Michael Huemer would benefit from learning Alliance Theory.
When I first encountered ideologies and religions, I took them at face value, as attempts to understand the world. I assumed that people sincerely believed them and would use them to infer further consequences—or, in the event that they couldn’t accept a consequence, would admit that they were wrong and change their ideology. I tried to evaluate ideologies based on evidence and correspondence with reality, which I assumed was what one was supposed to do.
Over a period of years, I realized that, for the rest of the world, it wasn’t really about ideas and understanding the world.
1. How Can Ideology Not Be About Ideas?
Wait, an ideology is a certain kind of system of ideas. How could it “not be about ideas”? What I mean is thata. The reasons people choose an ideology are extraneous to the intellectual characteristics of the ideology (the arguments, the evidence, the explanatory virtues) and more to do with arbitrary extrinsic characteristics, like who else holds that ideology, or what vague emotional associations it carries.
b. Most people don’t take the contents of their ideology all that seriously—they don’t actually use it to understand the real world. It’s mostly something to say, and to berate other people for not saying. They use ideological debate as a proxy for tribal contests. They don’t support group G because of idea I; they support I because it’s the idea associated with G.
I observed in an earlier post (“Do Religious People Believe Religion?”), that people who profess some religion often don’t appear to take the major tenets of that religion seriously. Many self-described Christians fail to attend church, or read the Bible, or follow its teachings. Few of them really turn the other cheek, nor do they seem to eagerly anticipate death (as one should if one expects to go to heaven).
Many people are like that about politics too. E.g., people who said the Covid lockdowns were essential, but then they went out to big gatherings. Or people who say the elections are rigged, but they still go to vote.
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory is the missing spine in Huemer’s account. He’s seeing real phenomena, but he’s explaining them with personality, genes, and “tribalism” where the deeper driver is coalition maintenance.
Here’s the Alliance Theory decode of what he wrote, point by point.
“Ideology isn’t about ideas”
Alliance Theory agrees, with a tighter mechanism.
Most ideology is a badge that answers two questions:
Who are my people
Who are my enemies
Once those are set, “ideas” are mostly post hoc justifications that keep you legible to your coalition and dangerous to the rival coalition.
So Huemer’s observation is right. The causal story is incomplete.
Why people “don’t take it seriously”
In Alliance Theory terms, most political speech is not for cognition. It’s for alliance signaling.
You say the thing that shows membership. You do not necessarily live it.
That is not hypocrisy in the moral sense. It’s role behavior.
The Covid example he gives fits this perfectly.
Public compliance talk signals loyalty to the pro-order coalition.
Private behavior follows personal incentives and local norms.
Personality and genes
Alliance Theory does not deny trait correlations. It reframes them.
Traits influence which coalitions feel comfortable.
But coalitions select and reward speech.
So the main causal chain is:
temperament nudges affiliation
affiliation imposes narrative
narrative dictates which “beliefs” are safe to state
Huemer treats ideology as self-expression.
Alliance Theory treats it as membership management.
Tribes
Huemer is closest to Alliance Theory here.
He says people support the idea because the group holds it.
Alliance Theory adds the mechanism that makes this stable.
Coalitions enforce boundaries using:
status rewards for conformity
shame for deviation
friendship and career incentives
shared enemies that require coordinated stories
That is why beliefs cluster even when they are logically unrelated.
Outrage
Alliance Theory says outrage is not just emotion.
It is a coalition weapon.
Outrage does three jobs at once.
It binds the in-group.
It degrades the out-group.
It advertises your loyalty to bystanders.
That is why outrage is addictive.
It pays.
“Ideology makes people suckers”
This is correct, but again, Alliance Theory sharpens it.
Scams work when they:
confirm the coalition’s enemy image
reward the listener for “noticing” what the other side is supposedly like
Believing the scam is not a bug.
It is a loyalty display.
If you doubt it, you risk looking soft.
So you get credulity that looks irrational but is socially rational.
“Ideology shifts”
His best example is the Republican flip on Russia and personal morality.
Alliance Theory explains this cleanly.
Coalitions do not primarily preserve doctrines.
They preserve power, identity, and enemies.
When the coalition’s strategic needs change, doctrines are replaced fast.
The base follows because membership matters more than policy consistency.
He also notes elites are more disturbed by shifts.
Alliance Theory again.
Elites have more invested in coherent justifications because their status depends on being “principled,” “serious,” “thoughtful.”
Mass members need only a banner.
What Huemer is missing
Three Alliance Theory pieces would upgrade his essay.
A. Coalitions are not just “tribes”
They are competitive machines that allocate status and resources.
Ideology is the coordination language that makes the machine work.
B. Belief is often performative, but not necessarily insincere
People can half-believe and still signal.
They can believe at the level required for membership.
The important thing is what the belief does socially.
C. Parties and movements are run on elite coalition bargains
Mass opinion follows elite cues because elites control the coordination channels:
media, institutions, donors, professional incentives, and narrative legitimacy.
So “meaningless tribalism” is not meaningless.
It is functional.
Bottom line
Huemer is describing the surface correctly.
Alliance Theory explains the engine.
His story is: people are irrational, genetic, and tribal.
Alliance Theory’s story is: people are coalition-aware, status-sensitive, and incentive-shaped.
That second story predicts the behavior better and it is less moralizing about human stupidity.
