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Comment by endominus | Hacker News Reader

The first sentence of the introduction clarifies the definition of "political tolerance", which seems to be a term of art; "Citizen support for the rights and liberties of even those political groups that they dislike, commonly termed political tolerance, is an important element of liberal democracy." So what is being measured is support for the civil liberties of political groups that are disliked by the respondent. Survey respondents were given a list of groups and asked to rate, from -4 to 4, a. how much they liked that group, and b. how much they would protect that group's rights.

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Also worth pointing out that this was a sample of only Mechanical Turk users in America, and members of the Danish Military in Denmark.

Draftees in Denmark, which includes all men, plus women who volunteer. So it's skewed, but not quite as skewed as if you used only self selected people.

I am told by people who do this kind of research that using Mechanical Turk isn't as pointless as it would sound. I have to take them at their word in that.

What do they say about Mechanical Turk? Is it that it's more representative of non-American point of view?

In this case they filtered for Americans. They put some effort into validating identity, and into ensuring that you are taking the survey seriously (trap questions, for example).

It doesn't strike me as sufficient but it's not my field.

I can say (but not visibly prove, unfortunately, NDAs) that large mechanical Turk surveys tend to get distinctly different results to mail and phone call surveys. Enough so that the commissioners of the study were not interested in replacing existing surveys with mechanical Turk.

> Citizen support for the rights and liberties of even those political groups that they dislike

Is exactly zero now for most of politicized Twitter with their loud congratulations of deplatforming of their opponents.

(Who otherwise think they are an example of tolerant)

I wonder if the research highlights their low cognitive ability.

"Deplatforming" has nothing to do with "rights and liberties", and everything to do with the "rights and liberties" of those whose computers they formerly used space on.

I am astounded by the amount of both political tolerance and cognitive ability that my political opponents has shown by downvoting my comment and outright flagging the (completely valid) criticism of your response.

You officially win all internets.

Is that extreme support? Not all liberties are private.

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