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Persuasion through status rather than argument

robkhenderson.com

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Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#91

Post by mistermann »

dalbasal wrote: post #55

The majority of all argument, debates, polemics... it's all "hacks." We're all dirty tricks, if we're being honest. Formalizing and naming templates of fallacies and dirty tricks... it's kind of a fallacious trick in itself. Logically valid, convincing, and the way we actually think a completely different. There are places where these come together, often requiring a lot of effort. The reality that we, all of us, way…

> The way formal logic works, and the way we think, talk and convince one another.. they are very far apart.

Strict logic is "pedantry", "JAQing off", Sea-lioning, "conspiratorial thinking", etc. I know of no social media platform where this is not true (based on replies and voting). And (seemingly) ironically, "scientific thinkers" are often particularly prone to the phenomenon.

> That doesn't mean we can't grasp logic. We can.

That which is physically possible is not necessarily metaphysically possible. People can use logic sometimes, but very often it is culturally (thus consciously) non-permissible, like during COVID[1], war time[2], etc.

I am not aware of any current or historical attempts to solve this problem, the scientific method being somewhat of a specialized exception.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332076

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332346

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#92

Post by Tainnor »

gms wrote: post #88
Tainnor wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't responded to my main point: do you believe that a completely unregulated market doesn't lead to wealth accumulation in the hands of few people? It is of course true that some (bad) regulation, like protectionism of various sorts, can also lead to the same outcome in a different way.

Yes, completely unregulated would lead to that. We need laws to protect against coercion and adjudicate in the case of disagreements between parties. Warring tribes where physical force wins is not a good place to be.

I don't think you're seeing the whole picture if you think only about physical force.

People who are well off have more opportunities to start other ventures that make them even more well-off, and if they're especially powerful, they can use that influence to further their benefit. I don't think that's particularly controversial.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#93

Post by JaDogg »

hef19898 wrote: post #44
habinero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before we had vaccines, covid was killing more people than heart attacks and car accidents. Combined. Deriding people for caring about their own safety is callous and puerile.

Evem worse, masks work better for others than yourself. What came a bit as shock during COVId for me, was how little people cared for each other, that people couldn't even bothered with the smallest inconveniences to do something good for everyone. I am a cynic, but didn't that level egoism.

Indeed. However, I believe that we, as humans, have always been indifferent to those outside our immediate circle. Similarly, people often don't show concern for the homeless or those in inescapable servitude due to mortgages. Yet, there is a desire to increase the number of people in office, rather than converting more spaces into houses or apartments. I have observed on Hacker News that some individuals don't even rent places; instead, they keep those spaces closed to inflate prices. Despite the significant progress we've made from tribal times, our emotional evolution seems limited.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#94

Post by bloomingeek »

Wow, that's a lot to unpack! For my part, trusting experts can be risky. I can trust my doctor, but I can also question him about what he wants me to do. Unless he is willing to explain a treatment to my understanding, I'll seek out another opinion.

I can't pretend to understand everything, I need some experts for that, however I can gather information. Intellectual laziness from my side leads to heartbreaking dread if I didn't attempt to understand what an expert was saying.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#95

Post by bloomingeek »

motohagiography wrote: post #72

A lot of intelligent people aren't very smart, and a lot of smart people aren't very intelligent. The smart achive desirable outcomes, and usually that means not rocking the boat. The intelligent have a capacity for abstraction, which means it's easy to misunderstand why people are parroting absurdities. Where a good programmer is intelligent, a good product manager is smart. I was surprised he didn't include this Da…

Great response! I always remind myself: information isn't the same as knowledge, knowledge isn't the same as wisdom. Lies have nothing to do with wisdom, integrity is destroyed by the actions of lies.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#96

Post by leni536 »

naasking wrote: post #83
tsimionescu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the main point about the hyperloop was the vacuum tube, not the maglev part. And the vacuum tube doesn't actually work. It's not actually feasible to create a vacuum tube hundreds of km long. It's just about physically possible, but it's not really technologically feasible - not for a system that is supposed to be in constant operation all year long. It's also important to remember that vacuum tube trains a…

> It's not actually feasible to create a vacuum tube hundreds of km long Why not? It's just a series of smaller sections that must each individually achieve near vacuum.

I think the main problem is that the failure of a small section is a catastrophic failure of the whole system.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#97

Post by User3456335 »

hasoleju wrote: post #53

A better title could maybe be: "Smart and successful people don't express their true opinion because they fear a loss of status" The author explains, that the more status people gained in their life, the more they try to stick to the common sense of opinions people of their status hold. This behavior really stabilizes the status quo. For me this also explains why the consequent climate change protests are mainly supp…

You are assuming it is a conscious decision and that these high-status individuals are aware that what they express is false. But the point the author makes is that the falsehoods are their true opinion.

And most likely, you yourself will have opinions that aren't true and that you have only started to believe because of fear of status loss.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#98

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

carlosjobim wrote: post #24
hcks wrote: post #2

Can the author provide example of dumb ideas? Or is it "dumb ideas" == "ideas I disagree with" More generally, it seems like the recipe of this breed of substack author is to take a basic object level opinion e.g. "I don’t like pronoun people" or "AI people are dumb" and turn it a whole pseudo intellectual rant without ever getting to the point.

Communism is one of the worst ideas, with the worst track records, and have always captured the most intelligent people, even today. A casual browse through HN comments is enough evidence.

> > Communism is one of the worst ideas

Communism is the idea that in order to be successful you have to kiss asses at the location where you want to eventually become someone, for example a government agency or a political party.

Capitalism is the idea that in order to be successful you should be able to kiss asses wherever and however you can and be able to move the provents from the aforementioned ass kissing at some other place (in the form of money) so you don't have to start all over. So you can make some ass kissing arbitrage in order to minimize the amount of ass kissing that you do.

I prefer the latter because I don't like to be constrained in one place and might have a bit of commit-o-phobia but it's not a stretch to think that people who like to put the work day-in and day-out in the same place, see familiar faces everyday and don't have commit-o-phobia might prefer the former.

In the end it's all about kissing asses and there are very minor differences. Long gone are the days of low hanging fruits where you could singlehandedly invent the wheel or fire, now every minor marginal improvement in anything requires some serious ass kissing and given that it's a practice that nobody likes you see emerge these big ideological battles between factions who say:

"There would be more stuff and less need for ass kissing in a libertarian free market haven"

and those who reply :

"In a proper commune the need for ass kissing would be at an all time low and the stuff would be at an all time high"

Reality is nobody knows if the wheel or fire were invented in a commune or libertarian haven because it was something so self-evident and straightforward that these sort of mega ideological battles were a non-factor.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#99

Post by kredd »

XorNot wrote: post #75
jacquesm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And besides that you don't have to have a really good vacuum, you just have to have a 'good enough' vacuum that you can attain high speed without losing the stabilizing effect of a bunch of air constrained by the walls of a tube. Bonus points of you can get the air to move at a speed a bit slower than your vehicle, more bonus points if you can use the air to propel your vehicle. But: it's probably still a dumb idea,…

The problem is that if any of that was a good idea, the question is why is the Hyperloop specifically a good idea, but regular old high speed rail is not? What factor are you changing that makes one good, and the other not good enough to get done right now? (the answer of course is nothing: the Hyperloop would be stupidly expensive, and however fast it is wouldn't solve the logistics problem of loading and unloading…

We used to discuss this back in university days! NA is extremely allergic to copy something that’s been done extremely well in the east (e.g., high speed rails) and instead tries to come up with some “cool better way” of doing things. After all, we are different, and copying something would be an extreme ego hit. This thought process applies to Hyperloop as well. I live in Canada, and it is really disappointing how we don’t have reliable rails between metro areas of large cities. Or even cross-border ones like Vancouver-Seattle corridor. Even sadder knowing it will never happen.

Re: Persuasion through status rather than argument

#100

Post by Kye »

jacquesm wrote: post #87
XorNot wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that if any of that was a good idea, the question is why is the Hyperloop specifically a good idea, but regular old high speed rail is not? What factor are you changing that makes one good, and the other not good enough to get done right now? (the answer of course is nothing: the Hyperloop would be stupidly expensive, and however fast it is wouldn't solve the logistics problem of loading and unloading…

Yes, there isn't anything in particular about Hyperloop that makes it stand out, but it is different in high speed rail in that it is underground and so more complex in almost all ways but one: right of way (and possibly aesthetics, which depending on the landscape can matter a lot).

Not a lawyer and might be wrong but as far as I know land rights go all the way to the core in the US, so going underground wouldn't help with right of way. I know, "HN is more than the US," but we seem to have the most trouble with trains.
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