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You can fool some of the people, all of the time

economist.com

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Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#201

Post by keysdr85 »

randcraw wrote: post #107

I think the rise of lies has little to do with humans being hardwired to resolve questions using emotions over reason. We prefer lies because we want a complex world to be simple, predictable, and manageable. Obviously it's not, so the only way that powerless people can believe their lives aren't spinning out of control is for authority figures to tell them what they want to hear: 1) every problem is simple and 2) a…

By reasoning of this article, we all ‘think’ we know what the answer is and it usually comes in the form of a one paragraph response that grossly simplifies how complex human beings and the world is. You use ‘I think’ to start your paragraph but, what’s more likely - according to what this article is saying - is that ‘you feel’ that what you say is correct and it is to a significant degree influenced by your emotions. Now you may come back and say, you don’t know me and I am a rational persona and use sound reasoning and carful research to come to my conclusion. However, the economist article states precisely that all people action on emotion rationalize this by pointing to how they use reason and sound judgement.

I am not trying to attack anyone here, I am guilty of this as much as anyone. But when you really evaluate your beliefs, including the one states above, can you confidently state that it is pure reason unaltered by emotion?

And I think this is the core, we must recognize that all of us are hard wired to behave like this. And maybe the best that we can do is try to recognize it often enough and then consciously counteract it.

I don’t have the answer here and it is beyond my expertise but I think anything complicated such as ‘why and how are humans hardwired to act on emotion instead of reason’ and ‘how is this knowledge being abused’, has more than one underlying cause that you alluded to.

You may be right and we may prefer lies exactly for the reasons you stated, but what evidence is there for that and how did you come to that conclusion? Or is it based on your ‘gut feeling’ or ‘intuition’ based on your world outlook.

Everything we learn has some inherent flaws due to the fact that it passes through the brain’s limited capacity to deal with biases and separate reason from emotion.

So, while I think my response is terribly insightful and impressive. In my limited capacity, I know that I will no doubt be humbled by responses of others which will point out my own errors in my reasoning.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#202

Post by andrei_says_ »

May I recommend this talk on the neuroscience of language and thought by George Lakoff?

https://youtu.be/JJP-rkilz40?t=280

And also this one on political language, morals and metaphors?

It will change how you listen to political speech, and especially political speech targeting people with different political orientation -- which can often sound nonsensical, but is actually carefully constructed to activate their metaphors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f9R9MtkpqM

Basically, the ideas of enlightenment (we are rational beings) are not true.

A couple of slides from the first lecture:

Myth:

Reason is conscious, you know what you think.

Science:

Reason is mostly unconscious, estimates are about 98% unconscious.

Conscious thinking is linear. Brain circuitry is massively parallel.

Myth:

Ideas are made meaningful via their direct connections to the external world.

Meaning is a matter of truth conditions.

Science:

Ideas are made meaningful via the brain's connections to the body and our embodied experience.

Myth:

Emotion gets in the way of rationality.

Science:

Emotion is necessary for rationality.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#203

Post by nanny »

hqrlk wrote: post #184
TrackerFF wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hate to be political, but as one Trump supporter said, when asked on Trump and his lies: "I think what most liberals are missing is that this isn't about right and wrong, it's about winning and losing. I've attached my entire worldview to this man and I am going down with the ship. Not one of you is going to convince me otherwise." Some people are simply willing to accept lies, if it resonates with their beliefs. A m…

I don't believe that to be an actual quote, but having said that, we live in a post-truth world. We have recognised, at last, that the ends justify the means.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTrumpSupporters/comments/dct1be/...

Whether or not he's a real supporter? Who knows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#204

Post by DesiLurker »

My view is that this is a byproduct of a flaw in the way human attention works. we deal with events not the whole landscape of reality as such. well because thats what it takes to survive. Politicians & media have caught on to this so all they have to do is manage attention when an undesirable event happens. once the event is lost its very hard for us to go back and review it as daily life take over & the cycle repeats.

IMO the only realistic way around this is to have more eyeballs looking at it and have smaller pools of resources so there is less incentive to distort. both of these converge to the solution that we need smaller constituencies and a more EU like structure with a lot more representation per capita. Otherwise everything becomes a 51% attack & with this electoral college & Senate composition we'd be lucky if that.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#205

Post by hqrlk »

nanny wrote: post #203
hqrlk wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that to be an actual quote, but having said that, we live in a post-truth world. We have recognised, at last, that the ends justify the means.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTrumpSupporters/comments/dct1be/... Whether or not he's a real supporter? Who knows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Very cool actually. I like this response and how it was downvoted: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskTrumpSupporters/comments/dct1be/...

Also a shame how confusing the new interface of reddit is... Yes I know I can go to old.reddit.com but still.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#206

Post by PavlovsCat »

disintegore wrote: post #192
PavlovsCat wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't invoke Chomsky for this nonsense. > What has been created by this half century of massive corporate propaganda is what's called "anti-politics". So that anything that goes wrong, you blame the government. Well okay, there's plenty to blame the government about, but the government is the one institution that people can change... the one institution that you can affect without institutional change. That's exactly…

I'll invoke him if he's relevant. It is possible for both the government and the private sector to be corrupted, especially if the latter exerts corrupting pressure on the former.

> I'll invoke him if he's relevant.

No, you're trying to speak for him. Consent to, say, physical assault being illegal, is a whole different ball game than manufactured consent to the Vietnam War, and all that is entailed in this wishy-washy stuff about "consent" in this context. Not to mention "democracy reacting by force to protest" -- as opposed to what, exactly? Non-democracies? Companies? People clicking buttons on HN? Nobody bothers to say, making it all an exercise in throwing shade at the one means of self-defense we have left.

> The neoliberal era of the last generation is dedicated, in principle, to destroying the only means we have to defend ourselves from destruction. It's not called that, what it's called is shifting decision-making from public institutions, which at least in principle are under public influence, to private institutions which are immune from public control, in principle. That's called "shifting to the market", it's under the rhetoric of freedom, but it just means servitude. It means servitude to unaccountable private institutions.

-- Noam Chomsky

> It is possible for both the government and the private sector to be corrupted

Obviously, but the private sector isn't "corrupt" when it's a tyranny, that's the best it can hope to be. The government is responsibility of the citizens in a democracy, not something purely external they get to just complain about.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#207

Post by chrisco255 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #198
chrisco255 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be one guys opinion, but you understand the other side is lying, correct? What I didn't fully appreciate until Trump was how much of politics is theater.

More than just one guy - seems pretty systemic, if you ask me. https://www.axios.com/monmouth-poll-trump-approval-a05b8144-... (But, yes, all political parties lie to some extent - some are just more brazen and outlandish than others)

Right, some (the DNC) will pay a foreign entity to craft a totally made up conspiracy theory about Russia collusion and then leverage the FBI, the CIA and all major news outlets to propagandize that bullshit while keeping a straight face.

At the same time they'll spike a story for three years on a prolific pedophile (Epstein) that implicates Bill Clinton, to protect their own.

All parties lie, but the DNC and their allies in the media...well they really take the cake.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#208

Post by P_I_Staker »

lucian1900 wrote: post #91
numinary1 wrote: post #89

Democracy is ostensibly majority rule (don't nitpick). The majority of people are poor. Therefore, democracy is the rule of the poor (Aristotle). We do not live in a democracy.

If the poor were truly in charge, why would they choose to remain poor?

They aren't is the point. They would be if we lived in a democracy, and according to OP we don't.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#209

Post by P_I_Staker »

lucian1900 wrote: post #165
kbutler wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to define "poor". If you look at the progress of the poor in the US over the last 200 years, they're doing really, really well.

So well they can't afford homes, health care or even food? Despite working more than full time?

Most poor people have better amenities and work conditions. Probably even in the areas you mentioned. Basically, this is similar to the whole question of whether you'd be better off as a king in the middle ages, or an average joe now; or the idea that relatively speaking everything is better than ever.

Re: You can fool some of the people, all of the time

#210

Post by kbutler »

slg wrote: post #191
kbutler wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your position is that post 1970s increases in government transfer payments are "not a huge benefit to the middle and lower classes" and represent "austerity", and that major reductions in spending are "largesse for the military". Interesting.

I don't agree with OPs entire point and certainly wouldn't use such extreme language, but I also don't think you can dispute that point while only looking at spending like you did in your response.

Spending trends were sufficient to refute the OPs assertion.

To go deeper, take spending (here's another link - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/04/what-does-t... basically 65% of federal spending is now for social welfare, rising from about 5% of GDP in 1970 to 15% of GDP in 2016) and add in who pays the majority of taxes (the top 20% pay almost 70% of taxes https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/who-pays-taxes).

The progressivity (rate of upper income taxes vs lower income taxes) has also increased in the time period. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Average_US_Federal_Tax_Ra...

So the upper classes pay more taxes in both rates and absolute dollars, those rates have increased, and the social welfare programs are the largest and increasingly largest categories of spending.

See also the growth in income of the various quintiles after taxes and transfers, and the trends over these decades: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/55413#section2

To credibly assert "Post 1970s...austerity for the people, largesse for the military, corporations, and ruling class", you'll need to provide some strong opposing facts.

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