[danpalmer]

The framing of some of these is interesting. Not a criticism, just an observation.

I think many trigger a visceral negative reaction, like animal testing, but most of these can be broken up into sub-parts that are both obviously good and obviously bad at the same time. Animal testing of cosmetics: bad, animal testing of the safety of a new drug that millions of humans will take: probably good. Chemical manufacturing that produces plastic packaging for things that could use paper packaging: not great, chemical manufacturing for chemicals used in healthcare, probably good. To be clear, these are nuanced topics and I'm not interested in debating them here, just providing illustrative examples.

I realise this isn't really the point of this experiment, but it does go to show how much the framing matters. This is part of why surveys can produce radically different results depending on how you write the questions.

[jdthedisciple]

Couldn't have said it better, felt the same way about it.

Another example is military and defense, or pharmaceuticals. Some rather beneficial and even necessary aspects to both, yet some disagreeable things to either as well.

[breppp]

If this was framed as things you'd eliminate from society tomorrow, maybe pharma would fair better

[danpalmer]

In fact to go further, even just the inclusion of an item on a "race to the bottom" page implies negativity. In isolation, "cheap food" is a pretty positive thing, the emphasis may be on "food" and we all need that. But in this context it may imply the emphasis is on "cheap" and further imply bad, and most would agree that food quality is important so might downvote it, even though the concept is pretty good.

Similarly, "Wind farms" (negative connotations) vs "Wind power" (positive connotations).