Bringing rationality into politics (with Elizabeth Edwards-Appell)
1. Cultivate Epistemic Rigor
Actively seek out resources like Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “sequences” to learn about cognitive biases and deconstruct them in yourself, aiming to be convinced by good arguments and unconvinced by bad ones.
2. Deconstruct Your Own Biases
Focus not just on learning about cognitive biases, but actively deconstructing them within your own thinking to challenge deeply held dogmas and ideologies.
3. Adopt Probabilistic Thinking
Shift from binary (true/false) thinking to probabilistic thinking, assigning probabilities to beliefs and continuously updating them with new information, making it easier to adjust beliefs when proven wrong.
4. Practice “Leaving Line Retreat”
Mentally explore what your life would be like if your most cherished beliefs were untrue, allowing alternatives to become thinkable and reducing the psychological difficulty of changing your mind.
5. Avoid Harmful Self-Labeling
Be cautious with self-labels (e.g., “libertarian,” “Democrat”) as they can be epistemically toxic, shrinking your possibility space and limiting the solutions you consider for problems. Instead, ask “what is the best solution?”
6. Avoid Identifying with Groups
To maintain epistemic flexibility and avoid the negative side effects of group identity (like avoiding hypocrisy or tribalism), try to avoid identifying with any specific political group.
7. Consider Running for Office
If you believe you could do better than current elected representatives, you likely can, as many politicians exhibit common human flaws like scope insensitivity or simple incompetence.
8. Prioritize Based on Scope
As a policymaker, intentionally prioritize issues that affect vast numbers of people over those affecting smaller groups, actively counteracting the natural human tendency towards scope insensitivity.
9. Seek Guidance for Running
If you are considering running for office, especially as a woman who might self-doubt, seek guidance from experienced individuals to assess if it’s a good personal fit.
10. Target Likely Voters
When shaping a campaign, focus on targeting likely voters, especially primary voters in your party, as mobilizing non-voters is much harder and less effective.
11. Mobilize Your Group’s Vote
If you are part of a politically active group, mobilizing all members to vote can have an outsized influence on election outcomes, especially at the local level.
12. Embrace Party Label
If you intend to run for office, you generally need to pick and embrace a party label to avoid being blocked or kicked out, especially within a two-party system.
13. Cultivate Pleasantness & Likeability
Actively try to be pleasant and well-liked by colleagues, especially if you anticipate having differing views or needing to vote against the party line, to counter negative perceptions.
14. Conserve Political Capital
Identify specific, important goals you can realistically achieve and focus your political capital on those; for other issues, “go along to get along” to maintain relationships and preserve capital.
15. Build Political Capital
Gain political capital by being popular, making donations to other campaigns, attending events, and generally being gracious and pleasant to be around.
16. Influence Policy Actively
To influence legislative outcomes, focus on sponsoring/co-sponsoring bills, actively participating in committee meetings to persuade members, and giving speeches to the full body before votes.
17. Prepare Thoroughly for Persuasion
To successfully persuade a committee, be extremely prepared by providing committee members with relevant information, sharing party-aligned articles during caucuses, and asking pointed questions to demonstrate expertise.
18. Strategically Deviate from Party
If you must vote against your party, do so judiciously, respectfully, and without flagrancy; sometimes abstaining (e.g., “taking a walk”) can avoid direct opposition on important votes.
19. Avoid Incumbents When Running
Focus on districts with open seats as running against an incumbent is generally “pretty pointless” and makes it harder to win.
20. Attend Local Party Meetings
Engage with local party meetings to discover open seats and build connections within your chosen party.
21. Door-to-Door Campaigning
For state-level political campaigns, going door-to-door is a valuable strategy to get face-to-face time with constituents, even with small budgets.
22. Recognize Public Choice Effects
Be aware that many laws and regulations tend to concentrate benefits for a small group while socializing costs across a larger population, driven by the incentives of those who benefit most.
23. Policymakers Consult Experts
When designing complex regulations, it is important for policymakers to listen to experts, acknowledging that experts can disagree and their expertise might be limited to specific domains.
24. Support Environmental Regulations
Regulations targeting widespread harms like environmental pollution (e.g., clean water and air) are often robust and successful in improving societal well-being.