The empirical evidence speaks in your favor, since I fully expected my remark to be downed, but instead now see a lot of supportive votes. Mea culpa, I blame n

The empirical evidence speaks in your favor, since I fully expected my remark to be downed, but instead now see a lot of supportive votes. Mea culpa, I blame negativity bias[0]. US-centric thinking annoys me in a "don't be short-sighted" way (Eurocentric thinking too, but I have more blind spots there), and as a European, the "neutral" position for regulation is probably far more on the regulation side of things (just like how the "neutral" political leaning being very left compared to the US, for that matter). I also suspect that hathawsh comment elsewhere is right about discourse taking more extreme positions in general, although I doubt the polarization in the US is the lone cause. Stronger opinions are always more vocal, so it is the nature of the internet, and public discourse in general to show apparent extremities within public opinion[1]. [0] perception bias where negative experiences, which includes annoyances, are given more weight, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias [1] https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2939