Re: Post-factualism: Goodbye Enlightenment--Hello Idiocracy?
Posted: Sun Dec 18, 2016 2:09 pm
@BRUTE: Exactly. You expressed it much better than me. Also, I meant male-fantasy fiction, not male fantasy-fiction.
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Exactly. The rebellion/status-quo-destruction narrative is more important than the reality that the person who is haphazardly swinging the club of rebellious-destruction is succeeding in bashing his own head.BRUTE wrote:brute has this himself, and he thinks it stems from the fact that most individuals are not particularly attached to abstract positive outcomes, but to a narrative. if brute's narrative isn't playing out, why should he root for anyone else's? burn this mother fucker to the ground.
very interesting. maybe the crux of the problem is that, with the internet, it's now impossible to counter all the incoming bullshit arguments. used to be that there would be a political debate at the Thanksgiving table, a few arguments in the social circle among friends, in the family, and something at work. it was feasible to carry out a handful of intellectual arguments per week. with the internet, brute could (and sometimes does) spend days arguing without even making a dent. therefore, correcting wrongness has lost its appeal - nobody's going to change. why even try?jacob wrote:So for this post-factual world, I've been looking at a new heuristic. Namely to establish whether a person's heuristic is based on post-factual metrics, i.e page one google search results, fav. blogger, a celebrity, a politician, ... Claiming that "I've done my research" or "I read all the news" or "I have all the bestest facts" is easy. Whereas making a coherent (framework-based) argument that isn't composed of dressed up factoids is hard.
I now decide where to spend my time/argue/educate based on that. It's basic intellectual triage+wheaton levels---can this person be reached and am I the one to do it? If not, I ignore! Why reason with someone who isn't using reason in the first place. It's a waste of time. And now that unreason is en vogue ... it's better to focus one's effort on detecting unreason than fighting a war of reason with someone who's impervious. Of course such an attitude is fracturing when it comes to society ... but isn't this what the fourth turning is about ... we've reached a point where we need some creative destruction to rid ourselves of bad directions ...
I'm honestly not like this. I know it's a self-assessment but I think I'm really good at looking at the facts and deriving a realistic conclusion.BRUTE wrote:he thinks steveo73 and Ego are slightly less confident in the sense that they still have something to lose if it were proven they were mistaken. maybe akin to how jacob is confident about climate change differently than a human who's heavily invested, but didn't do all the science himself - there's no way jacob could've been wrong (in his mind), so his defense isn't a defense of his own identity, it's a defense of truth. but how can the bystander differentiate this from the ignorant zealot, who also has 100% confidence on faith alone?
Oh, I don't think it's all that dire. Even I could build a toaster if you left me alone with no instructions in a scrap yard for a while with adequate motivation. I know my sister probably could because she made one in the 7th grade. I am going to estimate that around half of the 10 people with whom I associate most frequently in real life could build a toaster from salvage. OTOH, if you dumped the 10 of us in the wilderness with no salvage materials, then that would be tough. Maybe 10 years to get back to toaster-level technology? Mining would almost certainly be the most difficult endeavor. Maybe some alternative technology that would bypass the re-invention of a device constructed solely for the purpose of browning sliced baked goods would serve as well?jacob said: In terms of human genetics, civilization is a rather precarious construct. Humans might know how to make a sandwich, but practically no humans know how to build a toaster.---Even building a fire would require some serious #adulting these days. In terms of widespread scientific education beyond the point where more than 20% can quote Ohm's law, we're talking less than 3-5 generations depending on which country you're in. Probably less than that. We're mostly relying on a few phenotypic outliers to drive technology.
Curious how often you don't ignore?jacob wrote:I now decide where to spend my time/argue/educate based on that. It's basic intellectual triage+wheaton levels---can this person be reached and am I the one to do it? If not, I ignore!
Well, I am lazy, so for many years I was just content to accept that the people who clearly have more expertise know what they are talking about. However, the matter has become so contentious lately, I felt compelled to make a bit of effort to see to what extent I could get a better grip on the science. If you divide all the weather stations in the world into two sets that are independent but equally dispersed, the temperature data looks somewhat different graphically displayed, as would be expected, but the general trend upwards is obvious and the same on both graphs. Understanding that this is due to human causes rather than natural causes only requires analysis roughly at the level of understanding the commonly offered problem of the baker who is cheating on the weight of his loaves. Understanding that even though the level of human emissions of CO2 is low compared to the amount processed by the biosphere in total this is still resulting in a major problem is like understanding what will happen if you pay less than the minimum payment on your credit card each month. What else? When ice that is on land melts into the ocean, the level of the ocean will get higher. The organism known to thrive in an environment that is high in CO2 yet nitrogen limited exudes a toxin that renders fresh water undrinkable by humans. Much of the water used to grow human food is obtained from seasonal melt off of mountain tops. No freeze. No melt. Etc.etc etc.BRUTE said: apparently, some humans think that climate science is less clear cut.
jacob wrote:So for this post-factual world, I've been looking at a new heuristic.
Contrary to stereotype, librarians generally do not conduct themselves as though their primary function is to limit access to written materials, inclusive of the wacky, or even the overtly dangerous. Quite the opposite. Right after 9-11, everybody was frightened and wrought up, and the initial version of the Patriot Act was going to allow virtually unimpeded government access to the library records of American citizens. We had to call a special policy meeting at the major bookstore where I was employed to discuss the ramifications. One of our customers had recently requested that we place a publisher-order for books on the topics of changing your identity, manufacturing weapons at home, and hiding dead bodies. The conclusion reached, and the one I have lived by in the years I have been operating independently as a book dealer, is that it is not our place to exert prejudice over what use an individual might make of ANY book or information. Censorship is BY FAR the greater sin.Ego said: Back then the librarians were gatekeeper who would refuse to order wacky books and it was fairly easy to discern the crazy books from the serious ones.
Please don't throw yourself on any fires. You are speaking about how it was in theory. I am speaking about how it was in reality. When a nutter walked into a branch of the Philadelphia Public Library to request a copy of "Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles" the librarian would first look in the card catalog, then make a call to the Central Library to check availability, then make another call to the Inter-Library Loan Department. When all three failed the librarian would refer said nutter to the acquisitions department where Miss DeGroot would politely tell him to fill out a form. The moment he walked out the door Miss DeGroot would look at the form and round file it. When nutter returned to pick up the requested copy of "Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles", Miss DeGroot would refer him to her supervisor who would explain that the public library system has very limited funds and "Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles" would not meet the criteria of a book.... blah, blah, blah. She would then refer nutter to a bookstore where he could buy it himself.7Wannabe5 wrote:Contrary to stereotype, librarians generally do not conduct themselves as though their primary function is to limit access to written materials, inclusive of the wacky, or even the overtly dangerous.Ego said: Back then the librarians were gatekeeper who would refuse to order wacky books and it was fairly easy to discern the crazy books from the serious ones.
I agree with this with some more contextual information. There are groups out there that suffer from mass hysteria. They get fed lines and they buy it. I suppose it's just like bubbles in the economy. So the tulip bubble is a great example. People get caught up in something and can't take a step back and be rational. In writing this it makes me realise that this is not a modern thing but a people thing. It's just that now we have better methods of feeding dribble to the masses.sky wrote:They consume media drivel in herds, stampeding from one mass delusion to another.
Point taken. However, I would note that the time wasted on listening to that clip would be worth a lot more than the $19.99 one could spend on purchasing something much more worthwhile. In fact, unless you are in want or need of a particular set of information or the newest-new thing, great books are one of the biggest bargains available on the planet. Therefore, I don't see how price-point of FREE!! makes much of a difference. I mean, do you feel compelled to read a copy of The Watchtower pamphlet when somebody thrusts it in your hand? If your place of employment provided a constant supply of free Sour Patch Kids, would you feel compelled to eat them?Ego said: Nutter would have no choice but to pay for the privilege of bathing his neurons in the wisdom contained in "Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles".
Today you can simply click here and have the author read most of the book to you with commentary....
There's more than one single problem(*), but I see the primary problem as being a due to a difference in confidence and competence (their relative levels in a given person) and how the internet makes it easy to sabotage entry-level competence with false information.Ego wrote: When designing a new heuristic, it seems to me the first step is defining the problem. What are the characteristics of someone suffering extreme PIID? Apophenia? Anxiety? Schadenfreude? Not-even-wrong-ness? What else?
So since becoming aware of how skills are learned (the above + other references, various models, etc.) and more importantly not-learned or mis-learned, my first step is generally to try to figure out what level a given person is at; whereas prior to that my initial impulse was the typical "Argh! Somebody is wrong on the internet..." Initially, it was hard to tell, but with practice, I began to notice meta-patterns in people's behavior. For example, people with material scientific training will use the word "fact" in very different ways than others. The way people talk is a very quick way to spot the "fakers" from those who are more solid.luxagraf wrote: Curious how often you don't ignore?
I have roughly the same criteria and I'm beginning to get seriously worried about whether I'll be talking about anything beyond the weather five years from now.