The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
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The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
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Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
#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 people reasonably believe that their discussion circles already filter out a lot of "average people" and thus expect a higher standard of discourse from their ideological opponents. When that still doesn't happen, it naturally seems like stronger evidence.
4. (Insert generic annoyance at veganism discourse here.)
Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
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Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
#4[dead]
Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
#5The key problem is social media feed boosting “engagement”. Balanced, well thought comments don't bring much engagement so they end up being ignored by the algorithm while outrageously stupid takes generate a lot of (negative) engagement, some of which being equally stupid which will bring more engagement than the sensible responses and so on. And at the end if the day, all you see in your social media feed is stupid people sharing at least some of your values arguing with even stupider people (or so you think, at least) who have the opposite views.
This is obviously harmful for society but also obviously the best outcome for the platform who wants to sell your attention to advertisers.
Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
#6> 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…
One big problem is that lately this kind of extremism has become more like a cult: even considering the idea that the “others” might have some truth (while being wrong about the rest) is treated like blasphemy
Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
#7I think the problem here is that we have a bias for those who agree with us that outweighs our patience in searching for oppositional opinions that are well founded. From a liberal bubble it is quite hard to find conservative viewpoints that aren't based on unobserved apriori belief or strawman arguments. It feels like being a heavyweight surrounded by lightweights and it makes me feel like I need a better sparring partner, I just can't find one...
Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
#8> it’s very very easy to be negatively polarized by a ton of bad conversations with normal people about it, until you feel like the whole rest of the world is crazy
Why wouldn't the world be crazy, though? What reason do we have to assume that the world is not crazy? Most reasons are tautological when you really unpack them.
Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
#9> it’s very very easy to be negatively polarized by a ton of bad conversations with normal people about it, until you feel like the whole rest of the world is crazy Why wouldn't the world be crazy, though? What reason do we have to assume that the world is not crazy? Most reasons are tautological when you really unpack them.
Of course the world is crazy. But so are you
Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)
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