Stephen Dubner

And that's a trick I think I learned from academia.

Let's take it away from the fascism.

If you're going to call someone in economic terms a communist or a socialist, let's define terms.

Are we talking about the socialism of 2025 Denmark?

Yeah.

Right.

Not the socialism of 1925 Vienna.

It's a big difference now.

What do you mean by that?

So this goes back to, I wonder if you've ever come across this in talking with Angela or anyone else in that realm.

I'm probably going to get all these facts wrong, but in my memory, there's something called the illusion of explanatory depth.

Basically, if you go to a family gathering, let's say, right?

People know you, you know them, you have some prior expectations.

Just go up to them and start asking them about hot button issues, whatever you think they are.

People get pretty heated pretty quickly.

But then if you take one of those hot button issues, let's say it's gun control or immigration or something,

and ask them in a non-obnoxious way, which is hard, but ask them to explain, like, what do you mean exactly by border control?

So it turns out that people just don't know what they're talking about most of the time, but we all pretend to.

The reason I don't like that is we pretend to in order to have a position, in order to be in a tribe that I want to get out of.

I think this idea that we've all allowed ourselves to be herded into two political parties.