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> And assuming that everybody who didn't show up to vote isn't associated with a tribe is just... you can do better than that. That's not a thing I said. I al

by _qulr 6y ago

> And assuming that everybody who didn't show up to vote isn't associated with a tribe is just... you can do better than that. That's not a thing I said. I also don't assume that everyone who did show up to vote is associated with a tribe. A lot of people just plug their noses while filling out the ballots for the lesser evil. The enthusiastic party voters are a subdivision of the minorities. Indeed many votes are more defined by what they're against than what they're for.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> That's not a thing I said. Then it's not obvious what you meant to imply by bringing up the voter turnout rate. > I also don't assume that everyone who did show up to vote is associated with a tribe. A lot of people just plug their noses while filling out the ballots for the lesser evil. But none of this is really addressing the original point, which is that the red tribe and the blue tribe are of approximately equal size, and their members are not at all in agreement as to who the liars are.
- _qulr 6y ago
  My point is that from the perspective of someone outside of both tribes, there's no reason why one has to accept the conclusion that each of those tribes is equally enlightened or ignorant. I realize of course that they disagree with each other on a number of issues, but... so what? I'm not evaluating them as a member.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    To a member of one of the tribes, that tribe's beliefs are obviously the correct ones. To an outside observer, you have to evaluate the individual beliefs. Is the best policy to combat climate change a carbon tax which is refunded to the population, or a WPA-style "Green New Deal"? According to most economists it's the former, according to AOC it's the latter. School choice programs have a strong record of giving low income families with children in failing public schools a better alternative, but public school teachers unions are a large Democratic voting block and major campaign donors, so they have a perverse incentive to oppose such programs even when they're succeeding, e.g. by shutting down the popular one in D.C. Immigration has a multifaceted economic effect. High skill immigration tends to bring domestic economic benefits, because the immigrants spend much of the money in the domestic economy and pay more in taxes than they consume in services. Low skill immigration tends to have the opposite effect, and to suppress wages for unskilled labor or increase unskilled domestic unemployment. If you combine the two the total effect is positive, because the former effect is larger. But the Democratic party has a stronger incentive to promote the latter, because unskilled immigrants from socialist-leaning countries are more likely to vote for Democrats, so they regularly conflate the two and adopt policies that promote the latter, even if it harms the domestic population. You can undoubtedly find some Republican to argue that all immigration is bad and some Democrat to argue that a carbon tax would be a good answer to climate change, but there remains much wrongness on both sides. The filter bubbles show people who live on one side or the other the reasons why some subset of the other side is wrong and not the reasons why some subset of their side is wrong. It creates an impression that isn't true. Even the premise is basically nonsense. If one Republican says we should have a carbon tax and another says that climate change is a hoax, does that mean Republicans are right because we should have a carbon tax or wrong because it is real? We know which one will be on CNN. If one Democrat says we should have a carbon tax and another says that climate change will cause human extinction in twelve years without a Green New Deal, does that mean Democrats are right because we should have a carbon tax or wrong because humans won't go extinct if we don't immediately raise taxes to 75% and spend the money on government windmills? You know which one will be on Fox.
    - _qulr 6y ago
      I'm not even talking about policy. I'm talking about basic factual matters. Start with something simple: the in-person attendance and TV viewership of the President's inauguration. This is completely irrelevant to policy and has no long-term implications whatsoever. Yet somehow it became a major "partisan" controversy, when it was never controversial in the past for Presidents of any party. Of course crowd size estimation isn't a perfect science, but this particular controversy had nothing to do with science. And if you're going to tell me the problem there was "both sides", I'll have to disagree. This is just one example of extreme reality denial. What makes it notable is again that the dispute was of no particular importance in the grand scheme, and yet reality was still vehemently denied. I mean, this kind of shit comes right out of George Orwell, where the test of party loyalty is how you can make yourself believe things that are obviously false. What was the attendance at Lincoln's inauguration? FDR's? Who knows. Who cares! The only person who truly cared was Donald J. Trump himself. But Republicans have been primed to take anything critical of what he says as a partisan attack by the "liberal media". Every fact, no matter how trivial, is now a political controversy.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        You're supplying an instance of Republicans denying reality, but nobody was claiming that they never did that. The issue is that they both do it. For example, the left made quite a kerfuffle about "Trump" separating families at the border, but the truth is the separation policy was preexisting and what changed was only how many detentions there were when he started to detain everyone crossing the border illegally. They also like to play word games, like saying "no existing policy of separating all families crossing the border illegally" which is intentionally misleading when what changed wasn't the separation of those in detention but rather the detention of everyone crossing the border illegally. Which isn't even to say that family separation was a good policy, but the persistent implication that it was a policy established under Trump is ridiculous and politically-motivated.
        _qulr 6y ago
        > The issue is that they both do it. No, that's not the issue. That's never been the issue. As I said much earlier: "Everyone is wrong about some facts." "However, this does not imply that everyone is equally wrong about the facts." There's neither time nor space here to numerically compare mistruths of the 2 major parties. I would just like to see acknowledgment of the general principle that 2 groups of people can be ignorant in some ways while having very different levels of ignorance. For example, compare high school children and elementary school children. Generally speaking, high schoolers have a lot more knowledge than grade schoolers, and yet high schoolers still have quite a bit of ignorance. The 2 groups are not at all equal. This is a very common situation, and "both sides are wrong about things" is not a useful description of that situation.

by _qulr 6y ago

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> That's not a thing I said. Then it's not obvious what you meant to imply by bringing up the voter turnout rate. > I also don't assume that everyone who did show up to vote is associated with a tribe. A lot of people just plug their noses while filling out the ballots for the lesser evil. But none of this is really addressing the original point, which is that the red tribe and the blue tribe are of approximately equal size, and their members are not at all in agreement as to who the liars are.

_qulr 6y ago
My point is that from the perspective of someone outside of both tribes, there's no reason why one has to accept the conclusion that each of those tribes is equally enlightened or ignorant. I realize of course that they disagree with each other on a number of issues, but... so what? I'm not evaluating them as a member.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  To a member of one of the tribes, that tribe's beliefs are obviously the correct ones. To an outside observer, you have to evaluate the individual beliefs. Is the best policy to combat climate change a carbon tax which is refunded to the population, or a WPA-style "Green New Deal"? According to most economists it's the former, according to AOC it's the latter. School choice programs have a strong record of giving low income families with children in failing public schools a better alternative, but public school teachers unions are a large Democratic voting block and major campaign donors, so they have a perverse incentive to oppose such programs even when they're succeeding, e.g. by shutting down the popular one in D.C. Immigration has a multifaceted economic effect. High skill immigration tends to bring domestic economic benefits, because the immigrants spend much of the money in the domestic economy and pay more in taxes than they consume in services. Low skill immigration tends to have the opposite effect, and to suppress wages for unskilled labor or increase unskilled domestic unemployment. If you combine the two the total effect is positive, because the former effect is larger. But the Democratic party has a stronger incentive to promote the latter, because unskilled immigrants from socialist-leaning countries are more likely to vote for Democrats, so they regularly conflate the two and adopt policies that promote the latter, even if it harms the domestic population. You can undoubtedly find some Republican to argue that all immigration is bad and some Democrat to argue that a carbon tax would be a good answer to climate change, but there remains much wrongness on both sides. The filter bubbles show people who live on one side or the other the reasons why some subset of the other side is wrong and not the reasons why some subset of their side is wrong. It creates an impression that isn't true. Even the premise is basically nonsense. If one Republican says we should have a carbon tax and another says that climate change is a hoax, does that mean Republicans are right because we should have a carbon tax or wrong because it is real? We know which one will be on CNN. If one Democrat says we should have a carbon tax and another says that climate change will cause human extinction in twelve years without a Green New Deal, does that mean Democrats are right because we should have a carbon tax or wrong because humans won't go extinct if we don't immediately raise taxes to 75% and spend the money on government windmills? You know which one will be on Fox.
  - _qulr 6y ago
    I'm not even talking about policy. I'm talking about basic factual matters. Start with something simple: the in-person attendance and TV viewership of the President's inauguration. This is completely irrelevant to policy and has no long-term implications whatsoever. Yet somehow it became a major "partisan" controversy, when it was never controversial in the past for Presidents of any party. Of course crowd size estimation isn't a perfect science, but this particular controversy had nothing to do with science. And if you're going to tell me the problem there was "both sides", I'll have to disagree. This is just one example of extreme reality denial. What makes it notable is again that the dispute was of no particular importance in the grand scheme, and yet reality was still vehemently denied. I mean, this kind of shit comes right out of George Orwell, where the test of party loyalty is how you can make yourself believe things that are obviously false. What was the attendance at Lincoln's inauguration? FDR's? Who knows. Who cares! The only person who truly cared was Donald J. Trump himself. But Republicans have been primed to take anything critical of what he says as a partisan attack by the "liberal media". Every fact, no matter how trivial, is now a political controversy.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      You're supplying an instance of Republicans denying reality, but nobody was claiming that they never did that. The issue is that they both do it. For example, the left made quite a kerfuffle about "Trump" separating families at the border, but the truth is the separation policy was preexisting and what changed was only how many detentions there were when he started to detain everyone crossing the border illegally. They also like to play word games, like saying "no existing policy of separating all families crossing the border illegally" which is intentionally misleading when what changed wasn't the separation of those in detention but rather the detention of everyone crossing the border illegally. Which isn't even to say that family separation was a good policy, but the persistent implication that it was a policy established under Trump is ridiculous and politically-motivated.
      - _qulr 6y ago
        > The issue is that they both do it. No, that's not the issue. That's never been the issue. As I said much earlier: "Everyone is wrong about some facts." "However, this does not imply that everyone is equally wrong about the facts." There's neither time nor space here to numerically compare mistruths of the 2 major parties. I would just like to see acknowledgment of the general principle that 2 groups of people can be ignorant in some ways while having very different levels of ignorance. For example, compare high school children and elementary school children. Generally speaking, high schoolers have a lot more knowledge than grade schoolers, and yet high schoolers still have quite a bit of ignorance. The 2 groups are not at all equal. This is a very common situation, and "both sides are wrong about things" is not a useful description of that situation.