Americans increasingly hide beliefs on political issues | Hacker News Reader

Americans increasingly hide beliefs on political issues

populace.org

25 pointsteucris31 comments

Finally, it seems it was a pretty widely accepted idea in society for many years that in general you don't discuss religion or politics in public nothing good would come from it and it would cause hurt feelings all around. In the lat 2000's a bunch of companies wanted to make themselves seem "different" and "hip" and "new" from the stodgy old megacorps so they brought in foosball tables they told people to bring their dogs, and started taking political positions.

It turns out that the reason many previous generations didn't talk about politics and religion in public wasn't because they were stodgy old people that hated progress and were soulless greed bags, it's because it largely seems to engender hurt feelings, foster conflict, increase dysfunction and inhibit effectively allowing people to operate in a professional environment.

It seems that my whole generation is not just intent on reinventing everything that society already had with a tech prefix, but they are also intent on relearning the hard way the lessons many earlier generations learned and had passed on.

Part of the issue, though, is that the political problems we're dealing with right now are a lot more foundational, and the places we talk about them have become more integrated.

It's easy to not talk about the politics of women in the workplace if you're all white advertising executives - who cares? Or to not talk about religion if it's implicit that everybody in your town is Methodist, and goes to the one Methodist church there.

That's just no longer the case in most places. Even in those small towns, the Internet exists, and people can choose beliefs other than the ones they're raised with.

It's not that we don't need to learn to get along with people who believe things that are different than what we believe, it's that our beliefs are so much more different now than we thought, and so much more visible.

As a member of a locally minority religion I NEVER bring it up at work and I always quickly direct the conversation into the nearest dead end if someone else brings it up.

It's easy not to talk about religion at work even when the population is not homogeneous.

The few people who will insist on bringing it up generally give me the impression that they are trying to convince me that I'm wrong and should get on the majority religion bandwagon. This behavior is disgusting anywhere, let alone in a professional setting.

When your livelihood is as stake for expressing the wrong views (and I mean outside of the workplace), of course people are going to stop being public about them. And this is really dangerous because going underground is where the really nasty stuff festers.

Can't we all just be nice and not personally go after people and instead debate their views in the open?

That would be great, except that it seems people can't agree on how to properly debate. One person will bring up something that is in the news, the other person who aligns with the opposite political party may come back with "Like what specific examples? Can you prove it?". And when they bring up something, you try the same thing but they come back with "The information is out there, go look for it."

So I've learned to just keep my mouth shut and even quit reading anything that is even close to a tabloid-style presentation. Problem is, what I though were good sources of info ended up lying to me on more than one occasion, that I noticed when I went back to the source (for example, "X says Y", but when I go through the speech from X and hear Y in context, it is clearly something completely different (and sensible) -- even if I can't stand X for other reasons.

We need a new conscientious objection.

After the fighting starts, it doesn't matter why the fighting started. It doesn't matter if the fight started over something important. After the fighting starts, whatever you are fighting about seems important.

In wartime objectors may still have had a 'side', they just didn't want to kill people on 'the other side'.

We need to be able to have conversations where 1. we don't intentionally try to shame 'the other side' and 2. 'the other side' does not feel like we are trying to shame them.

A new conscientious objection would mean not participating in conversations about duelling moralities. Don't insult someone else's righteousness, don't try to make them feel shame about political or religious beliefs. You can certainly still feel your own morality, but you don't need to use it like a weapon.

I don't know if this is possible in large groups on the internet. I don't know if it's worth trying in large groups on the internet. It might be worth trying with people you care about on an individual basis and who also have beliefs on 'the other side'

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"Both sides" is an utterly poisoned phrase. Just because there is a fight with two sides does not imply that either side is righteous, and it certainly does not imply that both sides have points of view worthy of consideration. Sometimes one side is just wrong and the debate is settled.

"Both sides" has been used to justify a lot of hateful speech, and a lot of speech that cannot be scientifically supported. I think people have a limited right to use hateful speech, and non-scientific speech, but not an absolute right to use that in every venue.

Talking politics is an immediate way to turn the conversation sour in today's climate unless you already know they'll agree with you.

Not talking about things exacerbates the problem. Many Americans need to learn how to have productive argument with each other which means asking more questions and really listening rather than stating positions. I personally love talking to people who do not agree with me, but maybe I am a minority.

Even when you're not hiding you may have to couch them in unnatural ways. I often find that I have to tailor my statements to an absurd degree depending on the audience. It's like you have to wave an appealing stick or say the right prayer to indicate to the crowd you're not a heretic before they'll listen to you at all. For example, if you want to make a point about abortion and body autonomy in a conservative space, you may have to bring up covid vaccine mandates. If you want to make a point about there not being enough/any shelters for male victims of domestic violence in a left-wing space, you have to bookend it with support for female victims.

It's like everyone is so insecure about their beliefs they can't function without a constant background hum of validation.

A lot of people see this as a left-wing issue, but this was actually pretty surprising to read:

>In public, 43% of people say public schools are focusing too much on racism in the U.S. However, in private that number is ten points lower (33%). This trend of greater public agreement than private holds for almost all subgroups.

>Second, while in public a majority (60%) say discussing gender identity in public schools is inappropriate for young children (K-3), in private this is not the majority view (only 40% privately agree).

Shocking stuff! I think when anyone starts talking about "cancel culture" and people hiding beliefs, this is something that should be brought up more.

I'm not terribly surprised. We over index on the whole twitter-sphere cancel culture idea that impacts like 2% of People. For a less modernly-controversial example, I bet a lot more people hold socialist/communist beliefs than admit so in public. I would think most kids go through a "but wait, why is communism bad" phase and I bet many don't feel completely satisfied by the answer. Though I guess it depends on how you define held political beliefs. Some part of me still asks that question, even though the majority of me holds the moderate "normal" position on capitalism

Perhaps the question is interpreted differently when you ask privately.

If you were to ask me in public I would say that gender identity is an inappropriate topic for young children. But as a parent, I know my own kids can handle a "woke" teacher. In fact, it's good for them to see a concrete example of what we're talking about, so I would answer the question differently in private because I would be answering for my own family and not for what I think would be good for society.

Interesting result. I assumed that more people pretended to espouse left-wing beliefs, but secretly harbored conservative beliefs. It's interesting to see evidence that it's the reverse.

The evidence doesn't indicate the reverse.

It indicates that individuals have complex ethical matrices that don't map onto "for/against" binaries and worse: individuals work to mask that matrix given social context.

Reality has neither a liberal or conservative bias. People do.

People are pressured to agree with those around them, which political slant that is depends on their surroundings.

It's called preference falsification and is not new. Happens all throughout history, especially in dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. We are seeing a different version of it because of cancel culture, twitter mobs, foreign adversaries fueling the flames, and the like. Because internet...

It's interesting, when the right expresses beliefs unpopular with liberals, they then complain about cancel culture, twitter mobs, etc. When the left expresses opinions unpopular with the right, they're met with constant harassment with guns, death threats, fire and brimstone rhetoric, etc. Seems like one is a little more worrying than the other.

And when your in the middle, both sides attack

If you think liberals don't make death threats or engage in violence, or that conservatives don't cancel speech, your sources need updating.

Knockout punches do kill people.

Private Truths, Public Lies by Timur Kuran is a good read.

In the book he gave the theory of Preference falsification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preference_falsification

What's their methodology for determining people's "private" opinions?

They write in the abstract that «The primary methodology of the survey was a list experiment (also known as item count technique), a survey technique designed to maximize respondents’ privacy.»

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmatched_count

Wrong hat. Wrong phrasing. Wrongthink.

The method is always the same. It is mildly depressing, but not surprising.

Amusingly, or sadly - I did not decide yet - just the other day, I openly declined to discuss Tate for that very reason in public.

This seems completely unrelated to the comment you're responding to. They were asking how the study figured out what the private opinions were, not about what sort of opinions they were hiding.

I disagree. The question by parent was how it is determined. I merely provided several ways to determine the out-group as determined by the in-group. It is very relevant and, frankly, apt.

Q: "How does A determine B?"

A: "X doesn't like Y or Z for stupid reasons, so that's a thing that sucks and I don't like it."

The levels of irrelevancy compound.

No, it's not. I think the thing they were asking could be rephrased as "How did the researchers figure out what private beliefs people held if those beliefs were private?"

How does "Wrong hat. Wrong phrasing. Wrongthink." remotely answer that? Those are labels of particular types of actions/beliefs. They are not explanations of how researchers would find out something that people usually keep secret.

I re-read it and you are right. I jumped to a conclusion based on what I thought I read. I would edit my comment, but I don't think I can anymore.

Thank you ( and frankly apologize for wasting everyone's energy on correcting me on this )!

I mean, no duh? Of course we are? When the most extreme factions are the ones largely in control of the political dialogue, there's no point in even speaking if you don't hold extreme views. In part, we got here because Internet discourse is controlling the narrative, and Internet discourse is typically the most extreme discourse possible. (Places like HN are exceptions to this rule.) Plus, since we have a two-party system and we categorize everything as "left" and "right", those parties have become symbols of the most extreme ends of the debate going on within their own movements.

I don't want to be cryptic about my political beliefs on here: I am an extremely progressive person, what someone on the right would call a "leftist". I am far to the left of most currently elected politicians in the Democratic party. I think the US as a country is systematically racist, sexist, and transphobic. I don't think billionaires should be allowed to exist. If you name a "liberal" policy, I'm probably in favor of it. In most conversations in real life, I come off as an extremist among people who share most of my preferences.

And yet there are many people, and many online spaces, with whom and where I am still not extreme enough on every issue. And there are a lot of issues where my position is essentially "fine, I don't care very much", where the consensus seems to be that I should be spending all of my time on it - on multiple issues simultaneously! That if I am not doing "the work" all the time with every fiber of my being ("the work" mostly being tweeting and protesting, apparently) I am insufficient. I read an article the other day which argued, straight-faced, that it is sexist (and therefore insufficiently progressive) to... think that Zodiac signs are not based in science.

It's the same on the right, if not worse. I have family members who would be considered "RINOs" online because, while politically conservative, they don't support a literal violent uprising against the US government to install a leader who wasn't actually elected based on fraud that had no evidence. Someone who's in favor of school choice but doesn't think books about gay people in libraries is "grooming" would be laughed at. I know people who have every stereotypically conservative view in the book, yet, because they don't happen to support one particular politician strongly enough (or would rather see someone else with similar views elected), they're considered to be on the fringes.

So, like I said, no duh. There's no midpoint because everyone is running to the edges so fast. As a result, honestly... I think we're probably fucked. I'm not sure this is fixable. But I am sure it's exhausting.

The term for that is purity spiral. If you _recognize_ that you're in one, it's time to take a step back from that community as it rarely ends well.

What happens when it's the entire country doing this?

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