People who care most about politics have least understanding of their opponents | Hacker News Reader

People who care most about politics have least understanding of their opponents

nationalreview.com

24 pointswerber22 comments

Take this with a grain of salt: it's based on a study by a group called More in Common [1], which exists explicitly to spread information that supports this conclusion.

[1] https://www.moreincommon.com

If they are really educated, that means knowing both sides of the story, not just what the echo chamber feeds you.

"In other words, the more you pay attention to political media, the less likely you are to understand the true beliefs of your political opponents."

Paying attention to political media does not make you educated.

I would think that for most people "paying attention to political media" means hearing stuff from one side's point of view repeatedly.

"First Things" https://www.firstthings.com provides an authentic and sympathetic view into conservative thought. Regrettably, Fox News appears to have more influence, and in the handful of hours I've spent with that it was an abyss of greed and hatred.

Also knowing that there is more to it, than two sides.

And yet, in America at least, there's only two parties representing those beliefs, so by being aligning to either side you're stuck voting for both the bad and the good.

>And yet, in America at least, there's only two parties representing those beliefs

There's still a diversity of opinions within those parties and you get to vote for those during the primaries. You can't say that Sanders is the same as Clinton, or Trump is the same as JEB.

There also seems to be a deep American belief that there are exactly two sides to an issue. And if you find one of them wrong then the other is right automatically.

Yup, and in debates they even prop them up as a pair of talking heads, giving them the veneer of equal weight, no matter the merits or general agreement.

And very often both sides are equally wrong. And two times wrong doesn't make anything right.

But it does make an easily televised fight.

That's the so-called Aristotlean viewpoint, which has been common in Western thought for thousands of years. Brought to a peak in British and American politics.

No, in this context educated means having a higher level of degree (high school, BS, MS, PHD). I'd argue that that only increases your experience of knowing both sides of the story if your focus is a subject such as Political Science. Having a degree in mathematics or chemistry would not affect your political knowledge at all. While having a degree in a subject such as gender studies or sociology would probably just expose you to a high degree of far-left opinions.

The report itself (skip National Review's explainer, since their writers and editors are the worst people in the entire world) is here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a70a7c3010027736a227...

At first blush the paper itself doesn't look very interesting. Everything in the paper hinges on its use of the term "extreme views," which in their usage is about perception and has nothing to do with the objective reality of what constitutes an extreme view (pp. 56-67).

This is a good rebuttal to the study:

https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/1142891539598852102

Not unlike sports or wrestling fans. Do they want to hear and consider strong arguments for their villain? Not so much.

That’s the problem. People are applying the template for being a sports fan to politics. In sports it’s OK to be a blind believer or believe nonsense but in politics this is very damaging . I have wished before that some people who are into partisan politics would cheer for a sports team instead.

It seems time for a centrists rebellion. If someone is good at Twitter it's a proxy for relatively extreme beliefs.

It's hard to centre a rebellion around the reasonable middle ground.

Practically speaking, I fear, that puts you in the position of the Liberal Democratic party in the UK, without its advantage of now and then being able to form part of a coalition government.

Being extreme gives people a lot of energy so these activists put a lot of effort into lobbying for their view. It’s hard to get centrists fired up to fight for their beliefs with the same intensity.

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