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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

#151

Post by BrenBarn »

kentm wrote: post #45
mock-possum wrote: post #29

> The writer who says "this issue has nuance and I can see valid concerns on multiple sides" gets a pat on the head and zero retweets. Because I think at this point ‘both sides ism’ Is easily recognizable as a dead end rhetorical strategy. At best it’s an ignorant position, at worst it’s low effort engagement bait / concern trolling that actively sabotages progress.

In my opinion, the problem is that journalists in general used “both sides” rhetoric where it wasn’t warranted to avoid accusations of bias. It feels that nuance is used out of cowardice more often than not. There’s also the fact that not all positions are equally valid or evidence based. Nuance doesn’t mean treating each position as equally valid, but evaluating each on the evidence. Journalists almost uniformly mis…

The boy who cried "there's a wolf on both sides!"

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

#152

Post by BLKNSLVR »

astroflection wrote: post #30
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #2

The author writes, “You end up in a world where changing your mind becomes impossible because you've built your entire identity around being right”. Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue (e.g. pro-Ukraine to anti-Ukraine or vice versa) and still keep their following and ability to monetize it. Social media is full of parasocial relationships; followers are in love with an influencer’s…

> Yet social-media personalities regularly do a 180° turn on some issue ... and still keep their following and ability to monetize it. And they asserted that they were totally right the entire time. That's how. And the sheep kept on following them.

There are / were a couple of right-wing shillers that were literally paid to promote Russian talking points and they just fit it right into their schtick without blinking.

Nothing on the internet is real. If it wants money or opinion or attention, consider it hostile and try to find the strings (although it's generally not worth the time to try and find the strings, just move on and do something productive instead).

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/05/nx-s1-5100829/russia-election...

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

#154

Post by upstairs_key »

BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #16

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 Bal…

This is a common misconception about what it means to be against political extremes.

It does not mean "both sides have a point".

It does not mean "both sides" are equally bad.

It does not even mean that there are necessarily two sides.

The term "centrist" is used to imply and reinforce these misconceptions, encouraging people toward extremes. When you see things in black and white, of course everything is a straight line from good to evil (with you at the far end of good), so if someone only partially agrees with you, they're in the "center" and that much closer to Hitler than you. It's hard to step outside of this fantasy. But I'll try to help you.

Imagine the following dialogue.

A: "Are you Hindu or Muslim?"

B: "Neither. I'm an atheist."

A: "Oh, so you are torn between Vishnu and Muhammad."

And yes, one of the political parties is significantly more deranged than the other right now. You don't need to be extreme to see that and it is possible to vote for the more reasonable party without drinking their kool-aid.

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

#155

Post by conqrr »

BrenBarn wrote: post #153

This article is advice for individuals on how to resist the societal incentives to embrace insanity. But what I'm really interested in is advice for how to fix our society so it doesn't incentivize insanity.

Reminds me of seatbelts on airplane, put them first before trying to help others.

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

#157

Post by didgetmaster »

When I go to the polling place to cast my vote for the candidate of my choice; I am often holding my nose and voting for the one who I think will do the least damage. I often wonder why sane, rational problem solvers are not on the ballot.

Then I realize that our system often rewards the attention seekers rather than pragmatic leaders. Those who quietly get the work done are not invited on talk shows or podcasts. The don't have rallies and make the evening news.

All the oxygen in the room is sucked in by the performance artists, who often say outlandish things but rarely get anything productive done.

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

#158

Post by BLKNSLVR »

We need 'unfluencers'.

The problem is that it would just be the same few message repeated ad nauseum:

- Treat it all like it's trying to sell you something

- Think for yourself

- Nothing is as simple as it seems

- One person does not represent an entire race/country/group (ie. anecdata is not truth)

etc.

As they say, however, a lie can travel the world twice before the truth has tied its shoe laces.

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

#159

Post by o11c »

grodes wrote: post #156

[flagged]

Note that "feeds" is a confusing word choice; I immediately thought of something RSS-like which often links to long-form content.

For news, my rule is to check major headlines at most once a day (often less in practice), so I am at least vaguely aware what people are talking about. Doing it this way makes it clear how ... banal? ... most clickbait is. Something local might be useful; if they mention something national it's probably actually semi-important. Though, if you can't change anything about it, is it really?

If reading the Bible, I strongly suggest starting with Matthew 5 and continuing from there, not too fast (maybe one chapter per week, so you can stop and think about it). This gets straight to the mindset, as opposed to the handful of protrusions that make it to the pop-culture version. [I have a lot more I could say about how to read the Bible, but it's no use posting it again unless someone is interested.]

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205&ver...

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

#160

Post by taejavu »

o11c wrote: post #159
grodes wrote: post #156

[flagged]

Note that "feeds" is a confusing word choice; I immediately thought of something RSS-like which often links to long-form content. For news, my rule is to check major headlines at most once a day (often less in practice), so I am at least vaguely aware what people are talking about. Doing it this way makes it clear how ... banal? ... most clickbait is. Something local might be useful; if they mention something nationa…

Consider me interested
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