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lessdazed comments on On "Friendly" Immortality - Less Wrong Discussion
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Introspection works poorly here, as it often does. People are adept at changing their minds and forgetting they had ever thought differently.
A person with a good grasp of the outside view but who overly respected introspection might think: "I think I am right about things, but so does everybody. Furthermore, I haven't significantly changed my mind from being wrong often, nor has anyone else. Society has been improving over time.
So long as I humbly and accurately recognize my not often changing my mind parallels others' not often changing their minds, and it is unlikely I represent the pinnacle of moral progress throughout the ages (even assuming I'm better than my contemporaries) death is needed to replace people and maintain moral progress."
The problem with that reasoning is that it is not true that people don't change their minds - they mostly just think they don't. They can honestly say they have always supported chief Grok, even when chief Urk was in charge.
But young people are more likely to support same-sex marriage.
Perhaps I worded it too strongly, though I don't think so, but I didn't mean to imply people never hold on to opinions established in their early life. I agree that on this issue (more than any other) generational churn is the biggest factor, but even here it is merely the largest one (I think).
"not a single state shows support for gay marriage greater than 35% amongst those 64 and older" - what were the opinions among this cohort years ago? When they were younger, did even half as many support gay marriage?
Also we do not know for sure that it is their age itself that creates more inflexibility of opinion. Many people in this age group are retired and consequently do not have as many social interactions outside of their in-groups.
I'm not sure what is meant by "inflexibility of opinion," but for many possible concepts that would apply much more to the young than the old, and perhaps to the middle aged least of all.