[HN Gopher] Persuasion through status rather than argument
___________________________________________________________________
Persuasion through status rather than argument
Author : jger15
Score : 133 points
Date : 2023-11-19 11:05 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.robkhenderson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.robkhenderson.com)
| hcks wrote:
| Can the author provide example of dumb ideas? Or is it "dumb
| ideas" == "ideas I disagree with"
|
| More generally, it seems like the recipe of this breed of
| substack author is to take a basic object level opinion e.g. "I
| don't like pronoun people" or "AI people are dumb" and turn it a
| whole pseudo intellectual rant without ever getting to the point.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Over unity, infinite compression algorithms, perpetual motion
| machines, tidal energy (unless you think subsidy is the goal in
| itself) and so on.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Which smart people believed in infinite compression
| algorithms or true perpetual motion?
| eatonphil wrote:
| Various folks into the 21st century.
|
| Edit: point taken.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_perpetual_motion
| _...
| LtWorf wrote:
| Well he lived before modern laws of physics were known...
| I'm not sure that counts.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Actually: he was instrumental in inspiring others to
| search for those modern laws of physics and at that point
| such experiments must have helped to figure out where
| exactly the line was culminating in the laws of
| thermodynamics.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| He lived 2 centuries before Newton, 3 centuries before
| Laplace, 4 centuries before Maxwell and 5 centuries
| before Noether, Einstein, and Shannon. That he doesn't
| believe the first law of thermodynamics is hardly his
| fault.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And all of those names effectively built on a foundation
| that Da Vinci helped establish. It wasn't modern science
| just yet but it was a massive step up from what came
| before.
|
| And in a way that is probably his biggest contribution:
| to show that if science focuses on that which works and
| can be generalized there will be massive progress.
| Because for a single individual, especially in that age
| his output was extremely impressive and that couldn't
| have worked if he didn't channel his energy to areas that
| were deemed to be fruitful.
| cinntaile wrote:
| The replies don't make a ton of sense, did you change the
| contents of your comment?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, the comment was changed considerably. Originally it
| gave Leonardo Da Vinci's attempts to create a perpetual
| motion machine as an example of a smart and successful
| person falling for a dumb idea.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Even in the source it says he was against such ideas.
|
| > Leonardo da Vinci made a number of drawings of devices
| he hoped would make free energy. Leonardo da Vinci was
| generally against such devices, but drew and examined
| numerous overbalanced wheels
|
| Just drawing some stuff that looks like perpetual machine
| isn't the same as actually believing in it. In fact this
| is how science should work. Even if something has a small
| chance to be correct try that and think about it.
| Einstein didn't believed in black holes but thought about
| breakdown of his equations.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That source wasn't there in the first version.
| jacquesm wrote:
| More than one that I've personally known. They miss _just_
| a tiny sliver of theory and they believe that their smarts
| are large enough to be able to see something that everybody
| else must have missed.
| biscuits1 wrote:
| Cold fusion is posted here every few months. Does it fall in
| this category?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| On that note, the entire LK-99 debacle.
| jacquesm wrote:
| But super conductors do exist and room temperature
| superconductors _may_ be possible. Nobody has ruled that
| out at all.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yeah but why did so many people take those guys so
| seriously before their work was replicated? Shouldn't
| extraordinary claims be filtered early before we give
| them the time of day?
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that most people that have a basic idea
| of materials science were simply intrigued (myself
| amongst them) because there wasn't anything that ruled it
| out and it seemed like a potentially promising path. And
| obviously: the truth would come out anyway given enough
| time. The HN threads of the time make for interesting
| reading: I think a lot of people approach technological
| progress from the point of something very close to
| wishful thinking, their enthusiasm isn't proportional to
| the likelihood of the thing being true but to the
| perceived good a particular invention would do if it were
| real. And that then overwhelms any kind of reasoning
| ability. Incidentally: that may well be as good an answer
| as I can provide to the original question posed by this
| article.
| XorNot wrote:
| I would contend that everyone discussing LK-99 took it
| very rationally. The idea that there were people "falling
| for it" is made up post-facto by a group who want to feel
| smugly superior about everything.
|
| Cynicism isn't wisdom though.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, lots of people _were_ falling for it and were
| twisting themselves into all kinds of knots that were not
| supported by evidence. And lots of people were similarly
| twisting themselves into all kinds of knots to claim it
| couldn 't possibly true. And neither position was
| supported by evidence or physics.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| You should go back and read the comment threads. People
| were incredibly level headed (actually tripping over
| themselves to make sure everyone knew how skeptical they
| were).
| imtringued wrote:
| You are missing the point of the article.
|
| People gobbled it up with the justification that random
| researchers on twitter "replicated" the results under the
| assumption that these anonymous researchers are putting
| their entire career on the line and therefore should be
| paid attention to. That is literally playing into the
| point the article is making. I.e. people believing lies
| because the information came from a higher status
| individual.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Some did, but not everybody did. I recall those threads
| vividly and I tried _very_ hard to keep an even keel and
| to keep it all grounded in evidence. But a lot of wishful
| thinking happened as well as categorical rejection and
| these had the same element in common: a lack of evidence.
| Though the categorical rejection faction had history on
| their side I still think that that 's just an argument
| from statistics without any relevant insight in to the
| subject matter.
| peyton wrote:
| Come on, that was fun and engaging. A floating rock is
| pretty harmless.
| the_only_law wrote:
| The funniest part of that whole debacle was watching side
| liners in HN get their ego personally hurt when it was
| exposed.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah yes, that one too.
| danbruc wrote:
| Hyperloop is probably a good example in the context of the
| article.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I think musk knew very well. It's the investors that fell for
| it.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| <Insert a quote about a fool and the departure of their
| money here>
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| There's nothing physically impossible about the Hyperloop
| (basically a maglev in vacuum tube, nothing wrong with the
| tech, just not particularly economical). Maglevs have been
| deployed successfully in some parts of Asia, they are just
| dreadfully expensive and nimbys have fears about radiation
| but they are hardly new technology.
| renox wrote:
| Nobody said they're impossible but believing that they
| would make sense economically even after they switched to
| maglev was the dumb part.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Note that the main point about the hyperloop was the
| vacuum tube, not the maglev part. And the vacuum tube
| doesn't actually work. It's not actually feasible to
| create a vacuum tube hundreds of km long. It's just about
| physically possible, but it's not really technologically
| feasible - not for a system that is supposed to be in
| constant operation all year long.
|
| It's also important to remember that vacuum tube trains
| are an 1800s idea, which everyone started pretending is
| some revolutionary new transportation concept.
| jacquesm wrote:
| And besides that you don't have to have a really good
| vacuum, you just have to have a 'good enough' vacuum that
| you can attain high speed without losing the stabilizing
| effect of a bunch of air constrained by the walls of a
| tube. Bonus points of you can get the air to move at a
| speed a bit slower than your vehicle, more bonus points
| if you can use the air to propel your vehicle.
|
| But: it's _probably_ still a dumb idea, but one that is
| borderline.
| Kye wrote:
| I'm still waiting on the giant pneumatic tubes from
| Futurama.
| XorNot wrote:
| The problem is that if any of that was a good idea, the
| question is why is the Hyperloop specifically a good
| idea, but regular old high speed rail is not? What factor
| are you changing that makes one good, and the other not
| good enough to get done right now?
|
| (the answer of course is nothing: the Hyperloop would be
| stupidly expensive, and however fast it is wouldn't solve
| the logistics problem of loading and unloading it - so
| whatever quote you've seen for rail, just triple it if
| you tried to build a hyperloop).
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, there isn't anything in particular about Hyperloop
| that makes it stand out, but it is different in high
| speed rail in that it is underground and so more complex
| in almost all ways but one: right of way (and possibly
| aesthetics, which depending on the landscape can matter a
| lot).
| Kye wrote:
| Not a lawyer and might be wrong but as far as I know land
| rights go all the way to the core in the US, so going
| underground wouldn't help with right of way. I know, "HN
| is more than the US," but we seem to have the most
| trouble with trains.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I think you're referring to the 'all the way to heaven
| and all the way to hell' bit.
|
| In principle that's true. But in practice mining rights
| and such have been split off from the right to the land
| and some reasonable depth underground. And any objection
| to an easement would be much harder to establish if it
| doesn't actually affect you. But for those parties that
| own the underground and mining rights for a given
| location there could well be a viable opposition to such
| a development. But that would then risk an eminent domain
| claim.
|
| It's all pretty complex. But I would still assume that
| going underground is easier than going above ground where
| the parcels are small and the interests are immediate due
| to interference with existing activity.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Even if this is true, the costs of digging are much
| higher than the costs of above-ground construction + the
| legal costs of acquiring the land. A hundred kilometer
| tunnel would be one of the longest tunnels ever built,
| and the longest train/track tunnel by quite some margin.
| And it would need copious safety features and auxiliary
| tunnels leading to the surface, even before the whole
| vacuum part gets added in. So it won't even completely
| avoid the need for buying above ground lands.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > the costs of digging are much higher than the costs of
| above-ground construction
|
| Yes, easily 3 to 10x.
|
| > A hundred kilometer tunnel would be one of the longest
| tunnels ever built, and the longest train/track tunnel by
| quite some margin. And it would need copious safety
| features and auxiliary tunnels leading to the surface,
| even before the whole vacuum part gets added in. So it
| won't even completely avoid the need for buying above
| ground lands.
|
| Indeed, so it's both a technical and economical non-
| starter. But it's not a 'dumb idea' in the sense that it
| is impossible. Merely impractical, too expensive and too
| complex and besides cheaper solutions exist (aircraft,
| for one, which scale much better with increasing distance
| than rail ever will).
|
| One thing all of these 'dumb ideas' and the hyperloop,
| tidal energy and so on all have in common: they are great
| ways to get your grubby fingers on subsidies.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I understand your point much better now, yes. These are
| all different from things like cold fusion.
| kredd wrote:
| We used to discuss this back in university days! NA is
| extremely allergic to copy something that's been done
| extremely well in the east (e.g., high speed rails) and
| instead tries to come up with some "cool better way" of
| doing things. After all, we are different, and copying
| something would be an extreme ego hit. This thought
| process applies to Hyperloop as well. I live in Canada,
| and it is really disappointing how we don't have reliable
| rails between metro areas of large cities. Or even cross-
| border ones like Vancouver-Seattle corridor. Even sadder
| knowing it will never happen.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Canada has a massive infra problem. That is not strange
| when you consider that it has an enormous area to deal
| with a relatively low population and that most of that
| population lives along a relatively narrow strip of land,
| and long strips are very much sub-optimal compared to a
| circle (which is the ideal for infra).
|
| So both from a density perspective and a topology
| perspective there are serious challenges to overcome.
| Which makes things like highway one even more impressive
| (especially when you take into account some of the
| territory it runs through, I think that its construction
| should rank right up there with the Panama Canal and the
| Chinese wall).
| kredd wrote:
| You're absolutely correct. Highway was built around 1941
| though, NA was still building itself up during that time.
| In an ideal world, we would be building up new cities,
| new rail lines, new infrastructure and etc., but I guess
| the momentum is lost. Now we're stuck in "upgrade and
| spend a lot more for a km of subway line". Maybe we'll
| figure our way out of it eventually!
| jacquesm wrote:
| I suspect that eventually immigration will solve it but
| it will take a very long time.
|
| As it is it did not look sustainable to me while I was
| living there.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Anything that can be called "a vacuum" is very very hard
| to achieve in a large volume.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes. That's why any kind of vacuum solution is likely a
| non-starter both from a technical and an economical
| perspective. And the 'obvious' solutions (multiple
| smaller evacuated chamber that connect as trains pass
| through) have a whole raft of safety and complexity
| issues and are going to increase the costs massively.
| naasking wrote:
| > It's not actually feasible to create a vacuum tube
| hundreds of km long
|
| Why not? It's just a series of smaller sections that must
| each individually achieve near vacuum.
| leni536 wrote:
| I think the main problem is that the failure of a small
| section is a catastrophic failure of the whole system.
| naasking wrote:
| I don't see why you can't compartmentalize it exactly
| like how I described. A leak in one of the ISS's modules
| wouldn't take down the whole ISS.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| And then what? The train just stops in the middle of
| nowhere for however many days until the one chamber is
| fixed?
| naasking wrote:
| It returns obviously. Making repair or replacement of
| damaged sections economical is one of the engineering
| challenges. This by itself suggests compartmentalizing
| along the same lines I suggested.
|
| It would probably be ideal if you could factory make each
| section and ship it on a standard truck, but with the
| growth of additive manufacturing, other possibilities
| also open up, like 3D printing the large metal container
| onsite.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I think you'd have to print it onsite, otherwise you have
| no gain in the loop being underground as you'd have to
| dig basically the entire ground up to swap sections.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Having a vacuum chamber large enough for a train to not
| only fit in but actually move through at high speed
| before getting to the next section still requires a few
| hundred meters per section if not more. That in itself is
| insanely difficult. Connecting multiple such sections
| while maintaining the vacuum is more difficult still. And
| still, you'll need thousands of pumping stations all
| around the middle of nowhere, that typically need
| constant maintenance.
|
| For reference, the largest existing vacuum chamber is
| some 30mx35m (100 feet x 120 feet). _Each one_ of the
| sections you would need here would have to be many times
| longer than the biggest vacuum chamber ever built to make
| any sort of sense.
| naasking wrote:
| The LHC achieves a hard vacuum over 27 km, and also
| features superconductors along its length, so clearly
| that combo is doable over an extended length. I'm not
| trying to trivialize the engineering challenges here, but
| I've seen that people have tendency to immediately jump
| from "it's hard" to "it's impossible or infeasible", even
| though no one's even made an attempt. Some clever
| engineering could await discovery that makes it all
| simpler.
|
| Sometimes this sort of skepticism is warranted because
| our understanding is sufficient (like our understanding
| of material science needed for a space elevator), but
| sometimes this is less clear, and I think hyperloop
| concepts fall into the latter category.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Is it large enough for a train?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The LHC tube is 27km long but ~6cm in diameter. It is
| true that they are pumping down a more impressive vacuum
| volume though, but not in the tube, but around each of
| the many, many superconducting magnets. That's about
| 9000m3 (compared to the ~150m3 of the actual tube).
|
| Still, the LHC is hardly maintaining that vacuum
| continuously all year round. And it is one of the most
| sophisticated engineering and scientific projects
| attempted in history. Hardly a good idea for a train
| project.
| hobs wrote:
| Physically impossible? Maybe, but the vacuum tube part
| was actually insane.
|
| It would have been insanely difficult to maintain a
| useful enough vacuum over huge distances that the
| hyperloop was supposed to run.
|
| A single failure in such a system could have catastrophic
| consequences across a huge range.
|
| edit: beaten by @tsimionescu by a minute.
| fragmede wrote:
| We didn't miss the part where
|
| > Musk admitted Hyperloop was about getting legislators
| to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California. He had
| no plans to build it
|
| https://twitter.com/alexdemling/status/155722163283750502
| 5
|
| https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-
| visions...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Seems relevant to the past couple days' of events re: OpenAI.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Madoff, WeWork, Theranos, NFTs, ...
|
| Looking ahead... Probably these vector db company valuations,
| most companies doing AWS competitor DX plays.
| cornholio wrote:
| All of those listed were well executed financial frauds. I
| don't think successful people are particularly more likely to
| fall for scams - they just have the necessary
| capital/disposable income and are targeted by more
| sophisticated scammers.
|
| I think the author thinks more along the lines of Steve Jobs
| trying to cure his cancer with herbal tea, Elon Musk sleep
| depriving himself into a twittering idiot, Scientology, NLP
| and various "success hacking" fads etc.
|
| The answer there might be that in reality successful people
| are not really very different from unsuccessful ones, and
| have very little control over the contingencies and luck that
| put them onto their respective paths. This is certainly the
| case with financial success.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, define "well executed". Theranos, in particular,
| it's notable that very little of their money came from
| _conventional_ sources (traditional VCs, sovereign wealth
| funds etc). It was largely, essentially, _personal_
| investment by stupid rich people; often via a family
| office, but ultimately at the direction of the stupid rich
| person. IIRC one attempt by Theranos to get investment from
| a real VC collapsed because they _could not provide audited
| accounts_. Like, they didn't even have a fake set, they
| were not providing them to their investors _at all_.
|
| I don't think that any of the named ones were particularly
| well-executed, and people were trying to warn that all of
| them were problems for a while. Madoff might be the
| closest, but even there it was verging on being an open
| secret that there was something up; again, Madoff's
| investors were not actually that sophisticated.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| As a "poor" person by Madoff investor standards, I am
| paranoid of any investment where I don't know what it is
| invested in. That said the other side are people who
| invested with the guy who bet against the CDS crap in
| 2008 (sorry forget his name), who I think were also in
| the "trust a guy with my money" camp. So I can see why
| people do it. But I would diversify, maybe max 10% in any
| one fund that is a black box, maybe max 40% in black
| boxes in total. Assuming you are rich - maybe 10% for
| most of us.
| ksec wrote:
| I have one that I think is worst than all of them.
| _CloudKitchen_.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Communism is one of the worst ideas, with the worst track
| records, and have always captured the most intelligent people,
| even today. A casual browse through HN comments is enough
| evidence.
| amelius wrote:
| You're probably one of those people who read any criticism of
| capitalism as a cry for communism.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| We should reject the false idea that it's either capitalism
| or communism. Capitalism is a crucial step for a society to
| take in order to be sufficiently vulnerable to fall for a
| communist revolution. Marx goes into great detail about
| this.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I don't read any criticism of capitalism because there is
| basically none. 99% of it is just people claiming that some
| abstract bad thing in human society is due to "capitalism"
| without any sort of argument that would actually rise to
| the level of what I would call criticism.
| imtringued wrote:
| Playing into the articles points to gain higher status
| among "capitalists"?
|
| Here is an easy one. Excess capital doesn't earn enough
| money to compensate for losses relating to depreciation,
| storage and maintenance costs i.e. the expectation is
| that capital income disappears in the long run. All
| further investment turns into consumption instead. That
| is kind of at odds with what people consider "capitalism"
| where the marginal productivity of capital is considered
| constant.
| Tainnor wrote:
| In an unregulated market, capital very naturally tends to
| accumulate more capital - while, if you have nothing,
| it's very hard to build up capital in the first place.
|
| Which means that, if this continues indefinitely, more
| and more things belong to fewer and fewer people - which
| is exactly what we've been seeing over the last couple of
| decades.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Also: externalities.
| gms wrote:
| You have it backwards. Regulation has gone up a lot over
| the last two decades which is why you're seeing what
| you're seeing.
|
| Historically in America or current day in developing
| countries, the rate of growth in living standards
| negatively correlates with the amount of regulation.
| Tainnor wrote:
| You haven't responded to my main point: do you believe
| that a completely unregulated market doesn't lead to
| wealth accumulation in the hands of few people?
|
| It is of course true that some (bad) regulation, like
| protectionism of various sorts, can also lead to the same
| outcome in a different way.
| gms wrote:
| Yes, completely unregulated would lead to that. We need
| laws to protect against coercion and adjudicate in the
| case of disagreements between parties. Warring tribes
| where physical force wins is not a good place to be.
| Tainnor wrote:
| I don't think you're seeing the whole picture if you
| think only about physical force.
|
| People who are well off have more opportunities to start
| other ventures that make them even more well-off, and if
| they're especially powerful, they can use that influence
| to further their benefit. I don't think that's
| particularly controversial.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| To wit, I live in a mid sized town in the Midwest - about
| 80 years ago a family started a business that was pretty
| successful and is on its third or fourth generation of
| ownership now -- that's all well and good but it's insane
| how much of the town is owned or directed by them now. Do
| you want to buy a car, foreign or domestic? Host a
| convention? Rent a hotel room in the urban core? Put on a
| concert? How about go to the hospital or buy health
| insurance? Go to college? Send your kid to preschool?
| Build a commercial building?
|
| Capital begets capital.
| gms wrote:
| It's not easy to start successful ventures. Most new
| ventures fail. Even the best VCs only have a 30% success
| rate.
| mindslight wrote:
| After pondering this question from time to time over a
| few decades now, I will say I still really don't know.
| Sure, it makes intuitive sense that wealth can be used to
| create setups that capture more wealth. But most examples
| we see of this (especially the galling zero-sum ones) are
| regulatory capture and regulatory escape, where wealth is
| used to affect government action/policy to further
| concentrate wealth. The most glaring of these, that
| facilitates many others, is the fountain of newly-created
| USD that the politically connected get the first cut of.
| That value doesn't come from nowhere - it's the central
| collection of technological and economic progress that
| would otherwise show up as distributed price deflation.
|
| On the other hand, we have the diminishing marginal
| utility of money - rich people overspend all the time,
| often on frivolous stuff. Musk bought an entire publicly
| traded company and crashed it on the way home, the way an
| upper middle class person might a shiny red Dodge Viper.
| One might say the VC ecosystem is chiefly 'dumb' money
| sloshing around trying to not be left out of the next big
| thing, while having no clue what that might be.
|
| Talking about "completely unregulated" markets is also
| somewhat specious. In a completely ancap context, we'd
| likely get structures similar to governments, funded by
| wealthy people cooperating rather than continuing to
| compete in less-productive ways (say through physical
| force). In fact some might even say that this is the
| character of the current US government in a few different
| regards.
| fallingknife wrote:
| But you are wrong. Inequality has not grown over the last
| 20 years. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA
| Tainnor wrote:
| Why are you only looking at income inequality, only in
| the United States and only in the last 20 years? Look at
| where that graph was in 1980, for example.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Because you said "over the last couple decades"
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| This was described in adam smith's original writings
| about "capitalism" and he was clear for the need in
| government intervention to maintain a free market long
| term.
| Geee wrote:
| This is a very good thing, and the reason why capitalism
| works. The idea of pure meritocratic capitalism is that
| capital is allowed to accumulate to those who use capital
| most efficiently. There are fewer of those, naturally.
| Increasing capital efficiency benefits everyone; it means
| less work and more production, i.e. there's more of
| everything and everything is cheaper.
|
| The actual issues of our current world happen because
| this pure version of capitalism doesn't happen. There's
| all sorts of things which lead to non-efficient people /
| organizations accumulating a lot of capital.
| atmavatar wrote:
| I feel like you're missing an important detail: in an
| unregulated market, it is often times _far_ more
| efficient from an individual corporation 's perspective
| to buy up or merge with competitors than to actually
| compete, whereas the societal-level efficiencies you're
| lauding come from competition itself. Without some form
| of regulation, capitalism trends towards monopoly, which
| is the antithesis of efficiency.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I think terms like "capitalism" inherently spread
| confusion rather than clarity.
|
| Specifically, which of these systems do you mean by
| "capitalism"?
|
| 1) The status quo in the US where the economy is
| dominated by private corporations but the government has
| some regulations and some safety net. Also, corporations
| receive a significant amount of welfare from the
| government, generally control the regulatory agencies and
| some are primarily funded by the government either
| directly (NPR/PBS, Amtrak, etc.) or as its primary
| customer (defense contractors).
|
| 2) The system that existed in Gilded Age America where
| there was very little regulation but lots of corporate
| welfare and a US Army that would "remove" any American
| Indians who were causing trouble for the railroads.
|
| 3) The libertarian utopia where absolutely everything is
| privatized.
|
| 4) A system where everything except the police and
| military is privatized, there are virtually no
| regulations and there is no corporate welfare. Basically
| the more moderate form of libertarianism.
|
| 5) Basically the system we have in the US but with a
| larger safety net, more regulations and less military
| spending. In other words the European system that is one
| of the things commonly called "socialism" in US politics
| but it is also called "capitalism" when convenient to
| contrast it against other types of economies.
|
| 6) An economy where most people have a reasonable chance
| of eventually becoming running their own business and
| where large businesses are generally rare. In this
| system, creating a corporation might even require an act
| of a state legislature or the national legislature and
| would be generally rare and mainly for utilities like
| long distance transportation. This is the system that
| generally prevailed in the free states of the US prior to
| the Gilded Age.
|
| 7) The system that existed in the mid-20th century US
| that is somewhere between 1) and 5). Strong unions,
| regulations (often captured by corporations), large
| corporations that make stuff domestically, restrictions
| on imports, defense contractors exist, etc. The main
| distinguishing characteristic of this system is a high
| degree of income equality. CEOs don't make dramatically
| more than typical workers and even entry level pays a
| living wage.
|
| At one point, I would have defined "capitalism" as 3 or
| 4. Today, I'd define it as 6. Most people would probably
| define it as 1, 2 or 7 which is what I would call
| "corporatism". I'm also undoubtedly leaving out other
| definitions of capitalism. The term "socialism" is also
| unhelpful for the same reason.
|
| People who like "capitalism" or "socialism" define it as
| an economic system they like then use the other word to
| define a system they don't like. Then they talk past
| people who have different definitions of those terms. An
| argument about Venezuela or the USSR is not a reasonable
| argument to use against somebody who wants the Nordic
| model in the US or to go back to the mid-20th century
| economic system. An argument about corporate welfare or
| defense contractors is not a reasonable argument to use
| against a libertarian.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > Communism is one of the worst ideas
|
| Communism is the idea that in order to be successful you have
| to kiss asses at the location where you want to eventually
| become someone, for example a government agency or a
| political party.
|
| Capitalism is the idea that in order to be successful you
| should be able to kiss asses wherever and however you can and
| be able to move the provents from the aforementioned ass
| kissing at some other place (in the form of money) so you
| don't have to start all over. So you can make some ass
| kissing arbitrage in order to minimize the amount of ass
| kissing that you do.
|
| I prefer the latter because I don't like to be constrained in
| one place and might have a bit of commit-o-phobia but it's
| not a stretch to think that people who like to put the work
| day-in and day-out in the same place, see familiar faces
| everyday and don't have commit-o-phobia might prefer the
| former.
|
| In the end it's all about kissing asses and there are very
| minor differences. Long gone are the days of low hanging
| fruits where you could singlehandedly invent the wheel or
| fire, now every minor marginal improvement in anything
| requires some serious ass kissing and given that it's a
| practice that nobody likes you see emerge these big
| ideological battles between factions who say:
|
| "There would be more stuff and less need for ass kissing in a
| libertarian free market haven"
|
| and those who reply :
|
| "In a proper commune the need for ass kissing would be at an
| all time low and the stuff would be at an all time high"
|
| Reality is nobody knows if the wheel or fire were invented in
| a commune or libertarian haven because it was something so
| self-evident and straightforward that these sort of mega
| ideological battles were a non-factor.
| naveen99 wrote:
| > ass kissing arbitrage
|
| ROFL.
|
| Minus the last paragraph. Remember primes are infinite.
| Improvements are infinite, the slow down is only to log
| speed, still plenty fast.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > Improvements are infinite, the slow down is only to
| log speed
|
| Yeah but the brain gets more excited going from 0 to
| 10mph on a self built skateboard than from mach1 to mach2
| on the Concorde, because you are in the exciting part of
| the S-curve.
|
| Also because skateboard you singlehandedly crafted and
| it's yours, Concorde you need a million people give or
| take to build and billions of man hours and you get to
| rent 1/160th of it for about 3 hours. And those 3 hours
| cost some serious ass kissing to acquire.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| If you can remember it, the American media and foreign policy
| establishment was fully in support of the war in Iraq. That
| actually is a really good example of what the author describes
| because I'm sure many knew it was a bad idea but went along
| with it to preserve their careers.
|
| I think we should be charitable with the author and not assume
| a "dumb idea" is something he disagrees with, but rather is
| something that was proven to be bad by the passage of time.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Well - he quotes The Cato Institute. And the graphic is clear
| enough, I think.
|
| The rhetorical sleight of hand is that it's not true that
| feeling you're being censored - and needing to self-censor -
| is the same as actually being censored.
|
| Self-censorship and self-selection are endemic in the
| corporate world, and the associated beliefs are mostly taken
| for granted without dissent.
|
| You're not going to get far in fintech, management
| consulting, or media channels such as Fox if you start
| questioning why so many people are poor, ill, and homeless.
|
| Similarly, if you work for FAANG you're not going to have a
| job for long if you start suggesting these BigCos should
| reinvent themselves as worker co-ops.
|
| That's a very different kind of argument to the one about
| pronouns, because most people are not actually threatened _in
| real terms_ by (say) LGBTQIA+ or unionisation.
|
| Of course plenty of people are just fine with how things are
| and the article is right to the extent that it points out
| that ideological conformity is a middle class luxury.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I mean you can also just read the author's other content
| which is mostly whining about woke-ism but with lots of
| Substack intellectualism piled on top.
|
| Edit: Just to specifically point out the effects of this
| author's "motivation," the cited article on myside bias
| actually doesn't say this:
|
| > Students and graduates of top universities are more prone
| to myside bias. They are more likely to "evaluate evidence,
| generate evidence, and test hypotheses in a manner biased
| toward their own prior beliefs, opinions, and attitudes."
|
| It says _everyone_ is prone to myside bias, and that more
| intelligent people are less prone _to detecting it in
| themselves._ This is important due to what it implies about
| the inverse. If it's true that the woke lib professors are
| more prone _to forming their beliefs_ based on their social
| surroundings, it'd suggest they're more liable to be _wrong_.
| If, however, _everyone_ is liable to form beliefs in this way
| (which they are), then there's no implication whatsoever
| about truthfulness on either side, at least not stemming from
| this effect.
|
| And in fact, if anything, it'd suggest the exact opposite of
| what the author implies by virtue of a really simple, obvious
| fact: an expert's social circle is more likely to be well-
| informed on the domain of expertise than the social circle of
| a complete outsider.
|
| Exceptions obviously exist and experts ought to be questioned
| vigorously, but to suggest that social circles are have spent
| collectively zero time learning about and thinking about an
| area are going to have a better grasp on that area than a
| group of individuals who have spent careers in it is really
| just dismissing the entire concept of expertise -- the
| concept of _learning_ -- altogether.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > And in fact, if anything, it'd suggest the exact opposite
| of what the author implies by virtue of a really simple,
| obvious fact: an expert's social circle is more likely to
| be well-informed on the domain of expertise than the social
| circle of a complete outsider.
|
| Which makes it really important to determine the actual
| boundaries of that domain of expertise.
| mistermann wrote:
| > If you can remember it, the American media and foreign
| policy establishment was fully in support of the war in Iraq.
|
| A decent corollary to that: how the pro-Israel media campaign
| is working out in the latest flare up with Palestine now that
| TikTok has been added into the mix, a fantastic illustration
| of the real reason they want to take it down.
| dilawar wrote:
| Some folks have called it problem of symmetry: take an idea and
| turn it on its head to get an argument.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think it is a fair criticism. The title appears does not
| appear to match the content, which is not as opinion-based. It
| still reads like a rant, but I just happen to agree with some
| of the conclusions like self-censorship:
|
| "They found that highly educated people are the most concerned
| about losing their jobs or missing out on job opportunities
| because of their political views".
|
| If I was being charitable, I would say that title is trying to
| capture attention while sacrificing the expectation one may
| have of its content.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| The point is clear. He even summarized it neatly in the least
| three sentences or so. The rest is projection (and a rather
| transparent attempt to undermine the author's message, dare I
| say _reputation_ , by association fallacy).
| lettergram wrote:
| IMO the author wrote a list of reasons to avoid the real
| intellectual discussion around debating ideas. In fact, I don't
| think there's ever a "dumb idea", it's really poor reasoning or
| lack of information that I see as the issue.
|
| For instance, take the "moon deniers" that is the idea being
| dismissed by "correct" people. When in reality there a whole
| range of arguments -- "we landed on the moon, recordings were
| faked" to "aliens told us to tell everyone we landed", etc it's
| the reasoning that matters. Quite often "smart" people have the
| same information as everyone else. That's also why IMO "smart"
| people are equally likely to believe in conspiracies as anyone
| else, they have the same info.
| voitvodder wrote:
| Really? You really can't think of a stupid idea of from the
| past 20 years. I think this is being totally intellectually
| dishonest or you waste too much time with political bullshit so
| you have lost the ability to think outside of rhetorical
| response to win a twitter flame war.
|
| How about all the dumb ideas that lead smart people to
| basically blow up the financial system in 2008 to start.
| flybrand wrote:
| Isn't this similar to a short-seller mantra from finance?
|
| "The masses can stay irrational longer than you can stay
| solvent."
| earth-adventure wrote:
| Isn't it "the market" rather than "the masses"?
| 123pie123 wrote:
| this reminds me of the 5 laws of stupidity
|
| https://youtu.be/3O9FFrLpinQ?t=16
| jagrsw wrote:
| A cool article by Maciej Ceglowski (https://pinboard.in) in the
| spirit of the original article (and times too):
|
| https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm
|
| Not that I agree with it, just another wittingly-written take on
| the topic.
| mjburgess wrote:
| The only issue here is calling the 'tribal mode' peripheral --
| no, no, it's the default.
|
| The human species is first divided into tribes, and much
| latterly, individuals. ie., Individual human psychology is
| governed principally by tribal logic -- though 'thinking for
| oneself' in the broadest sense is always available, it is rarely
| exercised outside of certain kinds non-social problem
| environments.
|
| Intellectuals are of course those who choose non-social problem
| environments. Consider Aristotle placing the purpose of life
| within Reason, rather than the survival and prosperity of the
| tribe (the only empirically defensible answer). This should, on
| the face of all evidence, seem outright absurd.
|
| So, it's no mystery that tribal logic is absent from the academic
| presentation of human activity. This becomes extraordinarily
| dangeours when academies find themselves in power or otherwise
| academic projects (eg., the neocon inclination to democractise)
| find themselves elevated to tribal practice.
|
| There ought be more explicit presentation of this in our
| education system -- it is a shame it has to be rediscovered so
| late.
|
| > This means we can be more easily manipulated through the
| peripheral route.
|
| This is only true if you're qualified to reason through the
| information yourself. Pseudointellectuals are easily manipulated
| (consider the CIA pushing a UFO conspraicy).
|
| By not understanding the tribal logic of our psychology, this
| article repeats the mistake: thinking for oneself is not an
| inherent virute, nor is it inherently feasible or purposeful in
| most cases
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > The human species is first divided into tribes, and much
| latterly, individuals. ie., Individual human psychology is
| governed principally by tribal logic -- though 'thinking for
| oneself' in the broadest sense is always available, it is
| rarely exercised outside of certain kinds non-social problem
| environments.
|
| No, this priority varies between individuals. And you left out
| the mating pair-bond from your analysis. This is a very basic
| introduction, and there are some arguments and nitpicks from
| others who study the subject, but it gets across the gist of
| the idea: https://www.eclecticenergies.com/enneagram/variants
|
| These three instincts are present in everyone (barring gross
| brain damage), but are in varying orders of priority.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Someone downvoted me so apparently doesn't like the idea that
| not all people are tribal animals, or doesn't like what I
| linked to.
|
| Just look at a _diversity_ of television and movies and you
| will see a variety of types of people presented. You probably
| won 't be compellingly interested in those varieties that
| differ too much from your own, but that certainly doesn't
| mean that they don't exist.
|
| What's primarily tribal about the psychology of the
| characters in _The Piano_?
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| > It might seem intuitive to believe that people with less
| education are more manipulable. But research suggests this may
| not be true.
|
| > High-status people are more preoccupied with how others view
| them. Which means that educated and/or affluent people may be
| especially prone to peripheral, as opposed to central, methods of
| persuasion.
|
| There is a hidden assumtion in the above part. Did you spot it?
|
| It is that educated people are also high status people, are also
| (overly) concerned about their reputation.
|
| If this assumptions breaks, all the following about perpetuated
| ideology stands on a weak basis. After all, more educated people
| could tend to be more rational too.
|
| To be fair, i would my left leaning ideology be based more on
| reason and not on my educational sociotope. May be just my bias.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I was nodding a lot reading this piece, but something did seem
| incongruous.
|
| The author claims "peripheral route" opinions are becoming more
| common because of information overload and the need to be
| parsimonious when forming opinions. He also claims that
| peripheral route opinions are more weakly held than central route
| opinions.
|
| How does that account for increasing ideological polarization,
| when you would expect people's opinions to shift more with the
| breeze?
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I thought he kind of addressed that.
|
| > This means we can be more easily manipulated through the
| peripheral route. If we are convinced of something via the
| peripheral route, a manipulator will be more successful at
| using the peripheral route once again to _alter our initial
| belief_.
|
| emphasis mine.
|
| So basically, he claims that _because_ peripheral information
| is more loosely held, peripheral beliefs are also more easily
| altered. Thus you have the rabbit hole effect leading to
| "pilling" and extreme beliefs.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| We should not conflate what is ostensibly "intelligence" with
| wisdom, virtue, and character. Without genuine virtue, the mind
| cannot function properly. Without a spine, without virtue,
| temptations to throw the truth under the bus for the sake of
| lesser goods easily overwhelm. It leads to the misuse and abuse
| of intelligence. It leads to skillful evasion of the truth. It
| leads to rationalization rather than reason. The author gives us
| one example.
|
| It's not his wealth, objectively a good thing, that prevents a
| rich man from getting into heaven, it is his prioritization of it
| over superior goods, his idolatry even. And riches come in many
| forms.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I thought about that myself since I actually self-censored
| lately despite my free-speech belief. As I am learning, the
| belief is not as strong as the drive to survive and comfort. It
| is disheartening in a way. I was expecting more of myself. On
| the other, it offered a look into the mirror.
|
| I an easily argue it is wisdom or even that there is good and
| right of me to focus on my family's well-being, but I know
| those are still just rationalizations.
| hasoleju wrote:
| A better title could maybe be:
|
| "Smart and successful people don't express their true opinion
| because they fear a loss of status"
|
| The author explains, that the more status people gained in their
| life, the more they try to stick to the common sense of opinions
| people of their status hold. This behavior really stabilizes the
| status quo.
|
| For me this also explains why the consequent climate change
| protests are mainly supported by young people. They presumably
| have acquired less status yet and therefor don't feel the fear of
| status loss if they express a new opinion.
| Kye wrote:
| Would you have clicked on that title? Everyone says they hate
| clickbait (defined here as "titles people actually click"), but
| it's about the only way to get anyone to look at anything
| unless they're already familiar with your work, regardless of
| the merits.
| User3456335 wrote:
| You are assuming it is a conscious decision and that these
| high-status individuals are aware that what they express is
| false. But the point the author makes is that the falsehoods
| are their true opinion.
|
| And most likely, you yourself will have opinions that aren't
| true and that you have only started to believe because of fear
| of status loss.
| hackandthink wrote:
| I noticed some group think posts lately.
|
| Perhaps some feel uncomfortable with the official assessments of
| the current wars.
|
| Fortunately, everyone is capable of learning. Today's dogma is
| tomorrow's stupidity.
| dalbasal wrote:
| The majority of all argument, debates, polemics... it's all
| "hacks." We're all dirty tricks, if we're being honest.
|
| Formalizing and naming templates of fallacies and dirty tricks...
| it's kind of a fallacious trick in itself.
|
| Logically valid, convincing, and the way we actually think a
| completely different. There are places where these come together,
| often requiring a lot of effort.
|
| The reality that we, all of us, way through the slush. None rise
| above it.
|
| To take the least noxious example, stories work on us. Stories.
| Narratives. They're very central to communicating, central to how
| we make sense of things. Who is what in which story.
|
| Telling the story, is unanimously agreed by all practitioners..
| primary to convincing people, or even getting them to listen to
| you in the first place.
|
| Is this logically sound? Is it conducive to keeping track of
| one's assumptions, presumptions and biases? Of course not. It is,
| how we work though.
|
| The way formal logic works, and the way we think, talk and
| convince one another.. they are very far apart. That doesn't mean
| we can't grasp logic. We can. It does mean, that we don't employ
| it on its own very often.
|
| The argument that would take, this post is the "central" path.
| The other half of this dichotomy. The assumed default state.
|
| People say things for a lot of reasons, and then argue their way
| back.
| mistermann wrote:
| > The way formal logic works, and the way we think, talk and
| convince one another.. they are very far apart.
|
| Strict logic is "pedantry", "JAQing off", Sea-lioning,
| "conspiratorial thinking", etc. I know of no social media
| platform where this is not true (based on replies and voting).
| And (seemingly) ironically, "scientific thinkers" are often
| particularly prone to the phenomenon.
|
| > That doesn't mean we can't grasp logic. We can.
|
| That which is physically possible is not necessarily
| metaphysically possible. People can use logic _sometimes_ , but
| very often it is culturally (thus consciously) non-permissible,
| like during COVID[1], war time[2], etc.
|
| I am not aware of any current or historical attempts to solve
| this problem, the scientific method being somewhat of a
| specialized exception.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332076
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332346
| mgaunard wrote:
| I think it's educational/cultural; the peripheral route seems
| particularly prevalent among Americans as opposed to say,
| continental Europeans, which are much more independent thinkers.
|
| Now Americans apparently also have a weird relationship with
| education (highly status correlated and rejected by certain bands
| of society) and often appear to interpret the world through the
| lens of their binary political divide.
|
| Coincidence?
| motohagiography wrote:
| A lot of intelligent people aren't very smart, and a lot of smart
| people aren't very intelligent. The smart achive desirable
| outcomes, and usually that means not rocking the boat. The
| intelligent have a capacity for abstraction, which means it's
| easy to misunderstand why people are parroting absurdities. Where
| a good programmer is intelligent, a good product manager is
| smart.
|
| I was surprised he didn't include this Dalrymple quote, _"
| propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to
| humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the
| better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are
| being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are
| forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all
| their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some
| small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist
| anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of
| emasculated liars is easy to control."_
|
| It captures the issue more succintly, but it would also have
| limited the reach of the article. I'm sure he's familiar with it,
| but the author was probably just being smart.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Great response! I always remind myself: information isn't the
| same as knowledge, knowledge isn't the same as wisdom. Lies
| have nothing to do with wisdom, integrity is destroyed by the
| actions of lies.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The use of smart vs intelligent here is arbitrary though
| illustrates the difference. _I 've also seen the reverse: smart
| aleck/smart ass, too smart for their own good._ I would say
| that being pragmatic captures the outcomes one.
|
| A good programmer and product manager are both, but with
| switched weightings as indicated.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > The use of smart vs intelligent here is arbitrary though
| illustrates the difference.
|
| Dungeons and Dragons insightfully divided these intelligences
| up into Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma.
| Lammy wrote:
| Propaganda doesn't necessarily mean lies. It's anything that
| makes a recipient feel compelled to participate in the spread
| of that thing. Right in the name: propaganda, propagate.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| I really love this quote, it meshes well with the concept of
| authenticity and setting boundaries in the context of
| interpersonal relationships. I would like to add or counter the
| aspect about becoming evil with one becoming vacant and
| "requiring" substances to alter themselves sufficiently to
| perform to the dominant social playbook that is relevant to
| their context.
|
| It hits very close to home, if not entirely so
|
| Edit: I hesitate to furnish this example but this seems to be
| what's up with Melania Trump. Don't wanna get political but
| imagine the dissonance of someone who married purely for money
| and is ruthlessly valued purely for her value as a trophy and
| softening agent for her husband and is cheated on while she's
| fucking pregnant with the next son. She might have preferred
| that in function if not in form by which I mean maybe it only
| became humilisting when it broke the news but its no less a
| tacit proof of concept that Trump was bored and did not find
| her desirable anymore. I do not envy those who marry for money.
| The inevitable divorce is gonna suck when he leaves her with
| all the debt
| ferociouskite56 wrote:
| Noone understands the brains' details and how to administer
| targeted medicines. Yet many rich people assume antipsychotics
| can magically prevent crime.
| lapcat wrote:
| The author is trying to push a consistent narrative throughout
| the article, and unfortunately this results in the omission of
| alternative explanations for the phenomena discussed. For
| example:
|
| > Likewise, in a fascinating study on the collapse of the Soviet
| Union, researchers have found that university-educated people
| were two to three times more likely than high school graduates to
| say they supported the Communist Party. White-collar professional
| workers were likewise two to three times more supportive of
| communist ideology, relative to farm laborers and semi-skilled
| workers.
|
| Alternative explanation: university-educated people and white-
| collar professional workers personally benefitted more from the
| Communist Party, so of course they supported the party more.
|
| > Educational divides within the US today are consistent with
| these historical patterns. The Democratic political analyst David
| Shor has observed that, "Highly educated people tend to have more
| ideologically coherent and extreme views than working-class ones.
| We see this in issue polling and ideological self-identification.
| College-educated voters are way less likely to identify as
| moderate."
|
| Alternative explanation: highly educated people spend more time
| and effort thinking about politics, indeed are forced to spend
| more time and effort thinking about politics by their teachers
| and peers, so of course they have more highly developed views and
| stronger opinions about politics.
|
| > Research by Caitlin Drummond and Baruch Fischhoff at Carnegie
| Mellon University found that people with more education, science
| education, and science literacy are more polarized in their views
| about scientific issues depending on their political identity.
| For example, the people who are most concerned about climate
| change? College-educated Democrats. The people who are least
| concerned? College-educated Republicans. In contrast, less
| educated Democrats and Republicans are not so different from one
| another in their views about climate change.
|
| Alternative explanation: again as above with regard to politics,
| highly educated people are forcibly confronted with the issue of
| climate change and are forced to think about it, discuss it, and
| form opinions about much more than less educated people.
|
| Let's do a poll to see which group has more highly polarized
| opinions about sports, for example.
| M95D wrote:
| > researchers have found that university-educated people were
| two to three times more likely than high school graduates to
| say they supported the Communist Party
|
| Ignorant researchers.
|
| Those kind of people were required to be members of the Party
| or else they could not get jobs according to their education.
| Also they were the most actively monitored by state security.
| Phones tapped, spied by neighbors, required to speak in public
| in support of the Party, etc.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Ignorant researchers.
|
| No, the surveys were conducted in 1998-2000, years after the
| collapse of the Soviet Union.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Wow, that's a lot to unpack! For my part, trusting experts can be
| risky. I can trust my doctor, but I can also question him about
| what he wants me to do. Unless he is willing to explain a
| treatment to my understanding, I'll seek out another opinion.
|
| I can't pretend to understand everything, I need some experts for
| that, however I can gather information. Intellectual laziness
| from my side leads to heartbreaking dread if I didn't attempt to
| understand what an expert was saying.
| shannifin wrote:
| Is there a way to self-evaluate whether or not your belief is the
| product of social status preservation? If not, what good is it to
| recognize the possibility, save for accusing others of it?
| lapcat wrote:
| There's a past-oriented and a future-oriented question you can
| ask with regard to your beliefs.
|
| Past: How did I come to believe what I currently believe?
|
| Future: How skeptical should I be about what I currently
| believe?
|
| The past-oriented question is difficult to answer; it's a
| causal story that may have a number of different factors, and
| of course it depends on your brain wiring.
|
| It seems to me that that the future-oriented question, on the
| other hand, is much easier to answer: if your beliefs
| personally benefit or comfort you, then you should be very
| skeptical of them.
|
| This is a natural corollary of "It is difficult to get a man to
| understand something, when his salary depends on his not
| understanding it."
| itronitron wrote:
| If the person speaking is wearing glasses or has a British
| accent then odds are good that any beliefs you have based on
| what that person has said are a product of social status
| preservation.
|
| You can correct for this bias by imagining that same argument
| being presented by Donnie Baker [0] and if you still find it
| compelling then it's probably a reasonable point that is being
| made. I swear to God it is.
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhQDsKoMCz0
| GalahiSimtam wrote:
| Save you some reading, it's about political biases of academia in
| USA, not about "why Elon Musk renamed Twitter to X" kind of
| ideas/people.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Results from a recent paper titled `Keeping Your Mouth Shut:
| Spiraling Self-Censorship in the United States' by the political
| scientists James L. Gibson and Joseph L. Sutherland is consistent
| with the findings from Cato/Yougov."
|
| Here is that paper. No SSRN Javascript required.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/psq/advance-article-pdf/doi/10.1093...
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| To whatever extent this article is true suggests that the way to
| convince people of certain positions is to hook them via
| peripheral route, but then keep them there via the central route.
|
| If the position is such that any central route reasoning would
| lead to a rejection of the position, than the next best option is
| to overwhelm the critical faculties with peripheral route
| persuasion
| Animats wrote:
| > In the 1950s, at the height of McCarthyism, 13.4 percent of
| Americans reported that "felt less free to speak their mind than
| they used to." In 1987, the figure had reached 20 percent. By
| 2019, 40 percent of Americans reported that they did not feel
| free to speak their minds. This isn't a partisan issue, either.
| Gibson and Sutherland report that, "The percentage of Democrats
| who are worried about speaking their mind is just about identical
| to the percentage of Republicans who self-censor: 39 and 40
| percent, respectively."
|
| That's a scary number. And it's probably not wrong.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I certainly keep my mouth shut about certain things, lest the
| people whose beliefs I find vile and unconscionable (and who
| view mine the same way) ostracize me, or worse, my child in the
| community.
|
| Far better to gently feel people out before revealing my
| beliefs entirely.
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