[epgui]

They do say that reality has a left leaning bias... Personally I find these quadrant visualizations a bit misleading (regardless of where you sit) because the "centre" is not so much a neutral point as it is the centre of the "Overton window".

[mhuffman]

>They do say that reality has a left leaning bias

I am not even sure how to interpret that. In the US, at least, politically people leaning left and leaning right are about even. I would definitely say that during my time in academia it appeared to me that more were left-leaning than people I knew in my non-academic life (ie. work, etc.) The fact that they have to spend so much time "re-aligning" these models seems to indicate that maybe the general public does not have a left-leaning bias at all.

[epgui]

Your interpretation was immediately wrong, because the statement doesn't say anything about the prevalence of right-leaning people or left-leaning people.

Google the phrase "reality has a left leaning bias" and you will find a variety of explanations as to what it means.

[mhuffman]

If I need multiple sources to explain it to me, then it is not communicating the information effectively is it? Also, I did Google it and got Reddit telling me that anyone that does not have a left leaning bias is just ignorant of science. Is that what you mean?

[epgui]

> If I need multiple sources to explain it to me, then it is not communicating the information effectively is it?

Navigating life expecting to understand everything without first having to learn the things is... unreasonable. The burden is not exclusively on the one sending the message: the one receiving the message shares his part of the burden.

> I did Google it and got Reddit telling me that anyone that does not have a left leaning bias is just ignorant of science

That's directionally better, but it's definitely not what I mean and is not how I would put it. This is why you need to look at multiple sources. Not just for this, but in life in general.

[mhuffman]

I disagree across the board with your assessment of this.

>reality has a left leaning bias

If not political leaning, what other "left leaning" bias might it have? I believe that you are simply wrong in your interpretation and even more wrong calling me out. If you think otherwise, I am willing to be educated on how this can be explained without a political bend.

>Navigating life expecting to understand everything without first having to learn the things is... unreasonable.

Not if you are being preached to or someone is implying that you don't understand something but they have "secret" knowledge, typically using an appeal to authority. If you call someone wrong, is it not better to explain to them what is "correct" in a way that they can understand and pass it on to others to make the world better and more "correct"?

>That's directionally better, but it's definitely not what I mean and is not how I would put it. This is why you need to look at multiple sources. Not just for this, but in life in general.

I mean this in a academic sense, not as a personal attack, but this is just a pretentious and arrogant way to interact with people.

I notice from your bio that you have a graduate degree, which is an odd flex to put in your HN bio, but you earned it so whatever, I guess. I also have a graduate degree (undergrad organic chem. with double minors in math and comp. sci., MBA with area of concentration in finance). It seems though that the difference is that if I speak to someone that I (perhaps erroneously) believe is not as educated as I am, I would never belittle them, insinuate that they are stupid, imply that they have not thought it through, or appeal to authority. And of course I check sources, although in this case it appears to me that you may not have. (I was having a bit of fun with you regarding the Reddit thing, sorry about that.)

Additionally in my academic experience and especially in social sciences, saying "all experts agree" on anything is about the dumbest thing you can say 99% of the time and usually is not even true. This can many times be true in hard sciences (sorry soft science folks, no offense intended) but isn't even always true there.

So, while I appreciate your life advice, I would offer some to you as well -- maybe don't assume things about people and if you know some useful knowledge, share it! It can and will make the world a better place! Also there is a very tiny chance, that you might be wrong and learn something new, which is always nice as well! This happens to me all the time ... but so far not in this case.

[jimbokun]

Studies comparing outcomes of children raised in married, two parent households vs single parent homes do not support left leaning orthodoxy.

That’s just one example off the top of my head. Overton window just keeps people from voicing right leaning opinions in polite company, even when thoroughly backed by data.

[RangerScience]

(edited) Are you claiming (1) that children from single-parent households have worse outcomes and (2) that left-leaning policies result in more single-parent households?

(Not going to argue about #1, that seems pretty well established, just pulling it out as a claim for clarity. #2 is what I'd argue against, and would want to actually see your example so that it's possible to do so in a constructive way)

> That’s just one example off the top of my head

It's not an example until you provide enough for information for us to find what you're talking about ourselves; ideally, a link.

[majormajor]

AFAICT, the poster is claiming that "left leaning orthodoxy" says "there's no disadvantages to children to being raised in a single family household."

I don't really know that that's true anyway. It doesn't seem to be a frequently discussed topic IME. There are related topics like "should divorce be available" and "should people be encouraged or discouraged from pre-marital sex" where I think they are extrapolating "if you support extra-marital sex then you also support single-family households and must therefore believe that they have no disadvantages" but I think that's a larger logical leap than I would personally make. It also doesn't seem to account for support for access to abortion which arguably counter-acts the support for experimentation with pre-marital sex...

The general "left leaning" mood is also to provide services that help single-family households to mitigate issues for children anyway, so I think it's much more of a nuanced "lesser of two evils" position to support things like divorce being available.

[algorias]

> The general "left leaning" mood is also to provide services that help single-family households to mitigate issues for children anyway, so I think it's much more of a nuanced "lesser of two evils" position to support things like divorce being available.

That's a good way to put it. In contrast, the right leaning mood would be to strengthen social cohesion, increase support that people have from families, neighbors, and so on, and decrease the impersonal, systemic "services" provided by some bureaucracy.

Not arguing, just describing. I see virtues and problems in both approaches.

[RangerScience]

> In contrast, the right leaning mood would be to strengthen social cohesion

Huh. Not the impression I get from what I see around me, not at all. What I see (from my bubble) is forced conformity and a systematic destruction of every form of support structure. Although, notably absent from my bubbles are religious support structures, so.

[majormajor]

> That's a good way to put it. In contrast, the right leaning mood would be to strengthen social cohesion, increase support that people have from families, neighbors, and so on, and decrease the impersonal, systemic "services" provided by some bureaucracy.

In the American right all of those things are often promoted with heavy doses of religion; IMO this is the core crisis of American politics on the right: how to promote fixing those things through non-governmental, pro-Evangelical religious measures while also preserving the freedom to not embrace that religion? Or even to follow the religion but choose a less fanatical strain?

[jimbokun]

Religion is another category that seems to have all kinds of social benefits the left is uncomfortable talking about.

[RangerScience]

> mitigation

Yeah, one of the reasons I'd want to actually see an example is because I imagine those policies make the situation better but not good; like you say, they're mitigations; the causal arrow is bad situation -> policy, not policy -> bad situation.

[algorias]

The OP means that kids raised by married parents have better life outcomes. The policy proposals that would follow from this (e.g. restricting divorce) are right-leaning positions outside the overton window.

But even beyond a specific policy proposal, there is a viewpoint in right-leaning circles that atomized individualism has caused lasting damage to the fabric of society and needs to be reigned in.

(NB: I can't speak to whether the claim that kids have better outcomes because their parents are married is actually true, as there are obvious confounders there)

[Nasrudith]

The funny thing is that I see complaints most about individualism from the left. It might be something more obvious on a non-monoaxis model.

[epgui]

How can you know what OP meant? The best any of us can do is guess.

[RangerScience]

> (e.g. restricting divorce)

I am so confused by the right. Aren't they usually in favor of things promoting freedoms, like freedom of association?

[epgui]

> Aren't they usually in favor of things promoting freedoms

Definitely not in a general sense. They place more importance on some freedoms than on others.

[underlipton]

#2 is false on its face. Conservative policies like abolishing gay marriage and regressive welfare reform - as well as the policies that result in outcomes like a disproportionate amount of men of color being sent to prison or having to take jobs far away from their families or being unable to afford marriage or a house - clearly predicate a large portion of the broken or malformed or unformed families that exist in the US. Left-leaning policies are not immaculate, but they don't carry the unspoken mandate of caring only about the stability of white, affluent, straight couples - which is a problem in a country where much of the population is some combination of not-white, queer, and working class, AND where many women (and men!) would desire the option to destabilize their dysfunctional marriages, if need be.

[epgui]

That's nice, and I'm even prepared to accept it as a fact,[1] but it doesn't appear to have any relevance to what I said.

---

[1] Given the irrelevance, I don't think it's even worth verifying.

[Fauntleroy]

What does single vs two parent households have to do with this?

[Fauntleroy]

Naturally, OP has abandoned this indefensible position.

[kleer001]

the center of a current Overton Window, to be precise, that thing's slippery

[FrustratedMonky]

If you take the Overton Window as a simple parabola, with an up swing on left and right side of curve.

I'm finding more and more that it has become more like a Mandelbrot Set and on any given day I'm not sure if I'd be considered Left or Right by any random other person who I also can't identify if they are Left or Right. It is almost like Left and Right are so confused now, that they have lost all meaning. Except when they vote, but they can't explain why they voted the way they did.

[Terr_]

When it comes to LLMs being fed vast swathes of commentary, it's not so much the limits of the Overton window as the distribution.

[epgui]

> When it comes to LLMs being fed best to swab the son of commentary

I understand all of these words individually, but I do not understand them in that sequence.

[Terr_]

Sorry, that's entirely my fault, I tried dictating it to my phone but in typical fashion all technology is getting worse every day and I didn't proofread the disappointing results.

Strangely apopos in a thread about computers generating undesirable text.

[drak0n1c]

If we're going by sayings, there is another saying that the majority of text content on the internet was written by people who are mentally unwell. Training LLMs on that can resort in a distorted and unrepresentative perspective.