Interesting study of 2 americas.

Yes this one is particularly stupid. I don’t want other parents determining what is taught to my kids. I want educational professionals.

 

Sad, that being the best at something is now a bad thing. Ironically those on the right have become the people they supposedly hate - being against meritocracy and handing out participation trophies.

 

Great book. Glad you reminded us. I remember recommending it back in the day.

 

yeah. I feel like we’ve had this chat before about this book. IMO you are elite.

 

Here's a light

 

Bpbpft - you have me bouncing between amusement and embarrassment.

 

Definitely has the hallmarks of a hacked study. For those interested in how this works, 538 has an excellent interactive tool where everyone can prove that their political party is the best for the economy.

Hack your way to scientific glory

 

Why so so many people conflate Elite with elitist.

 

I don’t think most studies/surveys are as easily picked apart or have such bizarre criteria to select their sample… if we could even call this random sampling.

There are problems with political surveys, like the ones that only reach people via landline. But that’s just an example of antiquated methods. This (unsurprisingly given the cast of characters) seems more like political hackery. Forget “seems” like hackery. The thing is called “them vs us”.

 

What thing that presents itself as an economic study is doing that?

I see exit polling that suggests Trump voters still believe the election was “stolen” and other such nonsense. Yes, I think that is deranged and/or represents extremism. I also think that accurately represents the Republican primary voter.

I also think reports such as this, clearly aimed at riling the Trump audience, is part of that extremism. Aside from the bizarre criteria for defining elites (nothing elite at all about $150k), I very much doubt how they would frame a question on “freedom” to get people to respond we have too much freedom. Like… a big city dweller being against open carry or saying we should let teachers do their jobs would constitute them thinking we have “too much freedom”, and therefore these so-called elites are against freedom and are the “them” in this us vs them scenario? GTFO. Smells like right wing populist propaganda to me. (hint: if you consider the source for 2 seconds, it is).

 

Do you admit that this survey is so completely baked and cherry picked as to being worthless? When you saw the results did you not even think to question the validity or were you blinded by the affirmation that it gave you?

Has anyone said that all Trump voters are MAGA extremists? I will say a large portion of Trump primary voters are MAGA extremists.

 

Even if true, what does that have to do with *this* bs?

If the SPLC put out a study on “domestic terrorism”, white nationalism, or something that offends you associating with a certain political ideology - and it was posted here, maybe it would be more useful to point out the flaws in their data or pick apart the methodology? I can’t say the SPLC uses good methods. Nor could I say they don’t. But either way, what’s the point (other than whataboutism)?

 

I’ve always felt elite but sadly I have to move out of Charlotte first.

 

The results were completely non sensical, that’s why I questioned it. There is no way the results represent the thinkings of “the top 1%”. After digging into it, the 1% actually represents the top 1% who don’t live in houses and mostly in the NY area.

I had to Google SPLC. All I know is they put Sam Harris on hate watch so they clearly are a bunch of idiots. Why would you assume I give them credibility?

 

If your wider point is that people tend to give more credence to claims that are consistent with their worldview or associated with their groups, I certainly agree. In fact, I think this is one of the most important facts for us as a society to recognize if we want to be successful. Indeed, I’ve devoted endless brainpower to thinking about how to overcome this in my own life over the past 15 years or so.

For this particular study, I only said that it appeared hacked because of the nature of the groups it had compared. Like others above, I think our skepticism should be peaked whenever we see that effects are found with very specific and complicated samples. Here’s a good example from xkcd, where you can see that in order to recover the effect. the sample analyzed becomes increasing specific and arbitrary:



But again, I am quite in your corner regarding your larger thesis. Certainly, many junk studies from the left have been posted here and accepted by those with liberal worldviews. At this point, I am skeptical of all studies and have become almost a nihilist. I do think some studies are truly better than others, but identifying these studies is a real art that can be prone to ideological corruption.