Why do Americans vote against their own interests?

[prosfilaes]

At LibraryThing, there's a list of book readings, etc., in the local area, and this is on the list:

Professor George Lakoff author of Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, Whose Freedom?, and Don't Think of an Elephant!, explores the connections between cognitive science and political action. Why do many Americans vote against

Comments

[jordan179]

Only some sort of Randoid could assume so assuredly that rational behavior means acting in one's self-interest.

Quite aside from the obvious fallacy ("Only some sort of Randroid") you're committing in this argument, you're defining "self-interest" far more narrowly than did Ayn Rand.

I mean, really, the people who would benefit from seal fur coats far outnumber the people who benefit from having the animals run around in the wild ...

You're assuming that biodiversity is not in our "self-interest."

... and the price we pay for gas would drop quite a bit after dropping some nukes on the Middle East

Would it? The attendant social disruption would be quite likely to interfere with the oil supply. In addition, the conversion of our own government into one ruthless enough to do something like this, unprovoked, would most definitely not be in our self-interest, as we might be its next target.

... (carefully, as we don't want to irradiate the oil).

... and now you've taken an excursion into fantasy-physics.

Bush Sr.'s campaign didn'

[prosfilaes]

Who are you? You've friended me, but I have no idea who you are.

And, of course, you ignore the fundamental point that rational behavior doesn't dictate goals. That you can be rational in favor of virtually any goal, and the choice of personal self-interest, to the extent which it is followed and it is ignored, is one driven by genetics and evolution, not rationality.

The second statement is not equivalent to the first; it completely ignores the fact that the Massachusetts legislature and courts, prior to Dukakis being elected, set up this program. More importantly, it reminds the viewers that we're talking about a _black_ man getting furloughed. It's visceral, not objective. If we thought the viewer would be objective, we'd use the name of William Horton, as names are irrelevant and it's his formal name.

[jordan179]

And, of course, you ignore the fundamental point that rational behavior doesn't dictate goals. That you can be rational in favor of virtually any goal, and the choice of personal self-interest, to the extent which it is followed and it is ignored, is one driven by genetics and evolution, not rationality.

Oh, I actually agree with that point. OTOH, note that "genetics and evolution" tends to promote behavior which is "rational" from the point of view of the genes or memes.

Granted, this is not the same thing as "rational" from the point of view of a classicist like Rand.

[prosfilaes]

But rational, point-of-view and even self-interest aren't meaningful words in the case of a meme or gene; it's just that the laws of logic mean that memes and genes that encourage their host to spread them are more common and thus more dominant. There's nothing more or less "rational" about that than water falling over a waterfall.