The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb • Hacker News Board

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#71

Post by jeremyt » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:41 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39

onewaystreet wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that someone who has a firm grasp on an issue will often find is that most people on both sides don't actually know what they are talking about.

This is a painfully true observation. I think the first time I really realized it was when I was drifting away from my religion of birth, and actually started to listen to atheist people around me. I soon discovered that the only difference between most of them and the religious people I know was the value of $religion variable. For one group it was "God", for the other it was "no God". The thought patterns were exac…

Ah yes, the old "prove that something doesn't exist" argument.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#72

Post by DrScump » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:43 AM UTC

gweinberg wrote: post #14

This article has it exactly wrong. Most people on the other side ARE stupid. Most people on your side are stupid also.

Most are uninformed (often due to intellectual laziness) rather than stupid.

"Stupid" implies that they make bad choices after being fully informed, which is often unproven.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#73

Post by DrScump » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:49 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #41

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32

Another observation about the "Other side" (that is, really, about all of us) to add to excellent points made by others here. Most disagreements happen around things that have no direct impact on day-to-day life. People can hold widely different opinions about politics because... it's politics. Most of it is bullshit, and rest doesn't affect your daily life anyway, at least not immediately or directly. Take two peopl…

>>People can hold widely different opinions about politics because... it's politics. Most of it is bullshit, and rest doesn't affect your daily life anyway, at least not immediately or directly. I completely disagree. Most political issues have a direct impact on people. Affordable Care Act is requiring millions of people to buy health insurance. Defunding Planned Parenthood would cut aid from millions of young women…

"Defunding Planned Parenthood would cut aid from millions of young women."

No, the "defunding Planned Parenthood" amendment would have simply removed their status as a preferred (and overpaid) provider of abortion services. Overall funding of family planning (including abortion) would not have been reduced, and Planned Parenthood could have still competed for such patients on level ground with all other providers.

I am pro-choice. Why do our opinions differ? Because I actually bothered to read the legislation. It's right there, freely accessible, on congress.gov.

There is a larger lesson here: major media agencies (including the big names like the New York Times, AP, Washington Post, etc.) generally never read legislation at all. A given reporter simply prints what a preferred legislator's staffer tells him/her to print. A great example of this was when pretty much all of the major media outlets claimed that "Republicans voted down a provision the (Feinstein Amendment) to deny gun sales to those on the terror watchlist", which was an outright lie. That amendment would have instead wiped out the ObamaCare repeal language.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#74

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:51 AM UTC

onewaystreet wrote: post #28

gweinberg wrote: post #14

This article has it exactly wrong. Most people on the other side ARE stupid. Most people on your side are stupid also.

The thing that someone who has a firm grasp on an issue will often find is that most people on both sides don't actually know what they are talking about.

Most people are complete morons when it comes to anything they don't have to deal with on a day to day basis. They know what they need to know to continue existing any maybe they know or learn enough to get ahead but beyond that people are generally ignorant and clueless to their ignorance.

For example, I personally have a stake in the gun control issue. I'm against "banning assault weapons" because I'm against a bunch of bureaucrats having a chance to define "assault weapon" because last time we gave them a chance they banned a bunch of things that make firearms look scary. Ditto for background checks but to a lesser extent. Existing implementations suck, a lot. The same goes for tougher laws in general, they don't seem to have done much of anything for the positive and there's anecdotal evidence they may be negative (look up some of the pro-gun number crunching exercises f you want an example). Why would I or anyone else who wants to go to the range want to encourage more of this? We see it as the firearm equivalent of security theater.

However people who aren't well informed on the details have had these two carrots danged in front of them as a cure to a problem in our society and they'd be fools not to reach for them when they're framed in that context. Meanwhile they can't be bothered to wonder why anyone wouldn't want these things. After all, some poll says $large_percent of people support $thing, yet they can't be arsed to even wonder why that $small_percent is holding out.

You find this sort of problem on both sides of any controversial issue.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#75

Post by sandworm101 » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:52 AM UTC

>> I implore you to seek out your opposite. When you hear someone cite “facts” that don’t support your viewpoint don’t think “that can’t be true!” Instead consider, “Hm, maybe that person is right? I should look into this.”

Nooop. When the crazy uncle starts going on about how the lizard people at the US have formed a world government for the express purpose of using solar panels to take guns away from seniors ... no. There are ideas that are not worth my time to explore or disprove. So long as the crazy people stick to their crazy shacks, I am not going to engage.

Of course those crazies seem to be breeding uncontrollably. It may be time to reverse my position and actually start researching the vril.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#76

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:56 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #61

memracom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the British tradition, university students used to participate in debates where two people argued the opposite sides of a question. The debaters got brownie points for winning the debate, not for arguing the RIGHT opinion. Often the debaters had to argue for a question which they themselves were against, or vice versa. The audiences who voted the winner, paid more attention to the quality of the debate, not to the…

I always viewed this kind of debates as potentially harmful though. If you award brownie points for "debate quality", as opposed to "getting it right", you may end up promoting eristic over rationality. But maybe British universities get it right. I don't know, I haven't had the experience. We had debates in my secondary school, and I remember that the best way to win those was to be the cleverest bullshitter in the…

I think you're completely correct. It's politically poisonous because it promotes a legal/corporate view of the world where you win by being glib, emotive, and persuasive, over a scientific/rational view of the world where you win by modelling and predicting objective reality more accurately than the other side.

It's easy to see how this destroys any possibility of rational policy-making.

It doesn't help that most countries suffer from literally industrial levels of PR effort, media spin, and online astroturfing, all designed to persuade, influence, and manipulate, and not to inform.

See e.g. http://www.businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movem... for a very incomplete list of examples.

The whole point of PR etc is to deny reality. So the idea that the other side might have a point worthy of respect is deeply problematic.

It would be true in a world where everyone had access to unbiased information, deliberately misleading the public was banned by law, and public education was a significant policy goal.

That isn't the world we live in.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#77

Post by enraged_camel » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:57 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #47

enraged_camel wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>People can hold widely different opinions about politics because... it's politics. Most of it is bullshit, and rest doesn't affect your daily life anyway, at least not immediately or directly. I completely disagree. Most political issues have a direct impact on people. Affordable Care Act is requiring millions of people to buy health insurance. Defunding Planned Parenthood would cut aid from millions of young women…

Ask yourself - how many of those issues affect you directly? And by directly I mean something you'll suddenly have to account for in your daily life and spending patterns. Personally, their equivalents in my country don't affect me at all. I'm young and relatively healthy, my employer pays for my health insurance. Yes, accidents can happen, but it's an abstract possibility. Gun control - when have you last seen peopl…

>>Ask yourself - how many of those issues affect you directly? And by directly I mean something you'll suddenly have to account for in your daily life and spending patterns.

Me directly? Probably very few. But that's because I'm a gainfully employed single white male and I have an incredible amount of job security. However, I'm definitely in the minority.

Besides, it's difficult to think of certain issues such as gun control in terms of direct and immediate impact. I mean, is lack of gun control affecting me right now? No. Will it affect me tomorrow when I'm watching a movie at the theater and some guy comes in and opens fire on the crowd and kills me? It's a very real possibility.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#78

Post by sandworm101 » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 3:00 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #6

The "Other side" is scared, not dumb. Molly Ivins used to point this out. For the white lower middle class, life has been a slow downhill slide since the mid-1970s. Those are the people who support Trump and the Tea Party. Unfortunately, exploiting that fear is politically effective. This is a problem with a long history. There are records of it back as far as Cicero. It's not their fault that they don't know what to…

Sometimes they aren't scared. Sometimes they are downright confident, down to their core confident. That is when they are most dangerous.

Nobody can argue with a true believer. Such people adopt views so strongly that no rational evidence can counter the irrational mystique they have written. Trying to change their minds directly, through conversation, only ends in violence. The willingness to cling to such beliefs, to take anything onboard as an absolute truth, is akin to an addiction. They have to fix themselves over an extended period of time.

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#79

Post by DrScump » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 3:01 AM UTC

memracom wrote: post #68

Ever think that on most issues, say 985 times out of 100, the other side is roughly 50% of those that are not undecided. If you look at the issue overall, and allow for shades of gray between the positions, then most people are in rough agreement around some central position. I think that if you can construct a survey on the issue that correctly breaks out several shades of gray in the position, then the results will…

   ...say 985 times out of 100...

985 times out of 100, people in general will mistrust the data. ;)

Re: The “Other Side” Is Not Dumb

#80

Post by ocdtrekkie » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 3:02 AM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #75

>> I implore you to seek out your opposite. When you hear someone cite “facts” that don’t support your viewpoint don’t think “that can’t be true!” Instead consider, “Hm, maybe that person is right? I should look into this.” Nooop. When the crazy uncle starts going on about how the lizard people at the US have formed a world government for the express purpose of using solar panels to take guns away from seniors ... no…

Well, we all generally agree that there aren't 'lizard people' in the US (we do agree that, right? ...right?), but increasingly less crazy ideas are now being regarded as similarly crazy.