The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025) • Hacker News Board

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#211

Post by zahlman » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 2:24 PM UTC

thrance wrote: post #187

zahlman wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumping quotes from a Wikipedia article, in the post-OWS era, is not at all a reasonable way to assess the political position of an individual. In practice, WP:BLP is just a mask. I would engage with the specific misrepresentations made here, but that is clearly outside of expected HN discourse. If you care enough, feel free to email me. I use this username, on the Proton email service (the short version of the domai…

It's not hard to confirm the stuff I quoted from Wikipedia. The guy has multiple episodes of his podcast dedicated to promoting the idea of "Cultural Marxism": a ludicrous conspiracy theory. So, in the context of finding someone both willing and knowledgeable enough to "debunk" Marxism, I think we can find better than a guy clueless enough to fall for such theories. Note that this says nothing of Lindsay's other view…

> the idea of "Cultural Marxism": a ludicrous conspiracy theory.

It is nothing of the sort; no conspiracy is alleged. That notion is an invention of Wikipedia's. It would make at least as much sense to describe any arbitrary religious doctrine that way.

Wikipedia's description of "groomer" as "an anti-LGBTQ slur" is also a political fabrication.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#212

Post by mapontosevenths » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

mrguyorama wrote: post #173

mapontosevenths wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only recently learned that most peoples beliefs are not "factual beliefs". Since most of mine are, I thought that's how other people work. I think Popper may have made the same mistake by assuming "correctness" is always the primary value a belief offers. The other kind of beliefs are "Symbolic beliefs." Symbolic beliefs are not held because they are true, or because they are useful on their own. They're held becau…

These unstated beliefs make up a lot of "Common Sense", which is reliably invoked as a means of outing someone for not being in the same "Tribe". There's no such thing as "Common Sense", and every single niche, culture, demographic, etc has their own set of things that "Everyone knows"

I'm not sure why, but this feels like something Heinlein would have said. It's a solid point either way.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#213

Post by Lord-Jobo » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

hackernud3s wrote: post #55

imoverclocked wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think knowing about the branches of your government is a prerequisite to having an opinion or good argument about it. It’s not sufficient to just know that but it’s a good filter in the USA where a surprising number of people have “opinions” but lack the most basic knowledge.

We all learned what the 3 branches are in grade school. Some people forgot it. Liberals are more likely to remember it because liberal discourse (this thread for example) reminds them of it. It's a biased litmus test in other words.

Yeah, biased in favor of people who can think critically. All litmus tests are biased, they are designed to kick out a group of people, pointing out that bias is strange.

Just because liberals tend to end up in the in-group doesn’t mean the test is bad. It means liberals are doing better (in this one specific regard, civics knowledge).

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#214

Post by Lord-Jobo » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 2:49 PM UTC

card_zero wrote: post #50

Pretty good. I have something to say about this part: > most people are in fact “asleep” about most things most of the time, not super thoughtful in how they develop beliefs Which is later echoed, but differently, as: > the average person just doesn’t know much about your hyper specific thing This is skirting around whether they have a duty to know about your thing. The first phrasing suggests they do, the second sug…

There is a pretty small set of things I think people have a duty to know in our very open and comfortable first world.

Civics is the main one that is being catastrophically neglected as pointed out by some other comments here. A majority of the discourse in every political space completely fumbles this(USA). Conservatives openly desire a king above the constitution. Centrists believe that a highly lopsided balance of power can somehow be fixed with moderate responses. And leftists are nearly 24/7 frothing at the mouth with “why WONT THE DEMOCRATS DO SOMETHING” without any apparent understanding of how majorities and pluralities dictate action in our government.

I wouldn’t guess higher than 5% of our political dialogue reflects anything higher than a grade schooler understanding of civics, history, or politics. Which is damn near the only thing we MUST know about to keep the ship upright here thanks to technology and abundance. And we still fuck it more and more every year.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#215

Post by Lord-Jobo » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

kylecazar wrote: post #46

Great points and nice write-up. At the risk of sounding AI pilled, I find LLM's are fairly good sparring partners if you instruct them well. At least they're more capable of giving you the best arguments against your position than the average bar patron. Almost all of my non-professional prompts are of that nature.

LLM are so insanely terrible at this that I constantly have to moderate my prompts with “maybe this isn’t true” or “maybe I am misunderstanding this explanation” to get them to STOP crumbling into dust over the slightest pressure. That’s WITH strong pre prompts that also push against this bias. Roleplay/persona used to be a good way to get around this. “Pretend you are an almighty, rarely wrong, curmudgeonly professor with 150 different phds talking to me, a student”. But these abilities have been strongly restricted due to other (fair) issues so it’s not a solution any more.

Better than a bar patron, no doubt. Still nothing compared to any normal well educated human being

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#216

Post by Lord-Jobo » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 3:00 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #130

zahlman wrote: post #2

> Don't update positively on your extremist beliefs whenever you hear a bad argument against them Two problems: 1. There are beliefs people hold approximately as strongly as they hold "the Sun will rise tomorrow", so "updating" is kinda irrelevant. 2. How many people actually think any of their beliefs are "extremist"? And if they don't, they won't consider the warning to apply. And after digging in further: 3. Many…

I am an extremist - I use GrapheneOS and I think the government shouldn't kill people for being gay.

This really is my big issue with the focus on “extremist, moderate, centrist, whatever”. I don’t care what the centrist or moderate opinion is. It’s been insanely wrong many times throughout history. (1939 German opinions on Jewish people. Public view on MLK at the time of his death) Let’s focus less on “extreme” and more on “unprincipled, uncritical, illogical, undercooked”. If you discard those categories, ignore extreme vs moderate, you get rid of anything that we should consider “bad” that is normally captured by “extreme”

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#217

Post by aftbit » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

jst1fthsdys wrote: post #197

aftbit wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some other examples in the thread, but two that come to mind for me are Charlie Kirk's killer and the guy who shot the cop in Alvarado, Texas after the ICE protest. Arguable another example is the guy who killed the United Healthcare CEO. But that said, most people who have drunk the kool-aid of one party or another are not nearly this extremist. Most of them just post nonsense on social media or even keep…

> Charlie Kirk's killer > the guy who killed the United Healthcare CEO. Allegedly. Neither have been convicted.

Well sure, and I'm not a lawyer or your lawyer, this isn't legal advice, etc.

I'm pretty confident that I know who killed both of those people. I'm pretty confident that both did it for ideological reasons. I'm pretty confident that both of those ideological reasons would be seen as "left leaning" in the American political spectrum.

As you say, neither has been convicted, but fortunately I'm not a court of law so I don't have to wait until they are convicted to draw inferences from what I see in the world.

Leave aside the shooters themselves for a moment. The other thing I find interesting is how those events are discussed and understood by other people, especially in contrast to right-leaning violence (like the people who killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, or the person who killed Melissa Hortman and her husband and also shot John Hoffman and his wife, or even the guy who killed Jonathan Joss). Generally I find it to be a mark of extremism if you feel that political violence is justified as long as it is done against the other side. I've spoken to a lot of people who I would characterize as left-leaning extremists because they outright support the killings of Charlie Kirk and Brian Thompson, even if they wouldn't do it themselves.

This is different from understanding how they could happen, or sympathizing with the killers. I'm talking about people who outright cheer for this to happen more frequently. IMO they do not understand what kind of world they are asking for, but that doesn't stop them from cheerfully asking for it.

And similarly, I've seen people who dismiss the killing of Renee Good or Alex Pretti as justified because she "weaponized their vehicle" (no she didn't - watch the video) or because he brought a firearm to a protest (so what - that's legal ... and what about Kyle Rittenhouse?)

So basically, lots of words to say ... violence against people for ideological reasons sucks and isn't justified. Don't do it.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#218

Post by jrflowers » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

zahlman wrote: post #209

jhbadger wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps. I suspect it may have more to do with the idea that many non-vegans think (whether or not it is true) that vegans believe themselves superior. It isn't unlike how learning that someone is an atheist angers many religious people -- they think the atheists think that they are superior (whether or not they really do).

> many non-vegans think (whether or not it is true) that vegans believe themselves superior. It's hard to imagine a reason why someone is vegan, that wouldn't logically entail such a self-image. > they think the atheists think that they are superior (whether or not they really do). Atheists do not present atheism as an abstention from religion, and generally describe religion as irrational or illogical, not immoral.…

> > many non-vegans think (whether or not it is true) that vegans believe themselves superior.

> It's hard to imagine a reason why someone is vegan, that wouldn't logically entail such a self-image.

I know a guy that’s vegan because he shit himself after going to an Outback Steakhouse

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#219

Post by jst1fthsdys » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #217

jst1fthsdys wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Charlie Kirk's killer > the guy who killed the United Healthcare CEO. Allegedly. Neither have been convicted.

Well sure, and I'm not a lawyer or your lawyer, this isn't legal advice, etc. I'm pretty confident that I know who killed both of those people. I'm pretty confident that both did it for ideological reasons. I'm pretty confident that both of those ideological reasons would be seen as "left leaning" in the American political spectrum. As you say, neither has been convicted, but fortunately I'm not a court of law so I d…

> I'm pretty confident that I know who killed both of those people. I'm pretty confident that both did it for ideological reasons. I'm pretty confident that both of those ideological reasons would be seen as "left leaning" in the American political spectrum.

One can easily say with as much certainty that it was from fascist infighting, something fascists are well known for. Fuentes was saying some rather incendiary things about Kirk prior to the shooting, after all.

Someone hating UHC and the health care system in this country doesn't mean they are left leaning either. The base level that you can assume is they are sick and driven to extremes by a corrupt and cruel system.

> Generally I find it to be a mark of extremism if you feel that political violence is justified as long as it is done against the other side.

Is it extreme to approve of violence on those who further an agenda of committing violence on a societal level?

> IMO they do not understand what kind of world they are asking for

That is the world we have lived in forever.

> violence against people for ideological reasons sucks and isn't justified. Don't do it.

You might want to get on the line with the government and let them know this. A lot of problems would be solved.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#220

Post by cowboylowrez » Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #175

zahlman wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... and find their more-reasoned arguments refreshing, you're right back at... emotionally attractive rather than rationally considered. How do you figure?

Just because someone can find or create lengthy logical rationalizations does not mean they're arriving at universal truths. Gödel's first theorem says that a logical system can either be incomplete or contradictory. The comprehensiveness of natural language (our primary tool for communicating), especially with the prevailing over-reliance on Boolean logic, points to the results from our use of them being readily con…

The contradictions probably should generate political compromises. I mean it would be sort of ridiculous to say "Godel, so lets be a failed state!" I would also not buy blaming the ridiculousness of the USA's state of affairs on Godel either, as I don't see any attempt from the powers in charge to lean toward "fully-baked reasoning", in fact they are whackadoodles from the best I can tell lol

Some folks talk like the lowest of the lowlife trolling forum goers are even remotely approaching logically consistent philosophical systems that eventually run into eventual and inevitable paradoxes, and I don't buy it. Heck, we should be that lucky to have forums like that instead of rabid identity wars.

Have you ever chatted with a libertarian for instance? In english? Half your terms need to receive new definitions lol