The smug style in American liberalism
This is definitely the preference falsification election.<p>Those who know me on HN know that I&#x27;m an outspoken proponent of unorthodox ideas. I&#x27;m regularly shouted down, called racist&#x2F;evil&#x2F;etc, downmodded and flagged on HN. I also get a steady stream of private emails: <i>&quot;I wouldn&#x27;t say this publicly cause of the bullies, but that .gov link with all the data does seem to support you. I think you might be right, I need to rethink my views.&quot;</i> These folks very rarely post here - they are afraid of social and perhaps professional approbrium (ala Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin).<p>Those folks are engaging preference falsification.<p>Off HN there is a similar manufactured consensus, similar social penalties for expressing the wrong ideas, and similar levels of preference falsification. When pollsters call the preference falsification continues.<p>Apparently in the privacy of a voting booth, people are willing to express their true beliefs.<p>Note: I don&#x27;t support Trump - search my posting history for &quot;open borders&quot; - but I do understand why folks like him. I don&#x27;t agree with him on basically any policy, but my visceral <i>emotional</i> reaction to his victory is positive: I love the great big &quot;fuck you&quot; to the biased media sneering at him, calling him racist based on &quot;dog whistles&quot; and then writing hit pieces against Ken Bone (let alone the bullying of folks like Tim Hunt, Brendan Eich and Curtis Yarvin).<p>See also Scott Aaronson who explains this in more detail: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scottaaronson.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=2777" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scottaaronson.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;?p=2777</a>