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Author Topic: AmeriPol thread  (Read 3535211 times)

nenjin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31200 on: July 15, 2019, 04:46:10 pm »

Once you get past the defensiveness barrier, if the personal attack actually rings true and the person is self-aware enough to get past their own butthurtness, it can be a agent of change.

I mean, if you get bullied for being overweight, isn't that sometimes a motivator to change? The method may be shitty but the message can be on point.
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smjjames

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31201 on: July 15, 2019, 05:07:04 pm »

By that, I mean your hypothesis is not sufficient. There are other ways people get into the rabbit hole, such as "Profound epiphanies" (such as very vivid dreams, hallucinations, mental changes from traumatic injury, etc), and lack of sufficiently solid education in the face of charismatic believers seeking to actively recruit them. (Born into a cult setting, and suffering sunk cost fallacy issues.)

This does not mean you are wrong; a good deal of people probably do end up in the rabbit hole the way you suggest-- it just is not sufficient to be the single answer, so you should not treat it as such.


My attestation was more in the vein of "Regardless of how they got there, they exhibit this pathology"-- Namely, that no amount of evidence of the falsity of their claims will reverse their belief.

Oh, I'd agree with that; I didn't mean to imply this is the only way for people to get started, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I'm highlighting it because it's one we can do something about. We can't very well stop people hallucinating or being told incorrect things by their trusted friends and family, but we can endeavor to make sure that if they check their hallucinations against what they're told is true, they find information that's as accurate as possible. It's why I try to get my colleagues to do more unconventional outreach, for example.

Nor was I trying to contradict your claim, at least not directly; sure, if you just tell people that they're wrong and how they're wrong, they're going to try to poke holes in your argument all day instead of adjusting their beliefs. That said, if we acknowledge the emotional component -- and it is behind a significant portion of the crankery out there -- it does suggest that we can alleviate the problem by decoupling them being wrong from them being stupid, much like how some racists can be and have been brought round by just associating with the people they're racist against so they accumulate positive experiences on which to base their generalizations. (Not that this is a very good idea to try en masse, mind.) The less of their identity has to change to fix the error, the easier it is for them to fix it. So yes, there's no panacea here, but there are some things we can do to help stop the spread of crank beliefs before they're internalized and no longer amenable to rational disproof and much harder to deal with. Being meticulous is one of them.

Speaking of racists, I doubt Trump would ever be brought around that way, he's just too stuck in his ways, and as salmongod said, it wouldn't happen fast enough for Democrats to accept.

Once you get past the defensiveness barrier, if the personal attack actually rings true and the person is self-aware enough to get past their own butthurtness, it can be a agent of change.

The self aware part there is key though, as is the ability to grow and change, Trump is clearly none of that.

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I mean, if you get bullied for being overweight, isn't that sometimes a motivator to change? The method may be shitty but the message can be on point.

It's certainly a motivator, but the same psychology still applies.
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wierd

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31202 on: July 15, 2019, 05:13:23 pm »

I would say that this is inappropriate, because of learned helplessness.

If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it is what happens when people are placed into a circumstance that they have no recourse for, through being forcibly subjected to, and punished for seeking redress for.  The clinical research was initially conducted with dogs getting electric shocks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Bullying in workplaces or schools (such as for being gay, or being overweight; conditions that are not really something a kid is able to redress themselves in any meaningful capacity) combines these elements.  It has both incapability to prevent or avoid (Children are trapped at school by legal requirement, Workers are statistically trapped by economic factors, as an alarming percentage of the workforce lives hand to mouth and cannot endure missing even a single paycheck) and reprisal for seeking redress (bullied EVEN HARDER for being a snitch, in the case of school, or given negative repercussions from HR in many workplace situations.) This conditions the recipients of such conditions to become INCAPABLE of seeking solutions to the problem. It does not significantly galvanize the population for effective, voluntary change.

Such voluntary change requires reinforcement of some kind.

The exact kind of reinforcement needed will be intimately specific to the psyche of the individual in question, so a panacea is not realistically feasible. (It is best to avoid the whole deleterious environment from the beginning, rather than try to clean it up after.)

Due to the intimately specific nature of that needed reinforcement, the best person to know what reinforcement is needed is the individual themselves, and again-- either axiomatic true belief obviates any sense of urgency or need, sunken costs fallacy distorts the scope of the problem sufficiently that the individual does not seek, or-- if bullied, learned helplessness reinforces a position of inaction, and ownership of the misery of the condition as an identity.

Short of very strongly minimizing the potential for these modes of entrapment, there isn't a quality stratagem outside of one-on-one counseling that I see as viable. I might be wrong, and I hope I am, but I do not currently see one.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2019, 05:14:54 pm by wierd »
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31203 on: July 15, 2019, 05:17:31 pm »

Why would we expect a personal attack to motivate someone to go through the painful process of transformation?

Well, in part because we sometimes fail to recognize that different beliefs about the same subject carry vastly different emotional significance. Say, for example, your (presumed) belief that the world is not run by a secret cabal of maple trees. I'm fairly confident of two things: the majority of people reading this have that belief, and it does not occur to them to run out into the streets on a daily basis screaming "There is no secret cabal of maple trees controlling our lives! None at all! They're just trees!"

If, however, you did believe that such a cabal existed, that belief would probably be very important to you.  You'd want people to know. The truth as you see it, and your role in discovering it, would fit into any number of very compelling narratives in which you are a very important person and have a duty to make this known, to prove the doubters wrong and haul this presumably Canadian skulduggery out into the light to free the world from their sap-filled clutches. It's a way to be a hero. So, when the rest of the world tells hypothetical you you're wrong, they're saying "this belief is unsupported by evidence, so I choose not to share it" but hypothetical you is hearing "you are not special, except in the sense of being exceptionally foolish." And thus the resistance starts, and the conspiracy theories grow.

So that's part of it, I think. We try to disabuse them of the inverse of our belief, not their belief.
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McTraveller

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31204 on: July 15, 2019, 06:22:06 pm »

You guys are just rediscovering/reiterating that pseudo-intellectualism is way worse than anti-intellectualism...  using scientific-sounding and "rational" arguments for ridiculous things is way worse than people just being against science in general.

I mean even look at climate science - instead of using words like "experiments show X with a margin of error Y" we end up with "consensus".  There should be no "consensus" in science - only data.  It's what happens when the mindset of "question all authority" starts applying to things like basic science (flat earth ahem).  Everything is whatever the individual wants it to be, rather than what actually is - at least sometimes.  So we are getting more and more conflicts, when people who are told the individual view is the most important, except when it conflicts with X or Y or Z, then there is some other authority that is actually more important.  But nobody really knows the rules about what is a "personal view" versus "aggregate view", so we are in the midst of all kinds of groups trying to define those rules.

It's awesome and terrifying to be able to observe it while it happens.
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31205 on: July 15, 2019, 06:34:30 pm »

I mean even look at climate science - instead of using words like "experiments show X with a margin of error Y" we end up with "consensus".  There should be no "consensus" in science - only data.

How do you propose we actually make predictions, then? Or why even do experiments, if all we're going to do is look at the results and go "Yep, those sure are some numbers, but obviously nobody can go so far as to say anything about what they might mean!"

The reason for the term "scientific consensus" is that nothing is ever completely proven empirically, but many things are so hard to disprove that nobody has yet made a credible attempt to do so. Gravity, for example. Nobody can ever prove Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is absolutely, metaphysically correct (classically, anyway), but nobody's arguing the point anymore, which is as close as we get. The end goal of the scientific process is falsifiable but unfalsified predictions about the world, and data alone doesn't get us there. It needs synthesis into a model from which predictions can be drawn.
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31206 on: July 15, 2019, 07:24:33 pm »

Yeah I mean, even things we routinely consider to be innately immutable, such as mathematics, are only our system of describing things as they are observed. We still find it to be minutely flawed from time to time, refined as it is. We have to come to a consensus on interpreting data, or we can't derive meaningful predictions or conclusions. The idea of a scientific consensus is that it is specifically not what an individual wants, but what that of multiple individuals with multiple trained perspectives agree best fits the data.
 
Whatchu got there is some pseudo-intellectualism, sir. Frankly, the belief in data as a source of absolute truth, as a method of avoiding human foibles and free of the failures of human perception, is a faith unto itself. The scientific method is a tool, not a God.
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McTraveller

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31207 on: July 15, 2019, 08:17:31 pm »

Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant that the thing that makes science valuable isn't that there is agreement by enough people ("consensus") but that there is support by enough data.

The use of the term "consensus" is the nefarious bit - it hints that "just because a lot of people say it, it must be..." - which is exactly what we do not want in science.
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Dunamisdeos

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31208 on: July 15, 2019, 08:25:24 pm »

Gotcha.

I think we sort of jumped all over you rather than think what you might have meant there.

Still though, consensus doesn't imply a lack of qualification in and of itself. The context is what matters. We are either talking about scientific consensus or popular consensus, which are two different things.
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31209 on: July 15, 2019, 08:44:33 pm »

Sorry I wasn't clear - I meant that the thing that makes science valuable isn't that there is agreement by enough people ("consensus") but that there is support by enough data.

The use of the term "consensus" is the nefarious bit - it hints that "just because a lot of people say it, it must be..." - which is exactly what we do not want in science.

It's the best proxy for proof we have, though. We can't disprove the existence of a better alternative model that perfectly explains everything with infinite predictive power, but if nobody's come up with a testable one, how are we to act on that possibility?

"The scientific consensus" is kind of shorthand for "the best everyone's failed to disprove empirically", and it's meant to indicate what we presently think is the least-worst explanation we have, which is important when we have to make a decision beyond gathering more data. Of course more data would always be great, but if we have to decide whether or not to sterilize surgical instruments or include gravity in ballistics or deal with climate change, what's being requested is the best non-shrug answer. The weight given by consensus is relative, not absolute, so we report the status quo of our collective error-rejecting process. That's the consensus.
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Folly

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31210 on: July 16, 2019, 08:07:22 pm »

So, the House voted today to condemn Trump's racist tweeting.

Does this actually mean anything? Like, are there any consequences? Or did they actually hold a vote just to determine that all of the Democrats and 4 of the Republicans don't like Trump?
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31211 on: July 16, 2019, 08:18:18 pm »

There are immense consequences - I have been forced to feel minor appreciation towards something done by Nancy Pelosi. Do you understand the kind of psychological impact that has on a person like me?

Fortunately, it was immediately negated by other Democrats keeping to character and condemning Pelosi for calling Trump a racist due to it being a """""""""personal attack""""""""" banned by Sacred Parliamentarianism.
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Trekkin

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31212 on: July 16, 2019, 08:18:55 pm »

So, the House voted today to condemn Trump's racist tweeting.

Does this actually mean anything? Like, are there any consequences? Or did they actually hold a vote just to determine that all of the Democrats and 4 of the Republicans don't like Trump?

To give you an actual answer: no, it doesn't actually do anything.
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Frumple

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31213 on: July 16, 2019, 10:47:46 pm »

I mean, it does look to be shitting on a house rule that probably needed shitting on. It's a minute indication of dems warming up to the idea of turbofucking congressional norms and doing something like nuking the filibuster if they end up with full legislature control next year.
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McTraveller

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Re: AmeriPol thread
« Reply #31214 on: July 17, 2019, 06:37:22 am »

"As soon as A observes something which seems to him wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or, in better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X... What I want to do is to look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. he is the man who never is thought of.... I call him the forgotten man... He works, he votes, generally he prays—but he always pays..."

    -William Graham Sumner, ca. 1876

Contrast with the appropriation of the term from FDR in 1932:

"These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensable units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that build from the bottom up and not from the top down, that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid."

Popular culture latched onto FDR's version, not Sumner's.  My observation is that we have both types in spades...and they are also often the same people.
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