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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)

#141

Post by aftbit »

inigyou wrote: post #128
121789 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've only seen this with the right. Can you describe what it's like when it's left?

In my experience, it looks almost identical, just mirror imaged. Lots of anger and fear, a strong certainty that they know the full story about every issue and that the other side is evil or idiotic. No grace or space in their hearts to consider that many of today's contentious issues are actually complicated, with overlapping and conflicting ethical arguments.

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

#142

Post by gghackernewsgg »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #137
gghackernewsgg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> 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.

Yes, absolutely.

And I think there's a practical extension to my framing that goes beyond semantics.

When there's a seemingly irresolvable conflict between knowledge and belief, i.e. reason says “yes" while the heart says “no”, simply doing the thing a few times will often resolve the tension.

That's the practical advantage I see in my framing:

1) In Gendler's framing, the cerebral and emotional aspects are presented as two different modes of cognition. Belief is thinking, while Alief is just another type of thinking about some other stuff. Taken too far or misinterpreted, this can encourage overanalysis.

2) In my framing, belief is fundamentally about how I operate. So when my reason has exhausted its arguments but I'm still not convinced, as long as my knowledge seems reliable, I know that forcing a behavioral change could be all that's needed to turn me into a believer.

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

#144

Post by shiandow »

gfrecvh wrote: post #101
pstuart wrote: post #21

Here's One Weird Trick™ to avoid being an ideologue: be ok with being wrong. Flipping that over: aspire to be correct in your beliefs, not in "being right". Karl Popper (the man behind the Intolerance of Intolerance "paradox) identified it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Falsifiability - misunderstood idea that's often used to discredit string theory, for example. As stated on Wikipedia: > Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific statements, including theories and hypotheses. A statement is falsifiable if it belongs to a language or logical structure capable of describing an empirical observation that contradicts it.

If we're doing a meta discussion on the quality of arguments it ought to be pointed out that Popper is not exactly modern any more so like objectivism, falsifiability is not some kind of holy grail any more.

A bigger issue with string theory is that we don't fully know how to make it describe reality, but it still describes some general principles we can test and learn from and I think it's the most successful quantum theory with gravity so far, even if it's not the right quantum mechanics and the right gravity.

Any property like super symmetry that could in theory be tested would prove parts of it. We lack a way of doing so, especially in a controlled manner, but particles have been identified from a single convenient photograph.

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

#145

Post by inigyou »

aftbit wrote: post #141
inigyou wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only seen this with the right. Can you describe what it's like when it's left?

In my experience, it looks almost identical, just mirror imaged. Lots of anger and fear, a strong certainty that they know the full story about every issue and that the other side is evil or idiotic. No grace or space in their hearts to consider that many of today's contentious issues are actually complicated, with overlapping and conflicting ethical arguments.

I'm noticing a lack of any concrete examples of left wing extremism in this comment.

Right wing extremism is like, that lady from the UK who made a tweet asking everyone to burn down a hotel full of migrants.

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

#146

Post by stryan »

jhbadger wrote: post #117
stryan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feels disingenuous to ignore the fact that what I said applies to the rest of the comment too, don't you think? Then quote the whole thing your responding to, otherwise your response seems disproportionately overreacting. > For starters, something like almost ~half of students move away from their families to attend college. And then look at moves for jobs and retirement and everything else. And then when an incumb…

>If you don't know the names of your representatives you can't vote for them. Seems pretty straight forward to me. The names are printed on the ballot, along with party affiliation. No memorization needed. In a primary there may be a bit of research needed, but even then you get a sample ballot beforehand so you can research the alternatives, but when the final election happens you generally only have two choices in…

> The names are printed on the ballot, along with party affiliation. No memorization needed. ... > but when the final election happens you generally only have two choices in the US per position and you simply vote for your party of choice.

I want to discourage voting blindingly by party affiliation. Personally I think you should at least know the general ideas and policies of the candidate(s) you're choosing, even though given the current political state the US it's foolish to vote for one of the parties, but even besides that how hard is it to remember their name so you can check if they actually follow through with anything? I'm not expecting perfection, but for example I know my senators names so whenever there's a big vote I can at least scan the list of supporters and see if I should be pissed at them or not. That lets me have at least a general vibe towards them come primaries and election season and whether I vote for their re-election.

> In a primary there may be a bit of research needed, but even then you get a sample ballot beforehand so you can research the alternatives,

Technically out of scope from OP's original point, but there's also a variety of local elections that can have multiple candidates per party. But either way, that "bit of research" with a sample ballot is all I'm really asking for out of people. These days they're tons of great voters guides out there too that include short Q&A's with each candidate for each hot topic issue, policy standpoints, etc. Because so many people just vote by party affiliation arguably the primaries and local elections are the most impactful votes you can do.

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

#147

Post by Gormo »

bratbag wrote: post #105
miyoji wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a prerequisite, but so is breathing. It's necessary but not sufficient. The bar I like to use is pretty simple: do you know who represents you in Congress (I am American so this is my bias, but substitute your country's equivalent if there is one)? As in, your state's two Senators and your district's Representative? If not, you probably don't vote or don't pay attention when you do, and you've definitely never c…

You are filtering out politically engaged people who have assesed the current mechanisms of state to be too flawed to be worth continued interaction. This is likely quite a large group.

More fundamentally, you'de be filtering out people's views on policy based on their engagement with the horse-race side of politics. That's not a particularly well-aligned criterion, regardless of the reasons why someone might not be immediately aware of which politicians are in which seats.

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

#148

Post by stryan »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #140
stryan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A fair point! Both states I've lived in so far have not been gerrymandering-battleground states so I haven't had that problem.

I'm willing to take a softer stance than OP's start and be okay with just knowing basically any of your representatives i.e. some combination of your two senators and one or more representatives.

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

#149

Post by gfrecvh »

shiandow wrote: post #144
gfrecvh wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falsifiability - misunderstood idea that's often used to discredit string theory, for example. As stated on Wikipedia: > Falsifiability is a standard of evaluation of scientific statements, including theories and hypotheses. A statement is falsifiable if it belongs to a language or logical structure capable of describing an empirical observation that contradicts it.

If we're doing a meta discussion on the quality of arguments it ought to be pointed out that Popper is not exactly modern any more so like objectivism, falsifiability is not some kind of holy grail any more. A bigger issue with string theory is that we don't fully know how to make it describe reality, but it still describes some general principles we can test and learn from and I think it's the most successful quantu…

Without detracting from anything you said, all I meant is that a lot of people make the argument of "we can't test it" when it's likely that the "can't" is purely a technological limitation. If those people knew the definition of falsifiability as stated on Wikipedia, they wouldn't make such a stupid argument.

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

#150

Post by Gormo »

benj111 wrote: post #112
narrator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Interestingly, he has a lot of people on what he calls the "Woke Right" (e.g Tucker Carlson) who also hate him. Is that interesting? I get accused of being a labour supporter in conservative areas and conservative in more left leaning areas. It's all part of the problem being discussed. If you don't precisely agree with someone, you must be one of 'them', and when you're in the middle, or have nuanced views, both e…

I have a speculative theory that core of the "woke right" did not originate from pre-existing conservative politics, but in fact emerged from segments of the political left finding themselves marginalized by the mainstream left-wing's increasing focus on identity politics over the past 10-15 years.

Many people departing left-wing communities for this reason began to reframe their political identities in opposition to the mainstream left, but did so by associating themselves with the left's own caricature of the right, rather than adopting the principles that informed the baseline worldview of the poltical right. The result was an influx of people with various collectivist, economically interventionist viewpoints into right-leaning institutions and communities.

Carlson, of course, isn't representative of this: I think he's just an opportunist who will play to whatever audience is in front of him, but I think the "woke right" notion of people reacting to the left while still adhering to its fundamental assumptions about the world is very evident. I think this explains why we're seeing policy positions that increasingly resemble socialist ones being advanced by "conservative" politicians.

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