Let me fire up Jupyter to make it pseudo-formal...
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Replying to @generativist @Aelkus
Er, actually, I'll save that for later, since I'm re-projecting my dissertation to a new medium which will do a better job anyway. Informally...
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Replying to @generativist @Aelkus
Let's say there is a context with associated beliefs. You express an opinion on one of the associated beliefs. It matches mine, constrained to that belief. But, I select a different associated belief. My expression matches yours, had you been constrained to that belief.
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Replying to @generativist @Aelkus
But, which ones you select convey information about the relationships *between* beliefs, which is what we really care more about. It's how we navigate implications. But, it's hard to share those things, so we look for cues in selection.
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Replying to @generativist @Aelkus
So, when people think, "oh those two people are talking past each other, but they really agree," they're making a mistake. They agree over an artificial, constrained projection; but their mental models disagree, as evidenced by expressive propensities.
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Replying to @generativist @Aelkus
It's also the place where so much fuckery hides because it's the hardest to quantify easily. E.g. GSS/ANES asks "What's your opinion on [X]?" it doesn't observe what beliefs you express and sample from in your life. It measures the wrong thing.
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Replying to @Aelkus
Kinda? Mostly, it's an overly-sophisticated way of saying something like, "yea, opinions on abortion aren't actually about abortion." We don't actually constrain our expressions or evaluations to a narrow context.
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Replying to @generativist @Aelkus
We're prone to pretending we do (and with a lot of effort we can come close) but really we perceive way more relational structure in particular "isolated" expressions than we're aware of.
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It's the relationships that drive the evolution of beliefs, not isolated expressions. But we focus on the latter because their observable. (This is why I thought Database Animals was so similar to my work.)
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