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Comment by woopwoop | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this is just my partisanship, but the misperceptions on the conservative side seem much more egregious than the misperceptions on the liberal side. Liberal misperceptions are of the form of wishy-washy statements such as "racism still exists in America". Of course two different people can say that they agree with this statement while meaning fantastically different things. On the other hand, one of the conservative misperceptions is that the sizable majority of Democrats take the concrete, extreme position of being in favor of completely open borders. I'm a Democrat, and I actually do hold this extreme position. I can tell you the vast majority of Democrats who I've ever talked to disagree with me strongly about this; it doesn't even pass the sniff test. I fail to see any misperception on the Democratic side which is even close to being this severe.

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That particular statement stood out at me, juxtaposed right next to the statement that many Muslims are good Americans. At least 10% of respondents believe both that racism is dead and that few Muslims are good Americans!

The “open borders” statement is also interesting. The Republican estimate is almost identical to the estimate for “abolish ICE.” This suggests that many respondents think these two statements are equivalent, a sentiment I’ve seen many times. But of course the idea there is to turn over its functions to another agency or create a new agency. The actual perception gap there is probably a lot larger due to this difference in understanding.

Or consider “Donald Trump is a flawed person.” The listed perception gap for bat one is very small, with both estimate and reality being around 45%. Does that imply that 55% of Republicans think Trump is perfect? The vast majority of Republicans are Christians, and a core tenet of that religion is that Man is inherently flawed. It doesn’t add up. “Flawed” must have a totally different meaning here.

It’s also unfortunate that it doesn’t include each group's estimate of itself. It would give us a much better sense of how significant this gap is if we could see that too.

>At least 10% of respondents believe both that racism is dead and that few Muslims are good Americans!

Muslim isn’t a race.

How did I know someone would make this response.

The sort of person who had an anti-Muslim bias is generally not the sort of person with this level of nuanced understanding of race, culture, and religion.

Because it’s a common point of rhetorical contention? The facts of the matter are settled with proof by definition but the association between Islam and Arabs is a tarpit that’s useful or limiting depending on the team and the point being argued.

I’m simply a fan of speaking as carefully and clearly as possible. I don’t mind linking ideas in a conversation but doing so up front and in the open. Not with a wink and nod that we can intuit “what they really think.” Just look at how much weasel wording you wrote and assumptions made when clarifiying.

For someone who supposedly values clarity, I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.

To make my own point as clearly as possible: I am certain that people who say Muslims aren’t good Americans are racists and are a disproof of their own statement if they say that racism doesn’t exist in America.

If you have some counterargument to that then please go right ahead.

I suspect the disagreement is one of terminology. Does the definition of racist that you are using extend to both religion and culture?

>I have no idea what point you’re trying to make.

I’m trying not to have a dog in the race while commenting on the meta.

On the flipside, why dismiss a fact that completely explains the supposed contradiction?

Because I don’t believe it actually explains it.

I’m not actually an idiot. I know that “Muslim” isn’t a race. Replying with that is the sort of facile dismissal that makes the commenter feel smart but accomplishes nothing besides starting an argument.

I do not believe that Muslims (either in America or otherwise) are bad people or a threat. In fact, my understanding is that because America's Muslim community is generally not disenfranchised it is generally more difficult for Islamist terrorists to radicalize people in America without getting caught than it is in other countries where the Islamic community has suffered greater discrimination.

However in my experience, there are many people who do not believe that people from Muslim majority countries are evil but who do believe that Islam is an innately violent religion. At the same time, I do think it's possible that those beliefs are at least partially influenced by a, perhaps subconscious, fear of "the other".

Is this a nuanced understanding of such sort of persons?

I agree they could pick a better question. It's not interesting to know how many people agree with that statement.

However, it is very interesting that Democrats actually thought that Republicans would not agree with that statement

Perhaps, but there's two ways that this can be interpreted. One is that Democrats have a misperception about Republicans' beliefs on this issue. I'm sure to some extent this is true. The other, though, is that Democrats and Republicans interpret this statement in different ways. So Democrats believe the statement means X, and Republicans believe it means Y. Republicans tend to agree with X and disagree with Y. Democrats may have an accurate view of how Republicans feel about beliefs X and Y, but still underestimate how many Republicans agree with the statement.

Yep. Though I don't think the two ways are incompatible- if one side actually has an accurate understanding of the other side's point of view, they would also understand the different ways in which the question might be interpreted.

Interviewer: "Will Republicans say the sky is blue?"

Democrat: "No."

Republican: "Of course it's blue. It's hot pink, which is a shade of blue."

Democrat: "... wait, what? You think... huh?"

Interviewer: "Looks like the Democrat was wrong!"

Which is true... ish. Truthy.

Not sure where the negative reaction is coming from for this comment. It's a perfect analogy. You can swap Republican and Democrat in every place if you'd like; the problem is the same. It's presented as if we have a predicate like "PARTISAN believes X" and another predicate like "OTHER_PARTISAN estimates that for all PARTISAN P, (P believes X)".

But it's not as clean as this. Because of the messiness of natural language -- which goes double for political language -- there's no guaranteed equality between the two Xs.

Yeah, the main question under discussion here when I made the post seemed to be the racism one, which appears to have played out the way I depicted. The general problem is that it's really, really hard to design complex social science surveys that even maybe measure what you're tying to measure. This one's complex, and I'm pretty sure doesn't measure what they were trying to measure. A big chunk of the two major parties don't even agree on the terms these questions are about, meaning they may well be aware of why their counterparts would answer "yes" where they said they'd say "no", but consider their "yes" to be fundamentally about something else entirely.

I wish they'd included "do democrats support murder" and "do republicans support murder". That'd have been fun. Some would certainly have said yes on either side (abortion, the death penalty) and they'd be right from their point of view, even though "do you support murder?" would have been near-zero on both sides.

Why is it less interesting that about 20% of Republicans do agree with that statement (according to the article), than that Democrats think 50% do?

For what it's worth, I'm in favor of open borders (with customs intact) which would mean no requirement for a visa and unconditional work permits. However, it would have to also be paired with a federal job guarantee. This would help both Americans and exploited people in the global south.

I don't call myself a Democrat though.

As Milton Friedman remarked, full open borders are not compatible with a welfare state (which the "job guarantee" is one example of). To be sure, you can open up a lot compared to the status quo (especially wrt. highly-skilled immigration, which gets pointlessly restricted in most developed countries); but some degree of proper control is likely necessary.

Fwiw, a job guarantee is supposed to be doing useful work. If more people come and we can sustain them environmentally, they'll carry their own weight and more.

Immigrants are known to sacrifice more for future generations i.e. two families in a small house to make ends meet.

I think open borders is a good idea it's humane. I think adding a federal vat or sales tax would help get taxes from those who do come. I think full citizenship should definitely have a build up (state benefits, voting rights, etc), but anyone should be allowed to come/go as they please. A tax on goods purchased would ensure that all who are here would pay.

I think we could even move from income taxes to sales taxes and possibly property taxes (all purchases including business purchases like employee salaries, etc would have the same tax, all investments would have the tax on the initial investment, and the institute receiving the investment would pay a tax on the interest since they are paying that to the recipient before the recipient receives it).

Homes, boats, cars, airplanes, all taxed at purchase. Tax rate would be decidable by congress based on current needs. This would go hand in hand though with guaranteed basic income and ending welfare. Tax rate would burden the lower 1/3rd so GBI would need to be a necessity to offset that and would be adjustable based on housing estimates -- the goal should be to get everyone into a home, and if people are still homeless it's possibly not enough. Though, a home address should also be required within 3 months of receiving GBI to continue receiving it.

Welfare should turn into social workers who are helping the homeless adjust to being non-homeless and ensuring they meet minimal guidelines to receive GBI which is - be living in a home, and not just paying someone to say you live there.

I'm for single-payer but not sure how we'd pay for immigrant coverage, perhaps they'd need to use coverage from their home country of citizenship or buy a plan to be covered? It might be a moot issue if the costs of hospital and drugs go down enough and we end up paying less to cover anyone in the country, but I also think we need to work w/ the world in general to adopt open borders everywhere so the U.S. is not the only place people can/will go.

TLDR; Open borders yes, income tax replaced by VAT/Sales, Single Payer and Guaranteed Basic income are a must for citizens only for VAT to work. Be humane but don't encourage 'leeching', other than having access immigrants would not receive benefits for being here until they're citizens and would pay higher VAT than citizens and greencard holders. I think a job guarantee is unrealistic jobs come and go and there's an entire industry of self-employeed contractors now via UBER / DoorDash / etc that would provide opportunities for newbies to work and support their families.

Consumption based taxes are regressive and spare the wealthy who spend more on financial products, real estate, and businesses than on consumer goods.

If someone is so desperate for medical care that they'll leave their own country to come here, let's just give it to them. We're willing to "share democracy" through trillions in military spending, but this would be purely good thing. There's plenty of money to go around here.

> Liberal misperceptions are of the form of wishy-washy statements such as "racism still exists in America".

> One of the conservative misperceptions is that the sizable majority of Democrats take the concrete, extreme position of being in favor of completely open borders.

This seems like a bit of a strange comparison. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it kind of seems like you are comparing ~the general nature or typical/average of one side's perceptions (giving an example of a typical perception), while comparing that to what I suspect must be a comically hyperbolic example of an extreme (and extremely delusional) perception held by the other side.

I have the same perception but I think this is the folly of countering statistical evidence with anecdote.

It's probably less than ideal to start trying to rank the severity of the misconceptions in a general way, straight out of the gate. I just don't see the point of skipping the nuance and going straight for the partisan circle jerking.

It is like this in many countries: the right accuses the left of something and the left stretches over backwards not to make these claims true (even if they might make sense).

And the bad thing is, that many people believe these things. I had an old friend telling me frantically that we are guarantueed to get sharia law if I vote for any party left of the conservatives.

This stuff is utterly ridiculous

You are providing evidence of your perception of views that people on the right hold by talking about your experience with discussions you've had with people on the left. Have you actually spoken to people on the right to find out whether they believe people on the right hold those perceptions of people on the left?

I think what you would find is that most people on the right feel that most people on the left don't hold the opinion that borders should be open but that politicians and the media in general take that position simply because they are anti-Trump, that Trump has pushed liberal discourse pretty far to the left simply to counter Trump who, they would say, is actually relatively moderate in his policies, though not in his communication.

There are a lot of misconceptions like that on the left side of the spectrum. I know people who won't even visit the state of Mississippi because of the abortion law. Not that they were going to go before but they are definitely lumping millions of people into one very simplified bucket that they don't agree with. There's a lot of viciousness on both sides of the aisle at the moment.

As someone who doesn't identify with either group, both major parties seem equally toxic and rife with misconceptions or deliberate misrepresentations of the other side.

Counterpoint: there's no real reason to visit Mississippi for most people most of the time, and saying "I'm not going to go out of my way to do something I never intended on doing in the first place because political reasons" feels like a political statement.

Consider it an extension of social media activists (e.g. "Repost if you think X should be illegal!!!)

Is that really a counterpoint though? My point is that they're classifying an entire state of people for political reasons and thus are just as bad as the example the OP gave of the right assuming all people on the left want open borders.

They are both painting with overly broad brushes.

Sure. I mean, that's the whole point of the original article (I think? I don't really get it, but I'm also a fan of sociology and good statistics, so I was never going to like this crap).

"People think that people who aren't like them aren't like them in more ways than they actually are!" is...something? Probably not "bad" exactly, but not good either?

And I still don't get how this is a "broad brush"? People don't want to go on vacations to challenge their ideals. They're usually going somewhere to relax or visit something they find interesting. No offense to the state of Mississippi, but it's not known for being a tourist destination. I'm not generally a fan of cancel culture, and the abortion legislation their government passed moved the needle from "0% chance I'll ever visit" to "0% chance I'll ever visit" but I don't think someone is "misinterpreting" something when they decide not to visit somewhere they likely had no intention of visiting before new information was provided to them that opposed their worldview.

TL;dr- This anecdote doesn't help demonstrate anything meaningful to me. In this way, it is very much like the article. Language is very nuanced and often because we don't have infinite time we take linguistic shortcuts that can eliminate some clarity to our meaning/intention. That's all this really seems like.

You need to read my response in the context of replying to the parent. They stated that the right is uniquely bad at broadly painting the views of the left. I gave an example of the left doing the same thing.

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