The Overton window is a simple device to consider the full spectrum of policy ideas and identify the range of politically acceptable ones.

Attitudes generally change slowly, as does policy to support them—with exceptions. Ideas that seemed radical or unthinkable at one time may gradually become plausible and popular. As this happens, the Overton Window shifts or expands.

Consider how attitudes have changed towards slavery, segregation, women's rights, animal welfare or gay marriage. Or consider policies made alongside the development of driverless cars or supporting sustainable energy. At one time, prohibition—banning the production and sale of alcohol—was popular enough to become policy in the US, though it would be unlikely to be proposed now.

Generally, the public is unlikely to elect politicians if they stand on policies too far outside the Overton window. And elected politicians will have difficulty enacting policies outside the window.

Named after Joseph Overton of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the original model was a cardboard window that could slide over paper, and looking through the window, you could see policy options in one direction towards more government control and in the other towards less government control. He called it the window of political possibilities. The Centre named it after him after his death. He made the slider vertical to avoid associations with the political left or right.

The Overton Window

Confirmation bias is the big one. The bias that leads us to live in a world of our own choosing, finding the information that already fits with our beliefs and ignoring or discounting what doesn't. It's the bias that makes two sides get further apart rather than closer together.

Edward De Bono in Water Logic suggested a metaphor for thought as channels of water. As water runs through the channels the channels get deeper, and as they get deeper it pulls more of the water into the main channels until there is only one way. Confirmation bias can act like that.

It's important to work to understand different opinions, not discount them upfront. To use our empathy to understand why others feel the way they do. And when we deliberately seek out information that challenges our point of view we will usually find a richer, more nuanced world that helps build bridges with others rather than drive us apart.

Confirmation bias

Also known as Brandolini’s Law, this is the simple observation that it’s far easier to produce and spread BS, misinformation and nonsense than it is to refute it.

In fact, the iSchool at University of Washington launched a course on Calling Bullshit with the first class being booked up within one-minute of registration. The professors, Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West have since written a book: Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World.

Phil Williamson in Nature also wrote a nice article emphasizing that we should take the time and effort to correct misinformation where we can. In it, he proposed the idea that “The global scientific community could…set up its own, moderated, rating system for websites that claim to report on science. We could call it the Scientific Honesty and Integrity Tracker, and give online nonsense the SHAIT rating it deserves.”

The BS asymmetry principle

All maps involve decisions. Whenever you compress real life onto something smaller and less detailed you have to choose what to keep in and what to leave out. And in the case of printing a map of the Earth, you have to figure out how to get something that is curved onto something that is flat, and this involves trade-offs and decisions as well. 3 dimensional space just doesn’t flatten to 2 dimensional paper without choices.

In 1569 Gerardus Mercator created a map that brilliantly solved a pressing problem — that of being able to follow a straight line while sailing and it correspond to a straight line on the map. His map also did a good job of preserving the shape of countries. But to do this you have to stretch the areas at the top and bottom of the Earth. Because most of the land on Earth is in the Northern hemisphere, and because that land is generally further north than the land in the southern hemisphere is south, it has the effect of enlarging Northern countries such as Europe, the US and Canada, Scandinavia and Russia as compared to countries closer to the equator and in the Southern hemisphere.

Most world maps you see are still similar to Mercator’s projection. In fact Google Maps desktop used it until just recently. It could well be that this distorts our worldview by emphasizing Northern countries in size and therefore importance. When I see a more size accurate Gall-Peters projection I have to say it’s hard to argue.

The Mercator projection

In direct democracy the people vote directly to create the laws, rules and regulations and such. In representative democracy, the people instead vote to elect a representative, who will then either act directly, or vote with other elected representatives to create the laws, rules and regulations and such. Most democracies are a form of representative democracy as I understand it, with the occasional instance of direct democracy thrown in, as in say, a referendum.

Politics sketches