In fact I find it really hard to be friends with people with very similar life experiences to mine, regardless of politics. It’s too boring.
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This might actually be the systematic age-agnostic “tell” of leaning conservative or progressive… your innate friend preferences. Do you want friends who share your history (conservative) or don’t (progressive). “Liberal” is imo not a psychologically fundamental posture.
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This is also why I distrust progressivism fueled by justice or fairness concerns or empathic sentiment. These are fragile dispositions. They collapse easily under survival pressure or scarcity. But friends-with-differences disposition is antifragile.
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If you are rich and only feel pity/guilt towards the poor, that can turn to apathy/contempt in a minute if your own fortunes change.
If you’re an “ally” for marginalized groups , you can easily turn into an oppressor/exploiter when you acquire even a bit of unaccountable power.
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This is why hypocrisy is a particular hazard for progressives. It’s cheap to maintain the appearance of an old idealistic posture when your circumstances and incentives change. But if progressive tendencies manifest mainly via friendships-across-differences, it is much costlier.
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Natural conservatives in my experience are rarely hypocritical. They’re more likely to be straight-up deceitful because it’s basically okay, even admirable, in their moral logic, to lie to people who are not like you (and therefore not your friends). It’s just a contest.
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Testable hypothesis: the most common "horseshoe effect" switch is far left to far right. I bet it's mostly those who can't be friends-with-disagreements.
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The reverse horseshoe shift, from right to left, usually happens when you're thrown into a less homogeneous milieu and the choice is between having fewer friends or having different-from-you friends. The prototype is migrating from a homogeneous small town to a diverse big city
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The single most natural-progressive thing I've done in my life is to move out of indian-grad-student ghetto and start living with a diverse bunch in 1998 (in a vegan coop... doesn't get more cliche than that).
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This pattern is so common, it's practically a cliche. An important subtype is post-military-service walkabouts reliably turning vets progressive, despite all militaries being strongly conservative at intake.
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Replying to @vgr
I suppose I'd be a strong example of the Reverse Horseshoe. I was an intern for GWB when I was 19-20 years old, but now consider myself on the left. A big part of the change was getting out of my evangelical fundamentalist bubble and going to a secular university + int'l travel.
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In fact, if I were a sneaky progressive billionaire wanting high leverage "conversions," I'd fund scholarships/fellowships for ex-military people to live in big cities, or go on global backpacking trips, after their service/tours of duty.
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The military is a particularly harsh experience, especially combat experience. From limited anecdotal accounts, it seems equally likely to harden conservatism and dehumanize-others attitudes OR forge the most humanistic people ever.
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My "If I Had The Money" move would be trying to deflate the military machine and explore post-carbon small-farming practices by diverting vets and itchy ADHD types like myself to sustainable farms. Kinda if Wendell Berry designed an Overview Effect for recovering warriors.

