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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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I don't think this is a useful kind of analysis, even if the survey wasn't online. It's still asking vague questions that different groups of people will take 10 seconds to answer and interpret in very different ways, and treating them like obvious truth. From this pdf, we find ... 68% of elite ivy league graduates support banning private air conditioning and non-essential travel to fight climate change? I just do not believe that, there's clearly something wrong with the poll. Even if there weren't, consider: For the 'freedom' vs 'government control' question, they plausibly just read it as "do you support conservative-coded views or liberal-coded views" and answered the one that was more liberal. And, you know, that's not an incorrect interpretation of the poll - you don't ask questions like "Does the united states provide too much individual freedom, too much government control, or both?" if you're trying to discern truth, the framing of that is heavily conservative, "government control" one side of a Russell conguation and "individual freedom" is on the other side of one. 90% (!) of ivy league graduate elites support "strict" rationing of "gas, meat, and electricity", when they probably just support carbon taxes in practice.

The whole presentation, along with the report, is on the discourse level of a political TV ad.

35% of the elite would rather cheat than lose a close election, rising to 69% of the ‘politically obsessed’. Only 7% of pleb voters would cheat. That seems like an underestimate to me – who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll? Wouldn’t people be embarrassed (or tactical) and lie – they’re cheats after all

... Okay, this just isn't true. Come on. "who goes and says ‘I would rather cheat than lose an election’ on a poll" - yes! that is a great question! You noticed something was off, which is good, and then somehow used that to infer that outgroup = bad. I know a fair number of "politically-obsessed" "elites", and even in private they don't talk like that at all! The answer is just "people who are lying or trolling on the poll".

Now, all that aside, the "elite" do have a number of beliefs that are bad and are harming themselves and others by implementing them. But bad analysis doesn't get one any closer to fixing that.

68% of elite ivy league graduates support banning private air conditioning and non-essential travel to fight climate change? I just do not believe that, there's clearly something wrong with the poll.

i think this is a reasonable possibility. i've heard it claimed there is a strong social desirability bias when answering surveys and the 'correct' thing to do is to fight climate change. just because they answered positively in a survey doesn't mean they would actually support the policies if it came to a vote. the cheating question is very weird and I suspect somehow they worded the question without explicitly saying cheating and claimed they question meant cheating in their summary.

68% of elite ivy league graduates support banning private air conditioning and non-essential travel to fight climate change? I just do not believe that, there's clearly something wrong with the poll.

I just do not believe that XX% of elite ivy league graduates wanted me to be taken to a gulag, or, preferably, just die, because I didn't get vaccinated. They are my peers. They are my friends. They are my neighbors. And yet....

Good find on that PDF, I clearly didn't spend enough time (any time) looking for extra information, I assumed it was kept for those paying for the research.

Elites would surely distinguish between carbon taxes and 'strict rationing' though. Rationing isn't a market mechanism like taxes or an emissions trading scheme. The polling could be distorted in various ways but I don't see anyway to misinterpret that question.