Separately, it isn’t that hard to find examples of disparate treatment of various positions on the continuum, independent of how extreme they are. In other words, there are lots of −4 discussion posts and comment that are well received, while there are fewer +4 discussion posts and comments equally well received.
I’d expect people’s ideas of where the zero point is to vary considerably, mainly thanks to selection effects: on average, people tend to be exposed mainly to political ideas similar to their own, partly due to political tribalism and partly because of geographical, age, and social class differences. That gives us a skewed local mean, and selection bias research tells us that people are not very good at compensating for that kind of thing even when they know it exists.
On average, therefore, we’d expect people with strong opinions on both sides of the aisle to feel that their side is meeting with a slightly harsher reception on the margins. That seems to explain most perceived political bias in this forum pretty well; taking the last poll results into account, if any mainstream position has an unusually hard time on the margins I’d expect it to be traditionalist conservatism. (Disclaimer: I am not a traditionalist.)
I’d expect people’s ideas of where the zero point is to vary considerably, mainly thanks to selection effects: on average, people tend to be exposed mainly to political ideas similar to their own, partly due to political tribalism and partly because of geographical, age, and social class differences. That gives us a skewed local mean, and selection bias research tells us that people are not very good at compensating for that kind of thing even when they know it exists.
On average, therefore, we’d expect people with strong opinions on both sides of the aisle to feel that their side is meeting with a slightly harsher reception on the margins. That seems to explain most perceived political bias in this forum pretty well; taking the last poll results into account, if any mainstream position has an unusually hard time on the margins I’d expect it to be traditionalist conservatism. (Disclaimer: I am not a traditionalist.)