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>Simple test for this is to ask some one to describe the positions of the other party and why they feel the way they do without using any disparaging or cynical

>Simple test for this is to ask some one to describe the positions of the other party and why they feel the way they do without using any disparaging or cynical terms That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. They lack the same fundamental values, and so they are unable to see conservative views as being within a set of values that are different from their own. Instead they see conservative views as being contrary to values, period. Liberals being asked to answer a survey the way they think a conservative would will answer agree/disagree questions like "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal" with disagree, but actual conservatives say agree. On the other hand, conservatives are able to accurately answer the same survey as a liberal would. Moderates are able to answer accurately as either a liberal or a conservative. https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conservatives-understand-liberals-better-than-liberals-understand-conservatives/ https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conserva...

dyeje 8y ago
Can you provide the actual study? I find this anecdote hard to believe.
- agsdfgsd 8y ago
  https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050092 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
abritinthebay 8y ago
So what you’re saying is that you, and the authors of the article, failed the Untellectual Turing Test then? Because that’s verifiably nonsense if you actually talked to anyone liberal. Most liberal policy even stems from empathetic roots! I totally understand—-and often agree with—-conservative (in the political sense) values. In fact, when you get down to it they are not very complex and different. The disagreement is generally in how to best promote & empower those values. Not about them. Very vigorous disagreement. There will, of course, be some values each side fundamentally disagrees on. That’s ok, it’s expected.
AlphaSite 8y ago
Tbh my observation is both sides demonise each other. ‘Abortion is murder’ being one example of the inverse.
- agsdfgsd 8y ago
  Both sides do demonize each other, that's not the question. The question is if they understand each other. Abortion is a perfect example. Conservatives understand the liberal position, that a woman's "right" to an abortion is more important than a fetus's "right" to live. Obviously they disagree, and obviously they consider the other view abhorrent. But they understand what that view is. On other other hand, liberals overwhelmingly do not understand conservative positions. Sticking with the same issue of abortion, most liberals say conservatives oppose abortion because they hate women and want to control their bodies. This despite the fact that the majority of people opposed to abortion are women. They simply believe the reverse of what I stated above: that the fetus's "right" to live is more important than the woman's "right" to have an abortion.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    I'm torn on this. The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong. The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control. So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this. Perhaps the folks who are both pro-life AND pro birth control need to up their game? edit: I would bet that this is because Roman Catholics provide most of the funding for the big pro-life groups.
    - agsdfgsd 8y ago
      >The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong Yes, it is. >The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control. That is incorrect, and a good example of the bubbles being real. You are just looking at church opposition because that's what the media likes to focus on showing. And it would not make the liberal idea of the conservative view correct even if it were true. Christians who oppose birth control do so because they value the traditions of their culture, not because they hate women. Again, most of them are women. And many of the people who are portrayed as "opposing birth control" actually just oppose having their tax money used to pay for other people's birth control, which is not the same thing. >So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this. It isn't irrational. Being wrong is not the same as being irrational.
gerbilly 8y ago
> That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values. Let's call this the foundational set V. Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V: mostly concerns for purity, respect for authority and a heightened concern for security. Let's call this set A. Conservatives could then easily predict the answers of liberals because they are both based on V, but it's not symmetrical, because conservatives are working from a bigger set of values V+A.
- repolfx 8y ago
  Whilst that's one way to phrase it, the underlying differences are deeper and more to do with perception of the span of human nature. For instance the apparent love of conservatives for 'respect for authority' is not actually respect for authority (why would they be so against big government if that were the case?) nor particular to conservatives, but rather, a preference for systems and formalised power structures over loose, informally specified power structures. One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics. The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery that liberals cannot understand conservatives but not vice-versa. Conservatives see disagreement with their world view as naivety, but liberals see disagreement with their world view as the result of an evil or malign nature. The latter view leads to a belief that attempting to understand such a perspective is itself immoral behaviour, as you might be legitimising it, or alternatively, might be tempted to the dark side by mere exposure to the ideas themselves. This is why you see so much no-platforming and general censorship coming from people with particular world views: they believe that conservative ideas work like some sort of infectious disease. Conservatives don't think that way about liberal views.
  - gerbilly 8y ago
    Ok, let me tweak my list of additional conservative values then: heightened concern for purity, intolerance of ambiguity and a heightened concern for security. NOTE: I am not conservative, so take that for what it's worth.

dyeje 8y ago

Can you provide the actual study? I find this anecdote hard to believe.

agsdfgsd 8y ago
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0050092 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

abritinthebay 8y ago

So what you’re saying is that you, and the authors of the article, failed the Untellectual Turing Test then? Because that’s verifiably nonsense if you actually talked to anyone liberal. Most liberal policy even stems from empathetic roots! I totally understand—-and often agree with—-conservative (in the political sense) values. In fact, when you get down to it they are not very complex and different. The disagreement is generally in how to best promote & empower those values. Not about them. Very vigorous disagreement. There will, of course, be some values each side fundamentally disagrees on. That’s ok, it’s expected.

AlphaSite 8y ago

Tbh my observation is both sides demonise each other. ‘Abortion is murder’ being one example of the inverse.

agsdfgsd 8y ago
Both sides do demonize each other, that's not the question. The question is if they understand each other. Abortion is a perfect example. Conservatives understand the liberal position, that a woman's "right" to an abortion is more important than a fetus's "right" to live. Obviously they disagree, and obviously they consider the other view abhorrent. But they understand what that view is. On other other hand, liberals overwhelmingly do not understand conservative positions. Sticking with the same issue of abortion, most liberals say conservatives oppose abortion because they hate women and want to control their bodies. This despite the fact that the majority of people opposed to abortion are women. They simply believe the reverse of what I stated above: that the fetus's "right" to live is more important than the woman's "right" to have an abortion.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  I'm torn on this. The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong. The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control. So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this. Perhaps the folks who are both pro-life AND pro birth control need to up their game? edit: I would bet that this is because Roman Catholics provide most of the funding for the big pro-life groups.
  - agsdfgsd 8y ago
    >The liberal understanding of this is not entirely wrong Yes, it is. >The evidence is that if you look at the big pro-life groups, they are not just anti abortion, they are also anti birth control. That is incorrect, and a good example of the bubbles being real. You are just looking at church opposition because that's what the media likes to focus on showing. And it would not make the liberal idea of the conservative view correct even if it were true. Christians who oppose birth control do so because they value the traditions of their culture, not because they hate women. Again, most of them are women. And many of the people who are portrayed as "opposing birth control" actually just oppose having their tax money used to pay for other people's birth control, which is not the same thing. >So it is not entirely irrational for liberals to think the way they do about this. It isn't irrational. Being wrong is not the same as being irrational.

gerbilly 8y ago

> That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values. Let's call this the foundational set V. Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V: mostly concerns for purity, respect for authority and a heightened concern for security. Let's call this set A. Conservatives could then easily predict the answers of liberals because they are both based on V, but it's not symmetrical, because conservatives are working from a bigger set of values V+A.

repolfx 8y ago
Whilst that's one way to phrase it, the underlying differences are deeper and more to do with perception of the span of human nature. For instance the apparent love of conservatives for 'respect for authority' is not actually respect for authority (why would they be so against big government if that were the case?) nor particular to conservatives, but rather, a preference for systems and formalised power structures over loose, informally specified power structures. One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics. The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery that liberals cannot understand conservatives but not vice-versa. Conservatives see disagreement with their world view as naivety, but liberals see disagreement with their world view as the result of an evil or malign nature. The latter view leads to a belief that attempting to understand such a perspective is itself immoral behaviour, as you might be legitimising it, or alternatively, might be tempted to the dark side by mere exposure to the ideas themselves. This is why you see so much no-platforming and general censorship coming from people with particular world views: they believe that conservative ideas work like some sort of infectious disease. Conservatives don't think that way about liberal views.
- gerbilly 8y ago
  Ok, let me tweak my list of additional conservative values then: heightened concern for purity, intolerance of ambiguity and a heightened concern for security. NOTE: I am not conservative, so take that for what it's worth.