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The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

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Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#131

Post by rglover »

hingler36 wrote: post #26

I agree with a lot of this, and the framing is new to me and I really appreciate it. I especially appreciate the acknowledgement that there isn't necessarily anything wrong with having extreme beliefs; "extreme" is a label most often applied by antagonists of such beliefs. But I definitely feel like there can be a pipeline where one extreme belief may lead to others simply because they are also labelled extreme and n…

It's okay to have extreme beliefs right up to the point of action. Extremists IME are impossible to negotiate with past a certain point. Once they're convinced their idea(s) are right, you will see all manner of rushing to support their beliefs and keep the psychological hatch shut (even in the face of calm reason).

I've unfortunately lost a few friends to this process (why I felt compelled to comment). There's definitely a "rabbit hole" effect where there's a chain of beliefs that lead you further into extremism. A, B, and C may be "extreme" but benign, and then at some juncture, D comes along and that's the 'thing' that confirms their extremism is a correct response to the world.

I had this happen with an online friend who forgot he was talking to a mixed-race black man and started sending me what was effectively racist content (under religious pretenses), completely doe-eyed, almost leaning in as to see whether I was just as excited to "get on board" (I wasn't). That shift happened rather quickly and I later stitched together how he'd gotten there in his head (in effect online religious content on YT/Twitter).

That's the danger with entertaining extremism: one day, they won't be "just talking about stuff," they'll be strapping up the proverbial vest and you'll be thinking "but we just had a normal conversation..."

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#132

Post by sethammons »

yen223 wrote: post #93
zmmmmm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I definitely feel like there can be a pipeline where one extreme belief may lead to others Once you accept a premise that majority consensus of well informed people can be drastically wrong, it's not hard to then transfer that horizontally from one domain to another. So if you accept the possibility that scientists made up climate change - why wouldn't they also make up COVID? or falsify risks associated with vacci…

What's also crucial is having your beliefs be backed by reality, and tossing away beliefs that aren't.

A core tenant of many-o-religions is faith, and if "the world" has counter-factuals, those are tests against that faith. Tossing away elements and breaking faith likely ends in exclusion from the group. And that is too much for many.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#133

Post by mock-possum »

121789 wrote: post #109
TrackerFF wrote: post #106

For the past few years, I've seen a dozen of friends or acquaintances turn "ideologically crazy", and they can be roughly grouped into: A) Onset of schizophrenia or other serious mental illness, followed by psychosis. This is actually the most common I've seen. But it is also the easiest to spot. B) Some crisis event in life, followed by finding / joining a community. Some were hit hard by this during COVID. I've yet…

Don’t agree actually. Have seen many busy working professionals fall into “extremism” and it’s pretty much always the same. They have a few issues they are firm on and align with one party, they don’t like the other side because of this, then they only hang out with people aligned with their views and only consume media aligned with their views. Quickly turns into lunatic talking points, and I’ve seen it happen to bo…

> They have a few issues they are firm on and align with one party

What kind of issues though.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#134

Post by harimau777 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #106

For the past few years, I've seen a dozen of friends or acquaintances turn "ideologically crazy", and they can be roughly grouped into: A) Onset of schizophrenia or other serious mental illness, followed by psychosis. This is actually the most common I've seen. But it is also the easiest to spot. B) Some crisis event in life, followed by finding / joining a community. Some were hit hard by this during COVID. I've yet…

It seems like you are overlooking a possibility: Perhaps the people who have gone through some crisis or otherwise "don't have their shit together" are politically radical precisely because of how society has failed them.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#136

Post by marky1991 »

hackernud3s wrote: post #98
bot403 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's inconceivable to me that you could forget the three branches. There are still headlines and news articles about the president , congress, and the supreme court. Those three things , talked about constantly, are a basic reminder of the most visible aspects of each branch.

That's because your experience is siloed. People in other silos are seeing other headlines and other news articles, and wondering how you could not see them.

That makes me, a conservative, wonder what those other headlines are talking about and if those headlines are worthwhile or helpful. Because, regardless of what you are reading, the fundamentals of government are unchanged. So if people aren't reading about them, that to me just suggests they're ignorant.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#137

Post by mapontosevenths »

gghackernewsgg wrote: post #124
mapontosevenths wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only recently learned that most peoples beliefs are not "factual beliefs". Since most of mine are, I thought that's how other people work. I think Popper may have made the same mistake by assuming "correctness" is always the primary value a belief offers. The other kind of beliefs are "Symbolic beliefs." Symbolic beliefs are not held because they are true, or because they are useful on their own. They're held becau…

Personally, I consider "belief" from a behavioral perspective: belief is the model of reality one actually operates from. For example, when I walk on my kitchen floor, I don't have to tell myself: "the floor is structurally sound, it's safe to walk on it." I just walk. The fact that I just walk can be used to infer an infinite number of implied bleiefs that I've never verbalized until this moment. For example, I beli…

That's an interesting perspective. It all starts to get a little too semantics oriented for my taste, but I think the basic idea you're proposing is that the beliefs live in what the neuro-folks would call the default mode network, where-as knowledge lives in some higher function part of the brain like the cortex.

Regardless of the mechanisms, I think we're agreed that it's important not just to examine your priors, but to be aware that there ARE priors in the first place.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#138

Post by narrator »

adduced wrote: post #113
narrator wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Lindsay does not adhere to basic honest critical inquiry. Marxism deserves much better critics! As a sample this text by Matt McManus shows some of the deep problems with one Lindsay's books https://archive.is/psCEw

[flagged]

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#139

Post by pstuart »

card_zero wrote: post #95
pstuart wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the same intention is to not hold refuted or refutable beliefs .

No, they must be refutable! Otherwise you're stuck with them forever. This is all about ongoing error correction.

Rereading what I wrote -- I think I misspoke in my haste to respond, but yes, I agree with this.

Re: The main way I've seen people turn ideologically crazy (2025)

#140

Post by ElevenLathe »

stryan wrote: post #36
dataflow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you've definitely never called your Congresspeople to complain about their votes Or, you know, you haven't lived at the same address for twenty years. In your imagined world where every single citizen either has something so pressing to call their representatives about or is just ignorant, you're still basically filtering out everybody who moved for a job/college/SO/whatever recently. I guess in your mind it's…

Feels a little disingenuous to quote this line and not the full section where OP was just asking you to know your local representatives. I've never called anyone about anything political, and I also haven't lived at the same address (or even in the same state) for 20 years but I still know at least who my senators are and some of my representatives. State elections are every two years; you have to almost actively not…

Have you seen our district lines in this country? One of the underdiscussed problems with gerrymandering is that, in addition to being undemocratic in the obvious ways, it obscures who your representatives are -- especially if you live in a city. Take a look at the US district map around Austin. There is no "rep from Austin" just a crapshoot about which bizzarely-shaped rural district your random part of the city is attached to to nullify your vote. This is repeated all over the country to various degrees and state house districts are even smaller and often weirder.

I agree with you on governors and senators but it's very easy not to learn who your other representatives are, because it requires close attention to detailed street by street maps that change every census.

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