Seconded. And I’ll add that asking whether people support the renewal of the nuclear deterrent was a good one for centre/left people here in the uk.
For right-wingers, something like getting them to admit that Scandinavia is doing something right with its high tax system and consequent high happiness.
It isn’t topical anymore but a couple years ago getting an American liberal’s take on the Dubai Ports World controversy worked pretty well. Also, progressive criticisms of the Bush administration for not implementing more aggressive cargo inspections and airplane security were pretty much just about getting in shots at the administration and not based on evidence.
Last year’s debates on bailouts for the automobile and banking sectors struck me as mostly consisting of political signaling with only a handful of people who actually had any idea what they were talking about. You’d see people arguing either side without actually making any reference to any of the economics involved. I.e. “We need to make sure these people don’t lose their jobs!” versus “You’re just trying to help out your fat cat friends!”.
Getting someone on the center-left to admit certain advantages of free trade and market economies probably works as well. The brute opposition to “sweatshops” without offering any constructive policy to provide the people who work in such places with alternatives strikes me as another good example.
It’s a little harder for me to do this for the American right-wing since a sizeable portion (definitely not all of it, just an especially vocal part) of it appears to hold their positions for exclusively non-evidential reasons. Some of these reasons don’t event appear to have propositional content. (Maybe conservatives see the left this way, though. It might just be that I’m too far away from the right-wing to see this clearly).
A conservative’s position on industry subsides- agriculture, textile, sugar etc. is a probably a decent indicator, though. I’d say immigration but the people who oppose it might have good reasons given their terminal values.
A lot of times you can tell when someone holds a position for political reasons just by their diction. It is a really bad sign If someone is using the same phrases and buzzwords as the candidates they support. This reminds me: A little over a year ago the college Democrats here held a debate for the Democratic Presidential Primary. Each candidate was represented by a student who was supporting that candidate. I thought it had potential since being unofficial representatives the students would be comfortable leveling some harsh criticisms and really diving into their reasons for supporting their candidate. The actual candidates are always too afraid of screwing up or alienating someone to diverge from their talking points. What actually happened isn’t surprising once you think about the kind of people who are heavily involved in the college branches of political parties (especially at my university). If you haven’t guessed it, what happened was this: Every student representative sat on the stage reciting the very same talking points their candidate was already using to dodge criticisms and spin issues in the real debates. It was like a horrifying training session where students learn to ignore evidence, reason in favor of political hackery and bullshit.
It was like a horrifying training session where students learn to ignore evidence, reason in favor of political hackery and bullshit.
I can’t quite summon up all the splenetic juices I need to hate that sort of thing the way it needs to be hated. I live in Canada, and crikey are our politicians langues-du-bois. You should have seen the candidates debate at the last election. Every one of them just hit their keywords, as I recall. The Conservative Harper tinkled the ivories about “tough on crime,” “fiscal responsibility” and “liberal corruption” (mercifully not “family values”). The Liberal Dion played a crab canon about “environment” and “recession.” And the NDP (Social-Democratic) Layton just did a sort of Ambrosian chant incorporating every word that has ever made a progressive feel warm and fuzzy inside: “rights” “working families” “aboriginals” “choice” “fat cats” and “social spending.” It made me want to elect Silvio Berlusconi.
Looking over your comments, the breadth of your vocabulary really is splendid. Do words like “splenetic” just come to your tongue or are you commenting away with a thesaurus open?
Heh, it’s kind of you to say. Basically, I grew up on a steady diet of shows like Black Adder, Jeeves and Wooster, Fawlty Towers… and authors like Douglas Adams, Rex Stout & Terry Pratchett. So my way of expressing myself has become more than a bit idiosyncratic.
Mostly I just didn’t recognize any of the names, but I did recognize what you were talking about. I don’t think clarification is what is really necessary here; since the purpose of your post seems to be more anecdotal evidence and venting than a fountain of new ideas.
If your post WAS supposed to be a fountain of new ideas, then it could use a little extra explanation.
I feel like that came off as a little more negative than I wanted it to so I’d like to note that I did enjoy and vote up your post.
More the European way. It definitely does not have the strong negative connotations, even among conservatives. Also worth noting that one of our two main political parties is actually called the Liberal Party of Canada.
Another fun fact: Liberals are also affectionately known as Grits, and Conservatives as Tories.
Do you Canadians use liberal like we Americans use it or like Europeans use it?
More the European way...Also worth noting that one of our two main political parties is actually called the Liberal Party of Canada.
My understanding is that that party is roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Democrats or U.K. Labour—which would make the usage of “liberal” much more like the American usage (meaning “left-wing”) than the European usage (meaning “opposed to high levels of economic regulation”).
In Australia the Liberal party is right-wing (liberal on free trade policies, not on social policies), so I tend to get confused about discussions of “liberals” in the US unless I remember to switch definitions before reading.
A lot of times you can tell when someone holds a position for political reasons just by their diction.
Very true. When I was fourteen years old, there were presidential elections after Mitterand’s two terms (Did I tell you I was French? I’m French.). I remember a friend saying we needed change “after fourteen years of socialism”, and at the time I thought there was no way that was his opinion, and that he was merely repeating what (most likely) his father said.
I guess it’s even easier to recognize talking points in kids, because it’s things they would never spontaneously say. I also remember my mom pointing out that a “letter to the editor” in a Children’s newspaper was probably just the kid parroting a parent, because no child would write things like that—and I was mildly embarrassed because I hadn’t noticed at first. Hmm, I’ll have to point that kind of stuff to my kids too.
For right-wingers, something like getting them to admit that Scandinavia is doing something right with its high tax system and consequent high happiness.
The phrasing might be better in a different direction:
″...getting them to admit that Scandinavia is not doing something inherently wrong with it’s high tax system, given that they have relatively high happiness and quality of life.”
(in that right-wing conservatives state that high taxes inherently will cause reduction of standard of living/happiness)
″...getting them to admit that Scandinavia is not doing something inherently wrong with it’s high tax system, given that they have relatively high happiness and quality of life.”
There is another conservative argument against this: To acknowledge that it might actually be true that the average happiness is increased, but to reject the morality of it.
Too see why someone might think that, imagine the following scenario: You find scientific evidence for the fact that if one forces the minority of the best-looking young women of a society at gunpoint to be of sexual service to whomever wishes to be pleased (there will be a government office regulating this) increases the average happiness of the country.
In other words, my argument questions that the happiness (needs/wishes/etc.) of a majority is at all relevant. This position is also known as individualism and at the root of (American) conservatism.
Too see why someone might think that, imagine the following scenario: You find scientific evidence for the fact that if one forces the minority of the best-looking young women of a society at gunpoint to be of sexual service to whomever wishes to be pleased (there will be a government office regulating this) increases the average happiness of the country.
If you disregard the happiness of the women, anyway
In other words, my argument questions that the happiness (needs/wishes/etc.) of a majority is at all relevant. This position is also known as individualism and at the root of (American) conservatism.
This can be looked at as a form of deontology: govts don’t have the right to tax anybody, and the outcomes of wisely spent taxation don’t affect that.
If you disregard the happiness of the women, anyway
No, it suffices if less women’s happiness sacrificed are needed than the amount of men whose happiness will be increased (assuming the “amount of happiness”—whatever that is to mean in the first place—is equal per individual). Then you can regard the happiness of women and still score a net increase in happiness. That’s the whole point of the argument.
I don’t understand what you were saying in the second sentence.
Although I accept this argument in the abstract, I oppose anyone actually trying to propose a policy like this in the real world because, historically, men have overvalued their feelings/utilons as compared to women’s feelings/utilons. It’s a simple ingroup bias, but similar biases in “amount of happiness”-evaluation have historically resulted in the stable maintenance of large pockets of unhappiness in societies (see also: slavery).
historically, men have overvalued their feelings/utilons as compared to women’s feelings/utilons.
I can’t see why this kind of behavior would be adaptive, and experimentsdon’t seem to bear this hypothesis out. It seems that (as should be expected) men favor women. Also, in-group bias is much weaker in men in general.
I’m not sure why women would have evolved to favor women too though.
I can’t see why this kind of behavior would be adaptive, and experiments don’t seem to bear this hypothesis out.
Perhaps I am missing something, but I didn’t see how the study or the wiki article you linked to addressed specifically how men value “their feelings/utilons as compared to women’s feelings/utilons” ? Both the experiment and the article mention prefering mothers over fathers and attributing a higher level of violence to men, neither of which I see as intrinsically linked to what I understood the previous poster to be saying. (I could be not-seeing the link, and/or I could be misinterpreting what point hesperidia was trying to make).
Related, but not entirely the same—I’m also not clear on how the “women are wonderful” effect is in any way correlated with “taking actions and/or advocating policies that benefit women as much as or more than men.” History (and religion) is full of rhetoric that waxes eloquent about the wonderful nature of women, even while there is much debate as to the “sexist” nature of these societies/religions.
It’s also entirely possible that I’m misinterpreting the point you’re trying to make. If that’s so, I’d be interested in clarifying that further.
So, I was especially confused by the claim that “in-group bias is much weaker in men in general.” I knew that in fact, when asked to play a job interviewer or evaluator, men punished women more often than other men for trying to negotiate salary, whereas women punished everyone equally.
But I do see other evidence that calling this “in-group bias” gives the wrong idea. Maybe women tend to have a greater belief in ‘gender roles,’ while disagreeing with men on what those roles require/allow for men specifically. This however seems kind of odd when we see that participants in the first study (both male and female) were less likely to ask for more money from a female evaluator. I guess the women there may have a false picture of men’s motives if they think men will punish them more than another women would (I don’t know the exact numbers). Except, what can the men be thinking if they know that 1. women would treat them the same as everyone would treat women, and 2. the men would treat themselves more leniently than they would treat women?
ETA: actually, it seems unclear from the abstract if men did behave differently with a female evaluator!
No, it suffices if less women’s happiness sacrificed are needed than the amount of men whose happiness will be increased (assuming the “amount of happiness”—whatever that is to mean in the first place—is equal per individual). Then you can regard the happiness of women and still score a net increase in happiness. That’s the whole point of the argument.
^ Upvoted for this.
I don’t understand what you were saying in the second sentence.
If you reject deals with positive expected outcomes because they violate some sort of ethical law, you’re a deontologist. That’s what deontology is.
For right-wingers, something like getting them to admit that Scandinavia is doing something right with its high tax system and consequent high happiness.
In reality you can make the bar even lower. Just ask the right wingers if they’re even aware of an empirical study comparing the relative happiness of Scandinavians to others.
Here’s something I believe—I might as well toss it in as a possible rationality test. I think immigration/emigration flows are a good rough test for ranking how good places are to live in. There are barriers to moving, so it’s only a rough estimate. Any place which people are willing to take a high risk of dying to leave is a bad place.
However, the fact that there isn’t a significant number of people moving from the US to western/northern Europe or vice versa suggests that they’re roughly on a par.
It suggests they believe they’re on par. All else being equal, you’re right.
With Scandinavia in particular, there’s an issue in that immigrating is really hard. Which is to say, we require you to learn our language and culture. Terrible taskmasters, we are.
It’s really easy to emigrate from a country in the European Union to Sweden (presumably also Denmark, but not Norway because it’s not in the union). I mean, I’m doing it at 3 AM while browsing the web! Is there a legal requirement to learn the language for immigrants from outside the EU, or did you mean you can’t make it in practice without speaking the language? I would expect that sitting around in a country for five years automatically teaches you its culture.
The first, with Norway, in practice. If you have particularly valuable skills they’ll overlook it, and being western helps, but immigration has pretty much had it with third-world immigrants lately.
I believe (I’m an expat, so haven’t followed that closely) that we just added a requirement to join some natives on cultural trips of various kinds, too. Going hiking, that kind of thing...
Is there a legal requirement to learn the language for immigrants from outside the EU, or did you mean you can’t make it in practice without speaking the language?
The second, mostly.
Are there any countries to which that doesn’t apply?
You’re saying it wouldn’t be that hard to live in the US without speaking English? That doesn’t sound very likely to me (though I’ve never been there).
(Or do you think that all people who might consider moving to the US because they think that’s a better place to live in already speak decent English?)
You’re saying it wouldn’t be that hard to live in the US without speaking English? That doesn’t sound very likely to me (though I’ve never been there).
Ethnic conclaves are probably what Baughn is thinking of. I have the impression that this could be true in the China and Koreatowns in the biggest cities, and there are probably places where you can live happily knowing only Spanish. (I gather from Amy Chua’s World on Fire that there are many such conclaves throughout the world; it helps to be a wealthier minority.)
Whether or not the nuclear deterrent should in fact be renewed, inability to see the point of (as opposed to mere considered disagreement with) “if you want peace, prepare for war” seems like valid proof of political derangement.
Oh, I see! You mean that a deranged liberal is likely to say “nuclear armament cannot possibly be a solution for anything in principle?” Yeah, that makes sense.
Come to think of it, the fear of anything nuclear, period, is probably a good predictor of irrationality on the left, as is a knee-jerk negative response to, i.a., GE crops.
Come to think of it, the fear of anything nuclear, period, is probably a good predictor of irrationality on the left, as is a knee-jerk negative response to, i.a., GE crops.
Simple ignorance can confuse the issue; the real indicator is how they deal with argument (assuming you really know your stuff and can present a compelling argument).
And I’ll add that asking whether people support the renewal of the nuclear deterrent was a good one for centre/left people here in the uk.
The overwhelming evidence for it being...?
For right-wingers, something like getting them to admit that Scandinavia is doing something right with its high tax system and consequent high happiness.
The only thing happiness research has shown so far is that it’s far more complicated than “tl;dr” summaries like that.
Seconded. And I’ll add that asking whether people support the renewal of the nuclear deterrent was a good one for centre/left people here in the uk.
For right-wingers, something like getting them to admit that Scandinavia is doing something right with its high tax system and consequent high happiness.
It isn’t topical anymore but a couple years ago getting an American liberal’s take on the Dubai Ports World controversy worked pretty well. Also, progressive criticisms of the Bush administration for not implementing more aggressive cargo inspections and airplane security were pretty much just about getting in shots at the administration and not based on evidence.
Last year’s debates on bailouts for the automobile and banking sectors struck me as mostly consisting of political signaling with only a handful of people who actually had any idea what they were talking about. You’d see people arguing either side without actually making any reference to any of the economics involved. I.e. “We need to make sure these people don’t lose their jobs!” versus “You’re just trying to help out your fat cat friends!”.
Getting someone on the center-left to admit certain advantages of free trade and market economies probably works as well. The brute opposition to “sweatshops” without offering any constructive policy to provide the people who work in such places with alternatives strikes me as another good example.
It’s a little harder for me to do this for the American right-wing since a sizeable portion (definitely not all of it, just an especially vocal part) of it appears to hold their positions for exclusively non-evidential reasons. Some of these reasons don’t event appear to have propositional content. (Maybe conservatives see the left this way, though. It might just be that I’m too far away from the right-wing to see this clearly).
A conservative’s position on industry subsides- agriculture, textile, sugar etc. is a probably a decent indicator, though. I’d say immigration but the people who oppose it might have good reasons given their terminal values.
A lot of times you can tell when someone holds a position for political reasons just by their diction. It is a really bad sign If someone is using the same phrases and buzzwords as the candidates they support. This reminds me: A little over a year ago the college Democrats here held a debate for the Democratic Presidential Primary. Each candidate was represented by a student who was supporting that candidate. I thought it had potential since being unofficial representatives the students would be comfortable leveling some harsh criticisms and really diving into their reasons for supporting their candidate. The actual candidates are always too afraid of screwing up or alienating someone to diverge from their talking points. What actually happened isn’t surprising once you think about the kind of people who are heavily involved in the college branches of political parties (especially at my university). If you haven’t guessed it, what happened was this: Every student representative sat on the stage reciting the very same talking points their candidate was already using to dodge criticisms and spin issues in the real debates. It was like a horrifying training session where students learn to ignore evidence, reason in favor of political hackery and bullshit.
I can’t quite summon up all the splenetic juices I need to hate that sort of thing the way it needs to be hated. I live in Canada, and crikey are our politicians langues-du-bois. You should have seen the candidates debate at the last election. Every one of them just hit their keywords, as I recall. The Conservative Harper tinkled the ivories about “tough on crime,” “fiscal responsibility” and “liberal corruption” (mercifully not “family values”). The Liberal Dion played a crab canon about “environment” and “recession.” And the NDP (Social-Democratic) Layton just did a sort of Ambrosian chant incorporating every word that has ever made a progressive feel warm and fuzzy inside: “rights” “working families” “aboriginals” “choice” “fat cats” and “social spending.” It made me want to elect Silvio Berlusconi.
I did not understand any of this post, but I enjoyed all of it.
ETA: I am now envisioning a Canadian man just chanting those phrases, over and over, clapping his hands and stomping his feet.
I endeavour to give satisfaction. =)
Anything I can clarify? Probably did overdo the classical music metaphors a little...
Looking over your comments, the breadth of your vocabulary really is splendid. Do words like “splenetic” just come to your tongue or are you commenting away with a thesaurus open?
Heh, it’s kind of you to say. Basically, I grew up on a steady diet of shows like Black Adder, Jeeves and Wooster, Fawlty Towers… and authors like Douglas Adams, Rex Stout & Terry Pratchett. So my way of expressing myself has become more than a bit idiosyncratic.
Mostly I just didn’t recognize any of the names, but I did recognize what you were talking about. I don’t think clarification is what is really necessary here; since the purpose of your post seems to be more anecdotal evidence and venting than a fountain of new ideas.
If your post WAS supposed to be a fountain of new ideas, then it could use a little extra explanation.
I feel like that came off as a little more negative than I wanted it to so I’d like to note that I did enjoy and vote up your post.
Do you Canadians use liberal like we Americans use it or like Europeans use it?
More the European way. It definitely does not have the strong negative connotations, even among conservatives. Also worth noting that one of our two main political parties is actually called the Liberal Party of Canada.
Another fun fact: Liberals are also affectionately known as Grits, and Conservatives as Tories.
My understanding is that that party is roughly the equivalent of the U.S. Democrats or U.K. Labour—which would make the usage of “liberal” much more like the American usage (meaning “left-wing”) than the European usage (meaning “opposed to high levels of economic regulation”).
uh—interesting. Thanks for pointing that out.
In Australia the Liberal party is right-wing (liberal on free trade policies, not on social policies), so I tend to get confused about discussions of “liberals” in the US unless I remember to switch definitions before reading.
There is that. I thought Jack was getting at the negative connotation aspect.
The Liberal party here is basically centre-left.
Very true. When I was fourteen years old, there were presidential elections after Mitterand’s two terms (Did I tell you I was French? I’m French.). I remember a friend saying we needed change “after fourteen years of socialism”, and at the time I thought there was no way that was his opinion, and that he was merely repeating what (most likely) his father said.
I guess it’s even easier to recognize talking points in kids, because it’s things they would never spontaneously say. I also remember my mom pointing out that a “letter to the editor” in a Children’s newspaper was probably just the kid parroting a parent, because no child would write things like that—and I was mildly embarrassed because I hadn’t noticed at first. Hmm, I’ll have to point that kind of stuff to my kids too.
Is the causation really that clear?
The phrasing might be better in a different direction:
″...getting them to admit that Scandinavia is not doing something inherently wrong with it’s high tax system, given that they have relatively high happiness and quality of life.”
(in that right-wing conservatives state that high taxes inherently will cause reduction of standard of living/happiness)
There is another conservative argument against this: To acknowledge that it might actually be true that the average happiness is increased, but to reject the morality of it.
Too see why someone might think that, imagine the following scenario: You find scientific evidence for the fact that if one forces the minority of the best-looking young women of a society at gunpoint to be of sexual service to whomever wishes to be pleased (there will be a government office regulating this) increases the average happiness of the country.
In other words, my argument questions that the happiness (needs/wishes/etc.) of a majority is at all relevant. This position is also known as individualism and at the root of (American) conservatism.
Even better, we could imagine that torturing Jews to death increases average happiness, because of all the happy racists.
Or removing Freedom would end all wars and poverty
Or [insert sacred value tradeoff here] would result in positive net utility.
IOW, that seems like a mindkilling example.
If you disregard the happiness of the women, anyway
This can be looked at as a form of deontology: govts don’t have the right to tax anybody, and the outcomes of wisely spent taxation don’t affect that.
No, it suffices if less women’s happiness sacrificed are needed than the amount of men whose happiness will be increased (assuming the “amount of happiness”—whatever that is to mean in the first place—is equal per individual). Then you can regard the happiness of women and still score a net increase in happiness. That’s the whole point of the argument.
I don’t understand what you were saying in the second sentence.
Although I accept this argument in the abstract, I oppose anyone actually trying to propose a policy like this in the real world because, historically, men have overvalued their feelings/utilons as compared to women’s feelings/utilons. It’s a simple ingroup bias, but similar biases in “amount of happiness”-evaluation have historically resulted in the stable maintenance of large pockets of unhappiness in societies (see also: slavery).
I can’t see why this kind of behavior would be adaptive, and experiments don’t seem to bear this hypothesis out. It seems that (as should be expected) men favor women. Also, in-group bias is much weaker in men in general.
I’m not sure why women would have evolved to favor women too though.
Perhaps I am missing something, but I didn’t see how the study or the wiki article you linked to addressed specifically how men value “their feelings/utilons as compared to women’s feelings/utilons” ? Both the experiment and the article mention prefering mothers over fathers and attributing a higher level of violence to men, neither of which I see as intrinsically linked to what I understood the previous poster to be saying. (I could be not-seeing the link, and/or I could be misinterpreting what point hesperidia was trying to make).
Related, but not entirely the same—I’m also not clear on how the “women are wonderful” effect is in any way correlated with “taking actions and/or advocating policies that benefit women as much as or more than men.” History (and religion) is full of rhetoric that waxes eloquent about the wonderful nature of women, even while there is much debate as to the “sexist” nature of these societies/religions.
It’s also entirely possible that I’m misinterpreting the point you’re trying to make. If that’s so, I’d be interested in clarifying that further.
So, I was especially confused by the claim that “in-group bias is much weaker in men in general.” I knew that in fact, when asked to play a job interviewer or evaluator, men punished women more often than other men for trying to negotiate salary, whereas women punished everyone equally.
But I do see other evidence that calling this “in-group bias” gives the wrong idea. Maybe women tend to have a greater belief in ‘gender roles,’ while disagreeing with men on what those roles require/allow for men specifically. This however seems kind of odd when we see that participants in the first study (both male and female) were less likely to ask for more money from a female evaluator. I guess the women there may have a false picture of men’s motives if they think men will punish them more than another women would (I don’t know the exact numbers). Except, what can the men be thinking if they know that 1. women would treat them the same as everyone would treat women, and 2. the men would treat themselves more leniently than they would treat women?
ETA: actually, it seems unclear from the abstract if men did behave differently with a female evaluator!
^ Upvoted for this.
If you reject deals with positive expected outcomes because they violate some sort of ethical law, you’re a deontologist. That’s what deontology is.
In reality you can make the bar even lower. Just ask the right wingers if they’re even aware of an empirical study comparing the relative happiness of Scandinavians to others.
Here’s something I believe—I might as well toss it in as a possible rationality test. I think immigration/emigration flows are a good rough test for ranking how good places are to live in. There are barriers to moving, so it’s only a rough estimate. Any place which people are willing to take a high risk of dying to leave is a bad place.
However, the fact that there isn’t a significant number of people moving from the US to western/northern Europe or vice versa suggests that they’re roughly on a par.
It suggests they believe they’re on par. All else being equal, you’re right.
With Scandinavia in particular, there’s an issue in that immigrating is really hard. Which is to say, we require you to learn our language and culture. Terrible taskmasters, we are.
It’s really easy to emigrate from a country in the European Union to Sweden (presumably also Denmark, but not Norway because it’s not in the union). I mean, I’m doing it at 3 AM while browsing the web! Is there a legal requirement to learn the language for immigrants from outside the EU, or did you mean you can’t make it in practice without speaking the language? I would expect that sitting around in a country for five years automatically teaches you its culture.
The second, mostly.
The first, with Norway, in practice. If you have particularly valuable skills they’ll overlook it, and being western helps, but immigration has pretty much had it with third-world immigrants lately.
I believe (I’m an expat, so haven’t followed that closely) that we just added a requirement to join some natives on cultural trips of various kinds, too. Going hiking, that kind of thing...
We do take our hiking seriously.
Are there any countries to which that doesn’t apply?
Yes, most notably the USA.
You’re saying it wouldn’t be that hard to live in the US without speaking English? That doesn’t sound very likely to me (though I’ve never been there).
(Or do you think that all people who might consider moving to the US because they think that’s a better place to live in already speak decent English?)
Ethnic conclaves are probably what Baughn is thinking of. I have the impression that this could be true in the China and Koreatowns in the biggest cities, and there are probably places where you can live happily knowing only Spanish. (I gather from Amy Chua’s World on Fire that there are many such conclaves throughout the world; it helps to be a wealthier minority.)
Now this I would not have thought of. Nuclear energy perhaps...
Do you think the nuclear deterrent should be renewed or should not, & why is it a litmus test?
Whether or not the nuclear deterrent should in fact be renewed, inability to see the point of (as opposed to mere considered disagreement with) “if you want peace, prepare for war” seems like valid proof of political derangement.
Oh, I see! You mean that a deranged liberal is likely to say “nuclear armament cannot possibly be a solution for anything in principle?” Yeah, that makes sense.
Come to think of it, the fear of anything nuclear, period, is probably a good predictor of irrationality on the left, as is a knee-jerk negative response to, i.a., GE crops.
Simple ignorance can confuse the issue; the real indicator is how they deal with argument (assuming you really know your stuff and can present a compelling argument).
The overwhelming evidence for it being...?
The only thing happiness research has shown so far is that it’s far more complicated than “tl;dr” summaries like that.