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Stephen Diamond's avatar

But the real situation is that typical voters struggle to reliably estimate *any* differing consequences of who they vote for. It is to such voters that I address my advice.

But it truly is bad advice! Voters ought to keep struggling until they can articulate a reliable difference. That's better than using your misleading measure.  

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Robert_13's avatar

All but a very few voters know anything significant about the people they vote for or why. They typically just adopt whatever political stance helps them feel they belong in their preferred social environment.

That's why you can't reason with them. Reason had nothing to do with their choices and they don't even know what reasoning really is, much less how to vet their sources of information. You might as well be speaking Klingon to these people when you try to reason with them.

That's what happens when you have an educational system full of teachers who can't teach critical thought because they don't have a clue how to think critically themselves. They just shove lots of rote learning down the poor kids' throats and believe that's what makes you smart...knowing lots of little facts that you just have to accept on authority. That is death to critical reasoning.

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