Political Beliefs (with Oliver Traldi)

Tell Spencer your thoughts about this episode!

Oliver Traldi rejoins Spencer Case to discuss the nature of political beliefs. Topics they cover include the bad incentives that influence political beliefs, how political beliefs should be defined, and the need for (and possibility of) politically neutral language in which to discuss political issues.

Episode Transcript

spencer_1_11-15-2023_21 (00:00):
Welcome to Micro Digressions, a
philosophy podcast.
This is Spencer Case, and I'mhere today with Oliver Trolley..
How are you doing, Oliver?

Oliver (00:10):
doing great, Spencer.
It's great to be back.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_21404 (00:13):
It's great to have you back.
Oh, yeah.
Before we move on, I'm gonna saythat the music that the audience
will be hearing right now, andyou, if you listen to it after I
edit it, is from my friendJeremy Moey, spelled
M-O-H-N-E-Y.
You can find.
It at Jeremy Mooney's Bandcampsite for a dollar.
You can download it.
It's called Sweet Man and I loveit.

(00:35):
So thank you Jeremy for lettingme use your music as, as bumper
music for my podcast.
So, Oliver, I wanna ask youabout the, this book that you're
working on, which is onpolitical beliefs.
I guess I wanted to ask you whatmade you interested in political
beliefs in particular, like,we've talked a lot about

(00:55):
political language, but not alot about what's unique about
political beliefs.

Oliver (01:01):
Yeah, so first of all, I should say, book is finished.
In production now.
Just sending them cover andstuff like that.
What got me into politicalbeliefs, really it was thinking
about political beliefs.
that got me back intophilosophy.
During the Trump campaign in,you know, late 2015 and 2016,
let me put it this way.

(01:22):
I was in a place in my lifewhere I was spending a lot of
time on the internet.
Well, that's always true of me,but I wasn't doing much else.
And I had friends.
Who were very active inpolitics, who were professionals
in politics.
my brother, uh, is a verysuccessful, union researcher and
organizer and now kind ofdirector of operations at

(01:43):
multiple nonprofits inWashington DC.
Um, my best friend worked on theObama campaigns and then worked
on the Hillary Clinton campaignin 2016.
And, uh, I knew many of theirfriends.
Uh, I also had college friendsin DC, um, and in New York
working on, on the campaign.
This is all from the Democraticperspective.

(02:03):
At this point, I didn't really,I hadn't really made very many
Republican or conservativefriends.
I'm kind of ethnically leftwing, so to speak, well, I
started to notice, because ofwhere I was at in my life.
I was spending some time on somepretty weird corners of the
internet.
Then I would go talk to, thepeople I was close to and, you
know, and their friends andtheir friends of friends and

(02:24):
such.
Um, when I was in DC or NewYork, or even just over text
message or whatever.
And, uh, we would have verydifferent impressions of what
was going on.
So one of the first ones wasthat, for, for basically, even
until the summer of 2016, youknow, a lot of people thought
that Trump would be somehowremoved from the ballot at the

(02:48):
Republican convention.
As 2016, I had people telling meTrump was not going to win a
single primary.
That the winner would be JebBush or Marco Rubio or somebody
like that.
And they would link me toarticles in, you know, Vox and
Slate and things like that.
By people like Ezra Klein or, orNate Silver and, uh.

(03:12):
Then of course, Trump won thenomination and even after that,
people said, well, there's noway he's going to win the
general election.
And that I agreed with,.
And of course that was wrongtoo.
And so I started really thinkingabout how did everybody get this
so wrong?
What were the incentives?
Why were the incentives sowrong?
and, uh, I started thinkingabout the incentives to say

(03:33):
various things about Trump andabout Trump supporters.
And about the different kinds ofinformation that Trump
supporters were getting fromtheir different news sources and
maybe the different kinds ofabilities they had to assess
that information compared toClinton supporters, Democrats
versus Republicans.
Moders versus extremists, youknow, various kinds of,

(03:53):
delineations of who's in whatcorner of politics.
And I just started to thinkabout all, all these problems of
where information is coming fromand who actually knows what's
going on.
how to make institutions betterand how people can reason better
about politics.
Um, and it started to strike methat I didn't feel that I knew
anything about politics., youknow, I had kind of grown up in

(04:17):
a certain culture and, uh, youknow, 2016 was also the year
that I started readingpublications like Quillette.
It was the year that I opened aTwitter account, and, uh, just
suddenly started to realize thatthere were, there was a lot of
thought out there that was notlike the thought that I had
encountered.
about politics and that I hadn'tencountered it for political

(04:38):
reasons.
And so I just started to think alot about, you know, people are
very confident about theirpolitical beliefs, but a lot of
the ideologies of our politicalbeliefs have these problems,
these bad incentives, thesebiases, these tribal
affiliations, this lack ofinformation, you know, there's
this complexity to these issuesthat, you know, make it really

(05:00):
hard for a lay person toevaluate, but then Uh, it's
really hard to know what wewould want from an expert on
politics.
hard to know how we would assessthem.
I started to worry about thingslike echo chambers.
Um, there was an Eon article byTai Nguyen I always pronounce
that last name wrong, but, healso has an episteme article
about it, called the EchoChambers and Epistemic Bubbles.

(05:22):
And anyway, I, I just startedgetting involved in this
question, uh, and that was a bigpart of why I went back to
philosophy.
I wanted to study theepistemology of politics, and I
found, social epistemology, whenI went into my PhD program and
it seemed like a, a goodstarting point for thinking
about the epistemology ofpolitics.
So I approached it through thekind of existing literature on

(05:44):
the epistemology ofdisagreement.
The epistemology of testimony,the epistemology of experts, the
epistemology of democracy.
And, uh, yeah, that was kind ofthe inspiration and that was
kind of the route that I took.
And, uh, you know, I was luckyenough through my platform in my
public writing to, to meet, mynow editor at Rutledge.

(06:05):
Uh, at a conference and proposedthis idea and it, you know, it
just so happens that I, I wasable to finish the book as I was
finishing, uh, my dissertationas well.
And it, it was great.
to write.
It was a lot of fun to write.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_21404 (06:18):
this wasn't like a new turn.
This was like what was drivingyou in your philosophical
journey to begin with?
I didn't realize that.

Oliver (06:26):
Yeah.
So it was, you know, I, I don'twant to overstate it.
When I started grad school, Idid want to study things like
metaphysics and logic and thephilosophy of science.
This political stuff was lurkingin the background for me, but,
um, I didn't kind of realizethat I could professionalize it.
You know, I thought this wouldbe kind of a side gig in, in
magazines and stuff like that.

(06:48):
and then, uh, in the spring ofmy first year, I took a class
with Blake Rober who became myadvisor, an epistemologist at
Notre Dame, who's also writing abook on the epistemology of
politics., this was a class onthe epistemology of polarization
and we were reading the bigsort.
We were reading some CassSunstein.
We were reading papers by someyoung philosophers like, Regina

(07:11):
Rini and Daniel Wodak and AlexWorsnip and Kevin Dorst.
And I was just realizing that.
This was a very active field andI didn't quite think anybody,
anybody was getting it right.
there, there, it seemed likethere was.
a good deal of low hanging fruitthere.
There are some very smart peopleworking on this.
But it seemed like there werealso, some mistakes being made.
But also, there was anopportunity to do something

(07:33):
comprehensive.
Maybe people who studiedepistemology would throw out a
paper about politics here andthere.
But nobody had just said, whatare all the issues about
political beliefs?
And combined.
Combined the new philosophicalwork with older traditions.
Obviously, there are traditionsof political epistemology that
go back to Marx and also back toPlato and Aristotle.

(07:56):
So I thought a book was a goodopportunity to talk about a lot
of those things.
And theories of political beliefthat come out of sociology or
psychology or political science.
It's an issue that's very activein those disciplines as well.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (08:08):
you must be familiar with this paper
by Michael, humor why people arerational about politics.

Oliver (08:14):
No.
Can you remind me?
I mean, certainly a lot ofpeople have made arguments that
people are, have irrationalpolitical beliefs.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (08:20):
His argument is that, people are
irrational about politics,because they are not
incentivized to form beliefswhere you actually update in
light of new evidence.
Like if you, there were norepercussions for your financial
decisions, You would make verybad ones, right?
When you suffer actual pain forbad decisions, there's a
feedback mechanism there.

(08:41):
But if an individual voter justkeeps voting for the wrong
candidates or shouting the wrongslogans or whatever, he or she
might not feel any pain fromthat, right?
In fact, you might be rewardedfor greater, acceptance within a
certain group of people.

Oliver (08:57):
Yeah, so, uh, I definitely think that that's
part of what, what goes on withpolitical beliefs.
This is an idea, you know, I'm alittle embarrassed to say I
haven't read the humor paper,but it's an idea that, that is
raised, by some other people.
I call it the, uh, the skin inthe game idea that's a phrase
from, I think, Naim Tale who youknow, has a lot of people

(09:18):
blocked on Twitter.
I don't really know his work toowell.
I just know the phrase.
And it's something that, um,Hugo Mercier talks about in his
book on Gull ability as well.
Yeah, the Skin in the Game idea,just that our beliefs are better
when, we're staking something onthem.
Um, this isn't like stakingtheories of rationality, like
pragmatic encouragement.
It's just about.

(09:38):
You know, when do we actuallywork on our beliefs?
When do we actually improve ourbeliefs?
Likely the situation where we'reimproving our beliefs the most
is when, you know, there aresome sorts of consequences for
having the wrong beliefs.
And we have to, you know, wehave to deal with the fact that
we're wrong.
And also when there aren'tbenefits from having the wrong

(10:00):
beliefs.
A lot of people talk more aboutthe benefits of having the wrong
beliefs.
than the lack of consequencesfor having the wrong beliefs.
So Dan Williams has a paperabout irrational political
beliefs, which is just about,and Rishi Joshi has a paper
about this too.
I think they just talk about,things like, social incentives
for, you know, sticking withyour tribe, sticking with your

(10:21):
group, you know, even whenthey're, they're saying
something silly.
And, uh, you know, one thing Iwonder about is just, when do
people have the wrong beliefsversus when do they have the
right beliefs and they just lie,right?
And so this is a big question, Ithink, in the epistemology of
politics that is one of thosephilosophical questions that,
you know, might not matter thatmuch to practically minded

(10:43):
people.
Practically minded people mightsay, well, why does it matter if
they lie or tell the truth?
you know, why does it matter ifthey.
Say the wrong thing, butactually believe the right
thing, you know, if theiractions don't change, why does
it matter?
Well, one reason it matters isthat you might think their
actions will change, in certaincircumstances, so they might
change, if, if we have some sortof privacy, a private ballot,

(11:05):
for instance, might be castdifferently, um, than the way
somebody talks, One thing that,uh, very problematic people.
talk about online is, uh, whenpeople do things like looking
for sperm and egg donors, theymight have various sorts of
preferences, which they would,in polite conversation,
castigate as, uh, you know,incredibly backwards and

(11:26):
unethical.
I'm not so sure that our beliefsdo depend on, on incentives, uh,
as much as some of these otherwriters do.
Um, I certainly think that ourexpressions of our beliefs, um,
depend on incentives.
You often can construct, kind ofisomorphically a theory of
insincere expressions thatcorresponds to another theory of

(11:49):
irrational beliefs.
I do think that this can, thismakes things difficult and it's
something that people need tolook into more.
Um, so there's a chapter in mybook where I say basically, for
any theory of political belief,you can just turn it into a
theory of political expressionand have a whole, a whole
different background theory ofpolitical belief.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (12:07):
I think there's room, there's
almost room here for just anerror theory for most people.
Most people don't have politicalbeliefs.
They're just saying what peoplearound them say.
I mean, if you're just, ifyou're just saying the things
that people around you say,hoping to get some kind of
social reward for it, thatdoesn't imply any kind of belief
whatsoever.

(12:28):
So, I wonder if there's room forskepticism about this project by
saying, well, you assume that,there are these political
beliefs.
Really all there is is justpolitical behavior driven by,
attitudes and non-cognitivethings.
There isn't actually a whole lotof belief in this domain.

Oliver (12:43):
Yeah, so I think there's a few things to say about that.
First, I'll just say, I thinkthis is, you know, an active and
important.
Theory of political belief.
Michael Hannon has a paper aboutthis.
He calls it politicalexpressivism.
He's done the most to developedthis theory.
From a kind of non-ideologicalperspective.
Emmi Tao, the one at Georgetown,not the one at UCLA.

(13:07):
Uh, has a theory a little bitalong these lines as well, and
is, he has a paper in a littleknown journal called Disputatio
or something, responding to, toJason Stanley's book on
propaganda, his old book from2015 or something like that,
writes that, uh, we don't needdeposit it.
Because there's this left wingtradition of being interested

(13:29):
in, you know, why does theproletariat not rise up while
they must have been infected bysome ideology that makes them
think that they deserve to betreated so horribly, right?
ideology theories are, importanttheories of political belief,
even though I tend to thinkthey're wrong.
And Tyro says, well, we don'tneed to posit these ideologies
because we can just as easilyposit.

(13:49):
that people actually know what'sright and wrong but they don't
want, the bad guys with guns toshoot them, or whatever right?
Lian Bright called this the, theGuys With The Guns Theory or
something like this.
And then, you know, PhilipConverse, in a classic paper on
public opinion from I think the60's, I think his name first
name was Philip, he basicallysuggested that, that most people

(14:11):
are non ideological, um, andtheir, political beliefs can
change very, very quickly.
And a lot of political judgmentsare formed by kind of intuitive
feelings of trusting ordistrusting a person or a
political party.
And then just kind of going withthe flow of what they say and
adopting their beliefs as one'sown.
One thing I would say is that,It's not clear how many of these

(14:35):
models actually get away frompeople having political beliefs,
so you might think, the personwho says we should go to war
because they think their friendsthink we should go to war or
something?
You might think, well, you eventhe thought that your friends
think that we should go to war.
Maybe that is also a politicalbelief because of spurring you
to a political action.
Right?

(14:55):
So the question of which beliefsare political is a question that
I start out the book with.
And it's actually a questionthat virtually nobody.
Really talks about, um.
I actually think there'ssomething parallel for the
question of which beliefs arereligious.
So obviously beliefs about,Whether there's a divinity or
whether there are supernaturalforces.
Are religious beliefs but youmight also think That, Questions

(15:17):
about, The truth of contentionsand sacred texts for example.
Are religious beliefs, and youmight even think that the, Some
moral beliefs are religiousbeliefs for certain people.
Right?
You might think that, um, youknow, an atheist who thinks we
shouldn't kill, that will not bea religious belief, but a
religious person who thinks weshould not kill, if that's on

(15:37):
the basis of reading it in somesacred text, that might make it
a religious belief, right?
So a political belief is notjust a belief about politics,
just as a religious belief isnot just a belief about
religion.
And so this is one thing that Istart, start out the book with
is just, which topics should weeven be considering when we're
thinking about politicalbeliefs?

(15:58):
And that, that helps guide ourinquiry and, and our thoughts
about, you know, how rational orirrational are these things?

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (16:05):
So isn't this, isn't this purely
nominal though?
Like couldn't we just say,political beliefs are just the
ones we want to call the thepolitical beliefs for the
purpose of this or thatinvestigation or like what's at
stake in defining that.

Oliver (16:19):
I think you, you could do this stipulatively like that.
Yeah.
for me, I was more interested inthinking about, you know,
there's actually, there'ssurprisingly little, it's
surprisingly uncommon forsomebody to ask even about what
is the nature of politicsitself.
a Lot of work in politicalphilosophy is, what is fair,
what is just, what is equal orwhatever, right?

(16:41):
You know better than me, youknow, more, much more political
philosophy than me, I think.
But what my understanding isthat it's quite rare to have a
discussion of just what ispolitics to begin with.
And people often throw out some,some definition, but there's a
whole lot of varieties ofdefinitions there.
One reason is to try and get thenature of politics right and
connect it up with that.
Another reason is that, And thisgoes also for the question about

(17:03):
the nature of politics, there'ssomething substantive and
political in the question ofwhich beliefs are political.
So the question about the scopeof politics, what the scope of
politics should be it's not akind of politically inert
question., people will saypolitics shouldn't touch this

(17:24):
issue or that issue., and oftenwhat they mean is it would be
out of bounds somehow.
To legislate about that issue orto, to take state action about
that issue.
And I think there's a danger of,taking a political stance when
you act merely stipulatively,about the nature of politics.

(17:45):
I didn't want to bias the bookin any political way.
Um, so my goal was to try to dosome genuine conceptual analysis
about the nature of politics,some kind of old style
conceptual analysis.
Of course, very roughly,hopefully other people will
follow it up and do more.
That's another thing to sayabout the book is just that, on
the one hand, I want it to beused as a textbook.

(18:05):
On the other hand, my hope isthat for like basically
everything in the book, otherpeople will find ways to improve
on it and that maybe there'll besome kind of conversation that I
help structure.
Um, that's kind of my dream isthat you know, I think one way,
one way to do well as aphilosopher is to get everything
right.
Another way is to ask the rightquestions and get everything

(18:26):
wrong.
Um, and I think it's, it's morelikely that.
I've sort of organized things inthe right way and said a lot of
dumb things that people willcorrect me on.
And if they do so, you know,that's great.
Um, I just hope they're not toomean about it.
But yeah, I think, for me, Ithink it, it would be, it would,
it's better to do it nonstipulatively.
Because I think there, there isan interesting question about
just what is politics?

(18:46):
What is the nature of politics?
The work I'm doing now, I onlytouched on it briefly in the
book, but I think one of my nextbig projects is going to be
about the debate about the roleof morality in politics.
Which I think has to take a, hasto take a non stipulative,,
approach to what politics is.
Um, it has to look for whatreally is politics and is it

(19:07):
really something, To whichmorality does or doesn't apply.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_2140 (19:12):
Yeah.
So it seems like politics islargely about power relations,
power structures.
That sounds very FCO I guess,but, it can't be purely
moralistic, right?
Like, I was having thisdiscussion with a friend a
couple weeks ago where I said Ididn't like the idea of spheres
of influences because it smacksof, might makes, right.

(19:36):
And then I, I later came tothink, well might makes
prudence, and prudence does bearon what's right.
So you can sort of see how wecan talk about, what can be done
through existing powerstructures that seems like
politics and morality, what youought to do with those, through
those existing structures.
I guess.

Oliver (19:56):
Yeah, so I've found, I've been reading about this
debate.
I'm curious what you think aboutit.
Because, a lot of the politicalrealists do say, yeah, you know,
morality bears on what we oughtto do in politics.
But it's only part of the story.
Part of what people like me tryto figure out is just like, if
we're talking about what weought to do, what is the other
part of the story that's not amoral part, you know?

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (20:20):
Oh, I would not say.
I would not say that there is apolitical ought that can
counteract the moral ought.
In fact, I don't think there, Iwouldn't think there's a
uniquely political ought at all.
But I think there aredescriptive facts about the
world and about what's possible,and you have to understand

(20:41):
what's possible, what wouldhappen.
Right.
Not just what would ideally bethe case.
So I guess politics would bediscovering the likely
consequences of our actions.
I wouldn't think of it as itsown normative domain.

Oliver (20:55):
Yeah.
So, that, that I think is a lotcloser to my position that in
politics, you often have to bevery consequentialist.
It's just kind of the nature ofthe game and, um, politics is
very complex.
So you have to be very careful.
You can't be, you can't be toomuch of an idealist.
Otherwise you end up messing upa lot.

(21:16):
And that's a lesson that youlearn as you do politics.
Um, I think all of those thingsare true.
Rightly described.
I don't think they do anythingto undercut, like the, authority
of the ethical normatively.
You know, um, I think they justsay.
Well, this is what's ethical.
What's ethical is to think aboutthe consequences of your actions
when you're acting politically,right?
What's ethical is to think aboutall these little details in

(21:39):
politics, right?
Rather than just saying, well,here's my principle.
I'm going to do, I'm going toapply it axiomatically to every
situation.
That doesn't seem like theethical, like the actually
ethical way to act to me.
Sometimes people who have thisview that politics and ethics
don't mix, I think they just,they just have the wrong view of
ethics.
Or maybe they're thinking abouta highly, deontological view of

(22:01):
ethics or a highly or aboutvirtue ethics or something.
There's certainly, don't seem tobe thinking about, you know, the
sort of spreadsheetconsequentialism, that at least
some moral realists are talkingabout.
But yeah, it's funny how thisdebate, basically every, every
other metaethical debate hasbeen invoked.
Um, in the literature about thisdebate about the role of
morality in politics.

(22:22):
Um, that's part of what makes itso interesting.
There's a lot of disentanglingto do.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (22:27):
the interesting thing is, political
beliefs have something to dowith our identities, and yet
political disagreements alsohave.
Something to do with ouridentities, right?
it seems like you can't reallyeven be polarized unless there
is some community of whichyou're a part if there's a

(22:48):
complete rupture.
You wouldn't describe that aspolarization.

Oliver (22:52):
Yeah, so certainly, one tradition of thinking about kind
of, you might call it theSchmittian approach.
One way of thinking about whatpolitics is, is that it's this
way of developing distinctionsbetween groups of people, right?
It's hard to know how we couldhave politics at all unless we
were making these, rather harshdistinctions in many of these

(23:15):
cases.
And I forget what I say aboutthis in the book, and I forget
exactly what other people havesaid about this, but one thing
you often do seem to see, inAmerican politics at least, is
that, the different sides reactagainst each other's beliefs,
almost to identify themselves bycontradistinction, and you get
these very odd patterns ofcycling views, one thing that I

(23:35):
do cite in the book, that Ithink a lot of people know
about, but nobody knows quitewhat to make of is the cycling
of views on COVID.
the early days of COVID where,you know, sort of right wing
preppers were the, were thepeople who thought COVID was
going to be very serious.
And progressives were sayingthat that was sort of, Racist,

(23:56):
anti Chinese belief that COVIDwas going to be serious.
And then, uh, you know, in thefall of 2020, uh, during that,
during that presidentialcampaign, you know, Kamala
Harris saying that.
she didn't want to take theTrump vaccine, um, and things
like that.
So that's an interesting, to me,that's a very interesting
phenomenon.
Um, this cycling, um, and how,the sides kind of cycle against

(24:21):
each other.
It's not like you develop thisconsensus, right?
Um, it's like once an issue ispoliticized by one side, the
other side almost has to opposeit.
There's a sort of psychological,necessity to have the opposite
view and to maintain youridentity as opposed to the other
group.
And again, this is somethingthat maybe I should have said

(24:43):
more about in the book.
Maybe I still can say more aboutin the book.
A lot of the theory aboutpolitical beliefs from a kind of
group oriented or tribalisticperspective is about the dangers
of being cast aside by yourgroup and the pleasures of being
part of a group.
But in fact, in the U.
S.
This doesn't quite fit with thepicture of polarization that we

(25:06):
have, because the picture ofpolarization that we have is
about negative affect againstthe other side.
It's about the fact that we hatethe other side so much.
And that motivates us much morethan any positive feeling we
might have for our own side.
I don't know if that makessense.
But yeah, that's, that'ssomething that's very

(25:27):
interesting to me, that pattern,and it's certainly part of where
our political beliefs come fromis something to do with the fact
that either these beliefs are,you know, in the weak case,
they're just beliefs thateverybody in our group happens
to have.
So we feel that we have to havethem too.
But in the strong case, theycould be beliefs that are almost

(25:49):
like definitive of being in thegroup.
Right?
You and I both have writtenabout some woke political
beliefs.
So you might think that that's aplace where having certain
beliefs about, you know, theUnited States being a racist
society or whatnot, and racismbeing bad and things like that.
Those are just definitive.
Of fitting in that group so thatit's not that you're worried

(26:11):
about being kicked out of thegroup if you fail to have those
beliefs, it's like, if you failto have those beliefs, you
already, you're, you're not, youknow, you're already not part of
the group, right?
The beliefs themselves are soimportant.
I think that was probably partof what motivated me as well.
I do think that.
The progressive politicalculture became a culture that
was much, you know, in many waysmore concerned with political

(26:34):
beliefs than with politicalaction.
And people were very concernedabout kind of the purity of
their beliefs and whethersomehow, you know, if you think
about things like unconsciousbias, people were very concerned
about.
Against all of my own desires,do I somehow believe something
that is really evil?
I think that was also part ofwhat motivated me to work on

(26:58):
political beliefs because, itstruck me as very odd that
people would care so much, wouldthink that there were such high
political stakes to what wasgoing on in their own heads,

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (27:08):
I wonder what we should think
about the idea that certainbeliefs should occasion certain
social penalties, theparadigmatic one, the one
everyone brings up is if youfind out somebody is like a
closeted Nazi, you should not befriends with that person or that
there's some beliefs that aresort of trip wires where you,

(27:31):
you express that when you revealthat you have that one, and
there's a duty basically on therest of us to impose some kind
of penalty.
What do you think of that?
It seems like in, the, thebroadest possible scope, it's
hard to resist that to somelevel.

Oliver (27:49):
Yeah, I think it's hard to say anything completely
general against that.
But the nature of what we'redoing there, you know, could be
contested.
So, I'm sure you know thatthere's, there's like a puzzle
about whether We can hold peopleresponsible for their beliefs,
which has to do with the amountof control people have over
their beliefs.
some people think moralresponsibility only exists where

(28:12):
we control something.
We're only responsible for whatwe can control.
And people also think We can'tcontrol our beliefs.
And so if those things are boththe case, then it's hard to see
how we can have moralresponsibility for our beliefs.
Now that doesn't mean it mightbe right for a community to
ostracize somebody with thewrong beliefs.
But that might be just for, youknow, it might just be that's

(28:34):
the right policy that leads tothe least harm, right?
Um, it doesn't mean that theperson who's being ostracized
has actually done anything wrongby having the belief that they
have.
So I think that there's a lot ofopen philosophical questions
about the nature ofresponsibility for belief that
bear on this.
I also think in a lot of thesesituations, there's a question
of.
Finding out that somebody hasthis political belief and the

(28:55):
process of finding out thatsomebody has a political belief,
you know, you might think thatit's however they express that
that's what they're doing wrong,right?
Because we don't have directaccess to anybody's beliefs.
It's not clear that that's everwhat we penalize somebody for
ever what we what we ought topenalize somebody for.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (29:11):
We could imagine.
We could imagine.
We have the technology, you getthe little scanner and, and,
okay, you've come up clean.
No, no bad beliefs, no red flagsor something like that.

Oliver (29:21):
Yeah, I think, I mean, I certainly think that from a
purely political perspective, Ithink others would join me in
finding that a little bitdystopian.
if you're scanning people'sbrains for wrong think, and then
kicking them out of society ifthey, if they have certain wrong
think.
But it is true that, you know,I, define political beliefs as
having a certain relationship topolitical action.

(29:44):
And so I do think that that'sthe main reason we blame people
for their political beliefs.
Is that we worry about whatpolitical actions they're going
to take.
so if we ostracize the Nazibecause we were worried about,
the um, Nazi like actions in thepresent day.
That makes a lot of sense to meif we, if we just do it, because

(30:04):
we think having the belief isbad enough that I kind of wonder
about.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_2140 (30:09):
Yeah, I, I just don't see how
ostracizing somebody is gonnamake that person less likely to
like, explode and become aterrorist or something like
that.
I think it's more likely thatwhat we're trying to do is
maintain a kind of epistemicherd immunity that you raise the
cost of certain beliefs thatthose beliefs are really bad and
really obviously false.
So there's a near consensus onboth those things.

(30:31):
And so we feel comfortableraising the social costs for
expressing death so as to detertheir dissemination.
I don't know that it's gotanything to do with stopping
individual actors from likeblowing up or something.

Oliver (30:47):
that's, there can, there definitely can be deterrence
costs.
You know, this is getting backinto what we talked about
before, about the question ofincentives for beliefs.
Um, and just what sorts ofpowers the incentives for
abilities have, and I think thisis something that warrants a lot
of further investigation.
I think this is something thatshould be operationalized and

(31:07):
should be worked on byphilosophers and psychologists.
Just the question of, you know,at what level do people believe
or not believe based onincentives?
Do they stop expressing thingsbased on incentives?
Do they really not believe themor what?
Right.
I think those are questions thatcan be really important.
It's probably the case thatraising the social cost of a

(31:27):
belief.
is going to make less peoplehave that belief.
Um, I mean, it seems like it'salmost certainly the case.,
there's something some peoplewill object to in kind of
approaching kind of groupepistemology or what you, what
you called a epistemic herdimmunity that way.
which is that.
It seems to kind of try toachieve rationality through

(31:50):
irrationality.
So there's this question of whatare the admissible reasons for
belief?
What are the rationallyadmissible reasons for belief,
right?
and the answer I favor, and thisis what my dissertation was
about, is that the rational.
The admissible reasons forbelief, the ones that are right
to use in terms of intellectualrationality, are simply

(32:13):
epistemic reasons, which kind ofmost classically would be
evidence, right?
Evidence in favor of or againstsome proposition.
And you might simply worry aboutif my way of trying to get my
group to be epistemicallyrational is by manipulating them

(32:35):
using factors that areepistemically irrational, non
epistemic reasons, like thepractical cost of the belief,
the social cost of the belief,right?
Practical reasons for or againstbelief.
You might think that theprospects of getting group
rationality through individualirrationality that way are slim.

(32:55):
And you might get some of thevery bad beliefs out, but you
might think that Everybody issimply engaging in motivated
reasoning all the time.
And so what you end up with willalso be wrong in some other way,
in some other way that youhaven't anticipated.
Right.
and I do think that this issomething.
that we've seen, where groupsthat are kind of based around

(33:19):
the exclusion of evil orinfectiously bad.
Beliefs end up making mistakesin ways that you might think
don't seem so related.
They end up not consideringalternate viewpoints at other
times.
And you also get, every time youraise the cost of a belief, you

(33:43):
get trolls whose whole purposeis to show.
It's to do costly signaling,right?
Their whole purpose is to show Ican bear the social cost Of, of
this evil belief, right?
I can bear being ostracized forthis belief

spencer_1_11-15-2023_2140 (34:00):
okay.
I mean, maybe it's the case thatit would be ideal if we based
all of our beliefs on epistemicreasons, but it might be
similarly true that it would beideal if we made all of our
practical decisions based on, onmoral reasons, but we know that
people aren't going to do that,and so that's why we have to

(34:21):
have law and stuff like that.
We have to have, you know,punishments for people driving
while drunk and stuff like thatbecause they won't necessarily
respond to their moral reasons.
So the thought would be maybe ifwe need some moral enforcement,
maybe we need some kind of likesofter epistemic enforcement.

Track 1 (34:41):
Yeah, I, I, I can buy that.
To be honest, I, I haven'tthought too much about, um, this
issue of, what should we do topeople if we can see all their
beliefs.
I think in some ways, you know,I wrote this book from the
perspective of, imagine somebodywho really is trying to get it
right about politics.
What should this individual doif they're trying to get their

(35:04):
beliefs right?
What tools do they have at theirdisposal and do, do, do they
even really have any good toolsat their disposal?
If that makes sense.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (35:13):
The interesting thing is if somebody
disagrees with.
This enough.
In politics, we tend to assumebad faith, or at least the
accusation that the other personisn't even really trying to
believe the truth, is likely tocome up.
Have you noticed that

Track 1 (35:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, one thing I findinteresting about this is that I
wrote about this a little bit inthe book, and I think maybe you
and I talked about this a littlea few years ago.
Paradoxically enough, anaccusation of bad faith can
actually be, a kind ofapplication of the principle of
charity, in the sense that, ifwe take a belief to be kind of

(35:48):
wild enough.
Then we're going to look for anyexplanation of somebody's
utterance of it,, that we can,that doesn't involve them
actually believing it.
And I think the reason that wesee this so much in politics is
simply that people forget ordeny The true and genuine scope

(36:09):
of political disagreement, justhow much disagreement there is
about politics.
And I think it's partly becausepolitical beliefs are these
group determining and grouprelevant things, especially now
in our polarized time.
So people aren't exposed tomuch, much disagreement and they
start to think that theirpolitical beliefs are just very,

(36:31):
very obvious.
Um, and very, very undeniable.
And so whenever anybody doesdisagree with them, they start
to say, oh, well this must be atroll.
This must be bad faith.
Or maybe this is a joke, or somekind of performance art, or
something like that.
It's what happens when we're notactually around people who
disagree with us that often.
We, we relate to them in thisway where,, the disagreement is

(36:53):
so surprising that we come upwith explanations that don't
involve them actually believingwhat they're saying.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_2140 (36:58):
Yeah, so, uh, I wonder.
whether you've thought aboutlike this practical question,
which I've thought a lot about,which is how broadly you should
maintain friendships with peoplewho disagree with because I, I
guess I've adopted a policy thatI'm willing to, to put up with

(37:18):
just about anything, uh, if Ithink the person might jar me
out of some bias or help me seesomething from a different
perspective every now and then.
Um, and I guess isn't completelyintolerable to me, like most of
the time I have a, a range ofpeople I'd say I'm friends with

(37:39):
from the pretty far to the leftto really pretty far to the
right and I guess I think thatit's probably safer for me to
have a sort of broad policy ofwho I'm friends with.
I I'll talk to people who willtalk to me.
And I, I, I, it's, maybe it'sover broad, but I see so much of
the opposite thing going onwhere people have just

(38:00):
unfriended like, uh, or juststopped talking to everyone who
disagrees with them aboutanything so that, you know, maga
people who won't talk to amoderate Republican, for
example.
And you of course, there's theversion of this on various
corners of the left.
In a time where that seems to bethe, the general pitfall, it

(38:25):
seems like the opposite policymight be the prudent one.

Track 1 (38:29):
Yeah, so I would say I basically, I basically no longer
end friendships over politics.
I certainly have lost friendsover politics, people have ended
friendships with me overpolitics.
Um, but I basically don't endfriendships over politics., and
I think, you know,, it reallyhelps, you know, I'm not gonna
call it a superpower oranything, but I think it really

(38:51):
helps because you get to seewhat people actually believe.
and you get to see that therereally is this very wide range
of political disagreement, butyou also get to see where your
wide range of friends actuallyin private agree.
You know, and actually, youknow, in private there can be
much more unanimity than thereseems in public.

(39:12):
Especially if you're determiningyour friend's Even if you're not
ending friendships based onpolitics, you might be friends
mostly with smart people or withgood people or something like
that.
And then, um, something wherethere's a lot of public
disagreement between left andright, you might find that
there's a lot of privateagreement about individual
cases.
This is something that Icertainly found in the woke anti

(39:35):
woke culture wars, that youwould, find individual cases
where, you know, all my, all mywoke friends and all my anti
woke friends, I.
Or my closest ones at least,would agree.
Yeah, like, this case was a bigdeal, or this case wasn't a big
deal, or this censorship waswrong, or this, this, this
person really was a nut andreally did need to be fired, or
something like that.

(39:55):
So I think having a wide rangeof friends is really good, in
terms of our, you know, not theepistemology, but uh, the sort
of epistemic utility, you know,just kind of from, if your goal
is having, the right politicalbeliefs, you know, you might
think epistemology is based onwhat we do with our evidence,
but then there's this otherquestion of how do we develop

(40:16):
better sources of evidence?
And I think cultivatingcross-cutting political
friendships, is a great way tohave multiple sources of
evidence, in large part because,you know, there's this old
Freddie Debore piece called theBack Channel.
Which is a phrase that has justbeen so useful to me because as
I've developed more and morefriendships with people in
philosophy, out of philosophy,in politics, outta politics,

(40:38):
I've noticed that if you, ifyou're one of these people who
people feel that they can talkto, you got all this useful,
useful information about whatpeople are actually thinking,
privately.
And it often will contradict thepublic image, of what's going on
with some group, um, or inreaction to some event.
so this idea of the back channelis really important to me.
Basically, I, the idea justbeing, watch what happens in

(41:01):
private, watch what happens inone-on-one conversations, and
listen to that where peopleexpress, you know, the views
that there won't be these socialsanctions for it.
These visa, there's notincentives for Right, except the
incentive of just dealing withme as an individual.
So I think there's a lot ofbenefits to, cross-cutting

(41:21):
political friendships.
And of course, there's the otherbenefit of just having more
friends.
I've never quite understood,well, I shouldn't say that.
actually, I feel that Iunderstand all too well why
people want to use politics thisway.
In the era of social media, itis actually quite easy to make

(41:43):
friends.
and in some cases we actuallywould prefer to have a new enemy
rather than a new friend becausewe have, you know, we have
negative feelings that need tobe expressed somehow.
Um, we have feelings that haveto get out.
We have some anger orfrustration and we just want to
get into a little bit of afight.
And I certainly have that too.
And sometimes, sometimes I justthink, well, I've, you know,

(42:05):
I've befriended all my, all myold enemies and now I don't, now
I don't have anybody to attack.
Um, and it can make me sadsometimes.
I can understand why people wantpeople who they aren't friends
with.
Maybe that's part of themotivation.
And I can also understand, youknow, again, if people's
political beliefs eventuate inpolitical action, maybe people
take actions that you think havecrossed the line and they make

(42:26):
you uncomfortable with them.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (42:28):
I.
mean, I think, I think worriesabout actions when people, essu
people who have the wrongpolitical beliefs saying they're
worried about actions, they'reworried about this is gonna lead
to some terrorist attack, orthis is gonna lead to some
incident.
I think that is arationalization.
I don't think that's what'sreally doing it.

Track 1 (42:48):
So the, I'm, I'm curious though, what do you
think is really doing it?
Because I mean, maybe the, do,do you think it's like a
contagion, Or, or worry aboutkind of being associated with
the wrong person or something.
It, you know, it blows back ontotheir image.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (43:01):
by way of answering that, maybe
I'm, I'm dodging your question,but I think you're going to be
interested to hear This This isa, a quotation from Adam
Smith's, uh, the Theory of MoralSentiments., love is an
agreeable resentment, adisagreeable passion, and
accordingly, we are not half soanxious that our friends should

(43:23):
adopt our friendships as thatthey should enter into our
resentments.
We can forgive them, though theyseem to be little affected with
the favors with which we havereceived, but lose all patience
if they seem indifferent aboutthe injuries which may have been
done to us.
Nor are we half so angry withthem for not entering into our

(43:44):
gratitude as for notsympathizing with our
resentment.
I've got a note here that,resentment is an underrated glue
of friendship.

Track 1 (43:54):
Yeah, that, does sound right to me.
I mean, people love hatereading, people love hating the
same things.
And you know, I know from my, myown recent social experiences
that there is a motivation.
If you feel somebody hasgenuinely hurt you.
You do hope that the peopleclose to you will kind of side
with you.
You hope that the people closewith you, you know, will not

(44:16):
think that it was right, thatyou were hurt, you know, will
not think that it was okay.
And, uh, and yeah, we'll, we'llshare in your resentments as, as
Smith said.
So that makes complete sense tome.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (44:26):
So you know how some people will
prefer a more tight-knit groupwith, I guess a more intense
sense of connection.
And the same way nationalists,you know, I guess prefer a
tighter sense of identity thanthe cosmopolitans who are
citizens of the world orwhatever, like maybe a small
scale version of this is, is youprefer to have a closer knit

(44:48):
group.
And part of the bond then isgonna be the resentment that you
share for the outburst.

Track 1 (44:55):
Yeah, I think that's completely right.
And I do think it's a strongbond.
And it also, you know, it's alsoan activity, right?
Making fun of the, the hatedpeople is a fun activity.
a lot of people who are involvedin politics, Start out by being
one of the hated people foranother group and then reacting
against that.

(45:15):
You know, a lot of people inpolitics start by thinking, oh,
those, those Republicans aresuch mean bullies.
They're always so mean to us.
And that you form a group ofpeople who are so mean to the
Republicans.
As an anti woke person, I thinkwe saw this a little bit with
once the anti wokes gotorganized against the Wokes, you
know, we, we had our own, wekind of replicated the same

(45:36):
things they had done to us,right?
In a lot of ways.
doesn't mean that we're wrong,but it does mean that, the
social structure of anti wokeswas not so different than the
social structure of Wokes.
That's why in some ways I'm asort of universalist about
politics because in everypolitical group you have a lot
of the same incentives.
You have a lot of the samestructures, you have a lot of
the same motivations.

(45:56):
You have just a lot of the same,you know, internal apparatus.
There's always hierarchieswithin groups and people trying
to gain status within groups.
As well.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (46:07):
I just have to say I, I've said
this many times, but I'll repeatit.
I'm so glad that James Lindsayexists to warn me about the
dangers of being too anti woke,because I would not have known
it could be that kind of a mindvirus.

Track 1 (46:21):
Yeah, no, it's funny.
Um, well, it's hard to know howmuch or how little to say about
Lindsay But yeah, you know, youand I were in Toronto in 2019, I
think, for one of the very firstColette meetups.
and even then, I remember therewas, there was some sort of
comedian who was, uh, it wasjust making all these jokes

(46:44):
about, you know, safe spaces andpeople identifying as
helicopters and things likethat.
Um, and some of them were funny,but a lot of it was just sort of
like, it's funny because we hatethose people.
And it was exactly, it wasexactly, you know, a, a, a
mirror image of the progressivecomedy that I thought we all
objected to.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_2140 (47:00):
Yeah, I've met.
This before that, I, I was in aRepublican fundraiser in like
2007 in Idaho.
Like, no, I guess it was alittle later than that.
It might have been like 2009,but in Idaho, and the jokes were
painfully unfunny, but they wereat the expense of the other
party and everyone was laughinghysterically as if they were
funny.

Track 1 (47:21):
Yeah.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (47:22):
It made me profoundly
uncomfortable.
And, that was the first time Ireally realized the extent to
which resentment and animosityis the real engine of democracy.
This what's fueling us.
It's the, it's this contempt.
And I felt really uncomfortableand I felt like, what if one of
the people, one of the caterersis a Democrat and they're

(47:43):
listening to this, just, I feltso embarrassed on behalf of that
person and, and just to even beseen there, even though these
were not stupid people,

Track 1 (47:52):
No.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (47:53):
But they were acting very foolishly
and they were just, yeah, itwas, it was bad.
It And this, this isn't afundraiser.
This is what gets people to, toopen up their wallets.
It's the, it's.

Track 1 (48:05):
Well, you know, I've often said, and maybe I should
write something more generalabout politics based on this, or
maybe I should have included inmy book.
I've always thought that Themost characteristic sentiment in
politics is, you know, it's okaywhen we do it right.
It's wrong when you do it, andin fact, my whole politics is

(48:26):
gonna revolve around the factthat it's wrong when you do it,
but it's okay for us to do it.
And I think you, you get thatwith that sort of mockery for
sure.
as well as all sorts of,illiberal, things like
censorship, or, you know,progressive, you know, racism.
Uh, and in general peopleabandoning their principles
because it might kind of,actually in their interest to do

(48:48):
so in, in a certain moment.
It's often talked about in thecontext of liberalism.
But I think it extends farbeyond that.
It, it's something very generalabout, whether you, you know,
when you complain about theother side doing something,
whether you then do that samething that they did.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (49:04):
But you'll never see it as the same
thing, because there's alwaysgonna be some difference.
Right.
That's the thing is like, Idon't know if I ever convinced
anyone that, Hey, you're doingexactly the same thing that you,
you condemned.
It's just so hard to do becauseit, it really will seem
different.
It really will seem different tothe person doing it.

Track 1 (49:24):
Yeah.
That's no doubt true, but Ithink it can't be, you can't be
so pessimistic because you and Ihave both had the same reaction.
You know?
And it's not as though, there'sno reason to think that this is
some unique area where nobodywho fails to have the reaction
immediately could be convinced.
So I don't see why, why youcouldn't convince somebody at

(49:45):
some point that, that yeah,you're doing the exact same
thing that you've complainedabout.
And in fact, I feel like it'shappened to me that people have
said, you're doing the exactsame thing that you complained
about, and I realized, oh yeah,they're right.
so yeah, I think people do seethis.
Sometimes it's a matter of howlong it takes them.
some people really worry aboutdoing the exact same thing that
they complain about.
And then, you know, there's alsoa meta to this where people are

(50:06):
like, well.
The other side does the exactsame thing that they complain
about So why can't we do theexact same thing that we
complain about?
so it can kind of go as manylevels as you want in general.
one way, and I don't know, maybeI should write something about
this too.
A, a lot of the good things arecoming outta this conversation.

(50:28):
I don't know if there's thingsthat would've fit in the book,
but maybe, maybe for futurethings to write.
In general.
One way to think about a lot ofthe things that happens in these
disputes is through the notionof unilateral disarmament.
When, when somebody says, Idon't like it.
When you do that, they're askingyou to stop using a certain

(50:50):
weapon or tool, you know, in thepolitical toolkit.
and basically, even if I say Idon't like it when the other
side uses that weapon, I thinkthe way a lot of people think
about it is, I'm not saying thatweapon is bad.
I'm saying, you know, it wouldbe great if nobody used that
weapon, but if they use it, I'mgonna use it too.
Right.
you saw this even, you know,something as ridiculous as, the

(51:11):
fat shaming of Donald Trump,right?
They made these balloons ofDonald Trump, you know, all the,
all the people who had said fatshaming is so evil for so long.
And then they made these, fatDonald Trump balloons.
And so suddenly fat shaming wason the table, and they just
said, well, you know, we're notgonna stop using this against

(51:31):
somebody who, who would use itagainst others, right?
So.
The idea there is basically youcan always use a tool against
somebody who would use that toolthemselves.
that seems like a crazy idea tome, but it does seem to be the
way that a lot of people operateis just by kind of avoiding at
all costs, any sort ofunilateral disarmament, avoiding

(51:52):
putting themselves at any sortof disadvantage in that way.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (51:55):
I remember seeing some people on
the left who came out againstthe fat shaming of Donald Trump,

Track 1 (52:01):
Yeah.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (52:02):
But the one that really bothers me,
and I can't help but dive intothe current moment is, if
there's any slogan that has everbeen used by white supremacists,
then you must not utter it ever.
And it's terrible if you do,

Track 1 (52:17):
Right, like the okay sign.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (52:19):
or it's okay to be white or white
lives matter or something likethat.
Like if any of those slogans isused by racist or could be seen
to have been used by racist oror whatever, don't you ever say,
but you know, glory to ourmartyrs is fine because we just
don't mean it in the proterrorist way.

Track 1 (52:38):
Right.
Right.
I'm concerned about, And I, Ijust much as I like him, I was
thinking about this a lot when Irecently read and reviewed Jason
Stanley's new book on thepolitics of Language.
I'm concerned about this cottageindustry of experts on what
things mean, who are almost allof a progressive political
persuasion.
And we'll say, I get to tell youwhich things are offensive,

(53:01):
right?
And I'll determine that, thatthis slogan is offensive and
that one isn't.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (53:06):
Not only, not only what things are
offensive, but what words mean?
I mean, I

Track 1 (53:10):
yeah.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (53:11):
I don't think it's an exaggeration
to say that a million ofanalysis is basically semantic
divine command theory with likethe trans community in the place
of God.
Like, we're just gonna tell youwhat things mean and it's better
that words mean this, becausewe're the oppressed and we know,

(53:31):
and so you better, you betteruse the words we want you to in
the way we want you to use them.
What more is going on there?

Track 1 (53:38):
Yeah.
Well, I would say it's, it's amatter of the people saying
we're the experts and we're, andwe know with being oppressed, as
being one way of gaining acertain sort of expertise.
You know, I think of it aspurely stipulative for the most
part of just saying, we're gonnause this word this way now.
And I think we've talked aboutit before, but in her book down
girl, this is what Kate Mannsays.

(53:59):
She says, well, this word has anasty flavor.
And I think we can use that toour advantage as feminists to
use the word misogyny in acertain way.
So I'm just gonna stipulate thatwe use it that way.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_21 (54:09):
Michael Bray.
In Antifa, the anti-fascistHandbook, there are really two
definitions of of fascism, andone of them he gives is close to
the actual definition offascism.
And the other one he mentions,he calls the political
definition, meaning the onewe're gonna use politically,
that includes, you know, antit,transphobia and, and just

Track 1 (54:29):
yeah.
Yeah.
Uh.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (54:31):
and so what we're gonna do is, use
the other definition when it'sconvenience, to lump our
opponents in with, with actualfascists.

Track 1 (54:39):
Yeah.
And so this gives you a senseof, this question of which
beliefs are political.
You wouldn't think that beliefsabout the meaning of words would
be political, but then suddenlysomebody makes it a political
battleground, right?
So this is one of my concernsabout this is why I think it's
really important to have theright account of what political
beliefs even are, because wehave to understand how one day

(55:00):
something, and this was myactual experience, right?
This is why I'm very concernedto get this right in my work one
day.
Something that you think is justa normal belief, an everyday
belief about the world, suddenlysomebody tells you that that's
political and that you're on theother side, and that they might
even hurt you for it, right?
And It could be a meaning, abelief about a meaning of a word

(55:22):
that you've been using yourwhole life.
And suddenly they tell youyou're wrong about what that
word means.
And you're gonna be in some sortof trouble unless you start
using it in the other way.
And suddenly you have apolitical belief about the
meaning of that word.
Where before that you, you justhad a completely ordinary
belief, right?
Um, maybe even anuncontroversial belief.
And so.

(55:43):
Yeah, I hate the stipulation.
I hate the stipulation ofAmeliorative analysis.
I don't think it's politicallyefficacious in the end.
But it certainly, one thing itdoes is we were talking about
political groups before.
One thing that it does is thatit does kind of assist with the
segregation of society intodifferent political groups

(56:03):
because you end up with peoplewho can't even communicate with
each other anymore.
Right?
You can't even join the actualpolitical debate because you get
caught in these debates aboutlanguage.
What does fascism even mean?
I want to call you a fascist andI'm gonna use this definition of
fascism.
Then you spend an hour debatingwhat fascism even means.
You don't even get to the debateabout whether the things you

(56:24):
disagree with that were thereason for them calling you a
fascist to begin with are rightor wrong, right?
You can't even really talk aboutanything because You're talking
about talking so much, you'retalking about the definitions of
words.
And I think this is one reasonwhy people are really upset
about this stuff, that they feelthat there's, you know, changing
definitions leads to thesedisputes, which I think people

(56:46):
are right to call merely verbal.
And they cover up substantivedisputes, which are so important
to have about politics, right?
And which, you know, it couldeasily be that the side that is
doing the redefining is actuallyright about the substance.
But the substance is then neveractually even addressed because
we have all these odd disputesabout what words mean in their

(57:08):
place, right?
So I think it's an incrediblyunproductive.
and also incredibly annoyingtactic.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (57:15):
It cannot be the case that our
language can be.
A purely instrumental tool of,politics.
Here's an example from the rightan older example, which is
defining terrorism so that nomatter what a state does, it is
a terrorism.
'cause it has to be a non-stateactor.
'cause we're stipulating that.
Okay.

(57:37):
That is, it's a stipulation, butit isn't, it isn't innocent, it
pushes you in a certaindirection.
It's, it's like, don't associatethese things with this bad
concept associate only theseother things.
So, you have a situation whereeach side of a political debate
is doing this relentlessly, thenyeah.

(57:58):
It it makes communicationimpossible., language has to be
a neutral, a politically neutralground.
This goes to your point about bydefining politics, we get to the
limits of politics.
We define the limits ofpolitics.
A common language betweenpolitical, having people having
a political disagreement, acommon, vocabulary, and agreed
upon set of discourse, normsamong the people who are

(58:22):
disagreeing.
That seems like that has to besomething that is, is
politically neutral, at least,at least while a particular
debate is, occurring.

Track 1 (58:32):
So I'm, I'm curious.
I do hope that you get to readJason Stanley's new book, which
he wrote with David Beaver.
They give an argument thatlanguage can never be
politically neutral, but Icouldn't quite, I.
I was trying to reconstruct theargument and I just couldn't, I
threw up my hands a little bitand they, they've published this
in a few places and they'vetalked about it in a few places.

(58:53):
I think they must beequivocating on the meaning of
the word neutral or something,or, or not realizing that
neutrality is gradable, youknow, that it comes in degrees.
or just thinking maybe, maybejust taking a really extreme
view of what would makesomething non neutral.
They say that, for example, theysay that the word dog is not a

(59:14):
neutral word to describe dogsbecause it it has a certain
feeling, which comes from thefact that it's that I think it
comes from old English, so ithas a certain kind of salt of
the earth, common feeling thatit's not, not there in like a
Latinate word.
And so they say that, that thatmakes the use of the word dog

(59:35):
non neutral.
So they're basically like, it'snot just words with strong
connotations, no word is neutralbecause every word has a
different kind of feel to it.
And this just seems so radicallydifferent.
You know, it's such a wild wayto think about neutrality, that
something like that destroysneutrality.
Neutrality must be at least alittle less fragile than that.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (59:57):
Any kind of emotional valence or set
of associations that somehowconnects it with politics and
it's, it's no longer a neutralterm.

Track 1 (01:00:05):
yeah, exactly.
And, they give a, a whole newtheory of meaning as what they
call resonance, which you mightthink means emotional resonance,
but they don't even mean it thatway.
But, uh, yeah, it's pretty odd,pretty odd what they do in that
section.
So I, I hope you get a chance toread it because I think that, I
don't know if Jason will stilllike me after this review or if

(01:00:28):
he even does now, but, I dothink that, you know, Jason
needs, needs somebody to calmlyexplain to him that he's gone a
little too far in this.
Formulation of what he means byneutrality., it just can't be
that this is, you know, he, he'sarguing against a kind of ghost.
This isn't what people mean byneutrality.
They don't mean that you'renever gonna make anybody feel a

(01:00:50):
certain way with the languagethat you use.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (01:00:53):
You can imagine like a sports team,
and they're like, okay, we'regonna do the coin flip.
And, the referees, uh, tellingthe players of both teams, okay,
this is how I'm gonna callcertain things.
It seems like that could beperfectly neutral, right?
It doesn't seem like the val,the emotionally valent nature of
language, uh, makes that notneutral.

Track 1 (01:01:13):
No, but I guess they might say, you know, well, what
if, you know, what if one of thewords hurts the feelings of one
of the members of one of theteam and not the other?
I, I don't know.
They think neutrality, wouldinvolve all of that, you know?
But I don't think, you know, tome, neutrality is very like, y
you know, often my girlfriendand I, you know, we both wanna

(01:01:34):
watch tv, but neither of us wantto pick right.
We both want to be neutral.
I think a lot of people don'thave this experience, and this
is why they doubt neutrality.
But for me, I often don't wantto make a choice, right?
I find choosing taxing initself.
And so I often want to beneutral.
I want to let other people makethe choice, right?
Um, and I think actually a lotof people have this experience

(01:01:55):
where they say, yeah, I, I wantyou to pick, I have an ex who
would, who would often say, um,What do I want to eat?
And I would have to list things,you know, I would've to
basically pick for her what shewas going to eat.
That's the kind of neutrality,right?
And I think usually that's morethan neutrality.
Neutrality and language isgenerally not what people are
talking about when they talkabout political neutrality.

(01:02:16):
They're talking about does thisprocess have in it a choice
already or is it merely kind oflike a A way of presenting the
choices and, uh, you know, a wayof letting people make the
choice of the group or, or assome sort of polity.
And of course, you know, it maybe that one, one process would

(01:02:38):
lead to one choice and anotherprocess would lead to another
choice.
But those can both be neutralprocesses, right?
Like, rolling a dye and flippinga coin might, might lead to
different choices if I'm betweentwo options, but that doesn't
mean that either of them is nonneutral.
Anyway, I don't know.
Neutrality is something I'vebeen thinking about a lot
recently.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (01:02:58):
I guess I, I take your point about
the need to understand whatpolitics is.
When we think of, there's somethings that seem to be
expansions of politics into newdomains that suggest that there,
there, there was a nonstipulative account of politics.
So I I, I'm seeing your pointthere more forcefully now.
Before we go, you, I didn't getthis far in your book, but I

(01:03:21):
know you got a chapter onconspiracy theories.

Track 1 (01:03:23):
Yeah.
So, you know, conspiracytheories is, is one of these,
uh.
one of these concepts that yousee in, in the popular discourse
a lot, and philosophers try totalk about it and then they
realize it's not a veryphilosophical concept.
Right.
So like a lot of people Ibasically have been convinced
by, and I think a lot of peopledon't realize this about the,

(01:03:45):
the philosophical literature onconspiracy theories, but it's
actually, it's not really thatanti conspiracy theory.
So most philosophers who havewritten about it, I think are
Particularist.
So what a particularist means inthe context of conspiracy
theories is you think that, youhave to determine, what's wrong
with any particular conspiracytheory by looking at, you know,

(01:04:07):
it in particular, rather thancoming up with some universal
account of what's wrong with allconspiracy theories.
I also think, there's adefinitional problem as well
that philosophers haven't cometo a consensus yet either.
Just just which theories areconspiracy theories?
It's actually pretty hard toavoid believing conspiracy
theories.
So just for example, like, youoften get into international

(01:04:29):
situations where, either onecountry conspired to attack the
other country or the othercountry conspired to make it
look that way.
Right?
So either way, there must be aconspiracy.
and so you end up with thisquestion of just like, okay, so
are you a conspiracy theorist?
If you believe that there everare any conspiracies, while
there are certainly conspiraciessometimes, right?

(01:04:50):
Conspiracy theory is a topicwhere it's not clear to me
exactly what it's grabbing atand, it's not clear to me that
it's a joint carving category,even in the very rough sense of
joint carving that we would havein this arena.
aNd it often seems like, there'sa certain class of conspiracy
theories that just have badvibes or low social status.

(01:05:11):
That are grouped together underthe label.
And then there are otherconspiracies which everybody
knows exist, or existed in thepast.
Right?
There are other, there are pastevents that, you know, uh, the
assassination of Julius Caesar,for instance.
You know, it's historical factthat it, at least, unless I'm
rem misremembering something,it's a historical fact that that

(01:05:31):
involved a conspiracy.
So I think there are just a lotof open questions about
conspiracy theories.
Another one, just reallybriefly, I cite this great ARC
digital article.
You and I have both written forARC Digital, by Political
Science scientist, Joe Yassky, Ithink is his name.
Basically asking, is this theyear of the conspiracy theory, I
think is the title.

(01:05:51):
and uh, basically he, he writesthat pretty much every year
somebody publishes an articlesaying that it's the year of the
conspiracy theory.
And it's not clear at all fromhis empirical investigations
that that belief in conspiraciesis, is going up in any
meaningful way.
I do think that you see,conspiracy theories, on both the
left and the right.

(01:06:12):
And, uh, certainly left-Wingacademics look for ways to
suggest that.
Again, as we were talking aboutbefore, they look for ways to
suggest that there's some bigdifference, some factor, some
feature of right-wing conspiracytheories that left-wing
conspiracies don't have somereally evil feature.
But I don't think there reallyis such a feature.
I do think that, you know,conspiracy theories, it would

(01:06:34):
make sense if that they becomemore vicious or that if they
rise with polarization aspolarization makes us think the
other side is worse and worse.
We start to imagine that theycould do worse and worse things,
not just as individuals, but inconcert.
Russia, gee posited a conspiracyin the, in the Trump campaign,
right?
Whether, whether it was corrector incorrect, that was a

(01:06:55):
conspiracy theory.
And you get this, you get thisproblem where a lot of people
say, well, to be conspiracytheory, then it, it has to be
false.
Well, that's just, you know,that's just a non-starter as the
theoretical delineation, right?
We can't, we can't bias theinvestigation into political
beliefs by saying we alreadyknow what all the correct and
incorrect political beliefs are.

(01:07:16):
That would be, to me, that wouldbe ridiculous.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (01:07:19):
So, is there something better we can
replace it with?
If I hear you correctly, likethis whole category is just a
muddle and probably, if we justgave up on the whole category of
conspiracy theories and tryingto classify different views as
conspiracy theories.
Nothing would be lost in givingthat up.

Track 1 (01:07:39):
Yeah, I, I, I don't know if I would go quite that
far, but I would certainly saythat somebody has to do the work
of, of showing otherwise, ofreally showing that it's an
intellectually useful category.
Obviously, it's a politicallyuseful category, just like we
were talking about with all theways that people can make
political use of language byattacking the other side.
But that's not, that's not thesort of thing we should, I think

(01:08:00):
you and I agree that's not thesort of thing we should care
about in the academy.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (01:08:03):
All right.
Well, Oliver, do you haveanything else to add?
I think I'm about ready to hitthe Hey.

Track 1 (01:08:08):
No, I think I'm, I'm getting kind of tired too.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (01:08:11):
So let's end with, it's been great
having you on.

Track 1 (01:08:14):
Oh yeah.
Thanks so much for having me.
and, yeah, I hope you'll, I hopeyou'll read the book when it
comes out.

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214040 (01:08:19):
Oh, I didn't even get the title.
Let's get the title in right atthe end.

Track 1 (01:08:22):
Oh, of course.
it's with Rutledge, it'spolitical Beliefs, a
philosophical introduction, andthey're telling me, uh, it might
be out next summer.
Um, that's the hope

spencer_1_11-15-2023_214 (01:08:31):
That's great.

Track 1 (01:08:33):
I.