This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind • Hacker News Board

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#11

Post by rayiner » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:37 PM UTC

classicsnoot wrote: post #7

amyjess wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see them every time you scroll. Want to go back and look at something again? You now have to wait for the animation. This is objectively bad design. I want static PNGs or SVGs, not JavaScript. Also, that site got in my shitlist for taking control of my keyboard. I prefer to use the arrow keys to scroll one line at a time, and the stupid JavaScript on that site made that impossible. Actually, I'd be happiest if th…

Every point you have made here is subjective.

No, it's not. The animations add no information that isn't conveyed by the graph already--it just creates a delay before you can see the information. And changing the behavior of core functionality like the keyboard/pointer will confuse people, and on this page there is nothing to be gained in return.

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#12

Post by rayiner » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:39 PM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #10

gyardley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'What if'? Prohibition is one of the examples - the policies aren't at all guaranteed to be good.

As an aside, it's no accident that women's suffrage coincides chronologically with prohibition. Though it turned out to be bad policy, prohibition was a galvanizing issue that drove many women to political activism, either for religious reasons, and/or in reaction to alcoholism and domestic abuse.

I strongly recommend watching the PBS series on the topic: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition.

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#13

Post by mikeash » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:39 PM UTC

acconrad wrote: post #2

While the speed of change is good for these issues, could that speed be detrimental in other scenarios? For example, what if this increases the speed to reverse good policies, such as carbon emissions taxes? What if the speed of change from political influence of much larger entities (corporations) also increases the influence to reverse things even faster?

The title is misleading. "America Changes Its Mind" sounds like it's talking about people's opinions, but the data presented is about legal status at the state level. This is misleading because there's a strong discontinuity there, and the speed at which states legalize something doesn't have to be related to the speed at which opinions change.

For an extreme case, consider some issue where opinions are evenly spread out among all the states, and it very slowly changes, at a rate of, say, 0.5% per year. It would take two centuries to go from all-against to all-for at that rate, yet once you pass 50% you'd expect all the states to switch over more or less simultaneously.

The real world isn't so clean, but the same idea applies. Looking at the data, the recent examples of marijuana and same-sex marriage are changing faster, at more like 1-2%/year, but you can still see that the rate of change in state legalization is way faster than the rate of change of public opinion, as one would generally expect.

A couple of random pages with relevant poll data:

http://www.gallup.com/poll/117328/marriage.aspx

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1657/illegal-drugs.aspx

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#14

Post by Kiro » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:39 PM UTC

OT but took a while before I realised the table was actually a representation of a map and not according to some other taxonomy.

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#15

Post by kissickas » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:41 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #5

metamet wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only see them once, so I didn't think it was that bad.

You see them every time you scroll. Want to go back and look at something again? You now have to wait for the animation. This is objectively bad design. I want static PNGs or SVGs, not JavaScript. Also, that site got in my shitlist for taking control of my keyboard. I prefer to use the arrow keys to scroll one line at a time, and the stupid JavaScript on that site made that impossible. Actually, I'd be happiest if th…

Scrolling by arrow key worked as normal for me (Firefox 37.0.2 on OS X). But I do agree about requiring javascript for a rather pointless bunch of animations - they could at least serve up the static images when javascript is unavailable. Its presence even led me to think they would be interactive - I tried clicking on my state, thinking it would be highlighted in the graphs below.

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#16

Post by bigpeopleareold » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:43 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #9

The case comes amid a wave of gay marriage legalization... This phrase, and the title, mask the fact that in the majority of states same-sex marriage legalization came from court cases, not through legislation or referenda[1]. "America", broadly construed, is quickly changing its mind, too, but this "wave" is more a product of judicial thought than public opinion. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in…

That is, unless the author considers "America changing its mind" and "judicial thought" to be the same thing. I immediately picked up on this as well, the common theme being what federal and state courts thinks.

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#17

Post by amyjess » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:51 PM UTC

lukifer wrote: post #10

gyardley wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'What if'? Prohibition is one of the examples - the policies aren't at all guaranteed to be good.

As an aside, it's no accident that women's suffrage coincides chronologically with prohibition. Though it turned out to be bad policy, prohibition was a galvanizing issue that drove many women to political activism, either for religious reasons, and/or in reaction to alcoholism and domestic abuse.

Progressives also endorsed prohibition because local bosses often used saloons as their bases, so breaking up the saloons was seen as a way to cut off corrupt party officials.

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#18

Post by anthony_romeo » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:53 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #9

The case comes amid a wave of gay marriage legalization... This phrase, and the title, mask the fact that in the majority of states same-sex marriage legalization came from court cases, not through legislation or referenda[1]. "America", broadly construed, is quickly changing its mind, too, but this "wave" is more a product of judicial thought than public opinion. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in…

At the same time, after these courts have started legalizing gay marriage, public support for gay marriage has followed. I always suspect it's a chicken-or-egg type of situation. Sometimes there is genuine public support for a given issue. Other times, change must occur first, and then people can see that society hasn't collapsed. Once polls began to demonstrate that more people supported gay marriage than were against it (years after the Massachusetts court decision), politicians began tripping over each other to suddenly become champions of gay rights.

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#19

Post by silverlight » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:55 PM UTC

It's incredible to see how apparently progressive Kansas used to be. As someone who lives here now, I always assume we're going to be one of the slowest (I guess "most conservative" might be a nicer way of putting it) states to adapt to social change. But I guess I really would have liked the Kansas that existed before the middle of the last century...

Re: This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind

#20

Post by fizbin » Mon, Apr 27, 2015, 2:56 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #13

acconrad wrote: post #2

While the speed of change is good for these issues, could that speed be detrimental in other scenarios? For example, what if this increases the speed to reverse good policies, such as carbon emissions taxes? What if the speed of change from political influence of much larger entities (corporations) also increases the influence to reverse things even faster?

The title is misleading. "America Changes Its Mind" sounds like it's talking about people's opinions, but the data presented is about legal status at the state level. This is misleading because there's a strong discontinuity there, and the speed at which states legalize something doesn't have to be related to the speed at which opinions change. For an extreme case, consider some issue where opinions are evenly spread…

And looking at something already settled by the courts, it's also interesting to compare the article's chart on the legal status of interracial marriage with public opinion data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_Uni...

Note that the "Approve" line doesn't cross the "Disapprove" line until the mid-1980s, long after the USSC had spoken. With same-sex marriage on the other hand, the "Approve"/"Disapprove" cross-over happened a bit over three years ago and the USSC has yet to speak as definitively as it did in Loving v. Virginia.

(One could argue that in invalidating most of DOMA, the USSC has already spoken strongly - if not definitively - in favor of same-sex marriage, and therefore that we should use that decision when making analogies to Loving. I'm not sure about that.)