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Vladimir_M comments on Politics is a fact of life - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (51)
Vladimir_Nesov:
You will probably agree that historically there have been at least some times and places where completely ignoring politics could be very costly. Therefore, if you believe that you're not losing anything by ignoring politics at the present time and place where you live, this can be rational only if you have some evidence that the present social order you live under is not in that category. However, you cannot have any such evidence if you really ignore politics completely.
It follows that either you're being irrational, or your level of interest in politics is perhaps very low, but still above zero.
I'd ask for specific examples of the kinds of situations you are talking about (and correspondingly the intended meaning of "interest in politics" appropriate for those situations). But it's not helpful to draw a distinction between "very low level of interest, above zero" and "completely no interest" for discussing the intended meaning in the post (i.e. deciding whether to have discussions about politics of LW). So sure, I didn't make this distinction. I don't see why you would see this distinction as relevant.
In what cases you shouldn't just rely on your gut feeling telling that everything is likely fine for the near future, and instead have to work on understanding the situation better? That gut feeling doesn't require additional work, and it does inform you about the current situation.
I'd expect that if anything so serious as to require action on my part was going on, and it would be possible to know it given more effort, my attention would be drawn to it, without the need to research things in advance. (This is the kind of state that I intended when asking for examples, and it's not clear what such examples are.)
Why are people deleting comments with subcomments? It is annoying.
My apologies for that blunder -- please see the above reply to Vladimir Nesov for explanation.
My apologies for deleting the above comment -- after writing it, I concluded that it was unsatisfactory and decided to rewrite it. I wasn't aware that you had started writing a reply almost immediately after I had posted it. This was careless, although it wasn't my intention to be inconsiderate, and thanks for replying in any case.
Basically, the point at which we disagree is the following:
As I've mentioned in previous discussions of this topic, my opinion about this specific question was strongly influenced by personal experiences. Specifically, it was the fact that my family members had this exact attitude in ex-Yugoslavia circa 1991 that caused a lot of avoidable trouble for us (which some other people I know indeed avoided thanks to their better insight into the situation). It doesn't seem to me that this example is particularly extreme or unique historically; I can easily think of many others that have happened around the world only in recent decades, and I'm sure you can too.
Now of course, one could argue that I am biased in overestimating the probability of such events, or that I'm overestimating the possibility that one could ever actually gain useful enough insight for this purpose, the things being just too unpredictable. I'm open to arguments on both these counts, but it certainly seems to me that based on my current state of knowledge, it would be irrational to just cease any interest in these issues.
There are also, in my view, other situations in life where acquiring political knowledge can be very cost-effective, and I think this holds even if you actively shun any political engagement in your life. But I suspect we would reach similar disagreements if we were to discuss any specific examples.
That one should assess political stability and predict the actions of politicians is a very different claim than that one should discuss optimal policy, which is what most people mean by "discuss politics" and a good chunk of your activities on the education thread. I find that people's discussions of policy tend to reinforce their beliefs in the stability of the current regime. That is a very serious cost of discussing policy as if one could control it.
Elsewhere you said:
I'd be interested in hearing more about this sometime; all I know is the western media depictions of the Yugoslav wars, it would be interesting to know how things looked from the inside preceding them.
Well, I could write a lot about it, but I think I've underscored the aspects relevant for this topic well enough already. If you have some more specific questions, feel free to PM me.
Is there any account of things you'd recommend for curious western readers? Either written by you in the comments here (I haven't been obsessively reading all comments here), or somewhere else.
For someone interested in this topic, I would first recommend making sure to gain an accurate understanding of the general historical framework in which this and other modern-era European ethnic and ideological conflicts have occurred. Without that, one is likely to get lost in the flood of complicated details and confused by the various parties' contradicting attempts to present their case as favorably as possible (or worse, successfully propagandized by some of them).
The ex-Yugoslav wars were, in my view, not a unique grand event that by itself decisively shaped history, like e.g. the world wars were, but rather just another instance of wider phenomena that have manifested themselves in many other places and times. Therefore, in my opinion, an interested reader should approach this topic by first gaining general insights about the origins and development of democratic and nationalistic ideologies in Europe in recent centuries, then studying the pre-1990 historical background of the ex-Yugoslav peoples, and only then getting into the concrete details of what happened in the 1990s. In my opinion, at each step a correct grasp of generalities, even if vague, is much more valuable than knowledge of details.
I'm not familiar with the academic sources on ex-Yugoslav wars, but for a detailed factual account, the (English) Wikipedia pages are generally not bad.
Heh. Yes, someone who's ever been subject to the sharp end of "show business for ugly people" will never, ever forget its relevance to their life.