I confess: I don't understand the other side

[BrainFireBob]

Allright, I haven’t heard back, so I’ll provide both halves.

Liberal Position: Global Warming. Something needs to be done!

Why don’t conservatives hold this position?

Well, they may, or may not.

Alternatives include:

1. I’m not convinced (Typically an uninformed opinion- for instance, if there’s global warming, why is it so cold in July?)

2. What something, and why us?

Bear in mind that there is no solution yet, because the ramifications are so far from understood it’s laughable the way action is agitated for- reducing emissions, etc., slows the spread of the problem, they’re not solutions. It’s a remote possibility that the planet will even find a new equilibrium.

So, it’s not that conservatives don’t see the problem- it’s that those that do are waiting for an actual solution to present itself, not a symbolic act that in no way alters, reduces, or otherwises does anything to the problem, while a number also don’t see the problem, because the simplified version presented in the media does not make sense to them because it’s oversimplified.

I even know a number (Type 3, I guess) who refuse to accept global warming because they are suspicious of liberal alarmism being used to cover a hidden agenda- trying to use it to “get a foot in the door” piece of legislation. This does happen politically, and as a matter of course they suspect any piece of alarmism handed to them. Call these the anti-liberals, I suppose.

Is that understandable?

[Mr.Svinlesha]

Natty Bumppo:

*And there was this I found from a NYT blog by Judith Warner:

Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,” he told me in a phone interview.

Read the article and you get the idea I have had for a while. Liberals are shooting themselves in the foot by not trying harder to understand conservatives as people. My suggestion is to stop thinking about it so hard, open your mind, and try spending time with a few conservatives. They really don’t bite.*

These conclusions certainly don’t jive with my own experience. Here at the SDMB there are few/no conservatives who are “adept” at thinking like “liberals,” as far as I can see. With regard to “liberal contempt”, it seems to me it is much more focused on the average conservative’s utter immunity to matters of fact or logical reasoning than his/her morals – except when it comes to the issue of hypocrisy, which is rife within the conservative camp.

A close relative of mine is an extremely conservative, right-wing fundamentalist Christian. We were discussing the election, and she told me that she didn’t think she could vote for Obama because he was a Muslim. I tried to explain to here that he was, in fact, a Christian. No, she replied, he was “genetically Muslim”, in the same sense that she and I are “genetically American.” I patiently explained to her that Islam was a religion, not a racial ethnicity. “What does that have to do with anything!” she exclaimed.

She didn’t know that Islam was the religion of “Muslims.”

I don’t find it to hard to understand her level of ignorance, but please believe me when I tell you that to this person, I could just as easily be from the planet Zarkon, so alien to her are my views on politics, history, and culture.

BrainFireBob:

*Liberal Position: Global Warming. Something needs to be done!

Why don’t conservatives hold this position?

Well, they may, or may not.

Alternatives include:

1. I’m not convinced (Typically an uninformed opinion- for instance, if there’s global warming, why is it so cold in July?)

2. What something, and why us?

Bear in mind that there is no solution yet, because the ramifications are so far from understood it’s laughable the way action is agitated for- reducing emissions, etc., slows the spread of the problem, they’re not solutions. It’s a remote possibility that the planet will even find a new equilibrium.*

I must say, for someone who criticizes the OP as “unforgivably sloppy”, you sure have a fuzzy understanding of the progressive stance on this issue. Obama has whole slate of concrete policy proposals for tackling the problem of global warming – and it must be acknowledged that resistance to the existence of the problem has come exclusively from conservative circles. While it’s true conservatives are beginning to see the light now, the Bush administration has only during the last two years come round to conceding that human activities are playing a significant role in the problem.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@a blog quoted by Natty Bumppo

Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,” he told me in a phone interview.

Hmm. If that’s true, I wonder if it’s similar to the way grown-ups are more adept at thinking like a kid than children are at understanding the grown-up point of view. Occasionally I suspect that maybe, in at least some ways or on some subjects, the conservative point of view is the “grown-up” one (characterized by realism and experience and cynicism and knowledge of how the world really works) and the liberal point of view is the “kid” one (characterized by idealism and wishful thinking). And yet, I know the analogy breaks down in many ways; and I know there are conservatives and liberals both at all levels of (intellectual and moral) maturity.

[cosmosdan]

@Dumbguy

Sam Harris makes an interesting argument in ‘The End of Faith’ that all beliefs are not equal, and the idea that all must be respected equally is PC claptrap that often prevents us from abandoning ideas that are demonstrably untrue and qualitatively inferior to other available options. For example, if people choose to believe that there are invisible men in the sky that watch over them and guide their lives, I am not, in absence of any empirical evidence of this belief, required to respect it alongside, say, the belief that wearing a seatbelt will make me more likely to survive an automobile accident. In fact, Harris argues, respecting these sorts of unsubstantiated beliefs contributes to their ability to survive in what should be a more Darwinian marketplace of ideas.

I agree with Sam on this, but note that you said, demonstrably untrue. There’s a significant difference between that and not demonstrably true.

Address beliefs that are demonstrably untrue with facts, repeatedly and consistently and they will fall eventually.

[Avumede]

@cosmosdan

I agree with Sam on this, but note that you said, demonstrably untrue. There’s a significant difference between that and not demonstrably true.

Address beliefs that are demonstrably untrue with facts, repeatedly and consistently and they will fall eventually.

That’s very optimistic of you, but it’s not correct. Creationism is demonstrably untrue, and belief in it is as strong as ever. People are not logical in what they belief, and nor will they ever be.

[cosmosdan]

I haven’t had time to rad the whole thread but wanted to comment.

I have a few conservative friends that I talk with regularly and it’s helped me to understand their views, even the ones I don’t agree with.

I understand that conservatives are concerned and in many cases opposed to government programs that are supposed to provide for the less fortunate. It’s not that they don’t want to help people, it’s that they think the government is lousy at it and that those programs tend to encourage people to not take personal responsibility. They are at least in part, correct. We see generations of people on welfare. It’s impossible to find a perfect balance but I think we need to find solutions that offer assistance but also encourage and/or insist on effort. I prefer workfare to welfare. If my tax dollars are helping someone then great. They can preform whatever task they are capable of to repay the taxpayers that are helping them.

UHC, I’d prefer some private solution rather than another huge government bureaucracy, but if we look at the profits of the insurance companies can’t we agree there’s a lot of room for improvement. I’m an over wieght male in my early 50s and Blue Cross refuses to insure me at all even though I have no history of health issues. I don’t see any reason that the government can’t encourage a non profit single payer system for most basic health care. Still, UHC costs money and while we want to help people we must try and remain practical to some extent. Other modern nations have it and although it has it’s problems, they have not collapsed under the economic burden.

I think with open honest and sometimes tense communication we can arrive at some solutions that are working compromises. The work is in the efforts at communication that requires hard listening and less ridicule and derision from both sides. Part of the problem is completely disingenuous communication from our political leaders. People need to study major issues for themselves and get past the myths and then push our elected officials into solutions. That requires and effort most people aren’t willing to make.

IMO Gay marriage is a civil rights issue period. The government should be supporting and protecting the civil rights of individuals, and that includes the right of same sex marriage and all the legal issues that involves. It’s no different than the issue of interracial marriage we faced generations ago. People had their reasons then for thinking they were morally correct and time proved them absolutely wrong.

[cosmosdan]

@Avumede

That’s very optimistic of you, but it’s not correct. Creationism is demonstrably untrue, and belief in it is as strong as ever. People are not logical in what they belief, and nor will they ever be.

You’d have to show me it’s as strong as ever. I think the process takes time and generations have to pass but I see a gradual shift away from literal creationism and more people seeing the biblical story as just metaphor.

They may still believe in a creator, but that’s a point that still not demonstrably untrue.

[smiling_bandit]

@Mr. Svinlesha

I must say, for someone who criticizes the OP as “unforgivably sloppy”, you sure have a fuzzy understanding of the progressive stance on this issue. Obama has whole slate of concrete policy proposals for tackling the problem of global warming – and it must be acknowledged that resistance to the existence of the problem has come exclusively from conservative circles. While it’s true conservatives are beginning to see the light now, the Bush administration has only during the last two years come round to conceding that human activities are playing a significant role in the problem.

UNfortunately, his proposals are essentially useless. None of them can effectively do anything about it because the key problem is not under American control. America, in fact, is reducing pollution is virtually every category across the board. Foreign nations are not. (None of them, AFAIK, with a kew exceptions where the economy collapsed.) Of course, there are a number of other causes of climate change, and the bulk may be natural anyway.

@cosmodan

You’d have to show me it’s as strong as ever. I think the process takes time and generations have to pass but I see a gradual shift away from literal creationism and more people seeing the biblical story as just metaphor.

No, it’s not demonstratably untrue. It may be that creation as envisaged by Christian fundamentalists is demonstratably untrue, but we cannot prove or disprove that the world was created all at once at some specific previous date. It’s simply not something scientific investigation can reveal. I don’t believe it, but I can’t disprove it and neither can anyone else.

[Mr.Svinlesha]

smiling bandit:

UNfortunately, his proposals are essentially useless. None of them can effectively do anything about it because the key problem is not under American control.

How do you know this?

America, in fact, is reducing pollution is virtually every category across the board.

Cite?

Foreign nations are not.

This is patently false. Sweden has a very aggressive plan to reduce emission of greenhouse gases, for example – I know because I live here – and I believe there is a consensus in Europe about the need to do so.

Of course, there are a number of other causes of climate change, and the bulk may be natural anyway.

Or not.

This is no argument for doing nothing, by any stretch of the imagination. Even if there are other forcers, anthropogenic forcing is significant – even the Bush administration has admitted that – and by addressing that problem, we can at least slow down the process.

This is a bit of a hijack, since the topic at hand is that of understanding the mindset of one’s political opponents, not global climate change.

[erislover]

@Sophistry_and_Illusion

Well, murder is wrong.

If we want to talk semantics, murder is the unlawful killing of another person. If abortion is legal, it isn’t murder, by definition.

ETA, you know, I didn’t even realize this was a 3 page discussion already, and here I am in blissful ignorance quoting something from page 1, probably completely out of touch with the conversations running by now. Please ignore me.

[BrainFireBob]

@Mr.Svinlesha

BrainFireBob:

I must say, for someone who criticizes the OP as “unforgivably sloppy”, you sure have a fuzzy understanding of the progressive stance on this issue. Obama has whole slate of concrete policy proposals for tackling the problem of global warming – and it must be acknowledged that resistance to the existence of the problem has come exclusively from conservative circles. While it’s true conservatives are beginning to see the light now, the Bush administration has only during the last two years come round to conceding that human activities are playing a significant role in the problem.

No fuzzy understanding, physicist that just finished working on a project regarding the issue. Obama, and his campaign, were entirely not relevant to the point I was making, which obviously whooshed you.

If you understand the science, we know it’s a problem. We’re still arguing about how much comes from anthropogenic factors, but there’s no doubt quite a bit has.

There’s no room to talk about solutions yet.

I was laying out a range of conservative positions on the issue- did you read anything I posted after summarizing liberal positions as “We must do something?”

[BrainFireBob]

@Mr.Svinlesha

smiling bandit:

This is patently false. Sweden has a very aggressive plan to reduce emission of greenhouse gases, for example – I know because I live here – and I believe there is a consensus in Europe about the need to do so.

China.

This is no argument for doing nothing, by any stretch of the imagination. Even if there are other forcers, anthropogenic forcing is significant – even the Bush administration has admitted that – and by addressing that problem, we can at least slow down the process.

We can at best slow down adding to the problem, which will at best prevent artificial acceleration of the process. That’s not slowing it down by any measure.

I see the problem you had with my post. You think reducing emissions is doing something about the problem. It’s not. It’s trying not to maximize the extant of the problem. We don’t yet have the understanding sufficient to say what to do about the problem- which was the point I raised and you apparently missed.

[Public_Animal_No.9]

@Natty_Bumppo

I didn’t see anyone mention this article, yet. What Makes People Vote Republican, By Jonathan Haidt. …(snip)…
Liberals are shooting themselves in the foot by not trying harder to understand conservatives as people. My suggestion is to stop thinking about it so hard, open your mind, and try spending time with a few conservatives. They really don’t bite.

Haidt’s article is really quite good. I think I’d expand on your comment about liberals needing to understand conservatives as people. (I’ll probably butcher his fine descriptions in my summary, but nevertheless…) Haidt suggests that liberals focus on protecting people from harm and caring for those who have been harmed (what he calls a “harm/care” ethic), and creating a society that promotes fairness and reciprocity (“fairness/reciprocity”).

Conservatives, while they agree with and can support these two tenets, also follow three others: ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. The first, ingroup/loyalty, refers to loyalty to a larger group - family, country, religion, military, etc. It places much less weight on individual freedom than on support of and loyalty to the group. Authority/respect deals with the belief that there is a hierarchy that provides social stability, and there are those in authority that we should respect and follow, along with the obligation to provide for those who are lower in the heirarchy. The last one, purity/sanctity, Haidt suggests derive from"a relatively new part of the moral mind, related to the evolution of disgust, that makes us see carnality as degrading and renunciation as noble".

He goes on to say that, "These three systems support moralities that bind people into intensely interdependent groups that work together to reach common goals. Such moralities make it easier for individuals to forget themselves and coalesce temporarily into hives, a process that is thrilling, as anyone who has ever “lost” him or herself in a choir, protest march, or religious ritual can attest. "

From my perspective, Haidt’s discussion is a more formal way of saying what I think a lot of people on either side of the political spectrum feel - liberals focus on individual freedom of choice and the desire to be free from group norms, while conservatives believe that it is better to conform and follow the leadership. Think of the two key themes of the Presidential campaign - “Unity” for Obama (implying individuals working together by choice) and “Country First” for McCain (implying we’ll do what the big guy says is best).

I do think it’s interesting that liberals are characterized as being more for government intervention while conservatives are characterized as being for individual freedom (both of these characterizations are made by conservatives in my experience), when the opposite is more likely to be the case.

I highly recommend the Haidt article - it’s a very interesting read.

[Natty_Bumppo]

@Mr.Svinlesha

These conclusions certainly don’t jive with my own experience. Here at the SDMB there are few/no conservatives who are “adept” at thinking like “liberals,” as far as I can see. With regard to “liberal contempt”, it seems to me it is much more focused on the average conservative’s utter immunity to matters of fact or logical reasoning than his/her morals – except when it comes to the issue of hypocrisy, which is rife within the conservative camp.

A close relative of mine is an extremely conservative, right-wing fundamentalist Christian. We were discussing the election, and she told me that she didn’t think she could vote for Obama because he was a Muslim. I tried to explain to here that he was, in fact, a Christian. No, she replied, he was “genetically Muslim”, in the same sense that she and I are “genetically American.” I patiently explained to her that Islam was a religion, not a racial ethnicity. “What does that have to do with anything!” she exclaimed.

She didn’t know that Islam was the religion of “Muslims.”

I don’t find it to hard to understand her level of ignorance, but please believe me when I tell you that to this person, I could just as easily be from the planet Zarkon, so alien to her are my views on politics, history, and culture.

If your relative was the norm for conservatives, I’d probably agree with you, too. You are still looking down your nose at a whole group of people by saying, they have “utter immunity to matters of fact or logical reasoning.” You seem to be equating ignorance with holding conservative views. Isn’t it possible that ignorant people can also be liberal? I’ve met a few.

Do you really think millions of conservative Americans ignore facts and are unreasoning? Or, are you letting yourself go a bit? Either way, that’s not a very open minded way of trying to understand conservatives. Isn’t it possible they just have different way of looking at things? My suggestion, if I may be so bold, is that you start by giving a few conservatives the benefit of the doubt on the fact/logical reasoning front.

[Hyperelastic]

I venture to say there are more ex-liberal conservatives than ex-conservative liberals. I grew up liberal, so I feel I have some insight into the liberal mindset, but apparently the OP and some other posters haven’t considered issues from both sides in a long time.

There is a certain kind of liberal, well-represented on the SDMB, who cannot simply respond to a conservative argument. He has to restate the argument in the most insultingly moronic manner possible, and then respond to that argument, rather than the argument actually being made. For example, Bosstone said,

That gay couple is harming nobody, but it’s weird and strange, so they need to stop.

Irritating, and counterproductive.

[XaMcQ]

@Little_Plastic_Ninja

Because everyone was on the edge of their seats wondering what I think about all this. Warning, it’s past three in the morning, I’m insomniac, this will be long.

I’m a Christian against putting any kind of Christianity into law. Crazy, I know. I don’t think abortion is a mortal sin or anything, but I don’t plan to have one. I’m not really for raising children in one’s own religion, either, without giving them the option to learn about and choose their own (I’d actually be in favor of religion classes in school, taught purely as a philosophy class and prominently including atheism as one among many religion-based belief systems). The road to illumination has many paths, and even if I think I’m on the right one, it is not up to me to choose that for anyone else. I think there’s a belief among some religious folk that making abortion illegal, banning gay marriage, and making divorces harder to get will somehow make people better. That rather than break the law they will merrily go along the Proper Path.

But it doesn’t work like that. Girls told not to have sex till marriage have sex. Stable families have crazy kids. Men fall in love with men and women with women. Sometimes people make choices. Sometimes people make bad choices.

Sometimes people make bad choices. And they need to face up to those. I was once very very liberal on public welfare: nobody, I said, should ever be hungry or homeless or sick. Government money should go to pay for that. But when I grew up and met some of the people stuck in that mire, I wanted to tear my hair out. There’s people who decided to quit high school and go work in the factories, but now that the factories are moving overseas they’re jobless and angry and want to be taken care of. They made foolish choices and now they’re coming to regret them.

The conservative, pragmatic part of my brain thinks “And there’s no reason I should have to pay for them, either. I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve coped with them. I pay my debts, I work hard full time, I studied in college, I deserve what I got. Maybe they deserve what they’ve got. Why should I subsidize people who refuse to work?” And I think that’s true.

The liberal, mooshy part of me says “But there for the grace of God go I. I have a freaking ENGLISH degree and my parents are upper middle class and can help me out with money. When my contract job found out I had to go for surgery, they dropped me from the job the day before I was going to the hospital and I am STILL paying for the bills that the chintzy-ass insurance didn’t cover. And the friend who had no insurance at all who had the slipped disc? When he was sent to the hospital, he lay screaming on a gurney in the hallway for six hours before seeing a doctor. The nurses wouldn’t even help him get to the bathroom, all because he had no insurance and they were sure they’d never see a dime from the guy making minimum wage at the video store. And as much as you can blame asshole parents who work under the radar, spend the money on cigarettes, and use food stamps to feed the kids, where are the better options? How can they really reach them? Should their kids suffer because of their bad choices?” And I think all that is true, too.

But people need to be allowed to make bad choices. That’s part of the freedom we have. Part and parcel with the freedom to succeed is the freedom to fail. Making failure illegal, making the “wrong choices” illegal, does not help. Saying a person doesn’t deserve help does not make them vanish.

Legislating morality, too, is a failing proposition. I actually do understand the belief behind it, partly: I know someone who once looked rather desperately into my eyes and explained that without his faith in God, he’d be breaking all sorts of laws and doing terrible things because he had no fear of divine retribution. I suspect that many people realize this fault in character and believe that fear of government and fear of God can be interchanged.

I suppose I’m a Texas Democrat: against most gun control, for social programs being run smarter and better, generally against the government trying to alter human nature.

…Does that mean I’m a Republican? SHIT. :eek:

You sound like an independent to me, and I think you should run for office!

[Avumede]

The more interesting question is why should liberals try to understand conservatives? I haven’t seen any conservatives argue that they should try and understand liberals, in fact it’s the liberal tendency to try and understand everyone else that is mocked by conservatives.

We should treat each other with respect, yes. And it’s always good to hear other people’s arguments, doing so will lead to the truth. But even though we know what philosophies motivate the other side, we can never really understand what makes people believe in those philosophies.

Try to understand other people assumes that people’s beliefs come from logic or reasoned thought. Not true. We can never understand why other people believe what they do, just like we never really understand why we believe what we do.

So forget about trying to understand the other side. That’s not what we should try and achieve on the Straight Dope. We don’t need to understand, we need to fight ignorance, either our own or other people’s. The way to do that is to listen to the other side, and use logic and reasoning to separate the wheat from the chaff, and use that to enrich ourselves and this community.

[Vox_Imperatoris]

@Avumede

The more interesting question is why should liberals try to understand conservatives? I haven’t seen any conservatives argue that they should try and understand liberals, in fact it’s the liberal tendency to try and understand everyone else that is mocked by conservatives.

We should treat each other with respect, yes. And it’s always good to hear other people’s arguments, doing so will lead to the truth. But even though we know what philosophies motivate the other side, we can never really understand what makes people believe in those philosophies.

Try to understand other people assumes that people’s beliefs come from logic or reasoned thought. Not true. We can never understand why other people believe what they do, just like we never really understand why we believe what we do.

So forget about trying to understand the other side. That’s not what we should try and achieve on the Straight Dope. We don’t need to understand, we need to fight ignorance, either our own or other people’s. The way to do that is to listen to the other side, and use logic and reasoning to separate the wheat from the chaff, and use that to enrich ourselves and this community.

I agree: Sophism '08!

(That really is the essence of Sophism, though.)

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

[BrainFireBob]

@Avumede

The more interesting question is why should liberals try to understand conservatives? I haven’t seen any conservatives argue that they should try and understand liberals, in fact it’s the liberal tendency to try and understand everyone else that is mocked by conservatives.

We should treat each other with respect, yes. And it’s always good to hear other people’s arguments, doing so will lead to the truth. But even though we know what philosophies motivate the other side, we can never really understand what makes people believe in those philosophies.

Try to understand other people assumes that people’s beliefs come from logic or reasoned thought. Not true. We can never understand why other people believe what they do, just like we never really understand why we believe what we do.

So forget about trying to understand the other side. That’s not what we should try and achieve on the Straight Dope. We don’t need to understand, we need to fight ignorance, either our own or other people’s. The way to do that is to listen to the other side, and use logic and reasoning to separate the wheat from the chaff, and use that to enrich ourselves and this community.

Didn’t read the article, did you? Actually, conservatives tend to understand liberals far better than the other way.

[Orr_G]

@BrainFireBob

Actually, conservatives tend to understand liberals far better than the other way.

I would love to read the Haidt study that suggests this. I have so far been unable to find anything other than the already quoted paragraph from Warner’s blog.