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Relsqui comments on Vote Qualifications, Not Issues - Less Wrong
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There is one thing I'd like to add, which I thought was implicit but which the feedback so far indicates wasn't.
If an issue has smart people on one side and stupid people on the other, then taking the wrong side is overwhelming evidence that a politician is stupid, and therefore unqualified. For example, it would be wrong to vote for a politician who was a creationist, regardless of their other qualifications, because there aren't any smart and sane creationists. But this isn't really a controversial issue, in the sense that I meant it - the overwhelming majority of intelligent people agree.
I mean this only to apply to issues that are controversial in the sense that approximately equally sized groups of qualified people exist on either side. In those cases, people should expect that most of their opinions were picked up socially and reinforced by confirmation bias.
Over a couple of posts of yours, I have seen a tendency towards judgmental hyperbole, and also towards dividing the world into "smart" and "stupid," which I don't agree with and which puts me off of the ideas you present with them.
I'm not remotely a creationist and I rolled my eyes at this. Are there any strong rationalists who have carefully examined the evidence and weighed the probabilities and remain creationists? I doubt it. Does that exclude all people who are smart and sane? Of course not. You're doing almost exactly the thing your post argues against: picking one issue and ignoring any other factors that might contribute to a person's intelligence. Being wrong about one thing doesn't make someone a dribbling moron, nor crazy. If you really believe there exist no smart creationists, you may be spending too much time with people who are very much like you, and not enough with people who are very unlike you but whom you still respect. Reading Fox News as a Democrat (or the equivalent for your political stance) doesn't count; that's just justifying your superiority complex to yourself.
(Edited to clarify last sentence.)