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Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

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Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#71

Post by twoquestions »

bduerst wrote: post #67
twoquestions wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly! Professing belief in something blatantly untrue is a wonderful social signal, it says you're willing to stick with the in-group no matter what! Example: Someone close to me thinks the Detroit Lions are the best football team.

Which seems like harmless, lightheared tribalism, sure, but there are many forms of tribalism that have quantifiable negative impact. Even for Midwest football: http://qje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/03/21/qje.q...

I meant to be subtle about this, and you raise an excellent point. Tribalism is great for the in-group members and the in-group itself, but it can be horrifying to out-group members and greater society.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#72

Post by DougN7 »

smallnamespace wrote: post #70
chc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that people tend to answer the question in a way that favors their party and disfavors the other party if you just ask them, but they're more likely to get it right if you offer an incentive to do so. This can't be explained just by "The questions are tricky," though that might be contributing factor that helps people fool themselves when they want to.

I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero. That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise, forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires…

Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#73

Post by idiot74 »

praptak wrote: post #18

Having skin in the game makes one thoughtful. Sometimes it works in debates too. "Let's do A, it's much better design." "Will you do the debugging and support for the feature?" "Ummm, maybe let's rethink this A, I see some flaws in it."

Could be. With no financial reward there's not much incentive to spend energy thinking about things: so answers default to supporting political views. Suddenly there's a financial incentive, and so people take a few more steps in their thought processes. (maybe, idk)

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#74

Post by Semiapies »

madenine wrote: post #15
sharemywin wrote: post #2

wonder if there's a way to tease out what I believe versus what I think you want to hear.

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "I think want me to say the unemployment rate is X, so I'll select that, but I believe the unemployment rate is actually Y"

"Welcome to" implies it hasn't been that way for longer than any of us here have been alive.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#75

Post by sambe »

praptak wrote: post #18

Having skin in the game makes one thoughtful. Sometimes it works in debates too. "Let's do A, it's much better design." "Will you do the debugging and support for the feature?" "Ummm, maybe let's rethink this A, I see some flaws in it."

Easy to say yes and then shirk it in future though. Unfortunately common in practice.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#76

Post by didibus »

DougN7 wrote: post #72
smallnamespace wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero. That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise, forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires…

Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

Very true. Coming from Quebec, Canada, I actually say that. It's more ingrained in our culture that what we are taxed for is services that benefit us all and that makes our societal environment more enjoyable.

Now in the US, I can't seem to find anyone who think this. My biggest issue is that I can't even find anyone who thinks that the government is the people. Everyone seems to think of the government as this black box that has a mind of its own and inflict laws and rules upon us. While I'm much more used to the common thinking that the people rule, and the government simply enact our rule. We elect it, we pay for it, and therefore it simply does what we elected and paid for it to do.

I'm not sure what makes up that difference, but it could be the bi-partisanery. It's a shame too, because it often fails to capture fine grain requirements. Like say I wanted a very liberal economy, while keeping gun rights strong and conservative norms in place? Or the other way around? There's no kind of choice like that. So you lysine end up for choosing based on your top issue only.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#77

Post by rdw »

DougN7 wrote: post #72
smallnamespace wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero. That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise, forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires…

Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

This is not really true in California, at least, where we've voted ourselves a bunch of tax increases via the proposition system.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#78

Post by sharemywin »

bduerst wrote: post #63
sharemywin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another problem. apparently there are 6 different numbers... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-... So, when they ask which one are they talking about?

Doesn't matter. It's a red herring because the question itself was a rate of change over time , for which the answer is given in a 1.0% range. Irregardless of whether you focus on U-5 (the reported statistic) or U-6 (the denier's statistic), it's still only about a -0.2% and +0.1% change, respectively. Even if you did the math on U-5, you would still get the answer right for every of the 6 numbers.

the denier's statistic is closer to use U-5 for a starting point then switch to U-6 as an end point.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#79

Post by sharemywin »

bduerst wrote: post #63
sharemywin wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another problem. apparently there are 6 different numbers... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-... So, when they ask which one are they talking about?

Doesn't matter. It's a red herring because the question itself was a rate of change over time , for which the answer is given in a 1.0% range. Irregardless of whether you focus on U-5 (the reported statistic) or U-6 (the denier's statistic), it's still only about a -0.2% and +0.1% change, respectively. Even if you did the math on U-5, you would still get the answer right for every of the 6 numbers.

sorry missed the rate of change over time.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#80

Post by briantmaurer »

DougN7 wrote: post #72
smallnamespace wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero. That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise, forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires…

Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

This is not true for everyone. I am glad to pay taxes in exchange for public goods/services like roads, schools, libraries, ...
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