Interesting conversation, I could have picked many items to excerpt. She says,
If you look at the personality data on libertarians, they tend towards being more systematizing in their cognitive profile. Women, on average, tend to be more empathizing and agreeable, and so arguments around political issues that are based on quantitative reasoning and facts and logic without an emotional layer to it are going to be less appealing to women.
I’ve said to libertarian friends that if you want to be more appealing, get your message across in a more appealing way, you need to wrap up the ideas into a story that has an emotional component.
Slate Star Codex, which is generally worth reading, has a couple of useful takes:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/01/gender-imbalances-are-mostly-not-due-to-offensive-attitudes/ (note- this link is about gender imbalances in libertarianism specifically)
See also the non-libertarian FAQ (“why I hate your freedom”), which outlines a set of arguments that any libertarian should be prepared to answer.
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertarian-faq/
I’ve said to libertarian friends that if you want to be more appealing, get your message across in a more appealing way, you need to wrap up the ideas into a story that has an emotional component.
Seems consistent with the Three Languages of Politics approach.
On the other hand, the “Appeal to Emotion” (see wikipedia entry) “or argumentum ad passiones is a logical fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient’s emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence… …Appeals to emotion are intended to draw inward feelings such as fear, pity, and joy from the recipient of the information with the end goal of convincing him/her that the statements being presented in the fallacious argument are true.”
I doubt Lehmann would confess to advocating that. Perhaps by adding “a component” she meant to suggest that you can be true and right, but you have to market your argument to your audience anyway. To offer this advice with seem so condescending as to suggest it is your fault if you don’t pander to your audience’s weaknesses, there is supposed to be some emotional truth out there that, remembering the old “emotional intelligence” hypothesis, the better sorts of people recognize.
How exactly would one appeal to emotion responsibly? Not sure. My suspicion is that this is all about finding ways to reinforce your audience’s sense of righteousness.
So we are back to simply moralizing.
And that gets us nowhere.
Which is a shame, because I love Quillette and read it religiously.
But I know when I am being pandered to, and I suspect most people do too. And that is persuasive? For example, there is an excellent article up there now “Unpacking Peggy McIntosh’s Knapsack.” I agree with it completely, yet…..it plainly appeals to emotion based upon personal experience, depicting the corpses of people tortured by their longtime neighbors. I suspect that no brandisher of “white privilege” anywhere is going to give up that shibboleth.
One wonders if appealing to emotion actually just reinforces Dr. Kling’s observation that political speech is about reinforcing ties with one’s tribe with the persuasiveness of that speech to outsiders being largely irrelevant.
I’ve said to libertarian friends that if you want to be more appealing, get your message across in a more appealing way, you need to wrap up the ideas into a story that has an emotional component.
One of the best recent examples of this I’ve seen is Still Mine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv_Rl0CBPNs
The true story of an elderly Canadian man who fights small-minded local bureaucrats over building a new, small single-story house on his own land for his wife who’s developing dementia. Bureaucrats do make for good villains.
But I don’t think libertarians misunderstand this, really. The fight against police brutality (appropriately) includes endless personal stories of the people who have been killed and abused. The same goes for the fight against Title IX kangaroo courts and civil asset forfeiture — many more personal stories of gross miscarriages of justice.
But for some issues, this is tougher to do — anywhere there are ‘concentrated benefits and dispersed costs’ it’s harder to find sympathetic individual poster victims to pull at the heart-strings. So to fight Trump’s protectionism on an emotional level, you have to find people who’ve lost their jobs and whose companies have shut down because, for example, steel became too expensive due to tariffs.
Except there is no police brutality worth talking about and the protests surrounding it have only resulted in more crime and death. See Steve Sailer on The Feurgeson Effect. Riling people up on often false “hands up don’t shoot” and statistically irrelevant cases has caused people to adopt incorrect policy preference based on appeals to emotion over reason.
“Except there is no police brutality worth talking about”
Oh, BS. I’m not a fan of Black Lives Matter either, but as the ubiquity of cell phone cameras have proven, there’s no shortage of instances of cops shooting suspects or roughing them up, charging them with ‘resisting arrest’ and lying about it all. It wouldn’t be any problem to find enough ‘cops behaving badly/criminally’ stories to keep you busy watching and reading through the entire holiday weekend.
If there are that many instances and all these cell phones, why do they need to highlight so many false flags?
In any country with over 300 million people we should expect a few tragic cases. I have seen zero evidence that the justice system treats blacks dramatically worse then you would expect once you adjust for their increased crime rates and the stresses that puts on law enforcement.
By contrast crime is a huge cost for society. It’s not just the crimes themselves. It’s the knots we twist ourselves in (how much of the prime real estate in our city is rendered worthless by the fact that law and order has broken down there). Don’t tell me about how much better things are then the height of crack, it’s all shit compared to what came before the 60s.
But libertarians don’t care about crime victims. And they don’t care about someone that overpaid for real estate so they can be in a safe neighboorhood. No all those normal law abiding citizens can suffer death by a thousand cuts. We need the emotional appeal of wondering why thugs with records assaulting people didn’t deserve to get shot. Ranting about that will get progressives to like you.
I’ve gotten tickets I don’t like too, riots that burned down my city demanding that cops no longer arrest criminals didn’t help that.
Which city got burned down? Was this recent?
I agree that police abuse isn’t primarily a racial issue — cops will abuse people of all colors who fail to ‘Respect mah authoritah!’. Justine Diamond was (with the emphasis on WAS) a white Australian woman. The driver who is blown away within a few seconds of the cop appearing on the scene WAS a white kid:
https://goo.gl/cyUwuA
I could keep you busy all weekend reading stories of police abuse where none of the targets were black.
If there are that many instances and all these cell phones, why do they need to highlight so many false flags?
That’s a legitimate question — why did BLM focus so much more on Michael Brown than Walter Scott? The answer seems to be because virtually everybody agreed Walter Scott’s shooting was an outrage. Only with Michael Brown did protesters get the push-back they wanted. Only with ambiguous cases like Michael Brown could activists demonstrate their unquestioning loyalty to the cause and have others (like you and me, I suppose) who don’t agree and who they can, therefore, demonize.
But regardless of the answer, the emphasis on Michael Brown doesn’t demonstrate that the problem is rare. It isn’t.
Moo cow,
The city I live in, Baltimore, had large scale BLM riots. We’ve had huge spikes in murders and general crime.
Slocum,
Is police brutality a major problem? I’ve had my issues with law enforcement in the past, but I remain convinced that I have more to fear from lawlessness then police overreach at this point in time. My place of residence may effect this, but I see it elsewhere.
Moreover, the things that bother me about cops are not racial nor are they related to use of force. BLM offers zero reform potential on this issue. Rather most things I would like to see done are boring reforms that don’t rule up the blood. Huge emotional cases obscure rather then highlight and confuse rather then elucidate the reforms that are necessary.
I remain convinced that libertarian support for BLM and anti cop narratives have more to do with libertarians wanting to fit in with progressives rather then a genuine desire for utility maximizing reforms.
Uh oh. Similar stuff was printed on NAOWS pamphlets. That’s going to make things pretty awkward for Brennan’s conception of epistocracy. This is the kind of thing only a woman can say without getting in deep trouble, but actually, only a woman not clearly on the wrong team, which Lehmann is just barely avoiding, so far.
Indeed, this bit is best explained by her using Cowen’s technique of throwing a bone to the progressive attach dogs so they go find some other prey:
“More destructive”. Sure Claire, whatever you say.
Good grief. If anyone takes the IDW crowd seriously a year from now it won’t be because they refrained from spouting out a bunch of nonsense.
Once again, our post-modern world means public intellectual discourse prioritizes “marketing over merits”.
And at any rate, her suggestion is simply horrible advice. Playing the “emotionally appealing” rhetorical game is a sure loser because “emotionally appealing” does not overlap very with with “ideologically correct, rational, and empirically-based policy proposals.” If one is going to play at that level – that is, not trying to convince people that they should refuse the be tempted by the emotional appeal of the opposition’s bad agenda – then one is definitely going to remain at a perpetual disadvantage with the really emotionally appealing political stuff, which definitely isn’t very libertarian.
Playing the “emotionally appealing” rhetorical game is a sure loser because “emotionally appealing” does not overlap very with with “ideologically correct, rational, and empirically-based policy proposals.”
I’m don’t think that’s true. For all the issues I listed in my comment, emotional appeals can overlap very well with rational policy proposals. Want to get rid of unnecessary occupational licenses? It can’t hurt to find an African Hair Braider who can’t work because she lacks the expensive (and obviously irrelevant) state cosmetology license:
https://ij.org/issues/economic-liberty/braiding/
No, there won’t always be ‘poster-victims’ to illustrate the problem with bad, statist policies, but often there will be, and there’s little reason NOT include their stories when making the case.
The few cases where this kind of thing are true are not examples to imitate but exceptions which prove the rule.
Any utilitarian calculus of dispersed, small benefits being much greater in magnitude than concentrated costs tends to fail the emotional appeal test. One can’t emotionally respond to prospect of ten million people who would barely notice saving a few cents on a bag of sugar. But the story of the poor owner of a small farm his family has run for generations and who will go under if he can’t get a little help competing with the vast sugarcane empire of Brazil pulls at the heartstrings. But, indeed, all those tiny benefits can add up to warrant shutting the poor farmer down, if we’re going to look at the cold, heart facts and logic of the situation.
Precisely this kind of thing pops up all the time when it comes to analysis of trade, environmental policy, health policy, or business regulations. The rational argument is almost always fighting an uphill battle against emotional impulses about who deserves sympathy and compassion and ‘help’.
That doesn’t even get into the tricky identity-politics matters of whose claims matter more or less than others in terms of the typical emotional reaction in the population. Playing the emotional appeal game is definitely going to suffer the structural disadvantage of having to take the existing (insane) ideological framework as a given, which completely works against the typical libertarian approach of neutral individualism and color-blindness.
The few cases where this kind of thing are true are not examples to imitate but exceptions which prove the rule.
But these cases aren’t just a ‘few exceptions’. There are identifiable victims in many, many issues that libertarians care about, including: police militarization & abuse, eminent domain abuse, the drug war, civil asset forfeiture, gay rights, occupational licensure, school choice, title IX kangaroo courts, and university speech codes. Look at the ‘Institute for Justice’ web site:
https://ij.org/
Representing sympathetic victims is pretty much all they do (you need a victim with standing to bring a lawsuit). This stuff isn’t a sideline for libertarians.
Any utilitarian calculus of dispersed, small benefits being much greater in magnitude than concentrated costs tends to fail the emotional appeal test.
As I noted, it IS harder in those cases. But not impossible. Often enough the concentrated benefits are going to unsympathetic wealthy individuals or large, rent-seeking companies. How were the ‘Corn Laws’ in England (a classic case of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs) finally revoked? In part by the emotional appeal of arguments like these:
The only barrier to these four beneficent solutions was the ignorant self-interest of the landlords, the “bread-taxing oligarchy, unprincipled, unfeeling, rapacious and plundering.”
Even when you can’t find poster victims, you may be able to find poster villains.
Eminiant domain abuse is good.
I’ve seen what legalized drugs does. It’s called the opioid crises. Portugal and the rest merely decriminalized position of small personal quantities, which is different from legalization in a big way. Moreover, I haven’t encountered enough evidence to conclude that drug legalization would significantly end crime and incarceration. It seems to me drugs are just the excuse for people who are otherwise violent and law breaking, and that would not fundamentally change if you legalized pot.
Moreover, the libertarian obsession with smoking pot as the be all end all of liberty is quite silly. At least Tyler Cowen has the balls to admit stupefying yourself isn’t some noble pursuit.
Gay rights is now used to terrify bakers and persecute Christians. Sodomy laws were overturned decades ago, and anyone that wanted to play house could do so befor gay marraige.
Title 9 courts are a problem because emotional sob stories about “rape culture” created them. If you try to fight and emotional sob story contest with young girls sexuality you will lose.
Libertarians have no answer to progressives designating something “hate speech”.
On quillette some commentator noted he joined the left when younger because it was “cool”. He left was pro getting high, pro getting laid, pro saying words that got your parents riled up. But now the left was “lame”. I commented that if the sum total of his life philosophy was self indulgence it’s no surprise that a stronger faith came along and ran roughshod over his ideology.
Conservatives had positive emotional stories like family, faith, human accomplishment. Libertarians don’t have much.
Libertarianism is a process. A philosophy of bringing the voter and consequences of voting closer. Avoid remote government programs with long rebound affects, not noticeable until it is too late. Get more responsive government and that often means less central and more local government.
Marketers, who try to convince people for a living, seem to use emotional appeals almost exclusively. Beer ads feature nubile youg women, and political ads show a steely-eyed candidate in shirtsleeves looking at cheering people while flags are flying and stirring music is playing. Purely emotional appeals must be the best way to reach people. Not me, of course….
I immediately thought of my Libertarian reading:
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,
The Fountainhead,
Atlas Shrugged.
Far more important than Anarchy, State, and Utopia — altho to confirm in rational thought and arguments, the individualism I already believed from the novels, the latter ASU was fantastic.
Most folk, most of the time, decide with their emotions. Then look for rationalizations so as to claim it was the rational choice. Freedom with responsibility looks better in Marvel than in most econ books.
I’m trying to read Democrat stuff — and it’s so much junk, and crap, and strawmen arguments, and dishonest projection of bad motives… Yet many Dems seem to believe it, and when it is believed, the other stuff seems to make sense.
Few women are, or will be, Libertarians. Nor are they, nor will they be, computer coders. There’s an emotional aspect missing from both.
“Women, on average, tend to be more empathizing and agreeable . . . .”
In my experience, women (and progressives generally) tend to be rather selective about those with whom they empathize and with whom they wish to be agreeable. Hillary Clinton, for example, demanded that Israeli Jews empathize with the Palestinians (and demonstrate such empathy by making whatever concessions the Obama administration demanded), but made no reciprocal demand on the Palestinians. This selectivity is not acknowledged. The principal of selection seems to be conformity with arbitrary fashion to enhance or protect one’s own social status. Hence the Obama administration’s transparent preference for admitting Muslim refugees, rather than Christian refugees (who are in greater danger), from the conflagration in the Levant.
Conservatives are selective, too, of course, but the selectivity – a preference for one’s own nation/civilization (which does NOT mean “hatred” or even indifference to others) – is acknowledged. And is at least socially rational – if you care about the survival of the nation/civilization. The Left has reached the point where it dismisses such concern as “racist,” except when exhibited by its mascot “Others.”
In my experience, women (and progressives generally) tend to be rather selective about those with whom they empathize and with whom they wish to be agreeable. Indeed. This same phenomenon of selectivity is responsible for most, if not all, of the popular idea that liberals are more open-minded. Even Haidt’s work falls prey to this error, as the standards against which open-mindedness, disgust etc. are measured, are taken from the modern progressive dispensation with little reflection or discussion. With more ideologically balanced questionnaires, liberals turn out to be e.g. as, if not more, close-minded about some things as conservatives are about other things, which are the approved things to be open-minded about. Unfortunately I don’t have a ready reference to formal studies, but any number of examples will readily suggest themselves to a neutral observer of modern media and discourse.