You are a proud member of a group. Your group believes in living a virtuous life and spreading those beliefs onto the non-believers. The leaders of your group constantly announce viewpoints that you should live by. They recently told everyone that whenever you want to toast bread your toaster should be set to the highest level, and you will always be assured that your toast will come out perfect. Not under done nor burnt. You enthusiastically follow this new directive. Every day you have a piece of toast for breakfast. You are confused because now every day your toast comes out burnt. You go to the group leaders looking for help. You are told that the directive is correct but maybe the ambient temperature in your kitchen is causing the issue. Or maybe you are just using the wrong type of bread. Regardless of the refinements that you make the result is always the same – burnt toast. This latest failed directive reminds you of other directives from the leaders that have yielded outcomes that are not what was guaranteed. At this point you need to decide whether you want to flee the group and live in reality or take a leap of faith and continue following the group directives. Many will remain as group members because it gives meaning to their lives. In just a short time they will convince themselves that the toast is actually not burnt and live the rest of their lives happily eating burnt toast convincing themselves that it just perfect.
We spend too much time with allegiance to political parties and individual politicians. It is always about policies and the provable outcomes of those policies.
It is not anti anything specific. It simply points out that if you follow any ideology that consistently does not produce a solution to a problem it might be time to rethink your position. In everyday life we see many things getting worse than they were. We are then told that those bad outcomes are not due to bad policies, but to various other factors that have nothing to do with the issue. This is a complete generalization but is seems to me that conservatives more than other groups deal with outcomes and not policies that simply make them feel good about themselves.
That sounds like textbook in-group bias. Do you have any evidence that conservatives deal more with outcomes instead of feelings? Because if not, you’re literally doing what you claim is wrong.
No and that is why I characterized it as a generalization.
It’s not a generalization, it’s speculation. At least until you provide evidence.
I mean – Gestures broadly at everything conservatives support
I don’t particularly like to use boring tropes. But in some cases they fit too well to avoid.
I mean, conservatives have a pretty solid track record of fighting against the science in favor of their opinions:
You’re right — I see a disturbing pattern here. Across a great diversity of topics, Republicans support policies that directly contradict the research.
Fine.
Both have costs and benefits, which I’ve never seen a conservative deny. Republicans have different value weightings than whoever you’re comparing it to. They are scientifically proven to have certain benefits. They are also scientifically proven to have certain costs. Republicans weigh those costs more heavily and the benefits more lightly than others.
Your comment is about science. Legal scrutiny is not science.
Are government massacres concurrent with civilian weapons bans considered in these homicide numbers, or is it only citizen-on-citizen crime that’s counted here?
I’m always willing to listen to counter arguments, if they are supported by peer reviewed studies. Got any recorded evidence for your claims?