How I Think About Politics

I want to say a few things about what’s happening right now in politics. I especially want to do so because I’ve supported Elon and Andreessen and similar “centrist” types in the past—and continue to do so on certain topics. I want to explain how and why that is, which turns out requires an overview of how I see things more broadly.

Core beliefs ​

In a phrase, I am a Star Trek (Next Generation) Liberal, and I would say the following are the tenets of my political / life philosophy:

1. The goal of society is to maximize flourishing and minimize suffering
2. Science, compassion, and curiosity are the best mechanisms for pursuing this goal
3. Freedom from oppressive authority is a central requirement
4. Relentless pursuit of truth is essential, even when difficult or uncomfortable
5. Humans technically lack free will, and we must keep #1 in mind when thinking about how to adjust our behavior given this knowledge
6. Successful people are lucky people—whether due to genes, parenting, environment, or some combination thereof—and should therefore spend significant resources on building a society that gives everyone those same starting parameters
7. A mindset of hard work, self-discipline, and ignoring obstacles outside your control is critical to success, and is one of the most important of these starting parameters

As such, I believe that taxes and social programs are incredibly important to overcome whatever causes the lack of equal opportunity.

I believe the rich are lucky, and the super-rich are super-lucky. Do they usually have good work ethics and self-disciple? Lots of talent and grit? Sure. But those come from luck as well. Good genes, good parenting, good schools, good environment, and/or a mindset bestowed onto them that makes them strive. Those are luxuries granted them by chance, and they shouldn't be. They’re luxuries every human should have.

Most importantly, you can’t look at someone who doesn't have them—due to who their parents were, a history of discrimination or oppression—and judge them the same. It’s society’s responsibility—that is, our responsibility—to give everyone the best possible starting parameters we can.

When we see places where that's not the case, we have to use science, curiosity, and compassion to make adjustments to society that fix those issues.

Believing this is the core of what I believe makes someone Liberal, and it’s why I will never stop being one.

The "Ideal World" Heuristic ​

Aside from core beliefs, I have another way of capturing one's politics without talking about politics at all—and that is to describe the world you want to live in.

I want to live in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and highly individualistic society that values and supports everyone becoming the best version of themselves.

Or, as a set of bullets:

• People live in harmony with each other, with concepts like race, gender, and religion being extremely secondary
• People are not oppressed by a government or religion
• Society provides extraordinary support to every new person, giving them the education and resources to help them become the absolute best version of themselves
• People can believe many different things, and pursue flourishing in vastly different ways, but they don't allow those beliefs to override the central goal of maximizing flourishing for everyone
• Society is largely based around art, exploration, and sharing of positive experiences—not on maximizing wealth or power

That is my politics.

It's largely the same as what I put in my tenets above, but it's a nice shortcut to just describe, or refer to, the type of world you wish existed.

The questions I ask when evaluating someone's politics ​

With that out of the way, it becomes a lot easier to talk about current issues. I keep a few primary questions in mind when I evaluate someone's politics:

1. What does their Ideal World look like?
2. What policies are they arguing for?
3. Do those policies help or hurt their or my Ideal World?

These questions—and their answers—are extremely effective at cutting through noise.

First, if they're trying to build a crappy world I don't want to live in—we've found our problem. Like White Christian Nationalism, or Islamic Theocracy, or Chinese Communism, as examples. No thanks. I'm happily exiting that discussion.

If their ideal world looks somewhat similar to mine, however, then I move onto the next step, which is talking about policies and their possible implications. This is where the tenets of using science, compassion, radical honesty, and curiosity come in—combined with needing a pretty expansive model of the world. As any economist knows, it's non-trivial to predict the effects of policies.

So obviously this is more of a discussion since—without the science being done—it's often impossible to know what policy would do what. But at least it's a starting point for a discussion, and it's based on a solid foundation of where we're trying to get to from our respective Ideal Worlds.

Looking Left, Right, and Center ​

Now let's talk about recent politics, going back 20 years or so. Short version—I've always been a Democrat. I've also only voted Democrat (except for Ron Paul one time back in the day), up to and including Kamala in November of 2024.

I wasn't thinking as clearly as the above back then, so I couldn't really articulate any of this, but it basically came down to:

1. Democrats care about people.
2. Republicans care about money.

Simple as that, so I've always been a Liberal / Democrat for those "reasons".

But politics got wonky as a hell starting somewhere around 2015 or so. Who knows when exactly that was. Maybe that's just when I started noticing or paying attention. Or perhaps I only then had the mental tools to break down various arguments and see the implications of policies and such.

Doesn't matter. Basically I think the far left of the last decade or so, but arguably going back to the 70’s, has lost its way.

They’ve taken to a primary narrative of telling certain people that they’re lesser than others. That they’re disabled. That it’s someone’s fault. And that they should be angry.

And worst of all—that this should become their identity.

It’s a horrifically bad way to help them advance. In fact it’s a nearly guaranteed way to do the opposite. And it just happens to greatly benefit the largest, most powerful, and best-funded political party in the world.

The importance of mindset ​

I think a big part of this was—and still is—the abandoning of a Stoic, grinder's mindset, and adopting the opposite mindset of victimhood. Not just adopting, but promoting it.

To me the grinder mindset is an absolute superpower. It gives people the ability to ignore obstacles and thrive almost regardless of circumstances. It's the mindset that says,

Sure, racism or sexism might still exist to some degree, but I won't notice because I'll be too busy working and winning.

This doesn't mean there aren't still problems, or that we should pretend they don't exist. As per our stated goal of maximizing flourishing and minimizing suffering, we should absolutely keep fighting racism, sexism, and other types of discrimination. Obviously.

But it does mean acknowledging that focusing on negatives—especially as a core aspect of your identity—is absolute poison. The key is to be able to hold both things in your mind simultaneously.

The complexity of simultaneous conflicting truths ​

I think clear thinking on politics requires an extraordinary ability to deal with complexity, and specifically the ability hold multiple truths in one’s mind at the same time. Here's an example:

1. A 14-year-old Black kid helps rob a liquor store and is in juvenile detention
2. A hard-right conservative says, You do the crime you do the time.", and "We can't have a society where people aren't held accountable."
3. A hard-left activist says this is all the result of a failed, racist system
4. The family's Pastor says Black kids have been robbed of fathers and morality in the home by far-left politics giving Black people a pass on immoral behavior
5. An ex-military teacher who cares about the kid tells him to take responsibility, and become a man, and change his ways, because everyone has the power to change their future
6. A philosopher reads about it in the news and knows the kid has no free will, so no—technically he can't make choices and he might be screwed

So which is correct?

All of them.

They all have truth in them. Politics should be about figuring out what to do once you've realized that.

Until then, the one thing you can't do is pick one of these angles and argue it to the exclusion of all the others, or dismiss and demonize people who acknowledge the truth in that angle.

It requires a sophisticated understanding of the world and significant courage, curiosity, and humility to see difficult situations from many perspectives simultaneously. Especially when giving any space to those different viewpoints might suggest something ghastly to a listener who's not thinking in a similar, multi-layered way. Unfortunately, I think this type of nuanced, complexity-based thinking is critical to making progress on anything significant in society.

Narrative analysis ​

So, moving closer to the topic of the piece here, let's look at some basic narratives that have been pushed by various groups in recent years.

Far Left ​

• America is evil
• America is the most racist and sexist country in the world
• If you get ahead, you’re benefiting from oppression, and are therefor basically an oppressor yourself
• We should not talk about individuals and a mindset of overcoming obstacles, and should instead focus exclusively on the past and group identity

I think one of the things that’s happened in the last few years is that the spell of this mindset has broken. It broke somewhat because people were tired of being blamed for oppressing others by succeeding, but more so broke because those being told they’re disabled, and that they should be full of rage, started hearing a different message.

That message came from people they were supposed to hate, and who were supposed to hate them, and it said,

You’ve been lied to. We don’t hate you. We hate being told we’re the problem is all. The truth is we just like people who work their asses off and who love this country because it’s pretty cool.

So millions of people who have been told their whole lives that the system, or the man, or whatever, has been holding them down, suddenly realized that the biggest thing holding them down was being told they were being held down. And then they realized that it benefits a single party greatly to keep them believing that. The party that's been telling the lies.

Well, people woke up. Millions of Latinos and Blacks and Asians realized the whole thing is poisonous, and they went for a narrative that sounded more positive. Something like:

Hard work is the most important thing, and America’s not so bad at all.

I voted for Kamala, but I saw that massive rejection of the previous far-left narrative to be a great thing. And I still do.

That's why in this diagram, I focus on outer two positions saying "Nothing you do matters", and the inner two positions say, "What you do matters greatly".

I think this distinction is everything, because in the center it's about how we as people behave, vs. if you're an extremist all that matters is what you were born as.

Far Right ​

But it's not so simple as blame it on the left. There's a reason they exist, and those reasons are good. In fact everything they're talking about has a good version.

DEI, for example, started as a way to remove obstacles to opportunity, and to the extent that it does that I'm all-in. Always will be. Where I can't get behind it is when its modern-day advocates ignore any unpopular discussions around behavioral causes of inequality and focus exclusively on outcomes.

But the Far Right has its own problems. I would say the main counterpart to the Far Left narrative above is one that's less damaging because it's not as prolific, but would actually be much worse if it were widespread. It goes something like this:

• Success is actually just 100% hard work or superior genetics or talent
• Anyone can get ahead, and they all have equal chances to do so
• Racism and sexism are all in the past or are so minor that we should ignore them
• If people fail it's because they weren't talented enough of didn't try hard enough
• Government programs need to be shut down because they just take from the successful
• Things would be perfect if we just went back to God in the schools, women being in the kitchen, there being two genders, and (optionally, depending on degree), white people running everything

There's obviously a spectrum here, not everyone believes all of these, and the numbers of people supporting that last racial one seem to still be quite small.

But it's important to call out this narrative and how it can live towards the middle in a nearly-centrist area (for the top 4 items at least), or reach all the way to the Far Right.

It should now be obvious where I stand on both of these narratives, and more importantly, why I stand there.

1. I don't support the Far Right narrative because it doesn't acknowledge the responsibility of people to help others get to an equal place of opportunity, it downplays the need to keep fighting racism and sexism, and in its extreme forms it's just outright racist and authoritarian.
2. I don't support the Far Left narrative because it teaches a way of thinking and living that removes agency and responsibility, it vilifies success and striving, and it focuses on the negatives of the past rather than the potential for a better future.

My version of Centrism ​

I've been calling myself a Centrist for years, which seriously irks all my friends to the right and left of me. Hopefully now you see why.

I'm simply charting to concepts that are separate from left and right.

Left and Right are not truths. They're not absolutes. They're not North Stars. They're labels, descriptions, or tags. We've lost the plot by placing so much importance on them.

Anyway, sticking within that Left/Right paradigm that's hard to get away from, what I like about this political spectrum diagram I put together here is how similar the left center looks to the right center.

They're largely identical, which makes me happy. What it tells me is that most people are moderate, that we mostly want the same things, and that the differences are not all that significant. It's the edges that are causing the issues.

If I had to call out a single, centrist narrative it would be something like:

Freedom from oppressive government and religion, the belief that hard work and self-discipline are the most important ingredient for success, and that successful people have a responsibility to give back to society in order to give everyone the opportunities they had.

This also tracks with numerous books about American society in the 50's, where the middle and upper classes largely lived in the same places, read the same books and newspapers, drove similar cars, and believed much the same things about society.

Deciding when to support or stop supporting people like Musk, Rogan, and Andreessen ​

So now we arrive at the purpose of this entire exercise above, which is to describe how I can still support—to some limited or significant degree—people like Thiel, Rogan, Musk, Andreeseen, etc.

These are all people who have been vilified by the Far Left for years—sometimes deservedly and often not, I would say. And I have disagreed with them vehemently on many, many topics on just as many occasions. But here's the—perhaps not surprising—answer to the riddle:

The way I judge someone's politics is by trying to determine their version of an Ideal World.

It's that simple.

I see everyone as multiple people, and I see many people worth fighting for as deeply flawed. When I see kindness, and compassion, and talent, but then I also see damage and flaws, I don't break contact. I don't separate (at least not permanently). That's not what I do. What I do is find the positive core that made me like them in the first place, and I try to lock onto it and nourish it.

When my friends—or anyone I care about—behave badly, this is how I approach it. Always have. I simply try to extend this to people I know from books or media or wherever in the world as well.

Let's look at a couple of these people:

• Joe Rogan: I've been following Joe since like 1994, and what most liberals don't get about him is how openminded and kind he is. Everyone who knows him talks about his kindness, and they've been saying that for decades. He also supports gay people and trans people, and his libertarian on drug use, etc. He's a liberal. But then the Far Left happens and he starts pushing back against that movement, and now he's considered Right or Far Right. He's not.

I personally think he's very wrong about certain vaccines, and I think he's prone to conspiracy theories at times, but it's hard to know which he actually believes and which he's just having fun with (like his episode with Kat Williams).

But once again—that's all noise. What world would Joe like to live in? The Far Right one? No. The Far Left one? No.

He's squarely in the middle that I laid out above.

Leave people alone and let them love who they want to. And he constantly says this, over and over. Just recently he was on with someone also considered Right by liberals, and they were talking about how Joe and he support taxation, because programs are absolutely needed to help people in need.

So do I disagree with Joe sometimes? Does he make me scream in my car sometimes? Yes. But I agree with the version of the world he wants to live in, and I think he's a good person. So I support him.

• Elon Musk: Elon is a lot more complex for me because I am not sure I've properly locked onto him. But I am 75% sure his vision of the future is similar to mine above. I think he's trying to solve the energy crisis, I think he's trying to make AI that brings abundance to the world, etc. In other words I think he's genuinely trying to improve the world, for regular people. For billions.

That being said, I can't stand him on X. He's mean. He's nasty. He's petty. And he makes me extraordinarily angry sometimes. Then you have this Nazi salute stuff, which has me shopping electric cars.

So here's where the real calculus comes in that cuts through the noise. This is literally what I ask myself whenever I consider whether to still support him or not.

Am I wrong about the world that he's trying to build?

If he's still trying to build a good, open, liberal world, and he's a traumatized narcissistic asshole sometimes, I think I can still (somewhat) support him. I read a lot of biographies and pretty much everyone you read about who does a lot of good in the world has warts. Often really bad ones.

But the moment I see, or realize, or get shown, overwhelming evidence that he's actually trying to build the Far Right version of the world, where white people or "special" people win everything and everyone else loses—I'm fucking out.. Instantly.

• Peter Theil, Marc Andreeseen, Ben Horowitz, and similar types: For people like this I generally suppport them because, if you read their books, you can easily tell that they're looking to build a quite liberal society for everyone on earth. Freedom from oppressive government and religion, freedom to love who you want, freedom to work hard and succeed, etc. It's straight down the line of moderation and centrism.

What I think people are missing about the people above is that they are attacking the left not because they want to bring about the Far Right version of an Ideal World, but because they believe that the Far Left version is the #1 obstacle to the liberal world we all want. Basically they're acting Right because it's the means to counter the Left and build the society that we in the liberal center all want. To me this explains all the Trump support and everything around it.

And just like with Elon or anyone else on this list, the moment I see otherwise, I can no longer support them.

Constant re-evaluation of peoples' Ideal World model ​

When I see a new statement from someone, or I hear second or third-hand about a statement from them, I'm always matching that up with what I think their ideal world model is. Is this statement congruent? Does it match perfectly? Is my model wrong? Is their model changing?

A good example of this is Trump lately, who I have been criticising aggressively and publicly since like 2015 or so. My Ideal World model is actually giving me a more favorable view of him lately—despite him implementing a number of policies which I 100% do not support—, which pushes hard against the extreme dislike I have had for him across all these years.

When updating my ideal world model on him it's strangely starting to look like:

1. Mostly non-committal liberal his whole life
2. Probably still mostly liberal or libertarian
3. Narcissist, power-hungry
4. Disconnected from reality (see 2020 election)
5. Uninformed, stupid, or evil on many issues (e.g., banning trans people in various places)
6. Wants to be revered as a peacemaker
7. Wants to de-nuclearize
8. Wants to make friends with Russia and China so everyone can get rich (including him and all his friends)
9. Ultimate goal would be a capitalist 1980s world-at-peace where he is cheered everywhere he goes for bringing peace and prosperity to the planet
10. Statues, Mouth Rushmore, etc. But not as a warlord or oppressor. As a peacemaker and a builder

Like, no joke. I seriously think this is what's in his mind, and that drastically changes how I view him.

Would I vote for him? Hell No. Which is why I didn't. He supports too many policies I can't get behind, and not accepting election results is a non-starter for me.

But what I'm trying to convey here is that the difference—in my mind—between Trump (if I'm right) and a White Nationalist, Neo-Nazi party member trying to come to power is vast. Night and day.

Honestly I'm still working out the implications of this, in terms of tactics on the ground, but I think it comes down to whether or not I can give credit to people for good goals or good work—even if I don't like other things they've done. Pol Pot might have made a great grilled cheese sandwich, or helped some kids learn to read, but I'm not going to be praising that on social media because I know his past actions and his world model.

How it plays out in the real world is when I hear something that makes me say, "What the f***, $PERSON", I do some quick algebra trying to explain it in my current model of them, whether it's a friend, colleague, or someone in the news. That's when I try to figure out if this is a flaw showing itself in a good person, or if it's a sign that my model of them is broken.

Basically everything hinges on my model of what they're trying to build, and making sure my model of that is accurate.

The difference between Centrism and "Both-Sidesing" ​

I viscerally dislike the term "Both-Sidesing" because people don't know how to use it properly. The truly bad version of the term—which I agree is bad—is when someone fails to take a position on a critical moral matter, and just gives some shallow talking points that are obviously true on both sides of the debate. It's intellectual and/or moral cowardice.

The problem is unsophisticated people who can't tell the difference between that and the Complexity we have been talking about. As an example, if you take that same boy in the scenario above, and say,

Well we can't just let people get away with crime, but we also need to realize there's history to take into account.

...you haven't really said anything. You're trying to score points and remain neutral without actually taking a position. That's bad.

To me the solution to that, which turns this from Bothe-Sidesing to Complexity is:

1. Identify the goal, which is to reduce crime and increase the chances for young Black kids to thrive
2. Identify all the various perspectives and truths that exist in the situation, such as the list above
3. And then to deliberate deeply in good-faith, ideally assisted by data from a well-run study, to determine the best possible policy to put into place to achieve the goal

That's not Both-Sidesing. That's taking a messed up, complex reality, and trying to navigate it with compassion, communication, and data.

Summary ​

1. The best way to learn someone's politics is to figure out the world they want to live in
2. Political discussion should be more centered around 1) what is your ideal society?, 2) what policies are you arguing for?, and 3) Will those policies help or hurt our chances of getting to our ideal societies?
3. I support people based on my interpretation and judgement of the world they'd like to live in, and I am quite forgiving of flaws for those I think are mostly good
4. Centrism isn't a weak version of Far Left or Far Right. It's actually a principled position focused around freedom from oppression, hard work, and lifting the less fortunate
5. Both the Far Right and Far Left have core narratives that remove agency, as they place your group identity as more important than your behavior as an individual
6. I recommend you describe your own Ideal World as a set of tenets like I've done here. It's an extremely enlightening exercise, and will help you cut through a lot of noise in future political discussions