[HN Gopher] The Meta-Positioning Habit of Mind
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The Meta-Positioning Habit of Mind
Author : longdefeat
Score : 75 points
Date : 2022-05-23 13:38 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconvivialsociety.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconvivialsociety.substack.com)
| yamrzou wrote:
| Here's my theory on why " _discussion detaches from the issue at
| hand, turning into meta-debates about how we respond to the
| responses of others, etc._ ":
|
| I think it's a battle for _common knowledge_ (See:
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2410). Suppose there are two
| groups, A and B, having a different stance on a given issue. On
| social media, it's not enough to voice an opinion about the issue
| at hand. Because the nature of social networks make it easy for
| opinions that are globally rare to be overrepresented (see: The
| Majority Illusion In Social Networks --
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03022). Therefore, if you're from
| group A, you want to make sure that your opinion is _common
| knowledge_ , but also the fact that you're shunning indivduals
| from group B (to signal that they are a minority or on the wrong
| side) _common knowledge_ as well. That 's why the discussion
| drifts quickly into those meta-debates.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Yup, _consensus reality_ is the other term I have heard used to
| describe this.
| nathias wrote:
| it's nothing meta about political opposition in discourse
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Another revealing term for a phrase like 'anti-anti-antivax' is
| Orwell's double-plus-ungood. It's in line with a standard tactic
| in propaganda: Take a complex topic, reduce it to simple
| statement even a small child could understand, then repeat,
| repeat, repeat. Twitter is the ideal tool for this approach, with
| its character-limited format. No wonder that state/corporate PR
| outfits (aka 'the media') and politicians congregate there.
|
| The article does have some good advice, though: _Jacobs
| recommends extending our temporal bandwidth through a deliberate
| engagement with the past through our reading as well as a
| deliberate effort to bring the more distant future into our
| reckoning._
|
| This is ideal for addressing the vaccination issue. The first
| question to ask of any self-styled 'vaccine expert' would be,
| "What are the 100 top vaccines that have been introduced in the
| past 100 years, and what are some examples of success and failure
| in these efforts"? (What I'd expect from Twitter is cherry-
| pickers finding the best and worst examples to push their own
| particular agenda, rather than an across-the-board debate).
|
| Granted, answering that question in detail would take a whole
| book, although wikipedia has a decent introduction:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_human_vaccines
|
| Some of the ancient religious views on illness seem to be playing
| a role here as well, i.e. illness is a divine punishment for
| human sin, so anyone effecting cures is clearly an agent of dark
| Satanic power, who should be burned at the stake etc. None of
| that excuses pharmaceutical manufacturers who run dirty
| production lines and end up contaminating their vaccines,
| however:
|
| "Viral contamination in biologic manufacture and implications for
| emerging therapies (2020)"
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-020-0507-2
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| This particular conversation typically conflates two separate
| questions: 1) is a person's decision to get a vaccine based on
| (however defined) accurate knowledge of vaccines and how they
| work? and 2) how can we ensure that individual rights to choose
| one's own medical and preventative treatments are protected
| regardless of the perceived answer to #1?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions that
| reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual makes
| choices that endanger everyone else?
| logicchains wrote:
| > 3) is it okay for society to collectively make decisions
| that reduce the liberty of an individual if that individual
| makes choices that endanger everyone else?
|
| I believe you mean: "Is it okay for society to collectively
| make decisions that reduce the liberty of an individual and
| endanger their life if that individual makes choices that
| endanger everyone else". Because for the covid vaccines at
| least there's ample evidence they're not without nontrivial
| risk: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-10928-z
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It's also very problematic to suggest that a human in
| their natural state of being poses a risk to society at
| large.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Many (most?) "natural" states and activities of human
| beings are considered unacceptable in society even
| without posing existential risk to other humans (you
| might find anything adjacent to reproduction in
| particular quite a minefield). Should vaccination be any
| exception?
|
| I suspect if we tried to define "natural" we'd find the
| term meaningless and applied very selectively where it
| suits someone's agenda.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| If the difference between telling people to put some
| clothes on & avoid sex in public vs. forcefully injecting
| chemicals into their bodies is not clear, I'm not sure
| what to tell you.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Not telling people but incarcerating them, and one of
| those "natural states" can't even hold a candle to the
| other in terms of risk.
|
| Or are we now switching up "natural" to mean how what we
| take into our bodies differs from our ancestors at
| various times in the past? Then compared to the amount of
| microplastics, PFAS, etc. a modern human anywhere on the
| planet consumes (inhales, absorbs) a couple of vaccine
| shots strikes me as truly insignificant.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > It's also very problematic to suggest that a human in
| their natural state of being poses a risk to society at
| large.
|
| Problematic is kind of an overloaded term, so it's not
| clear to me exactly what you mean here.
|
| It _can_ certainly be true that "a human in their
| natural state of being poses a risk to society at large."
| There are a lot of example of that (e.g. unvaccinated
| people with naive immune systems allowing the resurgence
| of disease, violent psychopaths).
|
| That fact certainly can cause problems where the
| contradictions between the _sloganized-forms_ of certain
| social axioms need to be resolved.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Society is most certainly okay making decisions that
| endanger an individual's life and limit their liberty
| even for choices that did not endanger anyone else's life
| (cf. prison system), vaccination is small beans by
| comparison.
| jum1p wrote:
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I dunno. Anti-vax crusading seems like something Eric Hoffer
| warned us about in "The True Believer".
|
| The connection to authoritarianism is mixed, but it seems just
| another meaningless thing you can do (like joining Scientology's
| Sea org or following Jim Jones to Guyana) that makes your life
| seem meaningful.
| bsedlm wrote:
| the _pesky_ thing with "meaning" is that a life that seems
| meaningful (to them who live it) *IS* meaningful (again, to
| them who live it)
| purplerabbit wrote:
| Many us hold that there is such a thing as _real_ meaning
| that extends beyond our subjective conceptions. (I 'd
| actually argue that not to believe this is a limited form of
| solipsism)
|
| Put a different way: everyone's life has some vestige of real
| meaning. And that meaning is probably different from meaning
| that person perceives their life to have.
| bsedlm wrote:
| some of us refuse to let this real meaning be dictated by
| any entity other than oneself. not to say the meaning is
| subjective, just to reject all except our own appreciation
| of this meaning.
|
| what I'm trying to say is that, sure, there is a real
| meaning beyond our own subjective experience AND that I
| reject any state, authority, ideology, and/or science which
| would try to tell me what this real objective meaning is or
| how I can access it.
|
| > _everyone 's life has some vestige of real meaning._
|
| maybe my life has just a vestige (a faint remnant) of
| meaning to you, but I think that for me, my own life has
| full 100% of possible meaning (and it should be the same
| for your own life's meaning). that is, unless you let this
| experience of meaning come to you from some institution or
| some ideological belief, then your own life will only be
| vestigially meaningful to yourself.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Bloggers love to invent words with "meta" in them.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| https://theconvivialsociety.substack.com is new to me, anyone
| have any thoughts on them?
| bpiche wrote:
| He's carrying the torch of Ivan Illich, basically. It's a
| reference to 'Tools for Conviviality'. Illich himself was a
| minor celebrity in the 70s/80s/90s and appeared on the front
| cover of The Whole Earth Quarterly or the Coevolution Quarterly
| once, I forget which issue, but it was about his 'Silence is a
| Commons' essay. He was a chemist, and a Catholic theologian,
| and a great humanist philosopher. He sort of ran a commune in
| Mexico in his later years. I miss him.
|
| edit, personal note: I was a big fan as a teenager. My dad has
| all the Whole Earth issues and had a few Illich books in the
| basement and I really enjoyed Tools for Conviviality a lot. As
| well as Medical Nemesis, To Hell With Good Intentions, and
| Deschooling Society. That one almost made me drop out of high
| school.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I've been liking reading his musings on technology and it's
| effects - with an emphasis on the effects that social media is
| having on society - essentially making us less convivial.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| It's dialectical thinking and phrasing, described in its most
| basic state in the modern era by Fichte (commonly credited to
| Hegel).
|
| Disciplining oneself to reject all dialectic (harder than it
| sounds) can go a long way to freeing oneself from a wide variety
| of crafted narratives.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think about the introduction of _How to be an anti-racist_
| that explicitly sets up a racist /anti-racist dialectic and
| effectively defines "racism" as "anti-blackism"
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| In any of these examples, it effectively creates a closed-
| loop definition, cutting off all external references or
| bases, where the definition of the dialectical terms is set
| by whomever happens to hold the most power and influence in
| the topic at hand.
| yamrzou wrote:
| Yes, because whoever controls the meaning of words wins:
| https://wyclif.substack.com/p/a-little-game-theory-on-
| discur...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I'm not sure if anybody wins in this case.
| meowkit wrote:
| Which is the core of why these power games are so dumb
| yet dangerous.
|
| Divisive narrative battles seem to spiral out in a
| vicious cycle until a group splits into tribes/echo
| chambers. The large battles continue until one side is
| conquered (materially - via financial or physical means).
| And even if a side wins, it is now suspect to splintering
| and the process starts all over again.
|
| I imagine this pattern is very old and it's only now on
| these rapid time scales enabled by the internet are we
| able to clearly recognize and discuss it more broadly.
| k__ wrote:
| Any resources on rejecting dialectic?
| bowsamic wrote:
| Vimalakirti sutra
|
| EDIT: for something more recent: Zen Mind, Beginners Mind by
| Shunryu Suzuki
| k__ wrote:
| Anything a bit more recent?
|
| Like, Marx-recent?
| naravara wrote:
| Marx is the opposite of the kind of reference you want if
| you want to reject dialectical thinking. That was Marx's
| whole deal.
| k__ wrote:
| Ah.
|
| What I wanted to say was:
|
| I know a bunch of people who argument from Marx
| perspective of dialectical thinking.
|
| But the comment I replied to gave me the impression,
| dialectical thinking was fundamentally flawed.
|
| So, I was interested where this flaw lies and how it
| might proof Marx wrong.
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31479769
| rgrieselhuber wrote:
| Rene Girard, in "I See Satan Fall Like Lightning,"
| effectively (in my opinion) mapped out how dialectical
| narratives underpin the process of scapegoating victims in a
| society for sacrifice / purging via revolutionary violence.
| There is a deep connection between dialectics and their basis
| in accusatory networks.
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