TL;DR

This post gives a name to a concept that I've encountered in many discussions recently: The Gap of Perspective. The concept is very similar to Inferential Distance in that there is a difficulty conveying your point with appropriate strength because of a huge difference in knowledge or experience. On top of that, the Gap of Perspective is based on an irrational distribution of opinion that runs inverse to the arguments, mostly because of tradition. The term Gap of Perspective is supposed to highlight that the other person does not update her opinion according to what the arguments suggest, instead staying closely to her original opinion. The reason for this is that she can't see the arguments or evidence from your point of view. Thus, despite of overwhelming arguments for this sane perspective, people update their belief only minor steps away from the socially established perspective. I elaborate on this using some controversial examples that I need to hold my tongue back about in everyday life, because what I consider sane is considered radical by many of the people I interact with. Like with Inferential Distance, I feel it is important to notice the Gap of Perspective in conversations in order to understand the frustration of certain discussions and better cope with it.

Disclaimer

Let me state first, that this is probably not a novel concept, because once seen, it feels obvious in a lot of cases. However, I don't recall having seen it stated this way on LW. I feel like Tim Urban came pretty close with his elaboration of the Idea Spectrum which does avoid the possibility of one opinion being way saner than the other, which is perfectly fine for his line of thought.
This article contains quite some of my personal opinion in the examples, which is backed by many arguments that I will not repeat here. I mainly use the most obvious arguments, while hoping to avoid strawmanning. In the end, the Gap of Perspective is exactly that: A huge difference in perception of a topic caused by a huge difference in knowledge or experience, plus the failure to update the beliefs appropriately.
This is not a post of what people should belief. It's about how it is sometimes necessary to look at a topic from a different perspective in order to get a reasonable consensus and notice when conversations turn (hopelessly) toxic. Also this post is a way to structure my thoughts

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