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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)

#61

Post by Eisenstein »

jongjong wrote: post #40

Rational people will pick the ideology which has the fewest contradictions. Irrational people will choose that which serves them best. People who benefit from a system are unlikely to look for problems with it and unlikely to notice any contradictions. Anything which appears as a contradiction gets shrugged off as "Well, there must be a good reason, I'm not an expert. I will trust the experts." These people corrupt O…

Try this: take a position you hold that you are sure is rational but that a number of people disagree with, and pretend it is wrong and look at it from the opposite perspective. Steelman it and honestly take that perspective as true and argue it in your head. You might still not agree with it, but you can make it rational. So, how certain are should we be that our positions are the rational ones if we can do this?

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

#62

Post by regularization »

> Suppose you become politically radicalized and become a Marxist. You get convinced that the labor theory of value is correct.

> The number of people in the general population who will know enough about the history and philosophy of economics to give you a clear account of why Marxism and the labor theory of value is incorrect,

He's correct most people don't know about labor theory of value. Which is why it's easy for him to categorize those who believe it as "radicalized" and "Marxist" versus the minority of calm, rational, objective people who can discount it.

Marx did follow the labor theory of value - as did virtually every major economist (or as they put it probably better back then, student of political economy) before Marx, who also believed it. Marx credits another revolutionary for discovering the labor theory of value - Benjamin Franklin. There were a few proto-papers on subjective theory of value, but an alternative theory of value did not even really exist before Capital was published.

Labor theory of value was the theory of Benjamin Franklin, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and all the major economists before Marx. And Marx accepted what they accepted.

Alternative theories of value were not really fleshed out until after Marx published Capital.

So consider all of this when he categorizes the idea of the labor theory of value as extremist, radical, Marxist etc.

According to this article, believing that a carpenter banging wood and nails into a table creates value is an extremist belief. Even though pretty much every major economist before Marx believed the same thing.

Ps. This was told to you by myself - from one the 1% of people who know this stuff

Pps. If you didn't read the article, you would not know I am referring to myself as part of an elite 1% of knowledge sarcastically

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

#63

Post by zmmmmm »

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…

> 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 vaccines? or any other number of things.

Underpinning all of this is some basic elements of humility and empathy - willingness to accede to a greater authority of others, and to weigh others experience that is different to yours as important in informing your views. Cutting those tethers gives your own belief system a new degree of freedom.

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

#64

Post by [deleted] »

miyoji wrote: post #11

The good part of this: don't fall into the trap of believing the proposition "an idiot disagrees with me, so I must be right". That's solid advice, idiots believe countless true things and geniuses believe innumerable false things. The intelligence of a random interlocutor has nothing to do with the validity of their opinions, really, so it shouldn't serve as evidence one way or another. Generally, I try to pay atten…

[deleted]

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

#65

Post by DavidPiper »

> The person [is not super fired up and] doesn’t just want to act as a soldier for their team

This pulled me into a tangential thought:

Has anyone else noticed that a lot of people just CAN'T be wrong? They might be contrarian, cynical, narcissists, experts in their field, experiencing PTSD or other emotional disregulation, extremely online, ... Then the team-based things: political entrenchment, [colour]-pilled, conspiracy theorists, religious, Collingwood supporters (kidding) ...

Finding people who are genuinely interested in learning about things that might change their views in substantial ways is very hard. Even when you find people genuinely interested in learning, it's so common to see evidence take a back seat to political or religious views. It makes you feel crazy sometimes.

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

#66

Post by hingler36 »

irishcoffee wrote: post #57
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…

I would counter with people who believe the earth is flat. This is in fact an extreme belief. The best part is, I don’t care if people believe this, not even a little a bit. I care when they start arguing with me and trying to jam their belief down my throat. I didn’t even ask, you brought it up and you’re mad at me because I disagree. I think this is the more interesting point to consider. Having a belief, any belie…

Where would you draw the line between someone advocating for their belief vs shoving it down your throat? Does the "extremeness" of the belief factor into the judgement? If so, how are we not back at the original question of the definition of what an extreme belief is?

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

#67

Post by phatskat »

irishcoffee wrote: post #57
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…

I would counter with people who believe the earth is flat. This is in fact an extreme belief. The best part is, I don’t care if people believe this, not even a little a bit. I care when they start arguing with me and trying to jam their belief down my throat. I didn’t even ask, you brought it up and you’re mad at me because I disagree. I think this is the more interesting point to consider. Having a belief, any belie…

Oddly though beliefs like “the world is flat” are tied up in other beliefs that actually cause harm. Flat-earth leads to the firmament leads to Christian god did this leads to ((those people)) killed Christ and control the banks that want you to believe in a spherical earth and get vaccinated.

One of the most depressing things about exploring the conspiracy world is that all roads tend to get co-opted into hateful rhetoric - I miss the days when I believed that one could hold a rather silly belief and have it just be benign.

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

#68

Post by regularization »

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

As the article talks about Marx, let us consider the falsifiable predictions of Narx, who died in 1883.

* Economic crises (recessions, depressions) would continue, and becone worse over time (example: subprime crisis of 2008)

* profitability rates would go down over time

* wealth would concentrate more over time

* middle class would be slowly shrunk - say, doctor's losing their own offices and made to see people in 15 minute appointment blocks

* real hourly wages would fall

* proletariat will revolt and displace the bourgeoisie, in the manner the bourgeoisie overthrew the feudal order

These predictions are all falsifiable

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

#69

Post by thrance »

Consider two categories of people:

1. The number of people in the general population who will object to neoliberalism.

2. The number of people in the general population who will know enough about the history and philosophy of economics to give you a clear account of why neoliberalism and the trickle down theory of economics is incorrect, and can speak to your very specific concerns about government bloat and over-regulation in a way that gets across how modern social theorists and economists give a more compelling and ethically coherent account of the way the world works, and do so patiently and thoroughly.

This is great! It works with everything.

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

#70

Post by thrance »

narrator wrote: post #41
miyoji wrote: post #11

The good part of this: don't fall into the trap of believing the proposition "an idiot disagrees with me, so I must be right". That's solid advice, idiots believe countless true things and geniuses believe innumerable false things. The intelligence of a random interlocutor has nothing to do with the validity of their opinions, really, so it shouldn't serve as evidence one way or another. Generally, I try to pay atten…

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