Ear Rational Thoughts

Robin Hanson on Opinions

Robin Hanson:

Signs that your opinions function more to signal loyalty and ability than to estimate truth:

1. You find it hard to be enthusiastic for something until you know that others oppose it.

2. You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued.

3. Realizing that a topic is important and neglected doesn’t make you much interested.

4. You have little interest in digging to bigger topics behind commonly argued topics.

5. You are less interested in a topic when you don’t foresee being able to talk about it.

6. You are uncomfortable taking a position near the middle of the opinion distribution.

7. You are uncomfortable taking a position of high uncertainty about who is right.

There are more, all of them spot on.

Liberal media bias

From Bryan Caplan, quoting David Boaz:

[M]ainstream (liberal) media regularly put an ideological label on conservative and libertarian organizations and interviewees, but not on liberal and leftist groups. In a report about states accepting stimulus funds, reporter Kathy Lohr quoted "Jon Shure of the Washington D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities," "Maurice Emsellem with the National Employment Law Project," and "Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst with the fiscally conservative Cato Institute in Washington, D.C." (Thanks! And I'd say the label is correct, even if I might prefer libertarian.)

Those are all legitimate sources for the story. But only one of them gets an ideological label -- even though the other two groups are clearly on the left...

Back on March 23, I noted but did not blog about references on "Morning Edition" to "the libertarian Cato Institute," the "conservative American Enterprise Institute," and "the Brookings Institution." No label needed for Brookings, of course. Just folks there...

[...]

It's all too typical of the mainstream-liberal media: They put ideological warning labels on libertarians and conservatives, lest readers and listeners be unaware of the potential for bias, but very rarely label liberals and leftists...

It's a pernicious tactic. Although it's not surprising. People who agree with you aren't ideologues, they're centrists. It's only those who disagree who - because their "facts" must be wrong - must have some ideological reason for their claims that your readers should be aware.