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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

#81

Post by kristopolous »

didibus wrote: post #76
DougN7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's a pro-private, anti-democratic push by chicago school, objectivists, and other groups, to essentially slander civic institutions as terrible and "privatize" them with capital extracting robber barons. "Government" is a 4 letter word and some people are insufferable in their hatred for it - thinking that some private selfish interest of people would magically make the world ... look, it's all preposterous ... it's apologetics and denialism wrapped in the religious fervor of a mythical free market.

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

#82

Post by bmelton »

scarmig wrote: post #32
philh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there is no incentive or a very small incentive to choose the candidate with the best policies, because the chance of your vote making a difference is so small" is a theoretical argument about rational actors, not an observation about actual people. The paper I linked argues that it doesn't hold. It also argues that there's some real-world evidence that people vote for social reasons.

Regardless of how a person votes, they're voting for a feel-good reason. Some people's identity gives them pleasure in voting for the candidate that rationally maximizes the Good, for some subjective measure of the good. These are the 'social preferences' Gellman talks about. Some people's identity gives them pleasure in the tribe, and they want to vote for the people like them and around them to fit in, especially s…

> Pretty much everyone has both tendencies, which are inherently in tension. This is cognitive dissonance. People don't like experiencing this, so they end up choosing to believe both in tribal politics and that their tribe is the rational one, which is the most convenient way to cut that Gordian knot.

And in addition, the more and more fiercely we tribally associate, the less and less we want to do with the other tribes. This has gone to the extent that certain fields of employment, or even fields of science are largely owned on tribal lines.

Conservatives largely outnumber liberals in fields like agriculture, while liberals dominate social sciences. This sounds fine, but peer review demands cultural diversity as well, or our own cognitive bias imparts blind-spots on the work. The only fix for those blind spots is cultural diversity, and the only way people can be happy with that cultural diversity is to re-tie their Gordian knots and learn to accept other people as other people, and not the devil monsters we tend to equate them as today.

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

#83

Post by js2 »

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.

My fellow voters and I just approved a half-cent sales tax to fund a transit plan, so that's not true.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/electio...

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

#84

Post by nerfhammer »

didibus wrote: post #76
DougN7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

This 1000x.

This or something like it has been called the "paranoid style in american politics" as early as 50 years ago: http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-ame...

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

#85

Post by mongmong »

Fr0ntBack wrote: post #5

Interesting finding. One of the problems with voting is that there is no incentive or a very small incentive to choose the candidate with the best policies, because the chance of your vote making a difference is so small. Therefore people vote for a candidate that makes them feel good, rather than a competent one. This is arguably the cause of many bad policies. Caplan discusses this issue in his book 'The Myth of th…

Your comment made me remember this article which I think nailed your point

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/10/the-dance-of-the-dunces-...

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

#86

Post by btilly »

dnautics wrote: post #54

"For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan." These are both really tricky questions, because the questions described are derivatives of derivatives! The deficit is the time derivative of the debt; so it's possible that someone is hearing "did the debt rise during clinton" (wh…

They may seem to be really tricky questions, but they have really clear answers.

Reagan was elected during an extreme inflationary period and it had dropped dramatically by the time he left office. Clinton started office with giant deficits and left office running a surplus.

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

#87

Post by xname2 »

OK. So Trump is the coming president, and GW is real and Trump will not handle it properly. So it is very likely GW bad predictions are going to happen. My question is: why there is no massive sell of beach houses?

a) Most beach house owners are GW deniers. b) Most beach house owners have strong confidence of the future government. c) Most beach house owners are extremely rich so they don't care.

How about those who are GW believers, and seriously think it is critical timing for action rightnow, and have uncertainty about future government, and are not extremely rich. Are they selling houses and moving to inland?

I think it is a pretty good test of how many people seriously believe GW. Do not tell me the incentive of home value is not strong enough.

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

#88

Post by lacampbell »

briantmaurer wrote: post #80
DougN7 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, ...

I am glad to pay taxes in exchange for public goods/services like roads, schools, libraries, ...

...bombs, bailouts, bribes, bureaucratic inefficiency, lining the pockets of lobby groups, incarceration for victimless crimes, keeping cops charged with police brutality on the payroll...

I would encourage you to check the officially published breakdown of how taxes are spent - and then consider what the actual break down might look like.

People have a real cognitive dissonance when it comes to the state. I think it's hard for people to deal with the the fact that money will inevitably be taken from you under threat of force to fund things you hate, that you find wrong, or that ruins peoples lives. It's much easier to just close your eyes and think of roads, schools and libraries.

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

#89

Post by smallnamespace »

nerfhammer wrote: post #84
didibus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. This 1000x. This or something like it has been called the "paranoid style in american politics" as early as 50 years ago: http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-ame...

As an American myself, I've always wondered whether there was something in the culture/genes of Americans that predisposed people towards paranoia towards all forms of external authority.

I mean, American immigrants are literally a self-selected population of people who found their home societies chafing and restrictive enough that they were willing to migrate thousands of miles at great risk to build a new life. And this migration was repeated time and again within the US -- as each part of the country was populated, waves of Americans decided to strike out West and get out from underneath the bankers, politicians, and other elites that would take over.

I think paranoia about government will always be the flip side to wanting to be fully free and independent (whether or not that is achievable in reality).

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

#90

Post by jeffdavis »

It could also be that people respond based on what they think the "official" answer is when paid; otherwise they answer what they actually believe.

For instance, there are official measurements of debt, deficit, and inflation. But some might believe that unfunded liabilities are debt, or that inflation is higher than the official number.

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