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> That voter is much more connected to reality than the typical academic, politician or professional though. Because they actually go out and do things in the r

> That voter is much more connected to reality than the typical academic, politician or professional though. Because they actually go out and do things in the real world. I might be off-base here, but I am unsure if you have thought through the ramifications of your statements. What your statement seems to be implicitly saying is that, (a few examples) - Surgeons who stitch up gunshot wounds in ERs - Doctors & nurse practitioners who deliver care to communities across the US - Developers who write the critical code that runs airplanes - Scientists & engineers who do nanoscale fabrication - Environmental scientists embedded inside local communities, studying long-term environmental changes e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/climate/climate-change-marine-science.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/07/climate/climate-change-ma... - Embedded anthropologists studying populations & subcultures in Iraq & Afghanistan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Terrain_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Terrain_System - Poets and artists living in these communities - Social scientists who study how rural Americans are used as a cheap workforce https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/mlg/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/mlg/ - Developers at Google & DDG writing the code that allows billions of people to do work every day - Scientists managing the US food supply and researching new ways to protect it, https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2016-10-19 https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2016-10-19 - Devs at companies like Stripe that power significant parts of the US economy Your text suggests that all of these people (and the millions more who aren't on the list) are less in tune with "reality" by default as compared to a random plumber or electrician. (I assume that you are referring to working class professions when you say "average voter") The text also says that they don't "go out and do things in the real world." It would be deeply wrong to assume that a random plumber or electrician is somehow lesser or incorrect by default. But it's also deeply wrong to say that the people who make important contributions that keep the lights of civilization on aren't somehow connected to reality by default.

roenxi 4y ago
Those are roughly the categories of people I was thinking of when I commented. You've put together a list of people who, by and large, are insulated from scarcity - people who either aren't going to have to do without, or are sufficiently confident in their position (academics and poets) that they don't think they need to work a conventional job. Frequently extreme specialists in a specific field that doesn't translate well into broad life experience. They don't have to live their lives in line with the resource constraints that the world works under. I'm an engineer, I know the perspective well. I'm part of the group of people keeping the lights on. And therefore there is nearly nothing out there that poses any sort of threat to my comfort, because society was built by and for people like me. That isn't an experience that matches up well with the typical experience and it would be very hard to spin as being exposed to 'reality'. I have access to disproportionate resources to solve my problems. And so do all the people you're listing.
- hackyhacky 4y ago
  I'm having some trouble understanding your perspective. Your original comment said: > That [average] voter is much more connected to reality than the typical academic, politician or professional though. Because they actually go out and do things in the real world. Now you're being more specific, saying those people who work outside "the real world," are those who are: > Frequently extreme specialists in a specific field that doesn't translate well into broad life experience. Why do you think that a fry cook or janitor has more "broad life experience" than a professor or a doctor? Do you think that there is something more "real" and "authentic" about manual labor, that intellectual labor lacks? Is scarcity the only source of authenticity? In my experience, most people a born into, and live their entire lives, in a single social stratum. Maybe it's abject poverty, maybe it's menial labor, maybe it's middle-class, or maybe it's educated and professional. The classes live in constant fear and envy of each other, but very few people get to experience more than of them first-hand. There's insulation, as you point out, between the strata, but that doesn't mean that the uneducated and the poor are experiencing more reality, just that they're experiencing it differently.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    In this case, what I wanted to say was that politics is deciding what to do next to get the best outcome given a set of constraints. In that context, "real world" to me means the clearest understanding of what the constraints are and what we should do to get the best outcome. It isn't a question of manual vs. non-manual in my mind. areoform was picking out a list of people who typically aren't exposed to the actual constraints because they are in the top ~10-20% of the social hierarchy, and usually only specialise in one specific area as opposed to understanding the total situation. Someone who has immanent and structural problems putting food on the table or keeping employment will have a much better idea of where the urgent pain points in an economy are than, say, a dev at Stripe. The people close to the happy tail end of the distribution for comfortable lifestyles aren't going to have a good understanding of the median or hard tail. Some do, most don't. People who live the risk of doing without food have a much better understanding of how bad the current food shortages are than I do, for example. Despite being quite interested in the crisis I have to really go out and look to figure out whether the situation is normal, a little bit worse or immanent threat of large numbers of people who had food last year running out. Basically, in short, it is easier for someone average to figure out what the experience is for the average person. Which is one of the most important experiences for figuring out whether a policy is working or not. The median voter is quite well connected to the experience of the median voter, much better than people like me who have to use statistics and guess what their experience is. Thankyou for drawing my attention to the fact that my language was excessively vague.

roenxi 4y ago

Those are roughly the categories of people I was thinking of when I commented. You've put together a list of people who, by and large, are insulated from scarcity - people who either aren't going to have to do without, or are sufficiently confident in their position (academics and poets) that they don't think they need to work a conventional job. Frequently extreme specialists in a specific field that doesn't translate well into broad life experience. They don't have to live their lives in line with the resource constraints that the world works under. I'm an engineer, I know the perspective well. I'm part of the group of people keeping the lights on. And therefore there is nearly nothing out there that poses any sort of threat to my comfort, because society was built by and for people like me. That isn't an experience that matches up well with the typical experience and it would be very hard to spin as being exposed to 'reality'. I have access to disproportionate resources to solve my problems. And so do all the people you're listing.

hackyhacky 4y ago
I'm having some trouble understanding your perspective. Your original comment said: > That [average] voter is much more connected to reality than the typical academic, politician or professional though. Because they actually go out and do things in the real world. Now you're being more specific, saying those people who work outside "the real world," are those who are: > Frequently extreme specialists in a specific field that doesn't translate well into broad life experience. Why do you think that a fry cook or janitor has more "broad life experience" than a professor or a doctor? Do you think that there is something more "real" and "authentic" about manual labor, that intellectual labor lacks? Is scarcity the only source of authenticity? In my experience, most people a born into, and live their entire lives, in a single social stratum. Maybe it's abject poverty, maybe it's menial labor, maybe it's middle-class, or maybe it's educated and professional. The classes live in constant fear and envy of each other, but very few people get to experience more than of them first-hand. There's insulation, as you point out, between the strata, but that doesn't mean that the uneducated and the poor are experiencing more reality, just that they're experiencing it differently.
- roenxi 4y ago
  In this case, what I wanted to say was that politics is deciding what to do next to get the best outcome given a set of constraints. In that context, "real world" to me means the clearest understanding of what the constraints are and what we should do to get the best outcome. It isn't a question of manual vs. non-manual in my mind. areoform was picking out a list of people who typically aren't exposed to the actual constraints because they are in the top ~10-20% of the social hierarchy, and usually only specialise in one specific area as opposed to understanding the total situation. Someone who has immanent and structural problems putting food on the table or keeping employment will have a much better idea of where the urgent pain points in an economy are than, say, a dev at Stripe. The people close to the happy tail end of the distribution for comfortable lifestyles aren't going to have a good understanding of the median or hard tail. Some do, most don't. People who live the risk of doing without food have a much better understanding of how bad the current food shortages are than I do, for example. Despite being quite interested in the crisis I have to really go out and look to figure out whether the situation is normal, a little bit worse or immanent threat of large numbers of people who had food last year running out. Basically, in short, it is easier for someone average to figure out what the experience is for the average person. Which is one of the most important experiences for figuring out whether a policy is working or not. The median voter is quite well connected to the experience of the median voter, much better than people like me who have to use statistics and guess what their experience is. Thankyou for drawing my attention to the fact that my language was excessively vague.