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Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

robkhenderson.com

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Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#31

Post by _cenw »

satellites wrote: post #15

“A survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police.” “By far” means “10% more” in the actual graph the author cites, which comes from an online poll that had 1500 respondents. I’m no statistician but that seems like a small difference and small sample size to be the key piece of “data” here. This article follows most tropes of behavioral s…

Also, it's not quite clear how much of a material difference exists between the middle answer and the defund the police answer. The slogan has some optics issues, but diverting funds from overfunded surplus military gear filled police departments to social support networks is not likely to be controversial with the middle group either.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#32

Post by lscdlscd »

satellites wrote: post #15

“A survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police.” “By far” means “10% more” in the actual graph the author cites, which comes from an online poll that had 1500 respondents. I’m no statistician but that seems like a small difference and small sample size to be the key piece of “data” here. This article follows most tropes of behavioral s…

Exactly. Mostly nonsense, and anything true in it was already obvious.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#33

Post by uses »

With a cynical viewpoint like this, how would you know the difference between "luxury beliefs expressed just to keep others down and make me look fancy" vs "earnestly held beliefs based on learning, and perhaps I could learn something by considering these beliefs"? Perhaps evaluate the beliefs based on their merit, rather than whose beliefs they are?

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#34

Post by hooverd »

tech_ken wrote: post #19
zbyte64 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil's advocate: maybe because the author perceives "tickle down economics" as a position adopted by many of the working class and may even aide in survival.

Sorry I was being oblique to signal some snark. You're sort of hitting my point directly: "luxury beliefs" are just whatever you personally believe to be (a) wrongly held and (b) limited to only the aristocracy (ie. not the opinion of "real Americans"). But concretely demonstrating both is kind of difficult and largely relies on your own subjective experience. It's a political cudgel, not a proper tool of inquiry.

Wild how the Real America always ends up being exurban jet-ski dealers.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#36

Post by _cenw »

Jeff_Brown wrote: post #17

That was not convincing. The article only touches two unorthodox beliefs: that we should defund the police (really a preference, not a belief) and that success is largely attributable to luck. But the elites are more likely to believe conventional wisdom on climate change, on whether vaccines work, on whether the Holocaust happened, on whether digesting genetically modified organisms changes the consumer's DNA, any n…

> Wanting to defund the police is likely correlated with not needing the police -- but that's likely simple ignorance, not signaling.

Or with police being a net-negative to your life. Like living in a disproportionately policed area.

Or having a disproportionately policed skin color.

The poll is pretty clear, defund the police doesn't mean anarchy, it means replacing it. The how's a bit up in the air, but it's more about how irredeemable the current system seems to someone.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#37

Post by mc32 »

satellites wrote: post #15

“A survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police.” “By far” means “10% more” in the actual graph the author cites, which comes from an online poll that had 1500 respondents. I’m no statistician but that seems like a small difference and small sample size to be the key piece of “data” here. This article follows most tropes of behavioral s…

If they they have a good confidence, there error could be around 3% up or down. So that's not bad.

And, yes, I think Defund the Police was primarily espoused and driven by people who would be little affected by the outcome of such performative stances.

The people who live in the places where the police got defunded suffer greater crime rates and disorder --which is why we see people at the grass roots asking for more police.

It's known that lawless places will suffer from lawlessness and then engender vigilantism --this is evident is most war-torn places where 'warlords'/gansters control neighborhoods.

Re: Luxury beliefs are status symbols (2022)

#39

Post by mistercow »

jihadjihad wrote: post #30
satellites wrote: post #15

“A survey from YouGov found that Americans in the highest income category were by far the most supportive of defunding the police.” “By far” means “10% more” in the actual graph the author cites, which comes from an online poll that had 1500 respondents. I’m no statistician but that seems like a small difference and small sample size to be the key piece of “data” here. This article follows most tropes of behavioral s…

It's a pretty typical result from social science. 1500 respondents is a fairly large sample size--I've seen papers where you're talking closer to ~50. Going from 22% to 32% is a 10 percentage point difference, but a 46% increase. I agree that the conclusion at the end is flimsy, and there are undoubtedly confounding factors--but the statistics are pretty well in line with what you'd expect in social sciences.

Yeah, but think about the error bars there. You’re looking at an MoE of around 3% for the entire sample, and more for these subgroups. The real difference could be just a couple percentage points and still be within the confidence interval.
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