December 2019There are two distinct ways to be politically moderate: on purposeand by accident. Intentional moderates are trimmers, deliberatelychoosing a position mid-way between the extremes of right and left.Accidental moderates end up in the middle, on average, because theymake up their own minds about each question, and the far right andfar left are roughly equally wrong.You can distinguish intentional from accidental moderates by thedistribution of their opinions. If the far left opinion on somematter is 0 and the far right opinion 100, an intentional moderate'sopinion on every question will be near 50. Whereas an accidentalmoderate's opinions will be scattered over a broad range, but will,like those of the intentional moderate, average to about 50.Intentional moderates are similar to those on the far left and thefar right in that their opinions are, in a sense, not their own.The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or theright, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk. You don't get to pickand choose. Your opinions about taxation can be predicted from youropinions about sex. And although intentional moderatesmight seem to be the opposite of ideologues, their beliefs (thoughin their case the word "positions" might be more accurate) are alsoacquired in bulk. If the median opinion shifts to the right or left,the intentional moderate must shift with it. Otherwise they stopbeing moderate.Accidental moderates, on the other hand, not only choose their ownanswers, but choose their own questions. They may not care at allabout questions that the left and right both think are terriblyimportant. So you can only even measure the politics of an accidentalmoderate from the intersection of the questions they care about andthose the left and right care about, and this cansometimes be vanishingly small.It is not merely a manipulative rhetorical trick to say "if you'renot with us, you're against us," but often simply false.Moderates are sometimes derided as cowards, particularly by the extreme left. But while it may be accurate to call intentionalmoderates cowards, openly being an accidental moderate requires themost courage of all, because you get attacked from both right andleft, and you don't have the comfort of being an orthodox memberof a large group to sustain you.Nearly all the most impressive people I know are accidental moderates.If I knew a lot of professional athletes, or people in the entertainmentbusiness, that might be different. Being on the far left or farright doesn't affect how fast you run or how well you sing. Butsomeone who works with ideas has to be independent-minded to do itwell.Or more precisely, you have to be independent-minded about the ideasyou work with. You could be mindlessly doctrinaire in your politicsand still be a good mathematician. In the 20th century, a lot ofvery smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart aboutthe subjects Marxism involves. But if the ideas you use in yourwork intersect with the politics of your time, you have two choices:be an accidental moderate, or be mediocre.Notes[1] It's possible in theory for one side to be entirely right andthe other to be entirely wrong. Indeed, ideologues must alwaysbelieve this is the case. But historically it rarely has been.[2] For some reason the far right tend to ignore moderates ratherthan despise them as backsliders. I'm not sure why. Perhaps itmeans that the far right is less ideological than the far left. Orperhaps that they are more confident, or more resigned, or simplymore disorganized. I just don't know.[3] Having heretical opinions doesn't mean you have to expressthem openly. It may beeasier to have them if you don't.Thanks to Austen Allred, Trevor Blackwell, Patrick Collison, Jessica Livingston,Amjad Masad, Ryan Petersen, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this.
