that's a different thing from just defining politics to be such.

Dictionary.com lays out several definitions:

the science or art of political government.
the practice or profession of conducting political affairs.
political affairs: The advocated reforms have become embroiled in politics.
political methods or maneuvers: We could not approve of his politics in winning passage of the bill.
political principles or opinions: We avoided discussion of religion and politics. His politics are his own affair.

As well as an idiomatic definition which is closer to the way the word is often used by LW members who ... (read more)