This maybe makes more sense in an open thread than as a rationality quote.
This certainly is interesting. While at a glance, really bad metacognition looks like the chief culprit, there are other explanations. For example, they could be confusing Panetta-Burns with something else they’ve heard of. I’d be curious in particular if the poll asked the same people about Panetta-Burns it asked about Simpson-Bowles. One could conceive of someone not remembering the name and thinking that is what was being talked about. Also, this may to some extent be purely a demonstration that people don’t like to look ignorant, and so they’ve said yes, but that that vocalized knowledge wouldn’t have any impact on their actual behavior.
What intrigues me the most is not that people said they knew of it, but that they had a formed opinion for or against. If they didn’t ask about Simpson-Bowles to the same people, then maybe as you suggest people had an opinion on S-B but misremembered and thought that this was the topic. But if they did, then the only explanation I can think of is that 8% of the people have such a strong positive prior for “bipartisan plans devised by a Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo” that they agree with them without knowing what they are, and the reverse is true for 17% of the people.
This maybe makes more sense in an open thread than as a rationality quote.
This certainly is interesting. While at a glance, really bad metacognition looks like the chief culprit, there are other explanations. For example, they could be confusing Panetta-Burns with something else they’ve heard of. I’d be curious in particular if the poll asked the same people about Panetta-Burns it asked about Simpson-Bowles. One could conceive of someone not remembering the name and thinking that is what was being talked about. Also, this may to some extent be purely a demonstration that people don’t like to look ignorant, and so they’ve said yes, but that that vocalized knowledge wouldn’t have any impact on their actual behavior.
What intrigues me the most is not that people said they knew of it, but that they had a formed opinion for or against. If they didn’t ask about Simpson-Bowles to the same people, then maybe as you suggest people had an opinion on S-B but misremembered and thought that this was the topic. But if they did, then the only explanation I can think of is that 8% of the people have such a strong positive prior for “bipartisan plans devised by a Clinton Chief of Staff/former western Republican Senator combo” that they agree with them without knowing what they are, and the reverse is true for 17% of the people.