Amazing post. I already knew that filtered evidence can lead people astray, and that many disagreements are about relative importance of things, but your post really made everything “click” for me. Yes, of course if what people look at is correlated with what they see, that will lead to polarization. And even if people start out equally likely to look at X or Y, but seeing X makes them marginally more likely to look at X in the future rather than Y, then some people will randomly polarize toward X and others toward Y.
Amazing post. I already knew that filtered evidence can lead people astray, and that many disagreements are about relative importance of things, but your post really made everything “click” for me. Yes, of course if what people look at is correlated with what they see, that will lead to polarization. And even if people start out equally likely to look at X or Y, but seeing X makes them marginally more likely to look at X in the future rather than Y, then some people will randomly polarize toward X and others toward Y.