Standard Reasoning Procedures

• Ask random colleges student random policy questions and they will feel compelled to come up with opinions.
• Ask them for reasons for those opinions and they’ll feel compelled to come up with such reasons.
• Such opinions strongly tend to support the status quo – mostly whatever is, is assumed good.
• There is only a weak added tendency for students to offer similar opinions and reasons on similar policy questions. Opinions and reasons are not being generated by processes that tend to produce much added similarity.
• Students are mostly satisfied to grasp at any plausibly policy-relevant difference to justify treating things differently, even when such differences don’t obviously “make a difference” to the issue at hand.

Robin Hanson, "Natural Hypocrisy"