People love to create political compasses. The most famous one has left vs right on one dimension, and authoritarian vs libertarian on the other. Another popular one has political vs social liberal/conservative. Broadly speaking, the goal seems to be to come up with a set of dimensions that puts your beliefs next to the people everyone is supposed to like, and your rivals close to taboo figures like Hitler. There is a whole subreddit for this.
I don’t think left vs right is a particularly useful political dimension. Exactly what ideas fall into which group changes over time, and can be different in different countries. It’s more useful to see left and right as evolving political coalitions than stable coherent theories. Similarly, I don’t think libertarian vs authoritarian is as clear cut as it seems, since in practice giving less power to governments often gives more power to corporations, or whoever else might be waiting in the wings.
I think by far the most important political dimension is certainty. How certain are you that your own theories about how to run the country will have good results? How willing are you to accept that the other side might be right and you might be wrong? How willing are you to defer to (and maintain) neutral democratic institutions like elections and courts that won’t always take your side?
Your degree of certainty in your beliefs is totally separate from what those beliefs are. I used to run a political debate club in San Francisco. We had people from the left and right, and by and large they got on great, because the club cultivated a spirit of humility. When there was disagreement, the solution wasn’t to shout the other person down, but to ask for data, to suggest experiments, to explore nuance. Two people with very different beliefs will get on great if they have low certainty, but two people with near-identical beliefs can be utterly vicious to each other if they are certain they are right.
Both liberalism and conservatism are rooted in uncertainty. Liberalism tells us that we don’t know the best way to run a society, so we should try things out and see what works. Conservatism tells us we don’t know the best way to run a society, so we should try new things out carefully before making sweeping changes. Liberalism and Conservatism are very much compatible with each other.
I hate terms like Moderate and Centrist and think they are ultimately harmful to the discourse. I’m not a “moderate” or “centrist” in the sense that I think the truth is somewhere in the middle between the political extremes. Some of my beliefs about how we should run the world are things that some people might consider fairly radical. However I believe strongly that reason is a terrible source of truth, that many of the ideas I’m most attached to will turn out to be wrong, and progress comes from trying stuff out.
I think it’s unfortunate that we don’t currently have a well-recognized label for someone who believes in being uncertain about their beliefs. Labels are important, and it’s hard to form a coalition without a banner to rally behind.
People love to create political compasses. The most famous one has left vs right on one dimension, and authoritarian vs libertarian on the other. Another popular one has political vs social liberal/conservative. Broadly speaking, the goal seems to be to come up with a set of dimensions that puts your beliefs next to the people everyone is supposed to like, and your rivals close to taboo figures like Hitler. There is a whole subreddit for this.
I don’t think left vs right is a particularly useful political dimension. Exactly what ideas fall into which group changes over time, and can be different in different countries. It’s more useful to see left and right as evolving political coalitions than stable coherent theories. Similarly, I don’t think libertarian vs authoritarian is as clear cut as it seems, since in practice giving less power to governments often gives more power to corporations, or whoever else might be waiting in the wings.
I think by far the most important political dimension is certainty. How certain are you that your own theories about how to run the country will have good results? How willing are you to accept that the other side might be right and you might be wrong? How willing are you to defer to (and maintain) neutral democratic institutions like elections and courts that won’t always take your side?
Your degree of certainty in your beliefs is totally separate from what those beliefs are. I used to run a political debate club in San Francisco. We had people from the left and right, and by and large they got on great, because the club cultivated a spirit of humility. When there was disagreement, the solution wasn’t to shout the other person down, but to ask for data, to suggest experiments, to explore nuance. Two people with very different beliefs will get on great if they have low certainty, but two people with near-identical beliefs can be utterly vicious to each other if they are certain they are right.
Both liberalism and conservatism are rooted in uncertainty. Liberalism tells us that we don’t know the best way to run a society, so we should try things out and see what works. Conservatism tells us we don’t know the best way to run a society, so we should try new things out carefully before making sweeping changes. Liberalism and Conservatism are very much compatible with each other.
I hate terms like Moderate and Centrist and think they are ultimately harmful to the discourse. I’m not a “moderate” or “centrist” in the sense that I think the truth is somewhere in the middle between the political extremes. Some of my beliefs about how we should run the world are things that some people might consider fairly radical. However I believe strongly that reason is a terrible source of truth, that many of the ideas I’m most attached to will turn out to be wrong, and progress comes from trying stuff out.
I think it’s unfortunate that we don’t currently have a well-recognized label for someone who believes in being uncertain about their beliefs. Labels are important, and it’s hard to form a coalition without a banner to rally behind.