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I suspect that some of the ideas are just perceived to be unpopular, as opposed to be actually unpopular. People might like the idea but is afraid to say it out
by NhanH 9y ago
I suspect that some of the ideas are just perceived to be unpopular, as opposed to be actually unpopular. People might like the idea but is afraid to say it out loud
- lkesteloot 9y agoI would love to see a survey where people are asked both "how much do you agree" and "how likely are you to say so publicly". Given enough questions, it'd also be interesting to find out if the Left or the Right generally feels more suppressed. (I'm obsessed with the possibility that Clinton lost because the Left pressured people to deny that they supported Trump.)
- jcahill 9y agoThat wouldn't work like you're hoping. You're assuming a (representative) respondent pool that's all of these: 1. capable of switching off preference falsification for a survey 2. introspectively active (and accurately so) over a long enough period to notice that they behave differentially in public and private contexts 3. interested in exposing this degree of candor for a survey, i.e. motivated to "show the researchers" (show themselves, really) their belly after collapsing across all the reasons they'd rather not. Humans are primitive. Questionnaires have to be designed around that.
- steveeq1 9y agoSuch as racism. I just made a "racist" posting that fit the theme of the article, and it got downvoted.
- lkesteloot 9y agoYeah, the items on her list aren't that unpopular. Your item isn't on her list, or anything like it. Even an article listing unpopular opinions isn't going to dare list actually unpopular opinions.
- cholantesh 9y agoAre you saying that 12-14, 16-17 and 22 are popular opinions? I don't know too many people who would vocalize many of those ideas with confidence.
- steveeq1 9y agoMaybe those are the subjects that we should be exploring the most: http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html