I mean, I see why a party would want their members to perceive the other party's candidate as having a blind spot.  But I don't see why they'd be typically able to do this, given that the other party's candidate would rather not be perceived this way, the other party would rather their candidate not be perceived this way, and, naively, one might expect voters to wish not to be deluded.  It isn't enough to know there's an incentive in one direction; there's gotta be more like a net incentive across capacity-weighted players, or else an easier time creating appearance-of-blindspots vs creating visible-lack-of-blindspots, or something.  So, I'm somehow still not hearing a model that gives me this prediction.

You raise a good point that Susan’s relationship to Tusan and Vusan is part of what keeps her opinions stuck/stable.

But I’m hopeful that if Susan tries to “put primary focal attention on where the scissors comes from, and how it is working to trick Susan and Robert at once”, this’ll help with her stuckness re: Tusan and Vusan.  Like, it’ll still be hard, but it’ll be less hard than “what if Robert is right” would be.

Reasons I’m hopeful:

I’m partly working from a toy model in which (Susan and Tusan and Vusan) and (Robert and Sobert and Tobert) all used to be members of a common moral community, before it got scissored.  And the norms and memories of that community haven’t faded all the way.

Also, in my model, Susan’s fear of Tusan’s and Vusan’s punishment isn’t mostly fear of e.g. losing her income or other material-world costs.  It is mostly fear of not having a moral community she can be part of.  Like, of there being nobody who upholds norms that make sense to her and sees her as a member-in-good-standing of that group of people-with-sensible-norms.

Contemplating the scissoring process… does risk her fellowship with Tusan and Vusan, and that is scary and costly for Susan.

But:

• a) Tusan and Vusan are not *as* threatened by it as if Susan had e.g. been considering more directly whether Candidate X was good.  I think.
• b) Susan is at least partially compensated by her partial-risk-of-losing-Tusan-and-Vusan, by the hope/memory of the previous society that (Susan and Tusan and Vusan) and (Robert and Sobert and Tobert) all shared, which she has some hope of reaccessing here
• b2) Tusan and Vusan are maybe also a bit tempted by this, which on their simpler models (since they’re engaging with Susan’s thoughts only very loosely / from a distance, as they complain about Susan) renders as “maybe she can change some of the candidate X supporters, since she’s discussing how they got tricked”
• c) There are maybe some remnant-norms within the larger (pre-scissored) community that can appreciate/welcome Susan and her efforts.

I’m not sure I’m thinking about this well, or explicating it well.  But I feel there should be some unscissoring process?

I don't follow this model yet.  I see why, under this model, a party would want the opponent's candidate to enrage people / have a big blind spot (and how this would keep the extremes on their side engaged), but I don't see why this model would predict that they would want their own candidate to enrage people / have a big blind spot.

Thanks; I love this description of the primordial thing, had not noticed this this clearly/articulately before, it is helpful.

Re: why I'm hopeful about the available levers here: 

I'm hoping that, instead of Susan putting primary focal attention on Robert ("how can he vote this way, what is he thinking?"), Susan might be able to put primary focal attention on the process generating the scissors statements: "how is this thing trying to trick me and Robert, how does it work?"

A bit like how a person watching a commercial for sugary snacks, instead of putting primary focal attention on the smiling person on the screen who seems to desire the snacks, might instead put primary focal attention on "this is trying to trick me."  

(My hope is that this can become more feasible if we can provide accurate patterns for how the scissors-generating-process is trying to trick Susan(/Robert).  And that if Susan is trying to figure out how she and Robert were tricked, by modeling the tricking process, this can somehow help undo the trick, without needing to empathize at any point with "what if candidate X is great."

Or: by seeing themselves, and a voter for the other side, as co-victims of an optical illusion, designed to trick each of them into being unable to find another's areas of true seeing.  And by working together to figure out how the illusion works, while seeing it as a common enemy.

But my specific hypothesis here is that the illusion works by misconstruing the other voter's "Robert can see a problem with candidate Y" as "Robert can't see the problem with candidate X", and that if you focus on trying to decode the first the illusion won't kick in as much. 

By parsing the other voter as "against X" rather than "for Y", and then inquiring into how they see X as worth being against, and why, while trying really hard to play taboo and avoid ontological buckets.

Huh.  Is your model is that surpluses are all inevitably dissipated in some sort of waste/signaling cascade?  This seems wrong to me but also like it's onto something.

I like your conjecture about Susan's concern about giving Robert steam.

I am hoping that if we decode the meme structure better, Susan could give herself and Robert steam re: "maybe I, Susan, am blind to some thing, B, that matters" without giving steam to "maybe A doesn't matter, maybe Robert doesn't have a blind spot there."  Like, maybe we can make a more specific "try having empathy right at this part" request that doesn't confuse things the same way.  Or maybe we can make a world where people who don't bother to try that look like schmucks who aren't memetically savvy, or something.  I think there might be room for something like this?

If we can get good enough models of however the scissors-statements actually work, we might be able to help more people be more in touch with the common humanity of both halves of the country, and more able to heal blind spots.

E.g., if the above model is right, maybe we could tell at least some people "try exploring the hypothesis that Y-voters are not so much in favor of Y, as against X -- and that you're right about the problems with Y, but they might be able to see something that you and almost everyone you talk to is systematically blinded to about X."

We can build a useful genre-savviness about common/destructive meme patterns and how to counter them, maybe.  LessWrong is sort of well-positioned to be a leader there: we have analytic strength, and aren't too politically mindkilled.

I don't know the answer, but it would be fun to have a twitter comment with a zillion likes asking Sam Altman this question.  Maybe someone should make one?