Increasing Rationality In Political Thinking

Increasing rationality in political thinking: bad thinking about politics is a source of irrationality as well. At this point in history, while it may be less directly harmful than religion, it's total indirect effects are arguably more consequential than irrationality from religion, due to the unprecedented influence federal governments of large nation-states have on the lives of billions of people, affecting most aspects of their well-being. The importance and neglectedness of this cause will be more obvious to the LessWrong crowd than perhaps other rationalists and skeptics.

There were times in history when this was much more important than it is now. Raising the rationality waterline, or at least having the knowledge of the world we have now in the 1930s and 1940s, could've prevented WWII. It could've prevented the public from following and giving rise to ideologies and parties giving rise to catastrophic regimes. This would've been incredibly important in Russia in the 1910s, China and East Asia in the 1930s through 1960s, much of Europe during the Cold War, and South America, the Middle East, and Africa during the post-colonial era. The Cold War could've been mitigated much better or ended much earlier if hatred and mistrust were replaced with more attempts to coordinate and cooperate between the United States/NATO and the USSR/Warsaw Pact. Mass paranoia, excessive mistrust and fear, and irrationality not only in communist countries, but the extremity of anti-communist sentiment in the West, such as the Red Scare, made the world much more dangerous for everyone than in any point in history. It's difficult to imagine how the world would be both radically different or better if the sanity waterline had been higher at any of these periods of the twentieth century. Personally, I expect this cause may be the most important one in this focus area, as irrational thinking about global catastrophic risks like climate change, Artificial Intelligence, and technology arms races could lead to human extinction.

Another reason to work on this area is simply we're again seeing increasing political division and rancor among the public, which could lead to dire consequences like we saw in 20th century. Illiteracy of economics among the public gives credence to counterproductive policy, or elitist misunderstanding of social science can lead to awful policy or economic recessions. International sectarian conflict such as seen in the Middle East at present, dominating headlines, is a result of both religious and political irrationality. Making this cause tractable, however, seems difficult. First of all, while the skeptics and rationality movements have a consensus on what science we can and should use to spread scientific and religious skepticism, there is much less consensus to on what from science, especially the social sciences, we can use to increase rationality about political thought. Additionally, opinions on what constitutes 'good thinking' in politics are more divided and less scientifically informed, merely because much of the science which would lead to consensus doesn't exist. This can make it very difficult to coordinate groups to pursue a single set of best practices or strategies.