Well, yeah, we all vote based on feelings. Some feelings based on things that verifiably happened in the real world, and some feelings based on ridiculous bullshit we dreamed up.

Guess which side has more of the second kind of feelings.

He registered as a Republican in 2021, and voted in the 2022 election, so it wasn’t for a strategic vote against Trump, unless he was thinking ahead by several years.

And they’ve been neglecting that. There are a couple of street names that they have wrong, and I’ve been using the edit feature fruitlessly for over 8 years. I’ve included links to local business web sites with the new name of one, links to municipal web sites with the new name, geo-tagged photos of the street signs, and even links to the municipal ordinance that changed the names in 2003. It all goes into the same black hole.

Is there any evidence of that? I know that 12% of people who voted for Sanders in the primary ended up voting for Trump in 2016, but where’s the evidence that they were ever Democrats? It’s just as possible that they were Republican-leaning voters who were attracted to Sanders’ message, or trying to sabotage the Democratic primary. That’s a really good narrative for Clinton supporters to soothe their chagrin at the electoral college loss, but as that article points out, that number is actually pretty par for the course in elections.

Friend, what in Sam Hill are you on about? Celsius is obviously better for boiling water: It takes a lot more degrees to reach 212 than it does 100, so I get my ramen a lot sooner when boiling water in Celsius!

Dating apps were mainstream long before 4chan existed, although not as dominant. The idea that all of the women go for the top tier of men gained prominence with an analysis posted on the old OKCupid of their user behavior, and the particular 80/20 split was just pulled out of somewhere, likely borrowed from the Pareto Principle. In any case, 4chan may have pathologized it, but certainly did not originate the notion.

There’s a difference between prescriptive and descriptive, between saying what should be, and what is. I’m telling you the result of my empirical observations. You are welcome to try changing minds of people in the MAGA world. Don’t let me stop you. I’m just pointing out why it won’t work.

You can’t talk to them person to person. That type of persuasion works in matters when the other person is operating in the cerebral realm of logic. The problem in politics is that we’re operating in the realm of identity, and you cannot reason somebody out of a matter of personal identity, because the brain treats threats to personal identity the same way as physical threats. Especially when it is a closed belief system that defines politics as tribal combat, veracity as irrelevant, any information that comes from outside the tribe as per se objectionable, and agreement as a failure of will.

Basically, the psychological research funds that you have to take them out of the Q/MAGA bubble, and surround them with people with diverse views. It can’t be done in online forums. I’ve tried. If you listen, you just get regurgitated talking points, and if you ask questions that start to make them think they abruptly disengage.

The large-language model here has aptly synthesized the thoughts of just about every “centrist” I’ve ever encountered: Votes Republican based on policies the party allegedly supports but obviously doesn’t, won’t vote Democratic based on some vague complaint about style, yet perfectly content with all of the egregious things Republicans actually do.