There's this thing in public opinion where whatever people are mad about, they also overestimate how common it is by like a crazy amount.

Off the top of my head people think we should stop giving away so much money to poorer countries. Ask them how much of the budget goes to aid, they'll say something nuts like 20% when it's actually like 1%.

I haven't done this experiment in person but I bet I'd get a pretty ludicrous answer if we asked what percent of us are trans.

And it'd be pretty easy to debunk too. "oh you think it's 10%? So count the next ten customers to walk in. You think you typically serve a trans customer before 9am, and never noticed it?"

"......uh well maybe not 1/10. Maybe more like 1/100".

Where this is all going: you can convince a person that they are off by a crazy large amount fairly easily but you can never ever convince a person they're wrong.

Does this mean convincing people to be less enthusiastic about their wrong opinion is more viable than getting them to abandon wrong opinions?

Next time my facebook coworker screeds on the mythical girl who identifies as a cat and carries a litter box to school, I'm going to test his estimates. I bet I can't change his mind but I bet I can get him to be quieter.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
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    edit-2
    2 years ago

    I remember seeing a stat once that was more Americans regularly talk to angels or ghosts than those who regularly talk with a trans person. One of my cousins told me "at least half" of people are LGBTQ. I asked him if half the people he knew are queer, then he clarified he meant places like California balance that number out.

    I think a lot of Americans get into a trap where they consider their own immediate surroundings to be normal, yet separate from the wider world. There's a here and a there, and they influence one another, but they're on two sides of a barrier. Americans believe there's a wider world that's dangerous, confusing, and culturally incomprehensible compared to their own enclave. They live in little bubbles. They'll complain about murder rates in Chicago will living in an area with crime rates equal to anywhere else, just more spread out or with less media attention.

    I think I'm mostly talking about suburban white people.

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      places like California balance that number out

      Mystical Commiefornia, a place where everyone is gay and trans, but where gig workers can't get benefits.

    • LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think a lot of Americans get into a trap where they consider their own immediate surroundings to be normal, yet separate from the wider world.

      This is it. Everything I know is normal and correct. Everything else is weird and wrong

    • frankfurt_schoolgirl [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      at least half” of people are LGBTQ.

      I unironically believe at least half of people are somewhere bisexual. I do have some bias however.

      It is scary how much people's opinions are based on literal fiction. The whole liberal idea of reading the news and voting as the pinnacle of democracy is so full of shit.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
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        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I believe something like that. If we lived in a futuristic communist society that had abolished strict gender norms and didn't disparage against nonconformance, more people would identify as sexually flexible. Stuff like beauty and gender aesthetics are culturally informed, so a futuristic society without such rigid cultural/legal demands on gender would probably have a majority of people be openly bisexual.

      • SuperZutsuki [they/them]
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        2 years ago

        Without anti-LGBTQ programming from birth I think this would be true. There's just so much repression piled on people, though.

    • CrimsonSage [any]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I live in one if the safest urban zip codes in the country, but when my father sees clients two counties over out in the sticks they act like there are roaving gangs of "thugs" that will eat, murder, and rape, in that order, any "real" anericans they can get their hands on. Like these people live in genuine fear with guns at the ready everywhere, dad has almost gotten shot on accident a couple times. These people are older and sit at home mainlining fox news and worse 24/7. And yes the crime rate is much higher outside the city. It is really bonkers how warped some people's view of the world is.

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Most of my family is convinced there was a genuine civil war in 2020 where half the country broke off. They think California and Michigan and etc legit had a revolution and bombed their police stations and local governments and are now Mad Max style wastelands.

        These people live in a paranoia hell of their own creation.

        • CrimsonSage [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          This is one reason why I am skeptical of the rights ability to actual fight any sort of organized civil conflict. Like I get that all Americans live in their own little epistemic bubbles, and that as a Marxist I am subject to my own biases and siloing, but I at least acknowledge this fact and TRY to have some material interaction with the real world. Like these people are fucking nuts, completely off in cloud coo coo land. Like the second they get their power grids knocked out I expect them to just tart fucking air holing each other out of sheer terror.

          • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
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            edit-2
            2 years ago

            oh, no kidding. The organizational base of fascism in the US isn't like what Germany or Italy had, like disgruntled WW1 veterans or street gangs. The social base of fascism for Americans are white suburban guys in their mid 50s who own pool resurfacing businesses. There's no one to organize a conflict

            The closest thing to a fascist civil conflict in recent American history was the January 6th capital riots and it was comically bad how disorganized it was. They didn't know what to do after meeting together, so it turned into a series of photo ops for their facebook feeds. One of the main organizers was arrested by the feds after the event, he was celebrating in a fucking Olive Garden. It's comical, the leader of this supposed revolutionary movement has to take a time out to get some unlimited breadsticks. And one of the main reasons they organized this thing? Someone roleplaying as a federal informant on 4chan.

            The right lives and dies by their treats. They're infantilized beyond any capacity for mass movements. Oppression to them is when Applebee's tells them to wear a mask. Their social and economic theories are misspelled racial slurs typed under a Yahoo news article.