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The Cement of Society Is...

branemrys.blogspot.com

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Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#21

Post by blhack »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #12
rtkwe wrote: post #3

More and more I think a good answer for this is something along the lines of "...a shared basic reality of facts." Especially lately in the US it seems like there's a schism in the basic understanding of what's happening with stuff like Coronavirus, effects of systematic racism past and present, climate change, etc.

I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but "basic understanding" and "facts" are two very different things: facts are facts. Their understanding has more to do with the interpretation. And if we all agree on interpretation of the facts, then cementing the society becomes too easy of a task.

You're in a car. The speedometer reads 50mph. How fast are you going?

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#23

Post by bobthechef »

aaron695 wrote: post #14

Religion is an interesting one. It's certainly a cement. It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrained it will have shaped everything. We will perhaps never know if it was a net gain or not.

> It's easy to see the negatives really hard to see the positives but they will be huge, it's so ingrained it will have shaped everything. We will perhaps never know if it was a net gain or not.

Perhaps for you, but in any case, "religion" is not a single thing and not all religions are equal. Besides, every society has a religion. Every person has a faith. In the US, it is liberalism. In the Soviet Union, it was the Marxism/Leninism/whatever and the State. In medieval Europe, it was Catholicism. For Richard Dawkins, it is scientism.

And the only measure worth discussing is whether the religion in question is true. Your phrasing suggests you see it as some purely instrumental fiction. I reject that view because holding to a faith for its purported "benefits" is an act of bad faith. You believe things because you have reasons to believe they're true, not because you think they'll produce some desired result.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#24

Post by [deleted] »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #10
glial wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least, an agreement in the value of good faith discussion in pursuit of truth and mutual progress.

How many times have I heard from folks claiming "conservatism" that they don't want progress, in any form-- individual, mutual, societal...

[deleted]

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#25

Post by Chris2048 »

blhack wrote: post #21
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but "basic understanding" and "facts" are two very different things: facts are facts. Their understanding has more to do with the interpretation. And if we all agree on interpretation of the facts, then cementing the society becomes too easy of a task.

You're in a car. The speedometer reads 50mph. How fast are you going?

You're in a rocket-ship, the speedometer reads 0.5c (half-lightspeed); How fast are you going?

If you understand you'll ask "from what frame of reference?"

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#26

Post by klyrs »

blhack wrote: post #21
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound like a nitpicker, but "basic understanding" and "facts" are two very different things: facts are facts. Their understanding has more to do with the interpretation. And if we all agree on interpretation of the facts, then cementing the society becomes too easy of a task.

You're in a car. The speedometer reads 50mph. How fast are you going?

50, plus or minus a bit depending on environmental conditions, tire wear, and speedometer calibration, relative to the surface you're driving on.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#27

Post by ARandomerDude »

contingencies wrote: post #18

Alcohol. Banks. Chromosome identity politics. Divorce. Email. Foreigners-as-the-excuse. Generational warfare. Heels. I. Jokes approved as PC. Kafka. LVMH. Minimalism in lieu of poverty. No homes for Millenials. Objects. Puritanism. Quiet carriages. Restlessness. Streaming. Terror. University debt. Vegans. Woks. Xenogamy. Yellow peril. Zoom.

> Puritanism

Owen, Flavel, Sibbes, Manton, Perkins -- it would be amazing if these guys were the cement of our society!

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#28

Post by smegcicle »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #10
glial wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least, an agreement in the value of good faith discussion in pursuit of truth and mutual progress.

How many times have I heard from folks claiming "conservatism" that they don't want progress, in any form-- individual, mutual, societal...

opposite extreme: "'progress'- whatever the cost"... for some reason referred to as 'woke'? (still need to work on understanding that angle)

"replacing what works with what sounds good" --T.Sowell

offtopic rant, but on the subject of politics; to me it seems underhanded to pursue experimental federal programs eg for healthcare- why not demonstrate it works in a few test states.. wouldn't california love to pass something like that? if only there were a way to pass the buck to the federal government for the homeless...

not that the 'red team' political machine hasn't been pulling on the middle as well, claiming to be 'good guys' while corrupting for their own aims; what grinds my gears is either side claiming any kind of moral highground without referencing empirical positive impact

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#29

Post by rtkwe »

bobthechef wrote: post #16
rtkwe wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to believe when from your understanding of the world the other side is blatantly lying and misrepresenting things. It forms a bit of a positive feedback loop where seeing bad intentions leads you to being less likely to give slack so you see more bad intentions. From the left looking rightward at Fox News and many local stations (increasingly owned by and forced to run identical scripts from Sinclair Broa…

You do realize that the "other side" has the same EXACT perception of you, right? It would be nice if people were a bit more skeptical of their preferred news outlets and opinion makers. What I see instead is the continuing existence of the same bubble that led to the shock and surprise at Trump's election. An absolute refusal or inability to consider other views, an inability to interpret events in historical contex…

No, of course, I never thought about the perception from the other side. Yes I know that, I believe the things I do though because I either think they're correct, they should be correct, or I hope they'll be right some day, I think I've considered and synthesized information from various sources not just one or a small few. I get that my whole world view is a conglomeration of what I was taught, when I grew up, what I've read etc. but if I didn't think I was at least partially right why would I believe it.

It's not even strictly about the news itself, the underlying philosophy that tilts the news and policy choices seems like it's missing or ignoring a piece of reality. [0] The further from my view the more alien the terrain seems and the less any of the logic makes sense because the priors are so different. Why do we keep swinging back and forth on banking regulations (or business regulation in general) when fundamentally the incentives haven't changed?

[0] Again I get that this is probably what a Conservative feels too but I don't know how to bridge the conceptual gap between the ideological poles here. I went into CS because I can reasonably understand what twiddling a given knob will do and I can control the scope of problems. I have no idea how to even start twiddling societal knobs.

Re: The Cement of Society Is...

#30

Post by retsibsi »

lucas_membrane wrote: post #22

Trust. Or, as Reagan might have said, "Trust, and verify if you must."

Forgive me if this is too much of a tangent, but can anyone explain "trust, but verify" to me? I can't tell if it's drily ironic (basically meaning 'don't actually take anything on trust'), or kind of meaningless (like the previous interpretation, but meant to be polite and superficially positive), or has a meaning I'm completely missing.
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