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I mean a lot of people on the right know Trump is lying and are happy to talk about it, e.g. Scott Adams. Whereas I get the impression that more people on the l

I mean a lot of people on the right know Trump is lying and are happy to talk about it, e.g. Scott Adams. Whereas I get the impression that more people on the left seem to genuinely believe that HRC pretending like she suddenly supports gay marriage is somehow different than Trump saying he had the largest inauguration or whatever.

FluteBook 9y ago
I don't think that's true, and it almost certainly just boils down to who you interact with. I think you'll find a decent chunk of the left (especially Bernie voters) who don't idolize Hillary but basically viewed her as the lesser of two evils. And it's certainly not hard to find people on the right who think Trump can do no wrong and who will go through some exquisite mental gymnastics to maintain that illusion - there's a rather large subreddit devoted to it, in fact.
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danso 9y ago
I'm not a huge Clinton fan but how is a claim of supporting a position in the same category as something that can (within reason) be counted and measured? How do you know she is "pretending"?
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > How do you know she is "pretending"? I mean look at all her other positions. She was supposedly for the Iraq war until she was against it. Against marijuana legalization until she was for it. For building a wall with Mexico until Trump supported it. For single payer healthcare until Bernie supported it. And so on. It's normal for people to change their minds as they learn more about things. It's not normal for people to change their minds on every single political issue in lockstep with internal polling. In the same way that things like Benford's Law can be used to detect fraud, she seems to fail some fundamental test of being a real human.
  - danso 9y ago
    Political stances are mutable. I won't argue your point about whether she should be despised for the rate of her mutability. I'm pointing out the flaw in your analogy. Someone taking a stance that contradicts a past stance is not in the same category as someone saying something that contradicts an observable/measurable quantity, unless you are in a possession of a mind-reading device and can observe Clinton's current belief regarding gay marriage. Your analogy would work if you said liberals give Clinton a pass for flip-flopping while hating Trump for flip-flopping on abortion. AFAIK, liberals hate Trump for his current stance and actions on abortion rights, not for being a flip-flop (i.e. they'd be fine if the flip-flop happened in the other direction)
    - Alex3917 9y ago
      > taking a stance that contradicts a past stance is not in the same category as someone saying something that contradicts an observable/measurable quantity I mean that may be true in some sort of epistemological sense, but pragmatically both are equally ridiculous. The fact that something could be true doesn't make it any less false.
      - geofft 9y ago
        ... just to make sure I'm understanding the conversation right, you're saying that not having the same political views over a 20-year period and lying about objective reality are equally ridiculous?
        Alex3917 9y ago
        I'm saying if you were to do some sort of bayesian analysis, I think you'd find the probabilities of each to be approximately equal. (E.g. within 5%.) I'm talking specifically though about HRC believing all of HRC's stated positions, not about a random person changing their opinions over the course of time. The probability calculus there is very different. E.g. the Clintons literally hire people to survey the public to tell them what policies to campaign on, that's how they came up with the idea of adding v-chips to TVs or whatever. The Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self goes into this in depth.

FluteBook 9y ago

I don't think that's true, and it almost certainly just boils down to who you interact with. I think you'll find a decent chunk of the left (especially Bernie voters) who don't idolize Hillary but basically viewed her as the lesser of two evils. And it's certainly not hard to find people on the right who think Trump can do no wrong and who will go through some exquisite mental gymnastics to maintain that illusion - there's a rather large subreddit devoted to it, in fact.

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danso 9y ago

I'm not a huge Clinton fan but how is a claim of supporting a position in the same category as something that can (within reason) be counted and measured? How do you know she is "pretending"?

Alex3917 9y ago
> How do you know she is "pretending"? I mean look at all her other positions. She was supposedly for the Iraq war until she was against it. Against marijuana legalization until she was for it. For building a wall with Mexico until Trump supported it. For single payer healthcare until Bernie supported it. And so on. It's normal for people to change their minds as they learn more about things. It's not normal for people to change their minds on every single political issue in lockstep with internal polling. In the same way that things like Benford's Law can be used to detect fraud, she seems to fail some fundamental test of being a real human.
- danso 9y ago
  Political stances are mutable. I won't argue your point about whether she should be despised for the rate of her mutability. I'm pointing out the flaw in your analogy. Someone taking a stance that contradicts a past stance is not in the same category as someone saying something that contradicts an observable/measurable quantity, unless you are in a possession of a mind-reading device and can observe Clinton's current belief regarding gay marriage. Your analogy would work if you said liberals give Clinton a pass for flip-flopping while hating Trump for flip-flopping on abortion. AFAIK, liberals hate Trump for his current stance and actions on abortion rights, not for being a flip-flop (i.e. they'd be fine if the flip-flop happened in the other direction)
  - Alex3917 9y ago
    > taking a stance that contradicts a past stance is not in the same category as someone saying something that contradicts an observable/measurable quantity I mean that may be true in some sort of epistemological sense, but pragmatically both are equally ridiculous. The fact that something could be true doesn't make it any less false.
    - geofft 9y ago
      ... just to make sure I'm understanding the conversation right, you're saying that not having the same political views over a 20-year period and lying about objective reality are equally ridiculous?
      - Alex3917 9y ago
        I'm saying if you were to do some sort of bayesian analysis, I think you'd find the probabilities of each to be approximately equal. (E.g. within 5%.) I'm talking specifically though about HRC believing all of HRC's stated positions, not about a random person changing their opinions over the course of time. The probability calculus there is very different. E.g. the Clintons literally hire people to survey the public to tell them what policies to campaign on, that's how they came up with the idea of adding v-chips to TVs or whatever. The Adam Curtis documentary Century of the Self goes into this in depth.