Voting Against Our Own Interests: A Three-Layer Puzzle

Layer 1: The Human Mind Is Not a Calculator ~ Layer 2: Politics Is About Identity as Much as Policy ~ Layer 3: The Information Environment Shapes What We Believe ~ Putting the Layers Together ~ Laminated Card Version ~ The Real Question

Every election cycle someone asks a version of the same question:

Why do people vote against their own interests?

The question usually arrives with a mix of frustration and disbelief. It’s often asked about someone else: rural voters, urban voters, young voters, retirees. Whoever the speaker thinks should “know better.”

But the more we read and think about it, the more slippery the question becomes. What exactly counts as someone’s own interests? And why do we assume that voters make decisions the way economists imagine them to—coolly calculating costs and benefits like shoppers comparing tomatoes at the market?

Recently, our Scrapbook assistant pulled together ideas we’ve collected over the years. None of them fully explains the puzzle. But together they suggest a layered way of thinking about it.

The answer seems to live in three layers: psychology, politics, and the information environment.

Layer 1: The Human Mind Is Not a Calculator

Start with psychology.

People like to think they reason their way to political opinions. In practice, it often works the other way around. We adopt beliefs first, then construct reasons afterward.

Jonathan Haidt famously compared human reasoning to a lawyer defending a client rather than a judge evaluating evidence. Once we adopt a belief, we instinctively search for arguments that support it.

Several well-known mechanisms reinforce this tendency:

Cognitive dissonance.
When evidence contradicts our beliefs, we feel psychological discomfort. Instead of changing the belief, we often reinterpret the evidence.

Confirmation bias.
We seek out information that reinforces what we already think and quietly discard the rest.

Motivated ignorance.
Sometimes people avoid information entirely because knowing the truth would force them to reconsider their identity or social group.

In that sense, sticking with a belief—even when evidence mounts against it—can actually be the psychologically comfortable choice.

So before we even get to politics, the first complication appears:

People are not neutral processors of information.

Layer 2: Politics Is About Identity as Much as Policy

Now move up one layer—from psychology to politics.

If voters were motivated purely by economic self-interest, elections would look very different. Instead, political choices often reflect identity and belonging.

People vote in ways that signal

• who they are
• which group they belong to
• what values they want to express

That’s why voters sometimes support policies that appear economically harmful to them. The policy may conflict with their wallet but align with their moral worldview or group identity.

There is another wrinkle here.

Political scientist Suzanne Mettler documented what she calls the "government–citizen disconnect." Many people benefit from government programs without recognizing them as such. Tax credits, subsidies, or infrastructure investments simply appear as part of normal life. Because the connection is invisible, voters may support cutting programs they indirectly rely on.

In other words, people are not always voting against their interests. Sometimes they simply don’t see the connection between policy and outcome.

Layer 3: The Information Environment Shapes What We Believe

The third layer sits beneath both psychology and politics: the information system.

Democracy depends on something we rarely think about—a shared information environment. Citizens need some baseline agreement about facts in order to debate policy.

That shared environment has been fragmenting.

For most of the twentieth century, people in many countries consumed roughly the same news sources. Today, information is filtered through personalized feeds, partisan media ecosystems, and algorithmic recommendation engines.

The result is what some researchers call "bespoke realities".

Different groups encounter different information streams, reinforcing different interpretations of events. In such a landscape, arguments about competing realities quickly turn into arguments about reality itself.

And once reality becomes contested, identity becomes an even stronger guide for decision-making.

The cycle feeds itself:

• identity shapes which information people trust
• trusted information reinforces identity
• political choices follow from that identity

Putting the Layers Together

Seen this way, voting behavior isn’t a simple puzzle of rational choice.

It’s the outcome of a three-layer system:

Psychology
Identity and cognitive biases shape how individuals interpret information.

Politics
Group belonging and moral narratives influence how people translate beliefs into votes.

Information Systems
Media environments determine what information people encounter in the first place.

Put those layers together and something important emerges.

Voting decisions often reflect identity and narrative coherence more than economic calculation.

Laminated Card Version

Layer 1 — Psychology

Why individuals believe things.
identity → motivated reasoning → cognitive bias

Layer 2 — Politics

Why certain leaders and movements succeed.
anxiety → populism → demagogues → democratic erosion

Layer 3 — Information Systems

Why the environment amplifies these forces.
media fragmentation → algorithmic outrage → collapse of shared reality.

The Real Question

So maybe the question “Why do people vote against their interests?” starts from a flawed assumption.

It assumes that interests are purely economic and that voters approach politics as rational calculators.

But humans rarely operate that way.

We vote as members of tribes, participants in narratives, and inhabitants of information worlds that shape what we see and believe.

Seen from that angle, the mystery isn’t why people sometimes vote against their interests.

The mystery might be why we ever expected them not to.

A Hike from Val Taleggio to Piani di Artavaggio

Sometimes a food comes first and the place comes later. For us, Taleggio cheese showed up in our lives long before Val Taleggio itself did. Back in the 1990s we remember buying wedges of it at Whole Foods, intrigued by the orange rind and the slightly funky smell that promised something interesting inside. If someone had told us then that decades later we would be walking in the very valley where that cheese originated, we probably would have laughed. Yet here we are, boots on the trail in Val Taleggio, hiking toward the high meadows of Piani di Artavaggio.

  

View of Pizzino from just above Reggetto trail 150.

The tracks from Reggetto (Val Taleggio) to Piani di Artavaggio.

Monte Sodadura - Piani di Artavaggio (Lecco).

Overview

Length: 15.9 km
Duration: 4.5 hours (not including lunch, this time is up and back)
Elevation: 911 m, start point 960 m, highest point 1860 m
Location: Italy, Bergamo, Val Brembana, Val Taleggio

Notes

Today we took a hike from Val Taleggio to the Piani di Artavaggio. Val Taleggio is in the Province of Bergamo and Piani di Artavaggio is in the Province of Lecco.

Val Taleggio is a valley reachable from Val Brembana. From Bergamo you pass through San Pellegrino (perhaps you’ve heard about its water 😉) and continue up valley to the next town San Giovanni Bianco and take a sharp left and head west. After a few kilometers, you enter what is called in Italian Orrido della Val Taleggio or the Val Taleggio Ravine, a 3-km-long gorge carved by the Enna River.

Most people arrive at the Piani di Artavaggio via the Artavaggio cable car (from Moggio) as we did when we were last here hiking in August of 2023. (See Hiking Between Piani di Artavaggio and Piani di Bobbio.)

The “piani” of Piani di Artavaggio refers to the high meadows or alpine plains that characterize this area. Artavaggio could be a medieval Lombard or pre-Latin name describing a rocky, high pasture or a pasture associated with a person named Arto/Harto.

The CAI Bergamo Trail 150 is a mix of trails and dirt farming roads and isn’t the common way to reach the Piani. With trail 150, you start in Reggetto (Vedeseta), at around 960 m. Then you follow the signs, slowly climbing past summer pastures and serene stone structures in various states of disrepair. Once we reached the Piani, we kept climbing to reach Rifugio Nicola at around 1860 m.

Reggetto is a settlement of 13 full-time people as we learned at the local bar Nonno Fifi run by Fifi’s granddaughter. Fifi has been gone for about 15 years, but the fluorescent green building housing his bar remains as well as a small cheese shop located across from the bar. We couldn’t resist the temptation of getting some cheese where it is produced, so headed over. It’s called Società Agricola Locatelli Guglielmo. And we bought… you guessed it: Taleggio, but also strachítunt – a cheese not well known outside of Italy.

With our haul – our friend called it our bottino in Italian – we started to head back to Bergamo. But we didn’t make it far before we ran into the Coop. Agricola S. Antonio, a local cheese cooperative just below Reggetto. We said hello to the cows and popped inside to buy some yogurt, butter, and formaggella. After that, it really was back to Bergamo.

A carpet of snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis).
Trail 150 Reggetto (Val Taleggio) - pastures and old buildings.
View northeast from Trail 150 above Reggetto into the Orobie Bergamasche.

 
Piani di Artavaggio - vew from below Rifugio Nicola looking southwest toward Monte Resegone.
Trail 150 from Reggetto to Piani di Artavaggio.

  
Trail 150 from Reggetto to Piani di Artavaggio.

Cheese

Why is the area so famous? The answer is simple: pasture, tradition, and geography.

Val Taleggio and the surrounding Bergamasque Prealps have long been ideal terrain for alpine dairy farming. The steep slopes and high summer pastures (alpeggi) mean cattle are moved seasonally from valley farms to higher grazing areas. During the summer months cows feed on diverse alpine grasses and herbs, which in turn influence the flavor of the milk.

That milk becomes cheese.

The most famous product is Taleggio, one of Italy’s oldest soft cheeses, with roots going back at least to the 10th or 11th century. Historically it was called Stracchino, from the Lombard word stracch meaning “tired,” referring to cows returning from summer pastures. The cheese was later named after the valley where it was widely produced. Today Taleggio is a DOP cheese (Denominazione di Origine Protetta), meaning production is regulated and tied to this region.

Less well known internationally—but arguably even more interesting—is Strachítunt. This rare blue cheese originates specifically in Val Taleggio and neighboring valleys. It’s made by layering curds from two different milkings, creating natural blue veining without the industrial inoculation typical of many blue cheeses. Production nearly disappeared in the late 20th century but was revived by a handful of local producers and now holds its own DOP designation.

Walking through Val Taleggio you see why cheese production took root here. Pastures surround nearly every settlement, barns sit tucked into the slopes, and aging stone structures hint at generations of dairy work. The landscape itself feels built for milk and grass.

  
Views from Trail 150 Reggetto (Val Taleggio) to Piani di Artavaggio. Cows graze here starting in June.

Flora

The dominant colors today were late-winter earth brown in the lower parts of the hike or snow white in the upper parts. Piani di Artavaggio was still covered in snow. But that earth brown of the lower parts was punctuated by loads of late winter flowers, the usual but always welcome suspects listed below.

I’m surprised by how many Italians who we go on hikes with ask what this is. It’s one of the easiest to spot in late winter because of the color and shape of the flower. The three-lobed leaf shape and color reminded medieval herbalists of the human liver, and from that came the common name "liverwort". This is when people thought that God marked plants with a signature indicating which organ they could heal.

Spring crocuses are not where saffron comes from. It’s the autumn crocus, Crocus sativus. Spring crocuses have white or yellow stamens compared to Crocus sativus.

The lower regions of this hike, just outside of Reggetto, had some of the most beautiful stands of snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) that we had ever seen.

[Family] Genus species – {Common names in English; Italian}

[Amaryllidaceae] Galanthus nivalis – {Snowdrop; Bucaneve}
  

[Asteraceae] Petasites albus – {White butterbur; Farfaraccio bianco}
(no photo)

[Asteraceae] Tussilago farfara – {Coltsfoot; Tossilaggine comune}

[Iridaceae] Crocus vernus – {Crocus; Zafferano di primavera}
 

[Primulaceae] Primula elatior – {Oxlip; Primula maggiore}


[Primulaceae] Primula vulgaris – {Primrose; Primula comune}
 

[Ranunculaceae] Anemone nemorosa – {European Wood Anemone; Anemone dei boschi}

[Ranunculaceae] Helleborus niger – {Christmas Rose; Rosa di Natale}
  

[Ranunculaceae] Helleborus viridis – {Green Hellebore; Elleboro verde}
 

[Ranunculaceae] Hepatica nobilis – {Liverwort; Epatica erba trinità}
 

[Thymelaeaceae] Daphne mezereum – {Mezereon; Dafne mezereo o fior di stecco}

Late Transmissions

Late Transmissions: How AI (and good software engineering) surprised and delighted me.

Catalyst

The catalyst was an innocuous New Year's message we received from a friend. It was a short, fantastical AI-generated video that was uncanny and oddly charming. Watching it, we started wondering about the soundtrack. Was the music AI-generated too? Or was it stock audio stitched in afterward? We never quite answered the question, but it started us down the research path where we discovered tools that can be used for song generation.

We already knew that AI tools for music existed. A family member had even created a full album of country songs using them. We found it impressive, it didn’t spark any urgency in us to try it ourselves. That changed when we realized that some of these tools weren’t just about generating music from scratch. They allowed you to upload your own audio.

That’s when a light bulb went on. Somewhere in cloud storage sat a folder I rarely opened, filled with forgotten work: rough recordings with and without vocals, incomplete takes, old .wav files paired with scanned lyric sheets. Songs that had been written quickly, recorded imperfectly, and then set aside. The digital artifacts were from 30 years ago and suddenly had more currency.

The question wasn’t whether AI could write new songs. It was simpler and more personal: what would happen if I fed these old original-composition songs back into a new system? Would anything recognizable come back? Would it be interesting? Or would it flatten everything into something generic?

Experiment

After a bit of fiddling around, I tried my first test using Suno AI. The results were immediately pleasing and brought a smile to our faces. The tool didn’t feel like it was replacing the songs so much as re-voicing them in interesting ways. (In fact, in Suno it’s called a cover.) With some guidance in prompts and settings, the output came back remarkably close to what I remember wanting to do thirty years ago but couldn’t quite execute at the time. It was thrilling not because it was perfect, but because it felt like I was completing something left unfinished.

I think of these new versions as drafts that are an order of magnitude better than the originals. They’re not finished songs, and perhaps I don’t really want them to be. They aren’t finished because the AI process can introduce noise and artifacts into the final output. These can be removed in remastering Suno output (stems). We didn't go that far for our first attempt because we didn’t know how. And even with the noise and artifacts in our final songs, we were happy.

My preference for these songs is for real people to perform them someday. Or is that idea anachronistic? At least now these drafts can properly communicate the idea, the mood, the structure I had in mind. That, to me, is magic: not automation, but translation.

Expression

During the rediscovery and reimagining of these songs, I came around to the idea that songs function for me much like blog posts. They are audio blog posts. (Yeah, I know that much of the world has moved on from longer-form writing like blogs, but I haven’t.) Blog posts—and now songs—are formats in which I can express my thoughts or feelings.

Some of the messages from thirty years ago survived surprisingly well. Others needed a small amount of tuning, though I resisted changing the lyrics more than necessary for this first try. I wanted to hear what that earlier voice was actually saying, not rewrite it from the comfort of hindsight.

I was surprised at how many of the themes addressed in the songs are still relevant to me today: my voice, my sense of freedom, and ability to deal with modern life. In short, timeless themes.

In that sense, reinterpreting of these songs isn’t about reviving the past so much as finishing a sentence or blog post.

Release

Using AI in the process wasn’t about polishing or correcting the past, but about filtering it. It acted like a lens, separating signal from static, letting certain ideas come through more clearly than they ever had before. The result isn’t a set of finished songs so much as clearer drafts, and that feels right for now. Releasing them now isn’t a performance or a bid for attention; it’s simply a form of publication. It’s much easier to send a link than a batch of files. Publishing lets these transmissions complete their journey so I can move on to the next phase.

This post—and the album that shares its name—are both called Late Transmissions (Spotify, Apple, YouTube). The title felt unavoidable. These songs were written long ago, partially broadcast, and then abandoned mid-signal. They’re late not because they were delayed on purpose, but because they took a long route to their current form. 

A Sunday Walk to Find Il Becco di Dossena

Il Becco di Dossena was inaugurated in 2023, but it seems like we’ve been hearing about it longer. Recently, on the way home from a ski day at Piani di Bobbio as we were heading down Val Brembana, I looked up, saw it for a moment, and decided we should go. Then some friends said “hey, would you like to go for a walk on Sunday” and by the way “do you have any suggestions”. And voilà, a few days later we are standing on the beak (becco).

  

Left: Il Becco di Dossena in Dossena, Italy.

Center: Horses on Trail 599C in Dossena, Italy.

Right: The artwork Eco della Montagna near Il Becco di Dossena.

We think we followed the trail outlined here: Sentiero 599C: Dossena (SS. Trinità) - Miniere del Paglio | CAI Bergamo. We parked at the Chiesetta SS. Trinità and just started walking. After a short time, we arrived at the Parco Giochi (where you could also just as easily start from). If you're pressed for time or simply don’t want to walk, you can drive to the Parcheggio miniere and start from there. From the Parcheggio miniere, it’s a steady uphill climb on an old road.

The whole area leading up to Il Becco is well curated, with little bits of art to see. In particular, before the last push to the top there is an art installation called Eco della Montagna that celebrates the memory of all the people who worked in the former mining sites of the Dossena territory. The project consists of a circular fence, 25 meters in diameter, which "embraces" a large stone, sculpted by the artist Francesco Paterlini, isolating it from the surrounding landscape and giving it a symbolic and contemplative nature.

The piece is very Zen-like and fun to wander around.

After the “Eco” and just below Il Becco is another stopping point – again very Zen-inspired in our opinion – with a circular form, seating and a beautiful view east.

Il Becco is a 16 m (52.5 ft) walkway sticking out from the cliff edge. It’s about 250 m (820 ft) above Val Parina. Yours truly had a bit of trouble making it to the end without holding on tightly to the railing.

All in all, a beautiful project and a beautiful setting. And, free to visit.

Below the Parcheggio miniere there is the Miniere di Dossena, where you can find out more about the mines that once operated there and even visit inside the mines. We were there too early on our Sunday walk and missed the opening hours. Another reason to return.

  

Left: Dossena with Cima di Menna in the distance.
Center: Entrance to mines in Dossena, Italy.

Right: Horses in Dossena, Italy.

  

Left and center: Eco della montagna - Dossena, Italy

   

Left: Helleborus niger along Trail 599C.

Center left: Leucojum vernum along Trail 599C.

Center right: Trail 599C in Dossena, Italy.

Right: View to Parina in Val Brembana from Il Becco.

  

Il Becco di Dossena, Italy

 

Left: Sole - a whimsical art installation just below Il Becco di Dossena.
Right: A whimsical artwork on the way to Il Becco di Dossena.