Thought of a phrase: alt confidence. The generally higher sense of self certainty that comes with adopting fringe views.
I think it’s a selection effect. People who can’t tolerate high uncertainty centrifuge farther out to edge.
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This is the Dunning Kruger effect applied to political views under the assumption that smarter people's heads are full of ambiguity/uncertainty and are likely to be more centrist?
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Yes that’s the rough hypothesis. I think I had an earlier tweet a few weeks ago explicitly linking this to D-K
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Def true sometimes. But the thoughtless confidence in status quo sometimes can be very intense too. Even stiflingly so.
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That assumes the default is to start out on the fringe and move to the center. I don’t think that’s true, or that most people are that empiricist.
The alts move out, the norms don’t move in.
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So, where do flat-earthers and anti-vax folk fit into that? I actually think alt-confidence is much more general than politics...





