I don’t think privileging the hypothesis is the problem here. While it is unlikely that the acausal effects on Republicans and Democrats is exactly balanced (a hypothesis we should not be privileging), without assymetric information about them, we should assume that any probability of a given margin of more Republicans being influenced would be balanced by an equal probability of the same margin of more Democrats being influenced, so the expected influence on each group is still balanced.
Yes, see my reply to Larks. The problem was that Yvain’s comment doesn’t admit the interpretation of referring to zero expected effect. And having exactly balanced influences is a very narrow hypothesis with no support, hence unduly privileged.
I don’t think privileging the hypothesis is the problem here. While it is unlikely that the acausal effects on Republicans and Democrats is exactly balanced (a hypothesis we should not be privileging), without assymetric information about them, we should assume that any probability of a given margin of more Republicans being influenced would be balanced by an equal probability of the same margin of more Democrats being influenced, so the expected influence on each group is still balanced.
The problem is that assymetric information is being ignored.
Yes, see my reply to Larks. The problem was that Yvain’s comment doesn’t admit the interpretation of referring to zero expected effect. And having exactly balanced influences is a very narrow hypothesis with no support, hence unduly privileged.
The fact that everyone else on the thread interpreted it that way shows that it does.
If that was the intended interpretation, mystery solved!