There's a rather interesting piece at Alternet by Paul Rosenberg that looks at the differences between the Right and the Left that gets pretty meta at times, but is well worth a read. The title is: Why Are These Clowns Winning? Secrets of the Right-Wing Brain - Bush tanked the country. Now the right's again running the show. Neuroscience explains incompetence of all sides. (Despite the main title, it's actually about both Left and Right.) The $64,000 question is this:
...The financial crisis and resulting global economic meltdown Bush left us with were eerily reminiscent of the Great Depression, but there was also 9/11, the Iraq War and Katrina—a multifaceted record of spectacular failure so stunning that it should have disqualified conservative Republicans from holding power for at least another seven decades. Yet, the Democrats’ political response to the many messes Bush left behind has been so spectacularly inept that they’ve not only lost both houses of Congress, they’ve also lost more state legislative seats than any time since before the Great Recession.
There are many ways one might explain this state of affairs—and certainly the rise of Wall Street Democrats and the decline of labor played crucial roles. But beyond any particular issue area, there’s also the matter of differences in how liberals and conservatives think—and how they act and organize as a result.
A bit more below the
Orange Omnilepticon.
Rosenberg has been looking at research on cognition - how we know what we know, and how we fail to know when we don't know.
...there are multiple ways to characterize the differences in how liberals and conservatives think. For instance, Mooney argued that liberals, still fundamentally inspired by the Enlightenment promise of ever-growing knowledge about the world, are fundamentally mistaken about the nature of human reason, which they see as knowledge- and truth-seeking. But modern cognitive science teaches us that our brains are much more fundamentally shaped by the need to make persuasive arguments, which only require the appearance of rational argument.
There's a lot to consider in there, but let me pull out a few ideas. One is that the differences in thought styles predisposes both sides to particular kinds of errors - and further that they happen because those errors are ones that their way of thought can't handle or even visualize. It's one reason why we often end up talking past each other - because each side is blind to things the other can see plainly, and vice versa.
There's the problem of incompetence - which is, if you are incompetent at something, A) you can't accurately judge your real level of competence, and B) you can't understand where you're going wrong and how to fix it. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the name given to this - incompetent people often think they are far more competent than they really are because they can't tell otherwise.
Suppose there is a solution to a particular problem that is related to nothing else you know or is based on insights you may not share or even comprehend. How would you recognize it? How would you make use of it?
And then there are other problems, such as assuming because certain things strike you a certain way, others will share that same perception. Or... that someone is doing something that makes no sense - because what you think what they are trying to do is not what they are actually about. Then there is the problem of goals that may look similar, but have critical differences; how can you tell if everyone in a group is working for the same thing? (As in, is a political consultant's job to get someone elected, or is it about doing the job well enough to get paid and make a living? The two goals may look similar and produce similar behavior, but...)
Rosenberg attempts to elucidate how research about the way individuals approach these matters applies to groups as well - and there is some research pointing that way. I'm bringing up this article here because with all of the analysis and second guessing going on about how we can do better in the future, we may need to think different, and think deeper. Read the whole thing. And then discuss.