I agree to an extent. But even telling people they made a 'stupid mistake' and they 'have to understand' seems so fundamentally wrong to me. The argument as to why a better alternative exists needs to be strengthened i.e. there are some highly intelligent people that voted for brexit (like it or not) and a lot of people had genuine concerns about the EU beyond the simple immigration/racism narrative. For me that's where the remain argument was lost. There was no middle ground. Both sides dealt in extremes and it continues as evidenced by some of the adjectives used on here. If i go on a different forum it will be all about the woke, anti-British etc. etc. It's the same now in the battle for No. 10. At some point, Labour need to draw back from the Tory implosion and hammer home the message to the red wall why they are a better alternative. And it can't just be 'well look at them now - you made a mistake last time, now you're getting a second chance to do the right thing'.
'there are some highly intelligent people that voted for brexit'
You are absolutely right. This is very much the key point. We can say the same about pretty much every stupid decision people have made. Highly intelligent people do still make stupid decisions and very regularly. We all do. That is
especially true of politics.
Why is that?
Well, we are less likely to make dreadful mistakes when we are making big
personal decisions because those big personal decisions are going to have a big direct impact on own lives and the effect will be instant. Therefore we will usually pause and review, look at all the angles, before we rush into a rash, emotional, instinctive action. Usually. When we don't, how often do we regret it? There is a reason we don't let relatives and friends of a victim on a jury, there is a reason best practice is to remove anyone with a conflict of interest from a decision making process. We have learned over time that our biases interfere with us making the best decision. This is no better illustrated in Science. Science is not a thing, it is a
process. It is a method, developed over millennia by giants standing on the shoulders of giants. How dare any of us think we know better?
Unlike a personal decision, the impact of a
political decision on an individual is a more distant one. It isn't as direct or as great and it isn't as instant. So something happens psychologically to us with that. That distance between action and consequence is significant. Just look at the difference between the way most people argue with someone they are face to face with and how they argue on twitter or a message board. There is less regard for personal consequences.
Furthermore, with a personal decision, the issues are less complex and we understand all the parameters and issues to expert level, as when it comes to ourselves we are each the foremost authority on the planet, (except sometimes your wife and your mum).
Every minute of our lives involves us making choices. Mostly we don't realise it because Darwin's great insight tells us that we are a product of evolution by means of natural selection. So, a series of successful 'mistakes' with the sole acheivement, as a species, of successfully passing on our genes. That means we evolved,
as a species, some brilliant instincts to serve us well, throughout our lives,
to survive and propagate. Nothing more. Our bodies are always ready with an instinctive decision for us, instantly, all the time. Rarely, does our brain override these decisions. It has to work hard when it does.
Our instincts are decision making shortcuts that evolved, on the whole, to get us laid, and avoid getting eaten by a predator or doing something stupid that gets us killed. Our instincts are proven to work well by those parameters, since we are a very successful species.
However, that doesn't mean that our instincts lead to the
best outcomes every time, for every type of decision, just that on balance they avoid the
worst consequences. They are shortcuts and they are quick, because quick reactions avoid death or a lost opportunity for food or sex. The really smart decisions, the
best decisions we make are the careful ones. The planned and researched ones. The ones that recognise that our instincts can create barriers and biases. We now know these instincts are incredibly powerful. They take some overcoming because most of the time we don't even realise we are experiencing this influence. Even worse, intelligent people driven by powerful instincts that overpower their critical thinking skills, can then use their intelligence to find all sorts of arguments to justify a choice or decision that they won't acknowledge was flawed in it's process, if they have an ego. Most of us have an ego sometimes.
Now, when it comes to politics, because it isn't an instant consequence, because the effects aren't perceived as large and catastrophic, because the issues are usually complex and we are not as expert as we are on our own private life, we take a different type of shortcut a lot of the time. We go with an instinct. To the point that we go as far as just picking a tribe we identify with and pretty much going along with their choice.
What happened with Brexit was a perfect storm. It was complex. It wasn't a personal decision. One side was very effective at telling lies that appealed, simplifying a very complex matter, while the other side was poor at presenting their case and handicapped by truth and complexity. The traditional referee, the media, were useless as an arbiter of truth, because they didn't understand the complexity either and most were captivated with the court intrigue of the Conservative Party internal politics or else just biased.
Because of that it is unfair to be too hard on those who voted Brexit in 2016. You can't complain that people basically made the decision based on a gut instinct, on a narrative they were told that appealed, when that was all they had to go on, such was the poor quality of the debate and information easily available.
The information was there and if you rigorously and genuinely tested the arguments of both sides with equal vigour and with the right process, you could work out what was the best decision. That was hard though. Really hard. For most, on either side, the decision was led by instinct. Remainers got it right, but for 95% of them this sheer luck that their instincts on this issue lent the correct way. It wasn't because they had extra smarts.
Brexiters who didn't at least come around to favouring a People's Vote by 2019 however, that's a different matter. There really is no excuse for that. I mean, seriously, who takes a
major decision in their personal life without having a plan, or following someone on trust, without checking they have a plan? Who? The answer is not 17.4 million people, it is no-one who is thinking properly.