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> That doesn't work because liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of valu

> 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.
- agsdfgsd 8y ago
  >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?) Because authority is not the only value they hold, it is just one of six values. Overreaching authority will naturally conflict with those other values, particularly liberty. This is also complicated by the fact that libertarians tend to be lumped into the category of conservatives in the US, when libertarians have little in common with conservatives and overwhelmingly base their moral foundations entirely on liberty. Libertarians don't have respect for authority, conservatives do. But if you call libertarians conservatives, that will make things look weird. >One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics. I can not observe that at all. Quite the contrary, I find overwhelmingly that liberals do not respect authority in any form. Academics are not respected by liberals, they are constantly attacked and vilified for publishing facts that liberals don't like. Liberals will point to an academic that agrees with them to bolster their argument, but they don't actually respect academics, as they have nothing but disdain for an academic that disagrees with them. Look at how James Watson has been treated by liberals, I don't see a lot of respect there. If they had respect for academic authority, they would actually consider what is said, instead of assuming the person saying it is evil and calling them evil. >The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery I'm not sure that's an alternative explanation, it seems like the same explanation. Haidt notes the same thing, that liberals view conservatives as evil because the underlying values conservatives hold are not values to liberals. While conservatives see liberals as ignorant or stupid, because they incorrectly assume liberals are using the same underlying values to come to conclusions about issues and so they must be ignorant of some fact or making an error of reasoning.
agsdfgsd 8y ago
>Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values They share two or three values: care and fairness for sure, and maybe liberty (not necessarily a value held by either group, but one held by some subset of both groups). That doesn't contradict my statement that liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. Views are based on values. Lacking the values that create the view makes it very hard to understand the view. >Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V Precisely, they add loyalty, authority and sanctity. Liberals do not have these values, often even viewing them as evil. And so they do not understand the views based on those values. Conservatives do have the values liberals do, and so they can understand the views based on those values.

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.
agsdfgsd 8y ago
>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?) Because authority is not the only value they hold, it is just one of six values. Overreaching authority will naturally conflict with those other values, particularly liberty. This is also complicated by the fact that libertarians tend to be lumped into the category of conservatives in the US, when libertarians have little in common with conservatives and overwhelmingly base their moral foundations entirely on liberty. Libertarians don't have respect for authority, conservatives do. But if you call libertarians conservatives, that will make things look weird. >One can observe that people with liberal views often have tremendous respect for certain types of unstructured authority, in particular, academics. I can not observe that at all. Quite the contrary, I find overwhelmingly that liberals do not respect authority in any form. Academics are not respected by liberals, they are constantly attacked and vilified for publishing facts that liberals don't like. Liberals will point to an academic that agrees with them to bolster their argument, but they don't actually respect academics, as they have nothing but disdain for an academic that disagrees with them. Look at how James Watson has been treated by liberals, I don't see a lot of respect there. If they had respect for academic authority, they would actually consider what is said, instead of assuming the person saying it is evil and calling them evil. >The book "A Conflict Of Visions" provides an alternative explanation for this apparent discovery I'm not sure that's an alternative explanation, it seems like the same explanation. Haidt notes the same thing, that liberals view conservatives as evil because the underlying values conservatives hold are not values to liberals. While conservatives see liberals as ignorant or stupid, because they incorrectly assume liberals are using the same underlying values to come to conclusions about issues and so they must be ignorant of some fact or making an error of reasoning.

agsdfgsd 8y ago

>Actually conservatives and liberals do share a lot of values They share two or three values: care and fairness for sure, and maybe liberty (not necessarily a value held by either group, but one held by some subset of both groups). That doesn't contradict my statement that liberals are unable to understand and empathize with conservative views. Views are based on values. Lacking the values that create the view makes it very hard to understand the view. >Conservatives go on to add additional values to the set V Precisely, they add loyalty, authority and sanctity. Liberals do not have these values, often even viewing them as evil. And so they do not understand the views based on those values. Conservatives do have the values liberals do, and so they can understand the views based on those values.