Tim Harford: belief

Transcript context

…Most generally, at the conceptual level, how exactly did British politics get so weird? No matter what your point of view, it feels like something very few people had predicted six years ago. What happened? What variable didn’t we see? Yes. I’m not sure I have a good answer, even in hindsight. It is very curious. We got to a situation where people suddenly identified very strongly with a proposition that they had not previously identified strongly with. I don’t fully understand the processes whereby that happened, but both on the “remain” side and the “leave” side, people started expressing a great deal of contempt for the other side, not listening to what was being said, not taking the arguments seriously. And a lot of people just sorted themselves into echo chambers in a way that I hadn’t seen before. The curious thing — that polarization, I think, is familiar to anyone who studies American politics — but the curious thing is that it was crosscutting. It came at the electoral system sideways — viral referendum with both major parties split on what to do about it, and most members of parliament convinced that Brexit was not a very good idea. We’ve just been dealing with that awful logjam ever since. We’re having this conversation before the election. It will be broadcast after the election. There is a reasonable chance the election will break the logjam, but there’s a reasonable chance that it won’t. I guess we’ll see. When I go to England — which I do fairly often — frequently, I have the feeling that this is such a sensible culture. What strikes me is that when people say something, so often they feel compelled to give a reason. And they give the reason in a fairly even, or not so emotional, tone of voice. I contrast this with my native United States of America. Is my impression just off? Are the English actually not any more sensible than anyone else, culturally?…

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