Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How can we break our addiction to contempt?

freakonomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 212 posts

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#51

Post by JasonCannon »

at_a_remove wrote: post #37
Pxtl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to know the actual factual content of "What's The Matter With Kansas" is completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter who's correct, it matters who hurt their feelings. Which is pretty consistent - conservatives have become utterly disconnected from reality, and their absurd COVID policy has demonstrated what happens when reality doesn't give a crap how you feel.

See, there's that contempt again. You should know that this is what began to pry me away from being your basic leftist template. I said, "Wow, I better make sure I am not voting against my own interests. Wouldn't I feel like a fool if I supported people who had contempt for me." After that, I would hear "Ugh, men are awful" in a curious new light. Or someone would say "White people ruin everything" and I would realiz…

>After that, I would hear "Ugh, men are awful" in a curious new light. Or someone would say "White people ruin everything" and I would realize, hey, I'm white. This sort of thing began to add up and it became clear that "going left" meant supporting people who had contempt for me, purely on the basis of things like skin color and sex.

See, I would stand up for social justice and protecting women and people of color. But women and people of color don't trust white men so instead, I'm going to not stand for these things instead.

Great logic there. I could tell that you used to be a real leftist template.

How about instead, you stand for women and people of color because it's the right thing to do? Regardless of how little they trust white men. Maybe, just maybe, try and understand why they wouldn't trust white men?

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#52

Post by tombert »

Pxtl wrote: post #42
tombert wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't necessarily break with my reasoning, right? They might still actually think that the vaccines are worse than the disease. Obviously they're wrong, and they should get vaccinated, but they might be fundamentally "good" but also misguided people. I have my own hypothesis about the COVID vaccine denialism in particular, but I am afraid that it might come off as a bit too political for HN and Dang would lock…

The challenge is that historically the political mainstream has been endlessly assuming good faith on obvious bad actors, to the point that Trump's obvious racism was controversial to point out because he didn't literally dress up as a Klansman wielding a noose. As a reaction to this problem you see the basic approach that the social justice wing has basically declared that intent doesn't matter . No more excuses. An…

I never said that the politicians are acting in good faith. I said that I think a lot of the voters are.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#53

Post by at_a_remove »

Pxtl wrote: post #45
at_a_remove wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, there's that contempt again. You should know that this is what began to pry me away from being your basic leftist template. I said, "Wow, I better make sure I am not voting against my own interests. Wouldn't I feel like a fool if I supported people who had contempt for me." After that, I would hear "Ugh, men are awful" in a curious new light. Or someone would say "White people ruin everything" and I would realiz…

Again, you're talking about feelings instead of policy. About "contempt" instead of dollars and rights and lives. I can't help but see this as every bit as ridiculous as the anti-vaxxers who dig their heels in even as the people around them are dying, because they don't want to give in to The Left on vaccines.

Well hell, let's talk about facts!

Do you think the left is particularly supportive of men? ("In fact, more women as a whole now graduate from college than men ... This is a great accomplishment—not just for one sport or one college or even just for women but for America. And this is what Title IX is all about." President Barack Obama.) If they are not, then that is the error of What's the Matter with Kansas?, the error of supporting those who do not have your best interests at heart.

If feelings don't matter to you, then why are you engaging with a discussion about contempt?

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#54

Post by BitwiseFool »

abbub wrote: post #41
BitwiseFool wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think this sense is so prevalent on 'The Left' because they have established an image for themselves that is rational, empathetic, and humanist above all else. They actively frame their positions and actions in terms of "justice" and "fairness". They love to declare that "Reality has a well known liberal bias" and frame people who see the world different as rejecting reality itself. With motivations…

I mean...it's not 'The Left' that's pushing the 'fake news' and 'alternate facts' agenda when they come up against anything they disagree with...

As loathe as people are to hear "both sides", 'The Left' absolutely does this as too. They just use different names and insinuations to communicate the same point, that sources presented by the other side is not to be trusted.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#55

Post by Gunax »

He's wrong. Contempt will always beat love. Humour will always beat logical soundness. Pithy arguments will always beat correct but intricate arguments.

I dont have any hard proof of course, but this is how it is. No one cares if you're right if the opponent can be witty.

As proof Ill try to leave you with 2 videos, hopefully they are bipartisan enough:

1. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErZCMcoC8X8 2. https://youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#56

Post by h2odragon »

VictorPath wrote: post #50
at_a_remove wrote: post #13

What's the Matter with Kansas? is a lovely example of contempt disguised as gentle inquiry, with a touch of worry over another, and it starts even with the title itself. "Why those poor, naive, uneducated conservatives in the flyover states, they simply do not understand that they are voting against their own interests." It's concern-trolling with a mask of pity. Once you begin looking for it, you can see it more and…

> What's the Matter with Kansas? is a lovely example of contempt disguised as gentle inquiry, with a touch of worry over another, and it starts even with the title itself On the contrary. The title is from the 19th century, from an editorial asking why the populists in Kansas were so left wing, something the book goes into detail about in the second chapter.

Such trolling isn't new, its just the causes for which its used change

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#57

Post by wara23arish »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #31
tombert wrote: post #20

At some level I will be a permanent victim of movies and media, and as such there are absolutely politicians that I hate, but I've been trying to acknowledge to myself that, generally speaking, most of their voters mean well [1], even if they are voting for politicians that I think are disgusting. As such, I've tried to not "hate" them, even if I don't particularly like a good chunk of them either. [1] Though I have…

I'm not so sure about meaning well. If you read https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/I-Can-Tolerate-Anythi... , it feels like there's a lot of decisions nowadays that's taken because it will hurt/offend the "other team", with post-facto justification why the decision benefits "me/our side". It seems like people have been losing their pride in their selves that now they're invested in their "football teqm" winning i…

On that note, I recently found out about a term “Tittytainement”, coined by Zbigniew Berzinski, a national US security advisor in the 90s.

Message was that due to globalization, a 20/80 split in the job market was inevitable. So there needs to he work done on placating and nursing unrest by distracting people with movies, sports etc..

This was during the 1995 World State Forum. I tried to look up any more material whether that any concrete actions were taken place but couldn’t.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#58

Post by Pxtl »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #36
at_a_remove wrote: post #13

What's the Matter with Kansas? is a lovely example of contempt disguised as gentle inquiry, with a touch of worry over another, and it starts even with the title itself. "Why those poor, naive, uneducated conservatives in the flyover states, they simply do not understand that they are voting against their own interests." It's concern-trolling with a mask of pity. Once you begin looking for it, you can see it more and…

I can't help but think this sense is so prevalent on 'The Left' because they have established an image for themselves that is rational, empathetic, and humanist above all else. They actively frame their positions and actions in terms of "justice" and "fairness". They love to declare that "Reality has a well known liberal bias" and frame people who see the world different as rejecting reality itself. With motivations…

That's a wonderful narrative, except that Fox News and other conservative orgs have repeatedly been proven to be really, really deceptive. How many conservative talking heads have had to defend themselves in court that they're not really news, but entertainers playing a silly character for laughs? How many right-wing radio shock jocks have died of COVID because they drank their own kool-aid on the subject of Vaccines?

Polls have shown that Fox News viewers believe more incorrect facts about current events than people who don't follow the news at all.

For example:

http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/

After we spend decades hearing about how Iraq has WMD's and was involved with Al-Qaeda, Obama's secretly a non-American Muslim, Anthropogenic Climate Change is fake, COVID is just a bad cold, vaccines are an evil conspiracy, publicly funded healthcare for Americans will result in "death panels" and so on and so forth... is it not reasonable for American progressives to accept that their political opponents are generally either malevolent or suckers?

At some point it's time to stop assuming good faith.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#59

Post by at_a_remove »

JasonCannon wrote: post #51
at_a_remove wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See, there's that contempt again. You should know that this is what began to pry me away from being your basic leftist template. I said, "Wow, I better make sure I am not voting against my own interests. Wouldn't I feel like a fool if I supported people who had contempt for me." After that, I would hear "Ugh, men are awful" in a curious new light. Or someone would say "White people ruin everything" and I would realiz…

>After that, I would hear "Ugh, men are awful" in a curious new light. Or someone would say "White people ruin everything" and I would realize, hey, I'm white. This sort of thing began to add up and it became clear that "going left" meant supporting people who had contempt for me, purely on the basis of things like skin color and sex. See, I would stand up for social justice and protecting women and people of color.…

I was, Metafilter account and all. Got in trouble for getting a pro-choice piece published in the local rag when I was fifteen. But damn, I am not going to give energy to people who despise me due to the incidents of my birth.

Re: How can we break our addiction to contempt?

#60

Post by h2odragon »

registeredcorn wrote: post #47

How can one break an addiction to contempt? The answer is dead simple. Follow the Prince of Peace. > Living the New Life > Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They bec…

I'd say something about humility, which can be illustrated from many religious traditions; but i couldn't say it nearly so well.
Post reply on HN