A Quillette article by Michael Totten on my sidebar about right-wing paranoia - I like Totten and I like Quillette, but...- makes a claim about a PRRI study on paranoid ideas. The study does not say what Totten claims it does. James's plan, also stated before by bsking of Graph Paper Diaries, of clicking back and seeing what the underlying studies actually say proved out on this point.
Monday, May 16, 2022
Vindicating James and BSKing
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Well, okay... now you gotta tell us where we can read James' and Beth's discussions of this subject.
By the way, I see wild claims like this periodically: "Half of all Republicans think Joe Biden is a shape-shifting lizard from the planet Bleen." They just don't comport with what I know from my friends, family and acquaintances. I don't think I am in some sort of bubble, or that the people I know are all that unrepresentative, so I don't know how they come up with these things.
Not much discussion. James had a comment to that effect under my "We Don't Reason Very Well " post, and Bethany has made the comment over at Graph Paper Diaries from time to time that it's worth following up on whether the study being quoted in the news, especially if it is trying to prove something you think is suspect, actually says what they claim. She has mentioned that it even happens in supposedly respectable academic circles at times.
In this case there were three statements that included both QAnon-type beliefs and more general sentiments that elitists were running the country. 5% of the population as a whole agreed strongly, 11% agreed somewhat. I'm thinking that a lot of the "somewhats" weren't so particular about there being Satan-worshiping pedophiles but had some assent about the general trend.
I recall years ago there were even larger numbers that 9-11 was an inside job, on the order of 31% or Democrats. It's fun to believe your opponents are that crazy, but it didn't accord with what i knew. I knew a few people who thought there was something fishy about it and paid attention to claims about steel not melting at those temps, etc. Not the same thing. I've written before that lots of people want to show they can't be taken in, but are more hyperskeptical than anything.
Post a Comment