Learn a stranger's view on net zero and you can make a fair guess at their view on Gaza. Nothing logical connects the two. Something else does - and it isn't thinking.
Crossbencher · 22 July 2026
An opinion is supposed to be a conclusion - the thing you are left holding after you have looked. Most political opinions aren't conclusions. They arrive as a set: one membership, many outputs, and the tell is that a stranger who learns your position on a single issue can predict your positions on ten others that share no premise with it.
The pattern is easy to see once named. Views on net zero predict views on the Middle East. Views on lockdowns predicted views on statues. A person's judgement of the monarchy is a decent guide to their judgement of electric cars, and neither follows from the other by any chain of reasoning a philosopher would recognise. Issues with nothing in common move together, the way starlings do - thousands of birds turning at once, in formation, with nothing you could call a decision anywhere in the flock.
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