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Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-pol
by NavinF 4y ago
Related: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
> On the same poll, 13% of Americans claimed to believe Barack Obama was the Anti-Christ. […] Some pollsters are starting to consider these sorts of things symptomatic of what they term symbolic belief, which seems to be kind of what the Less Wrong sequences call Professing and Cheering or Belief As Attire. Basically, people are being emotivists rather than realists about belief. “Obama is the Anti-Christ” is another way of just saying “Boo Obama!”, rather than expressing some sort of proposition about the world.
- p_j_w 4y agoI'm related to the sort of people who are likely to respond that they think Obama is the anti-christ in a poll and I'm here to tell you that, for a good portion of them, it's a genuinely held belief. If you spend a significant amount of time with these sorts of people, these sorts of benign explanations don't really hold any sway. Is it possible I've been exposed to a biased slice of America that's not representative? Sure, but there's literally zero evidence that the benign view Scott Alexander is putting forth here is true. It's nothing more than a hope.