Hacker News Reader

Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

In a rather unpopular opinion, I think most people are more of a product of their environments than we like to believe. If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old. A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges. Certainly new generations have new ideas and put pressures on the environment, but I think there's too much weighting in most people's models of how much change is held up and requires older generations to exit the decision making process.

View on HN

> If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old.

To the contrary, it happens exactly that fast. https://scholars-stage.org/culture-wars-are-long-wars/

Bullshit

Between 2011 support was 70, 53, 39 for 18-34, 35-54, 55+ age groups. 2021 was 84, 72, 60. So that's ~20 points on 35-54 and 21 on 55+. That's 10 years. The 45+ transition into the 55 and the 25+ into the 35-54, but that doesn't explain the change. Why? Because the 2011 difference between 55+ and 35-54 is 14 points while 2021 it is 12. Even more importantly, the 55+ group in 2021 has a 7 point lead from the 35-55 age group from 2012.

This difference __cannot__ be explained from just people dying and the support "aging in" to the next age bracket. Literally 50% (7 points out of 14) is impossible to explain through an aging process.

Something more is going on, and thus, my claim is unequivocally supported by the data. (Note my claim isn't that specific, it is just that there is more than aging) Yes, culture wars are long, but they are shorter than can be explained from generations alone.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/350486/record-high-support-same...

This is so incorrect it's laughable. If you look at the data, public opinion in america has changed almost exactly in step with new generations emerging and old generations dying. People almost never change their opinion on political issues, they just die.

Except, of course, the politicians. It's always entertaining to watch them say or do the very thing they previously condemned.

That's precisely what you'd want politicians to do: represent the shifting will of the people.

Or, dare I say, learn what they themselves were wrong about and become right about it.

We vilify politicians when they change direction and make them dance around and mince words, when what they really want to say is "I was wrong before".

Yeah I don't get why people get upset over that. It's like the people that are like "we didn't learn that in school when I was your age." Times change, we learn, we correct, we update our beliefs. Being static is not healthy and creates a dissonance between the public and the __representatives__. i.e. the representatives become disaligned from those they are supposed to represent. And as my claim (which I add data to in other replies) shows, that's not even just a function of age.

We should commend people for updating their beliefs, not condemn. To me, one of the most honorable phrases one can say is "I stand corrected."

We wouldn't need politicians if all they did was repeat opinion polls. And very very few politicians say that they were wrong or that they stand corrected- they'll just blame their earlier comments on "it was a different time" or some similar nonsense.

To admit they were wrong would be to say everyone who previously voted for them was also wrong. We don't have that much bravery from most of our politicians.

Editing to add: of course, the real reason nobody expects them to ever say they were wrong is because nobody trusts they actually fully believe what they say in the first place.

Did you look at the data? Because I don't think you did. I lay it out here[0]. In short, what we can see is that in 2021 the 55+ age group has higher support than the 35-54 group did in 2012. This is not people aging into the new bins and bringing their support with them. If that were what was happening, then the 2021 55+ group could not have greater support than the 2012 35-54 group. There is missing growth from your model. We're literally talking about 50% of the growth being unexplainable by your model.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39087434

>A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges.

Do you live on one of the US coasts? Because if so, you are probably right - before Obergefell, most people didn't care about your private life and after Obergefell it could all finally be out in the open. But in a big chunk of this country, it really doesn't matter what the courts decided because there is major political and religious pressure that says that ain't ok. Don't pretend for a moment that a wide swath of states wouldn't send us straight back to 1863 if they could.

Not important. I'm working off of US polling data. See sister comments for reasoning. Everyone that is calling me laughable and "haven't looked at the data" has clearly not themselves.

I’m not calling you “laughable” I’m saying that the data doesn’t matter. We lost Roe, there’s no reason to believe that ugly politics won’t seek to roll back Obergefell too given the opportunity. These people don’t give a shit what the majority think.

Sorry, I'm not saying __you__ are saying my claim is laughable, I'm saying "people" are[0]. The fact of the matter is 2/3 responses I got were certain I'm wrong with providing no evidence (@Georgelemental's link is not backed by data, only shows one plot related to belief in god, and is really just a socialist propaganda article that is shoehorning economic discussion into cultural that creates a premise that would validate my claim but contradicts their own (if socialism solves the issues, then it isn't about age... Though I'll agree that economic factors are important for estimating rate of cultural change)).

I agree with your point, but to be clear, it is not contrary to what I claimed. My claim is about how ethical values change faster than people age. See the reply in [0] or the linked comment there. The claim shouldn't be controversial because it is ridiculous to believe that your beliefs become fixed at some certain age. The fallacy is that people will think "well I update my beliefs but others don't" (i.e. I'm Bayesian, but others are immutable). You're not that unique.

Certainly this change can go in any direction. It is also a common fallacy to believe younger = liberal while older = conservative. While there is correlation, there is not much to suggest causation. Especially considering there are young people that are Republicans and many old people that are Democrats. We can argue nuance, but that's a different claim. I don't think most people have a good understanding of the demographics of voters[1] and instead focus on what data they want to see. Some of that complexity may be illustrated in looking at Figure 3 (education) closely. The most apparent differential is graduate level education. If you look at the top part carefully you'll see that there's a subtle distinction between completion of a college education vs not and the main difference is in graduate education, which is a much smaller number of people. The graph can be hard to read because the size of each bin is directly proportional to the education level (largest bin is H.S. (~80% of Americans) or less and postgrad is smallest (~5% of Americans if counting professional degrees)). Also take specific note at the differentials in the bottom plot as there is inferential race based data.

Basically, I'm saying it's a bit complex and people are trying to overly simplify the problem. I even think your claim of coast vs central is a point, but I'm not sure it really discredits the claim which is independent of party affiliation or if someone is rural or urban (which is highly correlated with cost vs central).

Oversimplification won't give you an approximate answer, but often will lead you in the wrong direction.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082963

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com