Objectiveness don't win no elections

Striving for objectiveness is key for maintaining a fact-based worldview, but it doesn't help win elections. It annoys me to the bone that some people and organizations thrive despite making inaccurate and outright false claims about the world, but I also realize that merely voting for "the other candidate" doesn't help.

“Prooving” this post’s title

Most people will vote for their favorite candidate regardless of that candidate is striving for objectiveness or not.

Quite to the contrary, most people will click headlines and consume exciting stories regardless of them being “objectively true”, as long as they resonate on an emotional level.

Furthermore, an election campaign that is not bound to objective truths are able to create and deliver thousands or millions of individually crafted emotionally resonating stories, messages and ads, thus reaching most people efficiently.

Finally, since most people decide the outcome of elections, this post’s title has been demonstrated. (Feel free to claim bullshit via the comments section below!)

Why is this so?

Objectiveness is inhuman

Take a look at the following definition of objectiveness:

Noun 1. objectiveness. Judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices

Objectiveness essentially requires a certain degree of suppression of core human attributes.

To remain objective, one must consider multiple perspectives simultaneously and base any prioritization of one perspective over the other on available evidence. Given that evidence is often unavailable and may yet not be solid enough to draw any general conclusions, it straight out damn hard to know anything for sure.

Acknowledging that the world is not black-and-white and objective knowledge is hard to obtain goes against our human need of epistemic closure, eg the desire for predictability, decisiveness, preference for order and structure, and discomfort with ambiguity.

Screw this. Give me action, drama, love and friendship instead! Give me juicy stories and fill my mind with concrete hopes and dreams!

Objectiveness is a privilege

The objective truth is that it costs way too much to be “objective”. For most people, ignoring objective truth is the wise and pragmatic thing to do.

Objectiveness becomes easier with the right education, social peers and genetics, but having these lottery outcomes line up is a privilege.

I happen to have had a great formal education and been able to study basic psychology and philosophy as a hobby. I happen to be part of social groups that stigmatizes biased and prejudiced thinking. I happen to be good at analytic thinking.

This is an extremely privileged position that I don’t believe “most people” will find themselves in anytime soon. Thus, any action for making objectiveness play a role in election outcomes must come from some other position than simply voting for the candidate that best respects “objective truths”.

An uphill battle

Objectiveness-respecting leaders will always fight an uphill battle. Naturally then, they need additional support from objectiveness-striving humans and organizations - and they need the right kind of support.

Now we need to figure out what exactly we can do…

What can we do? Tell me/us and it will be the basis of the next post!

Please comment below! (Given that I have literally no organic readers of this blog, I won’t be expecting comments, but I’ll follow up on every single one that happen to come this way!)