No Such Thing As An Opinion!

Why don't all intelligent people vote the same way?


Have you ever wondered why there are intelligent people among both conservative and liberal groups? Why is that?  After all, when you aggregate both liberal and conservative positions, wouldn't evidence almost always favor either the liberal position over the conservative, or vice versa?

Of course it would. To disagree would mean that you believe evidence would support both the liberals and the conservatives by a split of exactly 50.00% to 50.00%.  That is extremely unlikely.  The evidence is very likely to favor one group's position with at least the support of 50.000000001% of the evidence (I'm not saying what the evidence favors, yet).

And by the way, I realize that there is some subjectivity regarding the importance of issues.  Abortion is different than immigration.  But subjective issues can still be categorized. Simply poll people to rate their importance.  Once you've exhausted objective descriptions, the only way I can think of to value something subjective is to poll people.


So if evidence supports the supremacy of either liberalism or conservatism over the other, then why do many intelligent people appear among both groups?


Well, I believe that intelligence isn't the
only factor that influences people's voting patterns. Bias may be one factor, but one factor that I've never seen mentioned is this: rationality.

Is it possible that either liberals or conservatives are more rational, on average, than the other? I believe this is likely the case. Stanovich reported about evidence that suggested there is almost a zero correlation between intelligence and rationality!


That could explain it.  Could liberals be much more rational than conservatives, or vice versa?



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