101–110 of 127 posts
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There's also the 130+ IQ group of neoreactionaries who like Trump from a perspective informed by history.
I had not heard the term. The current top post in their subreddit is "How to genocide inferior kinds in a properly Christian manner" Sounds like a great group of folks.
Having grown up in West Virginia and now living Silicon Valley, I see extremes from both sides. And they both _really_ think the other side is dumb. And that the president (Obama or Bush) is purposely trying to destroy the country. It is like two people in a marriage that has gone bad. Is there any way to fix it? My two cents is that a place to start is to try to make a single news source that both sides can read, to…
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>>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…
As a former card carrying Debate Club member, I suppose this article may be helpful for people who aren't used to having these arguments. But I don't believe it is very helpful for most interactions on anything really controversial right now. Most people making arguments for "the other side" haven't actually had to defend them against real criticism. They also are usually not the originators of their position, they'r…
> Most people making arguments for "the other side" haven't actually had to defend them against real criticism. If you go into a conversation with a condescending viewpoint like that, don't be surprised if you don't get anything out of it. Even if the person you're arguing isn't an expert on the issue you're talking about, they are an expert on why they feel that way. And understanding that can be helpful. I'm remind…
Not always. Sometimes we may be experts on knowing that we feel strongly one way or another without having thoroughly explored the potentially complex ideas and experiences that have shaped us. I was just having a conversation tonight with a family member about self-destructive patterns that we both get into and trying to analyze where they come from. Our society doesn't really cater to deep self reflection and a lot of times a response may be fairly reflexive if not deliberately considered. That doesn't mean the person making the argument would change their mind after further deliberation. Just that a lot of people actually cannot explain their feelings out loud.
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None of those concepts are as crazy as lizard people, are they?
Well they are both rather unlikely, but at least the lizard thing is testable. Poke the guy with a stick and see. Question answered. The other theories cannot be so easily disproved.
I like that he mentions the Ideological Turing Test, though not by name ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test ) "As any debate club veteran knows, if you can’t make your opponent’s point for them, you don’t truly grasp the issue."
"or they don't grasp it". This aphorism may be true for debate club opponents, where both sides actually care for proper structure and honest reasoning. But outside of that group, many people prefer to cling to disproven and even logically inconsistent views, just to avoid ceding even a little.
I like that he mentions the Ideological Turing Test, though not by name ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_Turing_Test ) "As any debate club veteran knows, if you can’t make your opponent’s point for them, you don’t truly grasp the issue."
"or they don't grasp it". This aphorism may be true for debate club opponents, where both sides actually care for proper structure and honest reasoning. But outside of that group, many people prefer to cling to disproven and even logically inconsistent views, just to avoid ceding even a little.
Having grown up in West Virginia and now living Silicon Valley, I see extremes from both sides. And they both _really_ think the other side is dumb. And that the president (Obama or Bush) is purposely trying to destroy the country. It is like two people in a marriage that has gone bad. Is there any way to fix it? My two cents is that a place to start is to try to make a single news source that both sides can read, to…
People in liberal areas talk about the south as if it were some backwards place, yet most have never even visited.
People in conservative areas think California is full of hippies, yet again, have never been there.
Guess what? People just disagree on politics! Always will. It doesn't mean one side is right and one is wrong.
What if the other side is actually rejecting factual reality, though? Are they still "not dumb"? What if facts have no hold on them whatsoever? Can we even have a productive conversation? See: vaccine deniers/vaccine scheduling skeptics, climate change deniers, evolution deniers, etc.
The examples you provided have nothing to do with facts, actually. They're about trustworthiness of the fact sources . Given all the shenanigans pharmaceutical companies pull, given how FDA itself is often reported in the news as unreliable or even corrupt, given that so many studies keep turning out to be unreliable - ask yourself, why do you believe you're right about vaccines? :).
You seem to be describing what is commonly known as a "conversation". I find it hilarious that western society has gradually devolved itself to such an extent with fear-fear mongering, hate-hate speech, and an absurd amount of righteous indignation that people are literally terrified to have opinions outside the groupthink; and you not only have to invent a game to feel human again, but that game is apparently novel…
I don't think it has anything to do with "Western society", but rather the nature of internet discussions. They're impersonal. They're amenable to favoritism and the echo chamber effect. You can't interrupt somebody in the middle of a soapbox lecture to ask for clarification or offer counter-arguments. The atomic unit of discussion is the paragraph, at best, and your audience numbers in the hundreds. Basically, it's…
Sure enough, just about anyone can get caught in the idea "Well, if my opponent thought about it, then surely they'd agree with me. They don't agree with me, so therefore they're not thinking people, and I need to use something other than reason to make them change their mind." But the difference is that the left are currently much more willing then to apply theories of social norms instead of arguments.
Terms such as "climate denier", "evolution denier", "free-thinker" (you wouldn't want to disagree with our opinion on religion, and show you're not a free thinker, now would you?), etc, were coined deliberately for rhetorical effect. Similarly, social movements on the left are usually quicker to play the game of rhetorical escalation. Can I find some rhetoric by which to portray my opponent's opinion as "sexist" or "ignorant"? So that regardless of what their reasoning is, the pressure to avoid being socially viewed as ignorant is an incentive for them to change their mind.