9 ms·

People make incorrect assumptions about their opposing political party

62 points by hirundo 7y ago

deogeo 7y ago
> Motive attribution asymmetry makes us unwilling to cooperate. When we hate our neighbors, we lower our defenses against the virtual invaders who detest the United States’ pluralist and classically liberal values. Mentioning motive attribution asymmetry, and committing it in the very next sentence - hilarious. I dare say those people don't detest 'classically liberal values', but US foreign policy and influence (such as imposing seed patent law on invaded countries). Of course this policy isn't driven by the US people as a whole, but by a handful of special interests. But it is very convenient for them to use the US as a shield, and remain discreet themselves. That said, I can't really disagree with the rest of the article.
Mikeb85 7y ago
It's strange watching American politics as an outsider. Trump was basically elected by the flyover states because he acknowledged that blue-collar America's economic situation was sub-par. And while he probably hasn't helped out their plight as much as hoped, the US economy overall certainly isn't hurting. Yet the democrats seem completely oblivious to the reasons Trump came to power in the first place, and somehow are poised to completely blow the next election despite the media machine railing against Trump and his supposed unpopularity. All the talk about Trump's racism, Nazi immigration officials, etc..., just makes the democrats look desperate considering his policies aren't much different than Clinton's in the 90's. His economic policies would have been considered orthodox in the 70's and 80's. The Democrats wasted years trying to come up with some sort of Russian link which they haven't proven and which frankly, I don't think anyone cares about. And it's all quite ridiculous considering Obama continued most of Bush's policies. He extended the Patriot Act, didn't shut down Guantanamo, killed people abroad with drones, detained and deported migrants. The absurd angle the democrats are taking with Trump is going to lead them to another defeat, as they're diluting their message by being so extreme. Trump makes everything about himself, the Democrats reinforce it, and it's impossible to see anyone from the Dem side challenging him.
- 8innovate 7y ago
  I don't agree with all of this but I am absolutely flabbergasted that Democrats seem to be falling into the exact same trap as they did during the previous election... I'm an American living abroad and was as shocked as anyone when Trump was elected. The racism/xenophobia and pseudo-intellectual far-right rhetoric is more vocal than it has ever been before and that does have a lot to do with Trump. It should be making it painfully easy to get Trump out of office in the coming election and yet somehow the Democrats seem to think we should continue down the weird neoliberal path of the past. Just start speaking in a language that blue collar workers can understand... that's it. Nothing fancy. But for some reason it's just not happening.
whatshisface 7y ago
>As America slouches toward the 2020 presidential election That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards the 2020 presidential election?
- JKCalhoun 7y ago
  I guessed William Blake — happy I wasn't too far off.
  - benjaminbrodie 7y ago
    You're just bragging lol. Stop it (said flirtatiously)
jakelazaroff 7y ago
Non-paywalled link: https://outline.com/ycP9Y5 https://outline.com/ycP9Y5
xhkkffbf 7y ago
Impossible! I'm 100% certain that they suck. I don't even need to listen to them or read their documents. It's just axiomatic.
- benjaminbrodie 7y ago
  It really is lol. People have too much of a sense of dignity to admit this lol. But isn't maturing just a matter of losing all sense of dignity lol.
JKCalhoun 7y ago
> The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. Wow, really? I'm not your average Democrat. How about this though: Do you believe that of people making more than $250,000 most are Republican? And: Do you believe that among those that identify as LGBQT most are Democrat?
- fcarraldo 7y ago
  I won’t answer these assertions as to not spoil the thought exercise for others, but I’m curious: what are the answers?
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Here are the answers at the back of the book: For income, you have this graph, partitioned into <$20,000/y, $39,000-$62,000/y, and >$102,000/y. https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/09/pm-repsndems/gr-pm-repsndems-462.gif https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/09/pm-repsndems/gr-pm... For LGB you have: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-voters-remain-a-solidly-democratic-bloc/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/lesbian-gay... Neither one lines up exactly with the parent's questions but this should give you an idea.
svat 7y ago
Direct link to what this article reports on: https://perceptiongap.us https://perceptiongap.us
- jl2718 7y ago
  > Democrats’ understanding of Republicans actually gets worse with every additional degree they earn. This effect is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree. Wow.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    And also, the more news you read, the higher the perception gap. The problematic effects of education don't surprise me at all though. I've felt for a while that more education seemed to make people somehow less intelligent in some strange, hard to define way. I think it's partly that people's defences are down - they think "I have a PhD so I couldn't possibly be manipulated or misled, unlike the plebs who left school at 16". It may also be due to people with higher education being more willing to uncritically accept anything said by 'experts' (i.e. their academic peers), without being willing to double check it against common sense or man-on-the-street reasoning. I've noticed that people with less education - we probably shouldn't call it worse education, given these findings - are much more willing to reject statements by academics if they're counterintuitive or seem to contradict lived experience. Whereas people with doctorates almost never do, regardless of how bizarre or absurd the claims being made are. Journalists likewise seem to be more likely to fall for bad science than they once were and I wonder if that's due to journalists always having degrees, these days. This is perhaps one of the problems leading to the replication crisis.
    - bassman9000 7y ago
      And also, the more news you read, the higher the perception gap. If readers are educated, isn't then that news are shit?
      - 7y ago
hedora 7y ago
I wonder how well the questions distinguish between opinions about other voters’ opinions, and the actions of people that are elected. For instance, with recent gerrymandering decisions from the Supreme Court, and Mitch McConnell’s blocking of bipartisan election security funding, it is easy to infer that a majority of Republican representatives in many elected bodies are against fair elections. I doubt that many voters are against the right to have their votes counted fairly.
- cgearhart 7y ago
  Have you looked at primary sources (statements from McConnell, his office, or Congress) for more about why they blocked that funding? Your inference sounds like it’s based on one-sided reporting and the asymmetry described in the OP article. There may be another explanation that doesn’t assume the worst. (I’ve been complaining about election security for twenty years, but this issue has become a political game since 2016.)
  - scruple 7y ago
    > I’ve been complaining about election security for twenty years Or longer. For me, personally, it was the "hanging chads" in 2000 that forced me to consider how insecure our elections are.
- drewcoo 7y ago
  To balance that, add all dem congresscritters who blame Russia for election tampering but seem unable to pass laws about anything to prevent said tampering in the future. I think their voters would like a fix for those perceived problems.
  - 18pfsmt 7y ago
    The Russians utilized historically divisive issues on social media in order to interfere, and it is not clear congress can do anything WRT social media in order to minimize the Russians' ability to continue this activity. The social media companies can (and have) taken steps to mitigate. I have been advising my friends to stay away from platforms that have "real name" policies, and to my less educated friends/family (they are easily fooled) to stay away from social media all together. I'm currently reading The Sword And The Shield The Mitrokhin Archive And The Secret History Of The KGB and they have been at this for over 100 years. It's ~700 pages, mostly dry, but completely revealing.
tootie 7y ago
I honestly think this is mostly irrelevant. As a liberal, I don't really care about what Republicans claim to believe or what their demographics really look like. All that matters is who they vote for and what that does to the country. If Republican voters actually have a moderate view of immigration, that's great, but they voted for a guy who is putting migrants in cages. Therefore, they all support putting migrants in cages. They could fix that by changing who they vote for, but they haven't done so. I consider this policy to be reprehensible, so how can I not consider Republican voters to be reprehensible? One of my favorite modern political quotes actually came from Joe Biden. He said, "Don't tell me your values. Show me your budget and I'll tell you your values."
- Fjolsvith 7y ago
  One of the interesting points that the media neglects to report on is that the migrants are free to return to their country. They would be given a ride to the border for free and allowed to go their merry way. Migrants in "cages" is only a perception that certain people have.
  - jakelazaroff 7y ago
    The media neglects to report on this because it's not accurate. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-free-leave-detention/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-free-leave-dete... https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/jul/17/facebook-posts/undocumented-immigrants-arent-free-leave-detention/ https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2...
    - Fjolsvith 7y ago
      Those are talking about the ones who broke the law by entering the US illegally.
      - jakelazaroff 7y ago
        What issue are you referring to?
jchanimal 7y ago
I learned that some of my family with Trump stickers are basically socialists, they just don’t realize it. When you start talking to them about the things they’re happy their local government does, it’s all safety net and arts.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  I know some Democrats who are basically anarcho-capitalists, who aren't socialist at all but just don't like Republican family values candidates.
daenz 7y ago
>The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. Meanwhile, Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. How close are these estimates to reality? Not very. Just 2 percent of Republicans are doing that well financially, and just 6 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. I think the authors of the study and the author of this article are measuring something completely different than what they think they're measuring. Although the questions are geared towards measuring specific traits (wealthy repub, or LGBTQ dem), I think what the study participants are actually estimating are the support network "power" for those ideals. I would bet if you rephrased the questions to: >"What percentage of Republicans would go along with wealthy Republican leadership decisions?" and >"What percentage of Democrats would go along with LGBTQ leadership decisions?" ...you would get similar percentages to the original questions. I would argue that the participants are naturally estimating the social power of the ideals in question, because it's a more useful metric, and I would make the argument that humans (on average) are really good at estimating that particular thing because it's what we've been optimizing for for the last few thousand years with investments, fashion, war, and innovation.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  I agree that something is fishy, but I think it's not quite as simple as that. I'm pretty confident those questions would return way over 40% from the opposite parties.
- dictum 7y ago
  I haven't read the study so I'm just going with a hunch: could it be that the people polled understood "Democrats" and "Republicans" to mean representatives and other politicians holding office?
Ididntdothis 7y ago
I really wish people would stop associating themselves with parties and instead care more about issues. I see it quite often that somebody thinks an issue is good but as soon as “their” party comes out against it they are suddenly fiercely against it too. Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues. Instead of doing the right thing it becomes all about winning and defeating the “other”. I bet on a lot of issues it would be really easy to find large national agreements if the parties didn’t sabotage them for tactical reasons.
- 18pfsmt 7y ago
  There are many people whose lives are such that they do not consider principles, only outcomes. This is "ends justify the means" thinking, and it is short-sighted and dangerous. There is a famous quotation from Gandhi to that effect, and he is probably the greatest human of the 20th century of notoriety.
- _underfl0w_ 7y ago
  > Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, explicitly not thinking seems to be the end goal for a lot of people, based on my own (potentially circumstantial) experience. A large percentage of people don't seem to find joy in thinking or thinking about thinking. It seems to be viewed as work, which is to be avoided when possible. Optimizing for the lest amount of mental work, basically, which your amygdala will graciously step in to provide emotional reactions that "feel right". May at least explain why or how things seem to err in that direction.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    Thinking is work, isn't it? The brain is an organ, it needs energy in order to work efficiently. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the brain had properties somewhat like a muscle, and deep reasoning for prolonged periods burned a lot of energy. I'm not sure if there's any biological evidence to support what I just said, but I do get the strong impression that critical thinking is like exercise: some people do it more, and it gets easier for them, so they do it more, and so on. But for most people it's just a drag and they don't like it, they'd rather do other things. WRT people changing their perspective because of party ... I suspect this is just a mental shortcut. The left and right exist because they summarise deeply held intuitions about human nature. The positions held by each side do follow logically from those intuitions, but sometimes it needs thought to see why, and it's of the rather subtle often semi-sub-conscious type of thinking that most would rather not do. So it may make perfect sense to change opinion if you learn your party has changed its opinion - if you think that your party of choice has got basically the right idea about the world in broad strokes, then it's a nice time-saving assumption that they thought more about any individual issue than you did, and you'd probably agree with them if you thought harder.
RickJWagner 7y ago
Good article with a good message. I hope lots of people hear and understand that we truly are 'More alike than different'.

62 points by hirundo 7y ago

> Motive attribution asymmetry makes us unwilling to cooperate. When we hate our neighbors, we lower our defenses against the virtual invaders who detest the United States’ pluralist and classically liberal values. Mentioning motive attribution asymmetry, and committing it in the very next sentence - hilarious. I dare say those people don't detest 'classically liberal values', but US foreign policy and influence (such as imposing seed patent law on invaded countries). Of course this policy isn't driven by the US people as a whole, but by a handful of special interests. But it is very convenient for them to use the US as a shield, and remain discreet themselves. That said, I can't really disagree with the rest of the article.

Mikeb85 7y ago

It's strange watching American politics as an outsider. Trump was basically elected by the flyover states because he acknowledged that blue-collar America's economic situation was sub-par. And while he probably hasn't helped out their plight as much as hoped, the US economy overall certainly isn't hurting. Yet the democrats seem completely oblivious to the reasons Trump came to power in the first place, and somehow are poised to completely blow the next election despite the media machine railing against Trump and his supposed unpopularity. All the talk about Trump's racism, Nazi immigration officials, etc..., just makes the democrats look desperate considering his policies aren't much different than Clinton's in the 90's. His economic policies would have been considered orthodox in the 70's and 80's. The Democrats wasted years trying to come up with some sort of Russian link which they haven't proven and which frankly, I don't think anyone cares about. And it's all quite ridiculous considering Obama continued most of Bush's policies. He extended the Patriot Act, didn't shut down Guantanamo, killed people abroad with drones, detained and deported migrants. The absurd angle the democrats are taking with Trump is going to lead them to another defeat, as they're diluting their message by being so extreme. Trump makes everything about himself, the Democrats reinforce it, and it's impossible to see anyone from the Dem side challenging him.

8innovate 7y ago
I don't agree with all of this but I am absolutely flabbergasted that Democrats seem to be falling into the exact same trap as they did during the previous election... I'm an American living abroad and was as shocked as anyone when Trump was elected. The racism/xenophobia and pseudo-intellectual far-right rhetoric is more vocal than it has ever been before and that does have a lot to do with Trump. It should be making it painfully easy to get Trump out of office in the coming election and yet somehow the Democrats seem to think we should continue down the weird neoliberal path of the past. Just start speaking in a language that blue collar workers can understand... that's it. Nothing fancy. But for some reason it's just not happening.

whatshisface 7y ago

>As America slouches toward the 2020 presidential election That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards the 2020 presidential election?

JKCalhoun 7y ago
I guessed William Blake — happy I wasn't too far off.
- benjaminbrodie 7y ago
  You're just bragging lol. Stop it (said flirtatiously)

jakelazaroff 7y ago

Non-paywalled link: https://outline.com/ycP9Y5 https://outline.com/ycP9Y5

xhkkffbf 7y ago

Impossible! I'm 100% certain that they suck. I don't even need to listen to them or read their documents. It's just axiomatic.

benjaminbrodie 7y ago
It really is lol. People have too much of a sense of dignity to admit this lol. But isn't maturing just a matter of losing all sense of dignity lol.

JKCalhoun 7y ago

> The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. Wow, really? I'm not your average Democrat. How about this though: Do you believe that of people making more than $250,000 most are Republican? And: Do you believe that among those that identify as LGBQT most are Democrat?

fcarraldo 7y ago
I won’t answer these assertions as to not spoil the thought exercise for others, but I’m curious: what are the answers?
whatshisface 7y ago
Here are the answers at the back of the book: For income, you have this graph, partitioned into <$20,000/y, $39,000-$62,000/y, and >$102,000/y. https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/09/pm-repsndems/gr-pm-repsndems-462.gif https://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2012/09/pm-repsndems/gr-pm... For LGB you have: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/lesbian-gay-and-bisexual-voters-remain-a-solidly-democratic-bloc/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/25/lesbian-gay... Neither one lines up exactly with the parent's questions but this should give you an idea.

svat 7y ago

Direct link to what this article reports on: https://perceptiongap.us https://perceptiongap.us

jl2718 7y ago
> Democrats’ understanding of Republicans actually gets worse with every additional degree they earn. This effect is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree. Wow.
- repolfx 7y ago
  And also, the more news you read, the higher the perception gap. The problematic effects of education don't surprise me at all though. I've felt for a while that more education seemed to make people somehow less intelligent in some strange, hard to define way. I think it's partly that people's defences are down - they think "I have a PhD so I couldn't possibly be manipulated or misled, unlike the plebs who left school at 16". It may also be due to people with higher education being more willing to uncritically accept anything said by 'experts' (i.e. their academic peers), without being willing to double check it against common sense or man-on-the-street reasoning. I've noticed that people with less education - we probably shouldn't call it worse education, given these findings - are much more willing to reject statements by academics if they're counterintuitive or seem to contradict lived experience. Whereas people with doctorates almost never do, regardless of how bizarre or absurd the claims being made are. Journalists likewise seem to be more likely to fall for bad science than they once were and I wonder if that's due to journalists always having degrees, these days. This is perhaps one of the problems leading to the replication crisis.
  - bassman9000 7y ago
    And also, the more news you read, the higher the perception gap. If readers are educated, isn't then that news are shit?
    - 7y ago

hedora 7y ago

I wonder how well the questions distinguish between opinions about other voters’ opinions, and the actions of people that are elected. For instance, with recent gerrymandering decisions from the Supreme Court, and Mitch McConnell’s blocking of bipartisan election security funding, it is easy to infer that a majority of Republican representatives in many elected bodies are against fair elections. I doubt that many voters are against the right to have their votes counted fairly.

cgearhart 7y ago
Have you looked at primary sources (statements from McConnell, his office, or Congress) for more about why they blocked that funding? Your inference sounds like it’s based on one-sided reporting and the asymmetry described in the OP article. There may be another explanation that doesn’t assume the worst. (I’ve been complaining about election security for twenty years, but this issue has become a political game since 2016.)
- scruple 7y ago
  > I’ve been complaining about election security for twenty years Or longer. For me, personally, it was the "hanging chads" in 2000 that forced me to consider how insecure our elections are.
drewcoo 7y ago
To balance that, add all dem congresscritters who blame Russia for election tampering but seem unable to pass laws about anything to prevent said tampering in the future. I think their voters would like a fix for those perceived problems.
- 18pfsmt 7y ago
  The Russians utilized historically divisive issues on social media in order to interfere, and it is not clear congress can do anything WRT social media in order to minimize the Russians' ability to continue this activity. The social media companies can (and have) taken steps to mitigate. I have been advising my friends to stay away from platforms that have "real name" policies, and to my less educated friends/family (they are easily fooled) to stay away from social media all together. I'm currently reading The Sword And The Shield The Mitrokhin Archive And The Secret History Of The KGB and they have been at this for over 100 years. It's ~700 pages, mostly dry, but completely revealing.

tootie 7y ago

I honestly think this is mostly irrelevant. As a liberal, I don't really care about what Republicans claim to believe or what their demographics really look like. All that matters is who they vote for and what that does to the country. If Republican voters actually have a moderate view of immigration, that's great, but they voted for a guy who is putting migrants in cages. Therefore, they all support putting migrants in cages. They could fix that by changing who they vote for, but they haven't done so. I consider this policy to be reprehensible, so how can I not consider Republican voters to be reprehensible? One of my favorite modern political quotes actually came from Joe Biden. He said, "Don't tell me your values. Show me your budget and I'll tell you your values."

Fjolsvith 7y ago
One of the interesting points that the media neglects to report on is that the migrants are free to return to their country. They would be given a ride to the border for free and allowed to go their merry way. Migrants in "cages" is only a perception that certain people have.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago
  The media neglects to report on this because it's not accurate. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-free-leave-detention/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/immigrants-free-leave-dete... https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2019/jul/17/facebook-posts/undocumented-immigrants-arent-free-leave-detention/ https://www.politifact.com/facebook-fact-checks/statements/2...
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    Those are talking about the ones who broke the law by entering the US illegally.
    - jakelazaroff 7y ago
      What issue are you referring to?

jchanimal 7y ago

I learned that some of my family with Trump stickers are basically socialists, they just don’t realize it. When you start talking to them about the things they’re happy their local government does, it’s all safety net and arts.

whatshisface 7y ago
I know some Democrats who are basically anarcho-capitalists, who aren't socialist at all but just don't like Republican family values candidates.

daenz 7y ago

>The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. Meanwhile, Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. How close are these estimates to reality? Not very. Just 2 percent of Republicans are doing that well financially, and just 6 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. I think the authors of the study and the author of this article are measuring something completely different than what they think they're measuring. Although the questions are geared towards measuring specific traits (wealthy repub, or LGBTQ dem), I think what the study participants are actually estimating are the support network "power" for those ideals. I would bet if you rephrased the questions to: >"What percentage of Republicans would go along with wealthy Republican leadership decisions?" and >"What percentage of Democrats would go along with LGBTQ leadership decisions?" ...you would get similar percentages to the original questions. I would argue that the participants are naturally estimating the social power of the ideals in question, because it's a more useful metric, and I would make the argument that humans (on average) are really good at estimating that particular thing because it's what we've been optimizing for for the last few thousand years with investments, fashion, war, and innovation.

happytoexplain 7y ago
I agree that something is fishy, but I think it's not quite as simple as that. I'm pretty confident those questions would return way over 40% from the opposite parties.
dictum 7y ago
I haven't read the study so I'm just going with a hunch: could it be that the people polled understood "Democrats" and "Republicans" to mean representatives and other politicians holding office?

Ididntdothis 7y ago

I really wish people would stop associating themselves with parties and instead care more about issues. I see it quite often that somebody thinks an issue is good but as soon as “their” party comes out against it they are suddenly fiercely against it too. Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues. Instead of doing the right thing it becomes all about winning and defeating the “other”. I bet on a lot of issues it would be really easy to find large national agreements if the parties didn’t sabotage them for tactical reasons.

18pfsmt 7y ago
There are many people whose lives are such that they do not consider principles, only outcomes. This is "ends justify the means" thinking, and it is short-sighted and dangerous. There is a famous quotation from Gandhi to that effect, and he is probably the greatest human of the 20th century of notoriety.
_underfl0w_ 7y ago
> Party allegiance pretty much stops people from thinking about issues I think you hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately, explicitly not thinking seems to be the end goal for a lot of people, based on my own (potentially circumstantial) experience. A large percentage of people don't seem to find joy in thinking or thinking about thinking. It seems to be viewed as work, which is to be avoided when possible. Optimizing for the lest amount of mental work, basically, which your amygdala will graciously step in to provide emotional reactions that "feel right". May at least explain why or how things seem to err in that direction.
- repolfx 7y ago
  Thinking is work, isn't it? The brain is an organ, it needs energy in order to work efficiently. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the brain had properties somewhat like a muscle, and deep reasoning for prolonged periods burned a lot of energy. I'm not sure if there's any biological evidence to support what I just said, but I do get the strong impression that critical thinking is like exercise: some people do it more, and it gets easier for them, so they do it more, and so on. But for most people it's just a drag and they don't like it, they'd rather do other things. WRT people changing their perspective because of party ... I suspect this is just a mental shortcut. The left and right exist because they summarise deeply held intuitions about human nature. The positions held by each side do follow logically from those intuitions, but sometimes it needs thought to see why, and it's of the rather subtle often semi-sub-conscious type of thinking that most would rather not do. So it may make perfect sense to change opinion if you learn your party has changed its opinion - if you think that your party of choice has got basically the right idea about the world in broad strokes, then it's a nice time-saving assumption that they thought more about any individual issue than you did, and you'd probably agree with them if you thought harder.

RickJWagner 7y ago

Good article with a good message. I hope lots of people hear and understand that we truly are 'More alike than different'.