akouts's comments

"both liberals and conservatives tend to overestimate how conservative their constituents are, conservatives’ perceptions in this regard are exceptionally strong – conservative politicians typically overestimate the conservatism of their constituencies by more than 20 percentage points on these issues. This difference is so large that ​nearly half of conservative politicians appear to believe that they represent a district that is as or more conservative on these issues than are the most conservative districts in the entire country​."

I heard a quote years ago that "reality has a liberal bias." Based on the data...that appears true.

Amazing paper. Thanks so much for contributing this work. I work in civic tech and am very focused on trying to improve the gov system we have through technology. Are there any representatives you have seen recently that are doing a particularly good job gauging the pulse of their constituents? AND/OR is there an ideal scenario you have imagined that is left out of the paper?

As an aside, as someone who has started one company in the space of citizen engagement and been in product exec roles at two others, I wonder whether or not rep engagement with constituents is a problem that can be solved with technology or if it is cultural in nature and requires more individual leadership to right the ship. I have met with a large number of reps from city, state and federal levels in order to build an understanding of the strategic problems that are top of mind for them. I have found (generally) that much more effort is paid in "dealing" with inbound messages and heading off harsh judgement in the court of public opinion than procuring good data.

TL;DR tech is important but far from a panacea and something reps don't really think about.

I worked at a large automotive manufacturer in near Detroit a number of years ago when they were considering whether or not to design and manufacture an electric vehicle. The had engaged in full "well to wheels" analysis of potential designs as well as that of competitors and concluded that the energy economics never made sense. That analysis considered how "carbon expensive" it is to spin up manufacturing, manufacture, service and operate a vehicle going all the way back to raw materials sourcing. They felt more optimistic about diesel hybrids but also chose not to pursue that. I find it unfortunate that we don't see a more standardized process for conducting full "well to wheels" analysis that takes into account the full life cycle of a designs, manufacturing and product lifecycle. Would be awesome if a consumer watchdog group existed that had the access and technical competence needed to audit these technologies.

A lot of conventional management advice floating around smacks of celebrating these so called "psychopathic" tendencies.

Ex. Never name a dog you are going to eat...

However, I don't think that separating emotion from a situation and being able to evaluate a situation dispassionately/objectively qualifies as psychopathic. Our society is so fascinated with the aberrant behavior of "broken people" we are politicizing and softening the term to a place outside of its definition. Being unable to participate in the full range of human emotion is vastly different from acting dispassionate when convenient.

Nice way of dealing with a near religious debate within the dev community. Huge fan of TDD from a process perspective, sometimes it can feel like ice skating uphill selling it though - well written and supported post.