re: #431 Gabriel Hanna

Instead of arguing on the merits. You assume, without evidence, that the problem is not with your ideas, but with the way your opponents conned the sheeple into thinking they made sense.

I don’t mean you personally, you seem quite reasonable. I’m just saying that the concept is not useful or particularly illuminating.

I’d agree that the Window isn’t useful if one wants to just use it everytime some pet idea is rejected by the public. That’s the opposite of useful. That’s a prescription for clinging to bad policies and ideas rejected by the public. You’re assuming, without evidence, that this is the way it’s always used. It’s not, nor is there any reason to think it would always and only be used that way.

There are different debates going on here: this is one:
1) is the abstract concept ever useful for understanding what happens in political discourse?

I think so. Political scientists think so. It’s just an idea about how to understand the framing of political discourse. (Whether and how it applies to any particular topic is another matter)

2) you have a different kind of objection over the whole notion of framing and bias, which is that ideas ought to stand or fall on their own merits. I think everyone would agree with that; nonetheless, we’re affected by biases and framing all the time, often unconsciously. It’s useful to understand them.

Hope that clarifies.