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>A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges.

Do you live on one of the US coasts? Because if so, you are probably right - before Obergefell, most people didn't care about your private life and after Obergefell it could all finally be out in the open. But in a big chunk of this country, it really doesn't matter what the courts decided because there is major political and religious pressure that says that ain't ok. Don't pretend for a moment that a wide swath of states wouldn't send us straight back to 1863 if they could.




Not important. I'm working off of US polling data. See sister comments for reasoning. Everyone that is calling me laughable and "haven't looked at the data" has clearly not themselves.


I’m not calling you “laughable” I’m saying that the data doesn’t matter. We lost Roe, there’s no reason to believe that ugly politics won’t seek to roll back Obergefell too given the opportunity. These people don’t give a shit what the majority think.


Sorry, I'm not saying __you__ are saying my claim is laughable, I'm saying "people" are[0]. The fact of the matter is 2/3 responses I got were certain I'm wrong with providing no evidence (@Georgelemental's link is not backed by data, only shows one plot related to belief in god, and is really just a socialist propaganda article that is shoehorning economic discussion into cultural that creates a premise that would validate my claim but contradicts their own (if socialism solves the issues, then it isn't about age... Though I'll agree that economic factors are important for estimating rate of cultural change)).

I agree with your point, but to be clear, it is not contrary to what I claimed. My claim is about how ethical values change faster than people age. See the reply in [0] or the linked comment there. The claim shouldn't be controversial because it is ridiculous to believe that your beliefs become fixed at some certain age. The fallacy is that people will think "well I update my beliefs but others don't" (i.e. I'm Bayesian, but others are immutable). You're not that unique.

Certainly this change can go in any direction. It is also a common fallacy to believe younger = liberal while older = conservative. While there is correlation, there is not much to suggest causation. Especially considering there are young people that are Republicans and many old people that are Democrats. We can argue nuance, but that's a different claim. I don't think most people have a good understanding of the demographics of voters[1] and instead focus on what data they want to see. Some of that complexity may be illustrated in looking at Figure 3 (education) closely. The most apparent differential is graduate level education. If you look at the top part carefully you'll see that there's a subtle distinction between completion of a college education vs not and the main difference is in graduate education, which is a much smaller number of people. The graph can be hard to read because the size of each bin is directly proportional to the education level (largest bin is H.S. (~80% of Americans) or less and postgrad is smallest (~5% of Americans if counting professional degrees)). Also take specific note at the differentials in the bottom plot as there is inferential race based data.

Basically, I'm saying it's a bit complex and people are trying to overly simplify the problem. I even think your claim of coast vs central is a point, but I'm not sure it really discredits the claim which is independent of party affiliation or if someone is rural or urban (which is highly correlated with cost vs central).

Oversimplification won't give you an approximate answer, but often will lead you in the wrong direction.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082963

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-...




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