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adamzerner comments on What motivates politicians? - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: adamzerner 05 September 2014 05:41AM

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Comment author: adamzerner 05 September 2014 04:50:48PM 1 point [-]

That allows the lobbyists to influence what a politician judges to be socially beneficial.

Really? We all know how hard it is to change someone's mind. Especially on things as primitive as political beliefs. You very well may be right, I'm just throwing it out there.

Comment author: ChristianKl 06 September 2014 08:52:32AM 3 points [-]

Especially on things as primitive as political beliefs.

The kind of beliefs that get discussed in the evening news might be primitive. The tax code that made up of thousands of sites of legal writing is very far from primitive and developing opinions about how to change it in a way that's actually an improvement is not trivial and it takes an expert to explain to you what the different provisions actually do.

Obama care is 33,000 pages. It's very complex and far from primitive.

Don't confuse political beliefs used for signaling tribalism with political beliefs about public policy. A lobbyist is interested in policy.

Comment author: Azathoth123 06 September 2014 04:28:55AM 3 points [-]

We all know how hard it is to change someone's mind.

It's hard to change someone's mind to a position very different from his current position. It's not hard to make incremental changes.

Comment author: gwillen 05 September 2014 08:42:44PM 2 points [-]

It's hard to change someone's mind via logical argument.

There are lots of ways to change someone's mind. (And giving them money is likely to help a lot in that, even if they don't want to take bribes and don't feel like their mind is being changed.)