Gun control and ideological tribalism

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Peter Coghill and Nick Hare of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing gun control. So sadly another week goes by and recently there's been another mass shooting in this school in the United States and so we want to talk about why gun control is such a political issue and Nick I'm going to start off with you so yeah go for it. Yeah I think this is something

Speaker B: 00:00:43

that you know being in the UK we can we can stand back a bit on. Gun control is one of the issues that we really don't have much shared understanding of here compared with the US because it's you know something that in the UK more or less everyone is pretty much in support of the gun control of the very stringent gun controls we have here and you know gun crime is almost non-existent in the UK so something we don't really understand so we can stand back and look at the issue of gun control and I think one thing that's very striking is how politically how almost perfectly the people's attitudes to gun control lines up with a lot of other stuff that people believe. You know you will tend to find conservative, republican, southern people and cultures being sort of very anti-gun control and pro the rights of individuals to bear their own arms and of course you'll find you know generally northern democrat or coastal people in the US progressives being very pro-gun control and the question is not we don't really want to talk about gun control because I think it's been done to death on the internet what we want to talk about is why that's true why it is why it is that these superficially why should someone's attitude for example to health care or immigration or even for that matter things like climate change why should they be so strongly correlated with their attitudes to things like gun control it's a strange but very pervasive phenomenon I think that's what we want to talk about today

Speaker A: 00:02:22

okay and so just off the bat are there other areas already that you couldn't you want to talk about where we see these correlations if we move away from some of the examples you've mentioned there

Speaker B: 00:02:33

I think well I think there's probably when we talk about you know people's political stances there's a whole bunch of different things that we're talking about it might be helpful to separate in into at least two things so we've got people's beliefs about what we ought to do so it's things like you know should we have gun control it's a policy issue and then there's separately there's the issue about what kind of society we actually want to be so that's and that's quite distinct so you know you might get some people who are so conservatives tend to like tend to want to see a society that's has it has more tradition has tend tends to have a bit more conformity whereas progressives and liberals tend to want to see a society that is probably more diverse and multicultural so there's that's almost like an issue about ends where where are we going where do we want to go as a society compared to what kinds of policies we ought to institute to get there so they're two separate two separate dimensions really and I think that it's helpful to to sort of put aside for a minute the the whole distinction the idea that you've got left wing and right wing and think of it instead of two separate things I well I find it quite helpful one is sort of progressivism versus traditionalism and the other is liberalism versus let's say statism but is there not an alignment between that how do we get there and what do we want well they used to be much more of an alignment which is why left and right wing made sense you know if you were left wing you tended to want to uh see a more sort of equal and fairer society and you were fairly clear that the way to get there was to have more socialist government so you'd have government control of things and the government would would sort of through uh measures like nationalization of of productive industry would would effectively enforce that that um increased uh egalitarianism um so they were correlated you know and then likewise you tended to be if you were if you were uh conservative you tended to support more freedom for individuals and less state control that's broken down a bit now I think you have so you know certainly in the last 20 years if you think back to Tony Blair and the third way you have uh sort of progressive social social progressives people who you know want to see a more equal society and care about differences between different groups uh you know care about gender equality and and you know equality for homosexuals that kind of thing uh also correlated with uh people you know with accepting that that free market approaches to things generally are more efficient um and and you also have um sort of there's a there's also a kind of paternalist strand of um conservatism which actually thinks the state has a a role in coercing people into good behavior so so you know it's it's not there isn't there isn't a perfect correlation between you know the kind of progressive traditionalist and uh liberal versus sort of socialist or government or statist uh approaches so anyway that's that's what but what we're talking about is why why is that a whole basket of different things are clustered you know why why you will tend to why you will tend to find people who are um well if you think about the UK you know you tend to find people who are sort of anti people are opposed to military intervention will also probably um advocate for you know more spending on NHS or welfare um and tend to be more concerned about inequality well they're all quite different things why are they bundled together uh Peter do

Speaker C: 00:06:03

you want to jump in at this point yeah well I'm not entirely convinced that they are necessarily bundled together they sort of you get simplified models often cited in media and news and things but I said if you ask any one person randomly parked off the street what their views are on a range of different topics they'll they they will have quite different views but they may associate with one party or another or more one outcome or another so one sort of set of policies one means and then one another set of outcomes of a set of ends um so I but I'm I as usual very difficult to find any sort of data on this it's very difficult to sort of uh I to start with to quantify how strongly leaning anyone any one person is in any particular direction but um I couldn't really find any any definitive studies on this um so I'm not entirely convinced I buy this idea that that um ideals are necessarily grouped I don't I don't know what

Speaker B: 00:07:03

kind of weird um sort of athenian style enlightened society you live in I I don't I haven't even welling in Kent it's no I haven't even looked I haven't even looked for data on this because it's so blindingly obvious I mean you know if I were to go to my mum's got a cottage in in Lincolnshire near Boston it's you know the biggest Brexit place in the world I could grab some random person off the street and you know as soon as I'm going to guess that they're probably a Brexit voter and as soon as I know that I can get a whole load of other things which will be about their attitude to immigration to education policy to health policy and I'm going to be pretty I'm I think I

Speaker C: 00:07:40

guess I'm going to be pretty accurate about those things what I mean is that that that that uh that that might be that they have chosen to live there or they have been brought up a certain way they're being exposed to a certain sort of cultural uh environment which has caused them to be like that rather than um I'm I'm going to deliberately adopt this ideal about gun control because I

Speaker B: 00:08:01

also believe in yeah but that's how I agree that that's a hypothesis about why these things are correlated but what I don't what I can't countenance is preposterous to me to suggest that the political beliefs aren't correlated in the way that I'm suggesting um now I once it it accepting that they are okay if if they aren't then this whole discussion is pointless but accepting that they are there are a number of possible causes I mean it might be that you know your um that something about your environment or background causes political beliefs or it might be that your political beliefs in some sense influence your lifestyle choices and who you associate with or it might be pure tribalism so it might be that this is just a random bunch of beliefs that is the beliefs that your tribe has and you cling to those okay it could be some combination of the three so

Speaker A: 00:08:47

yeah I mean so let's just sort of uh take stock for a moment um so I think Peter what you were saying is that you probably do agree that someone who holds this belief likely holds others it's the question of why that might be the case yeah okay you can always find candies levels but I

Speaker C: 00:09:05

mean I don't think it's quite as clear-cut as everyone necessarily assumes um I think you because you couldn't there plenty of people uh might be in favor of military intervention and regime change um kind of foreign policies yet be uh very um liberal in their mindset in terms of social care and stuff I know plenty of people like that I know it's easy to say that but um it's uh it's I don't I'm not convinced it's quite as black and white as we're making out

Speaker B: 00:09:37

okay all right yeah I mean I don't know I could because we're in north London right now we're in the heart of a bunch of people I could I could go out and find you you could people randomly

Speaker A: 00:09:46

throw a brick into the air it would land on someone who's going to remain a very basic

Speaker B: 00:09:50

yeah a kind of a person who is going to be a real sort of uh stereotype of people who live around here they'll they'll definitely be anti-war they'll probably still be uh fuming about the Iraq war um they'll definitely be a they'll be a remain voter you know um and um and they'll be they'll think that government cuts to the NHS uh are bad and that that you know the government is probably basically a bit malign in its uh in its approach to social policy and that we're not doing enough about you know insert issue x um I'm pretty sure you'd find a you'd find a lot of people that corresponds to that excessive beliefs um so look I mean look I don't know I can't I'm just racking my brain to think if I know of anyone other than possibly me who was sort of sort of pro uh military intervention um and and uh yet at the same time kind of progressive in

Speaker C: 00:10:37

terms of their maybe this is just your clique maybe maybe you're just too maybe you're socializing with too many north London metropolitan elite right right but but the point is that that that

Speaker B: 00:10:47

is but why is why is that a thing why is there a whole clique of people who who have the same view about military intervention in Iraq as they which is a totally separate thing really to about whether or not we should be part of the EU why are those things so highly correlated it's it's weird uh unless unless you know I mean when you get these correlations obviously when you see highly correlated data the race is on to find a more a kind of explanatory factor so we've got to look for what's the what's the is there a kind of root cause for this well look on the one hand I feel

Speaker A: 00:11:20

I mean I actually have I have trouble understanding this concept of you know uh means and ends but that you talked about earlier that division but let's leave that aside for the moment um I just feel we're dancing around the edges here of something but I don't know if we're just dancing around the edges of something that's just blindingly obvious um this you know it feels like we're asking the question oh why do why are people different from each other and and isn't the answer to do yeah what isn't isn't the answer no we were asking why they're the same as each other why we're asking

Speaker B: 00:11:53

why no we're not we're not asking no why people have a huge basket of predictable beliefs you know if someone tells me what they think about climate change I'm going to probably have a pretty good guess as to whether they voted remain now that's ridiculous why should our attitude to being a member of the EU no no so highly correlated to what we think we should be doing

Speaker A: 00:12:10

about climate change surely we're just approaching it I mean you say we're talking about why people the same I'm talking about why they're the difference why they're different that's pretty much the same question I actually okay I would argue um bear with me bear with me I think I see your point yeah yeah but aren't we talking about also why is it so difficult to persuade other people why is it so difficult for others to see um another group okay I think I think that's part of the let's try and get onto this thing about tribalism and I don't know I'm just worried that we're trying we're approaching this in a way that's just really obvious and um I just feel

Speaker B: 00:12:45

we're asking a question oh no it's not it's not because none of the explanations are really that satisfying because on one hand if you say well it's pure tribalism yeah so in other words well what do we mean by tribalism that I espouse or at least pretend to espouse a set of beliefs because that is a marker for membership of a particular group of people that I want to be in or am in in some way and I see it as socially advantageous to be part of that group so I go around saying oh yes government cuts the NHS have gone too far and we need to do more about sexual harassment because uh you know I want to be part of that kind of clique um in in which case it could have been totally different right we could have had a north London cosmopolitan group of people who um were really anti-immigration and pro uh pro-leave now uh to some extent right there are I mean there are issues which have changed sides and membership of the EU is one of them you know being pro-EU used to be a kind of um right-wing free market thing uh the left certainly the old left were very anti-the EU you know so that's something that's changed sides um there are there are uh I mean you think back to things like coal mining um you know I remember my my um sort of left-wing progressive parents taking me on marches complaining about the Tories shutting the coal mines down now uh the fact that Trump wants to keep the coal mines going is considered to be a really right-wing thing and the left are all very anti-coal mines because now it's you know that's a kind of anti it's a it's a it's sort of a because of the climate change issue which has now taken precedence so things switch sides right so that does suggest that's certainly evidence for the idea that um actually it's tribalism you know because oh it could be any random bunch of things uh however there are logical sort of connections between these baskets of belief which means that actually there probably is there's a coherence to them

Speaker C: 00:14:32

it's whatever they I think a big driving factor is whatever sort of that narrative logic that is being seized upon at the time to link a couple of concepts together and a party will reach out and grab a particular issue and say we're going to own so we'll we'll we're the we're the liberal um left we're going to reach out and grab the NHS as a thing that we we're going to hold up and say we'll make this better because everyone cares about that and we'll have a set of simple narrative logical arguments explain why that's a good thing and then the opposition has to take the opposite point of view otherwise they're not opposed on it they haven't got anything to challenge on it so they they're in the one thing that parties don't like to do is agree with each other because they can't stand out from each other so I think I think that's a big driving factor is this the the these apparent logical connections that cause um there is this and then and when they switch when when when when uh when when a new logical narrative is is is pushed

Speaker A: 00:15:31

then then things switch sides but do you think I mean something that you talked about there is that sometimes uh politicians feel they don't have a choice they just have to oppose but this kind of shift in in in um in beliefs or priorities where we mentioned mining for example I mean where where does that come from is it sort of is it top down or bottom up or I don't know how do

Speaker C: 00:15:59

these changes come about well I mean I think it's quite I think a bit of both bloom in in in America there's sort of the lobby the lobbying um process is extremely powerful in government so if um if uh if you get a business friendly or or seemingly business friendly president like Trump then big business who own coal and oil will will will lobby them very hard give them lots of money um and and they're sort of and they're and they're uh allied senators to to push your

Speaker B: 00:16:31

narrative yeah but it's not that see this is a bit Peter's presenting a very kind of nihilistic postmodern uh idea where it really is just you know a bunch of issues with different labels and people are just pushing them because they want to push issues I mean I would say you're it seems much more uh you are someone who's like a big business let's say you're kind of oil producers are gonna have an easier job trying to convince a republican um senator to support their cause than they would a democrat one um in today's climate just because you know the constituents the people that they're already representing are going to be more pro the idea of business being more important uh than let's say the environment whereas with the democrats that isn't the case now you know it's not just some random issue there's got there is an element to which the there has to be a coherence between them um you know you you could you have to look at the substance of the beliefs as well uh but this question about why what causes things to change what causes uh that basket of things to change I I don't know um but the I think that there's a there's a couple of things where we can say what happens to individuals when they change their views right what things cause individuals to change their views is it um sort of acquiring a new set of values so is it being exposed to the idea that other ways of life are actually better or is it new information or some combination of the two you know um and and actually I have to say I think the former it's it's it tend to tend to cause people to change their views more than the latter so another exposure did you say yeah so so and I think we talked a bit about this when we talked about cosmopolitanism in a previous um podcast but the classic example a classic route through life that people take is they have a sort of fairly conservative or monocultural kind of upbringing they go to university they get exposed to people of different ethnicities and cultures and uh different sexuality and they go oh hang on you know these are all fine as well these are all perfectly okay ways of living and people tend to become very progressive and then later on perhaps you know they start to question some of those progressive assumptions and start to come to a more kind of coherent view of the world which says well actually you know it's not all quite as idyllic as that either you know that classic the classic quote about if you're not a socialist when you're uh you know at 20 then you haven't got a heart and if you're not a conservative when you're 40 you haven't got a brain I think there's a certain element of truth to that it's Churchill wasn't it uh it Churchill's been given lots of quotes I'm not sure I'm not sure there is a there's another one yeah um but but yeah so I mean you know people's people's people's political views are not purely tribal in the sense that they are subject to new experience and new information you know they're not they're not

Speaker A: 00:19:18

fundamental in that sense okay um this I don't I don't I don't feel we've quite got to the heart of anything here but anyway uh we that doesn't stop us from having to finish but there's before we do there's one thing I just wanted to to talk about which is um something I used to be quite proud of um was and to an extent I still am in the UK is that I've got lots of friends who I've no idea what they vote I have no idea whether Labour voters Lib Dem I probably know if they're UKIP or not actually and they're probably not um and I where they're conservatives and I really like that and I like the fact that I and also I don't live in sort of North London London is Starm you know I live in somewhere that's a bit more sort of diverse in its opinion um and so I I know all sorts of people I have no idea what they vote and it doesn't really come up in our conversations even if we have quite political conversations sometimes it means that they vote conservative but I don't think it does it doesn't and um and you know sometimes you know just out of curiosity I have sort of asked them you know and I've often been surprised by what they say um and my point is this is that I think that's quite unusual that we've got that here um it's certainly unusual compared to somewhere like the United States for example and something I remember a few years ago question time the BBC um political program where they bring in politicians and other people to talk about political issues of the day they did a special edition from the US and I think they did it because it was a post 9 11 thing and one thing that struck me and I've seen this other times watching American politicians um in discussion is just the venom the there seems to be just this sort of lack of tolerance and don't get me wrong you see lots of heated debate here in the UK um but there always seem to be a sort of still in the UK a sense of um some sort of commonality somehow I don't I don't know but I guess my question is this is do you think I'm accurate in what I've said there um and second do you think it's changed at all because something I think with Brexit that's been laid bare is you know maybe I was being naive and there there is this sort of a greater division and a greater animosity um maybe it's always been there or

Speaker C: 00:21:34

maybe it's rising um Peter? Yeah well there is there is a there's a few sort of psychological studies that lead that building on a point you just made I think you're right that people that people have different persuasions political persuasions or ideological persuasions don't just think that the other side is logically wrong that there is a better way of doing having the outcome that you may collectively want to have but I also think that they're morally wrong so um you know the climate change deniers um will have a will will believe that that people who believe the climate is important we need to look after it are there's something morally repugnant about them something you know deeply wrong about them um and so this was well explained well well well well explored in a book by a guy called Jonathan Hyatt I forget the name of the book um Nick do you remember the is it the uh something about the political mind or something yeah something like that um and but so we haven't really got on to why this happens and um he Jonathan talks about this um concept of shared intentionality which is a a milestone that humans evolved um through uh when we started being more social and have been developing complex communication something that that uh other uh uh primates don't don't do so chimps don't don't necessarily have this they act more as sort of loose groups of individuals rather than groups of collective people with a collective outcome a collective desired outcome um uh and uh he he argues that it's potentially a uh is it is necessary for collective action that you have these different uh you have this social this cohesion within a group uh and this sort of adoption of the same views in order to have the same outcome and he also argues goes to say further says that there are uh what higher level species wide nationwide kind of advantages to having competing groups so although individual conflicts wars etc might be extremely damaging um eventually you find an equilibrium which is better than any one of the

Speaker B: 00:23:53

two extremes okay i i think i think it's quite as simple as um both sides thinking each other is uh morally wrong i would characterize it more as the right tend to see the left as stupid and the left tend to see the right as evil that that that seems more that seems to explain more to me to think of it in those terms and um uh yeah i mean the left tend to question the right's motives they tend to be very into you know they tend to think the rights are um being uh selfish or um you know or nationalistic or um you know looking down on other people um whereas the rights tend to think the left are naive and and uh you know too optimistic about the ability of government to deliver things and i think both those views are you know there's going to be some element of truth to both of those sides yeah and i say that as a really you know a kind of hardcore extreme

Speaker A: 00:24:46

centrist so i mean sorry just to wrap things up i mean just two things one i've often been struck um by the again the venom of the below the line comments in on the guardian yeah online um and just on things like just how how much they hate the tories and just and just how actually it's impossible to be a friend with someone who you either know is conservative or think might vote conservative and i just yeah i actually see more venom uh from the left um anyway but secondly i have no idea i mean you've just said you're a hardcore centrist um i thought you were a hardcore rocker but anyway um the yeah i have no idea what you two might vote in an election i don't know if you know or clearly i don't know if you know or i would vote uh yeah i wonder let's do a quick phrase what do you what radical islamist i think what do you think i would vote i uh i voted for

Speaker B: 00:25:42

the same party in the last three or four i wouldn't i wouldn't bet a lot of money on it but i would go either probably either liberal or labor um i i would i would probably veer towards

Speaker A: 00:25:55

uh liberal i think i think you're a green actually green um well you have to tell us now i will i will um and for nick what do you reckon i think you you're either labor or lib dem um and i would well you said you're a hardcore centrist so i'm gonna have to say lib dem i guess incorrect

Speaker B: 00:26:19

ion since i started voting in: 1997

Speaker A: 00:27:00

i'm shocked um yeah you're probably too forthright in your views to be a lib dem um well they're

Speaker B: 00:27:08

just they're not gonna win that's the main thing why would you want to vote for a party who wasn't gonna win yeah um what do we think about peter what do you think nick uh well like hmm you know he's gonna he's gonna take a very technocratic approach he's probably got a spreadsheet where he evaluates all the policies um and then ends up voting for some party you've never heard of sort of southeast london libertarian alliance or something yeah i'm gonna take a guess

Speaker A: 00:27:34

there should be one of those yeah i think he's a i think he's a conservative why do you think that um because i think you're quite a logical person and we talked about how the left can be sort of slightly naive um and i don't think you are a naive person well maybe you are with your views in technology sometimes and how it's a good thing in all cases yeah he's very he's very progressive

Speaker B: 00:28:00

i mean he's a he's a libertarian i just don't know actually so the question is whether he's going to go for the progressive values of the labour party or the or the kind of um more the libertarian policies of the uh of the of the conservative party i i don't know i couldn't call it but

Speaker C: 00:28:17

well i think i'm a floating voter as well okay i'm i'm from persuasion but um yeah i i'm generally like this i generally see myself as being fairly progressive can i ask what you voted in the last election i vote conservative right again given given the alternatives and i just generally have always voted conservative um just because the okay and not but not for any kind of political ideal more for the for the the the for the weighed up against the alternative

Speaker B: 00:28:45

um chaos so he's a floating voter who just happens coincidentally for the last 20 years have voted

Speaker A: 00:28:51

for the same party yeah yeah so i mean we need we really need to finish um but yeah just for the record so i actually in the last however many elections have voted lib dem um so you were right yeah yeah for really bad reasons actually just which is quite wishy-washy sort of not

Speaker B: 00:29:08

really keen on what well have you heard of Buridan's ass no i've not well it's a hypothetical animal which was trapped exactly equidistant between two bales of hay yeah and being unable to think of a good reason to go one way or the other he starved to death so that's that's voting lib dem essentially

Speaker A: 00:29:24

is yeah starving to death politically yeah but also i don't know why i bother because i know where i because where i live is hardcore conservative and there's absolutely no point whatsoever in me voting lib dem or labor for that matter um anyway nonetheless yeah no i have to say

Speaker B: 00:29:38

actually i mean i really like the lib dems if they stood a chance of winning i'd probably consider

Speaker C: 00:29:41

yeah okay well on that note so i've just said that's the problem with the lib dems though

Speaker B: 00:29:45

it's everyone thinks that well i know but you who wants to be the first to jump you know me

Speaker C: 00:29:50

oh okay yeah you're right let's start let's start it here the confirmed ass okay right we really

Speaker A: 00:29:56

need to stop there uh so thank you gentlemen um i did find that enlightening uh eventually um so uh thank you very much uh i'm Fraser McGruer we've been here with Nick Hare and Peter Coghill of Aleph Insights thank you for listening and until next time goodbye