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How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#11

Post by rsynnott »

lazide wrote: post #6
rsynnott wrote: post #3

> But exposing yourself to articulate versions of positions you oppose does something valuable: it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons. The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.

However, there are fewer articulate (and internally consistent) defenses of flat earth theory, than say… particle physics. In my experience. Plenty of timecube style ones, however.

That's true, but if you want one, you can find one. If you've conditioned yourself to think that articulate==credible, then sometimes it only takes one.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#12

Post by heisgone »

>A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.

I'm a long time Jon Stewart fan and if I'm being honest, looked at the "other side" as if it was a bunch of retarded people isn't new and predate 2016. No doubt Trump and social media got conservative to embrace condescending and extreme rhetoric and pushed it to another level but let's not pretend they invented anything.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#13

Post by ajkjk »

lkey wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Really nothing in the article implied that whatsoever? It's not even about that if you actively try to read between the lines. Like--"liberal as a slur" is just a daily experience of american life these days, irrespective of the details of any of your personal relationships.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#14

Post by rowanseymour »

lkey wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Exactly this. Disengaging from the injustices ongoing in this world will likely benefit your mental health but it's a choice and we don't need your essays justifying that choice, and you trying to convince yourself that it makes you smarter than everyone else.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#15

Post by hexator »

Not sure what the point of this is other than to complain about being out of touch with the world. Too many people think "diversifying your information" means subscribing to whatever drivel they find on substack instead of, you know, following a diverse set of _actual journalists_.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#16

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

I have a hard time taking this kind of enlightened-centrist both-sides gruel very seriously. Calling every strong position "extreme" is a classic sleight-of-hand maneuver by people who want to mask their own wrong-side-of-history beliefs that they know they should feel ashamed of expressing.

Yes, yes, look for truth beyond labeled groups, but pretending that the "sides" are equal is some utterly moronic "Fair and Balanced" bullshit.

> it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons.

Many issues really do have a bright dividing line. I mean, for fuck's sake, there are people who are currently fighting against releasing the Epstein files, documents that clearly incriminate pedophilic rape and sex trafficking.

> One friend became “convinced” that every major news story was manufactured consent.

I think the author here doesn't actually understand what manufactured consent is, because believing otherwise demonstrates media illiteracy. Talking about our extreme filter bubbles (community/information homogeneity) in one breath and then denying the pervasiveness of manufactured consent in the next is otherwise a perfect demonstration of Gell-Mann amnesia.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#17

Post by corpMaverick »

rsynnott wrote: post #3

> But exposing yourself to articulate versions of positions you oppose does something valuable: it makes you realize that intelligent people can disagree with you without being monsters or morons. The idea that being articulate implies intelligence and/or sanity is very common, but really a bit weird. You can find plenty of articulate defences of, say, flat earth theory.

Not all the flat earthers are true believers. Some are there just for the attention or other motives.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#19

Post by AndrewKemendo »

charlesabarnes wrote: post #10

I think disengaging from social media is a big part of this. These advertiser and engagement fueled algorithms promote all of the insane takes as well. You find much more fulfillment engaging with people locally or people in your close circles.

I’m not on social media unless you consider HN social media (I don’t) and the world is still totally as insane as it was before the internet.

For your average city person:

The food you’re offered is sugar + preservatives, the water is either non-existent (Tehran) or poisoned with fracking gas (Flint), almost all local communities have collapsed into extreme versions of themselves, the rich and poor still don’t mingle, men fear women and women want nothing to do with men, there is no upside to having a family or children.

I just spoke at a HBS event in DC last night about robotics and on one side of the room were people starting AI companion services and in the other side people were saying AI was causing the rise of Tradwives. It was like looking at 50 “deer in headlights” when explaining how thoroughly they have already integrated third party algorithmic logic into their decision processes - and are totally unaware of it.

The real world is absurd and getting less coherent with more information available. Humans aren’t biologically equipped for the world we collectively built.

Re: How to stay sane in a world that rewards insanity

#20

Post by lkey »

ajkjk wrote: post #13
lkey wrote: post #5

[flagged]

Really nothing in the article implied that whatsoever? It's not even about that if you actively try to read between the lines. Like--"liberal as a slur" is just a daily experience of american life these days, irrespective of the details of any of your personal relationships.

> a daily experience of american life

You people call you 'liberal as a slur' in real life out in the world?

Regardless, projecting your narrow experiences onto 'american life' writ large is not a sound starting point for any conversation.

It is the pairing of the term 'manufacturing consent' with "'liberal' as a slur" (from the left, not right) that evokes the genocide.

One of the primary consents manufactured in the Biden years was for exactly that.

Likewise for calls to eternal slow-walked 'nuance', instead of straightforward calls for ending the gifting of weapons to the belligerent, as has been done in living memory.

There's no 'conspiracy' (per the author) at all, Biden officials are already writing memoirs about it.

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