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What I Heard from Trump Supporters

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Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#351

Post by mikeash »

Eridrus wrote: post #331
dboreham wrote: post #21

Honestly not sure this sheds much light. Doesn't it boil down to: I always vote Republican regardless, sorry. I vote according to my pet wedge issue (usually guns or abortion), sorry. I'm bigoted and racist but I'm not going to admit to that. The alternative candidate wasn't very appealing so I figured why not? I liked the idea of a bomb-thrower, sorry.

> I vote according to my pet wedge issue (usually guns or abortion), sorry. As much as I agree with the left on both these issues... I would rather give up on these as politically untenable rather than lose every other issue to Republicans. I don't know if this would just lead to other wedge issues ad infinitum, and I don't know how you would get that idea through a democratic primary (though there are christian demo…

I do think that the Democrats should give up on gun control. I generally agree with their stance on it, but it's just not that important. I see so many reasonable people who agree with Democrats on nearly everything, but love their guns. Some of them hold their noses and vote D. Many of them refuse to, because they really love their guns, even though they lean that way on almost everything else.

I completely disagree on abortion, though. That's a serious health issue that will result in a lot of unnecessary innocent deaths if the "pro-life" side gets their way. That is an issue worth fighting for.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#352

Post by [deleted] »

rockmeamedee wrote: post #320
harryh wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you say it. "You're racist!" is an attack. "That thing you just said was racist." is better but will still come off as an attack. "Have you ever thought about how what you said will impact [minority group]?" will work much better.

What's worse, being a racist or being called a racist? If it's the former, being called a racist is a valuable thing. It's somebody telling you that you have advertently or inadvertently acted in a manner that is prejudiced against an ethnic group in a way that perpetuates societal imbalances (racism). Now you get an opportunity to fix it. Apologize, then stop doing what you were called out for. Now you'll neither be…

[deleted]

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#353

Post by throwaway713 »

freen wrote: post #318
throwaway713 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "fact" is just a statement with a probability distribution attached to it. If your prior is different than someone else's, your posterior is going to be different as well.

What about the probability distribution of the fact that you are a carrot?

There's still a probability distribution — it's just a very tightly peaked one that for all practical purposes is indistinguishable from a Dirac delta distribution.

Generally speaking, the physical sciences produce highly peaked distributions (literally, in the case of particle physics) and the social sciences produce more of what I would call flat lines with a few lumps in them. That includes most political "facts". Quantitative accuracy requires extremely high quality data and statistical inference, which when applied to social issues is impractical for the foreseeable future.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#354

Post by earthtolazlo »

jrs235 wrote: post #310
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets my goat is the kind of shouting down I get whenever I take any contrarian stance on non-GMO foods, or God forbid, vaccination. I know that vaccines are critical and that there is nothing wrong with them. But to not even admit the possibility that there might be a link between vaccines and some health problems is, to me, very anti-science. My understanding for science has always been to question all assumpti…

If you want to see some cognitive gear grinding and confusion, if you run into anyone that believes that vaccinations should be mandated by law, ask them "if it's my body, isn't it my choice?"

Which would make perfect sense if herd immunity wasn't a thing. I wouldn't care if you want to not vaccinate and die of some 19th century disease, but you're putting everyone else at risk as well.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#355

Post by godshatter »

convoces wrote: post #236
Yhippa wrote: post #40

This one gave me the most pause: > “Silicon Valley is incredibly unwelcoming to alternative points of view. Your curiosity, if it is sincere, is the very rare exception to the rule.” Substitute "Silicon Valley" for any major liberal enclaves, like universities and cities, and I think you see the same thing. I am skeptical by nature and try to take a scientific view of new ideas. However I feel like I get shouted down…

>try to take a scientific view >People start throwing link after link of facts You get upset when people present you with links to facts to respond to your proposed ideas? I can sympathize that it is definitely no fun if you feel like your ideas aren't getting the attention they deserve, but if you have trouble defending the ideas in the face of factual sources, maybe it's possible that one could reconsider those ide…

As a person who has a contrarian view on an issue that is highly politicized, it often turns out that those links of "facts" are links to web blogs that agree with the person that explain why the contrarian view is wrong. I suspect the original poster has looked at a few of the links before, found legitimate grounds to discuss possible flaws in their logic, and has been shut down.

There is definitely a tendency (on both sides) to collect links to "approved" viewpoints and push them as fact without being able to back them up with valid argumentation.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#356

Post by eridius »

jrs235 wrote: post #310
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets my goat is the kind of shouting down I get whenever I take any contrarian stance on non-GMO foods, or God forbid, vaccination. I know that vaccines are critical and that there is nothing wrong with them. But to not even admit the possibility that there might be a link between vaccines and some health problems is, to me, very anti-science. My understanding for science has always been to question all assumpti…

If you want to see some cognitive gear grinding and confusion, if you run into anyone that believes that vaccinations should be mandated by law, ask them "if it's my body, isn't it my choice?"

No it's not.

It's not about your body. It's about the society you're a part of and herd immunity. If you choose not to vaccinate, you are putting everyone else at risk.

So yeah, you can choose not to vaccinate, but you need to understand that if you do so, the rest of society has a right (and in many cases an obligation) to say "we don't want you here, if you're not vaccinated (for any reason other than medically unfit to be vaccinated) then you don't get to participate in our society, you don't get to put our members at risk, and you need to stay the hell away from us".

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#357

Post by rdl »

austenallred wrote: post #112
Yhippa wrote: post #40

This one gave me the most pause: > “Silicon Valley is incredibly unwelcoming to alternative points of view. Your curiosity, if it is sincere, is the very rare exception to the rule.” Substitute "Silicon Valley" for any major liberal enclaves, like universities and cities, and I think you see the same thing. I am skeptical by nature and try to take a scientific view of new ideas. However I feel like I get shouted down…

I moved to San Francisco from a rural town, and I would feel 10x more comfortable sharing my liberal viewpoints in a small, deeply-red town than I would insinuating something anything less than 100% left-leaning at work here. People disagree in small town Utah, and it would be uncomfortable. In San Francisco you're ostracized. It even makes me nervous to leave my name attached to a comment like this, knowing that my…

It wasn't always like this. Silicon Valley was a lot more diverse/tolerant in the first dotcom boom and until ~2006 or so than since. It really went off the deep end circa the Brendan Eich incident (2014), and then the most recent Presidential election cycle. The "Ex-communicate Peter Thiel" movement was the point of no return, and when I decided to flee permanently.

It doesn't seem to be as bad even in other equally-liberal tech areas outside SV.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#358

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

davidw wrote: post #188
darkmouth wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a staunch liberal and I don't understand the hostility towards deportation of illegal immigrants either. Calling illegal immigrants undocumented immigrants doesn't make the illegal part go away.

They are illegal because the system is so broken. There's a market demand for those people, and they're moving here to work, by and large. Just because something is set in law does not make it morally right.

Maybe, but that market demand exists because they are outside the law. Keeping illegal immigrants here allows a permanent underclass which can be abused by companies in ways that American citizens can't. It allows a race to the bottom where only companies which hire illegal immigrants can lower the cost of their product to a competitive level. The only way to end this cycle is to stop allowing illegal immigrants to work here.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#359

Post by pklausler »

sgift wrote: post #265
Yhippa wrote: post #40

This one gave me the most pause: > “Silicon Valley is incredibly unwelcoming to alternative points of view. Your curiosity, if it is sincere, is the very rare exception to the rule.” Substitute "Silicon Valley" for any major liberal enclaves, like universities and cities, and I think you see the same thing. I am skeptical by nature and try to take a scientific view of new ideas. However I feel like I get shouted down…

> People start throwing link after link of facts and don't want to even reason about ideas. It's hopeless and I end up keeping my mouth shut. So, you take a contrarian view. People respond with facts. So, where's the problem? You don't like the facts? Don't want to hear them or what exactly?

The facts had a liberal bias.

Re: What I Heard from Trump Supporters

#360

Post by freen »

Conservatives are afraid liberals will laugh at them. Maybe tax them a bit more and be nice to brown people with funny names.

Liberals are afraid conservatives will take away their health insurance, starve poor folks, destroy the planet, start unfounded invasive wars, end their own bodily self determination. Etc. etc.

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