Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

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Alphaville
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by Alphaville »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Aug 23, 2020 10:37 am

If the techno-optimists are correct in their predictions will “race” even exist 100 years from now? What if the techno-optimists are profoundly wrong?
i don’t know what techno-optimists predict (star trek world?) but i sure wish for the end of the stupidity that is the social construction of “race.” we imagine it, therefore it happens, and like a dog to his vomit, etc etc.

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Jean
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by Jean »

@Alphaville
What is the point of stating this opinion when no contradiction is allowed?

Back on the topic.
I don't think this strategy works. Macro opinion are as likely to be controversial than micro opinion. It's just that by reframing the in and outgroup, and thereby the scale at which politic happens (from your room mate eating your yoghurt to aliens invading earth), you will find a common ground (or enemy). You can then choose to focus on a divisive or bounding level, depending on how high you evaluate the groups ability to discuss disagreements in a way that progress toward truth (instead of quickly switching to name calling or violence). It depends if you favor truth (at the cost of conflict) or harmony (at the cost of allowing everyone's slope to prevail). But there is not link with the scale at which you focus. It is true that focusing on a larger scale can give one sense of grandeur, but it works equally well if you choose to share your mayonaise recipes.

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Alphaville
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by Alphaville »

Jean wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 5:02 pm
@Alphaville
What is the point of stating this opinion when no contradiction is allowed?
huh? sorry i can’t parse that fully. who does what to whom?

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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by jacob »

DEFCON 4 :!: :P

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Jean
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by Jean »

Why do you react now and not at Alphaville's post which is clearly Kegan 1.
It creates a cognitive dissonance between on one side:
-You are mostly smart and honnest
-you claim to favor A (to make it short, seeking truth for the whole group), which strongly exclude B(stating one's opinion without backing it)
and on the other Side
-I do A to correct some B, following your stated policy
-you react

So on one side you claim to have one policy, but instinctively, i feel that there is some unstated policy (unstated because it sounds quite bad) to stay within your overtone window (to be honnest, at some point you mentioned that leaving the overtone windows was idiotic). If you stated it, i wouldn't occasionaly breach it when i have strike of thinking that only your stated policy apply and that i should try to provide some other viewpoint on a particular subject, in order to help the group to reach truth.
Or at least, clearly saying that your acted because of an overtone windows breach, and not talking about kegan levels when it isn't why you acted.
This or I don't understand your stated policy properly, but I feel I'm not the only one. So it my be worth it to clarify.
"Reread all my post on the subject and in over our head would be an acceptable answer"
And then add some questions about the book in order to be able to post for everyone. That might actually be a good idea. I don't like being in conflict with you and I'm genuinly trying to solve it . I do it in the open, because i think more user could use those clarification. If I'm the only idiot, i'll stop mentioning politics, but it's very difficult, as more and more questions are rising about localisation and future societal evolution, and it's getting harder to answer those questions without mentioning things outside my perception of your overtone windows. I believe it would be a net loss.

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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by jacob »

I find it exasperating that this starts in the very same thread that that discusses the problem. Admittedly, my long and boring explanations are found all over the place. Maybe I should collect them all in a thread, but will everybody read them or remember them? Because my experience has been that reading the riot act will last about a week after which we're back to square one.

For this incident, I'd refer to forum rule 5 ("each side gets one shot and no more") and ask you both (and others) what you would have expected your (or someone else's) responses and the result would have been now 12 hours later if I haven't mentioned that I was paying extra attention to the situation with the potential of nuking it---that's what defcon4 means.

However, this is not about what the exact rules are. Because lawyers will always push those rules and try to work around them (loopholes). This is why the number of rules are ever increasing. At a more advanced level they might even get the other side to try to break the rules so they can appear to be the good guys. That's a common social media strategy. When it comes to good behavior, rules are just a map, not the territory.

This is about not deliberately or carelessly trying to start something that will end in conflict by first understanding who you're talking to, what you're talking about, and in which context. It's about avoiding win-lose, lose-win, and lose-lose arguments.

Overall, it's this again viewtopic.php?p=224208#p224208 ... and my tolerance is getting lower and lower---and it's lower for repeat offenders in the first place. It's not just my Overton window that has to be considered when starting or propagating a subject. It's everybody's window (in terms of where you talk---the Overton window of any given website) but in particular the window of whoever you're talking to. I know where you both stand on race and so do both of you---very very far apart! From a macro-perspective, it would have been clear that there is very little chance that you two can ever come to an agreement on this subject. In particular, I doubt you (Jean) will find anyone else here who thinks that Hitler's ideas on race and social evolution are anything but radical and unthinkable if not outright illegal even if carried out in a non-violent Gandhi-like manner. That should be a giant macro-hint that debating from such a position, however politely it is presented, risks and creates conflict [on this forum] no matter how reasonably it is carried out.

mooretrees
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by mooretrees »

jacob wrote:
Thu Aug 27, 2020 5:38 pm
DEFCON 4 :!: :P
I thought this was funny and silly and no big deal. It seemed obvious that the posters he was referring to were about to start a long back and forth about race, politics, etc.

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Jean
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by Jean »

I'm not trying to start conflict. I haven't answered on this topic before i incriminated some post as Bad behaviors, so it's hard to make a case for me provocating it. I assume everyone is intelligent enough so that conflict will only happen on the margin when someone is on a Bad day, and that this disagreement will be outweighted by the betterment of everyone's World view. I know that i could Come to an agreement with Alphaville, because i did it before(with people holding similar views) Seeing how you became more realistic on another topic, i think i might be right with my assumptions, so it is really a win win.
Honnestly, it feels like we are on some ego battle and should solve it trough fencing, but it might be more practical to use some quake 3.

BWND
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by BWND »

Hi Jean, just in response to your assertion that "I know that i could Come to an agreement with Alphaville, because i did it before(with people holding similar views) Seeing how you became more realistic on another topic, i think i might be right with my assumptions, so it is really a win win."

Linking it somewhat back to the topic, this is kind of an example of what I was thinking about when starting the topic and it has come up a few times in various responses. When I say an example, I don't mean your precise behaviour, but the general belief in 'can and must' win this person to my way of thinking on this particular topic that arose this particular day.

I believe knowing you can do something and it being the right thing to do in that moment might not always sit together. It isn't necessarily a win win, even if it were achievable, because there is the additional cost to the wider society where the debate takes place (the forum, the living room full of friends, the pub with a collection of work colleagues). It's not always a case of "scorched earth", but it can tend that way.

nomadscientist
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by nomadscientist »

I didn't want to comment on this thread because I think the message has been put across, and there's no right of indefinite appeal in an essentially private space.

I will comment that I do not find Jean to be the most disagreeable poster on a stylistic level by quite some margin. He is targeted because his views are disagreeable to many, not because he is personally disagreeable.

I entirely support the general approach that political disagreements do not need to be, and usually should not be, pursued to the end point when they are only incidentally relevant to a topic. However, with the subject matter of ERE, it is often difficult to come to practical conclusions without accepting at least some politically-charged premises. This is a difficult balancing act and I think jacob has done a better job than any other site admin I have encountered.

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Jean
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Re: Focussing on the 'Macro' over the 'Micro' to maintain sanity

Post by Jean »

@bwnd
I understand your point in case of off topic, or when thé assembly has a purpose that would bé disturbeb by disagreements. But if everyone wants to know better After thé discussion than before, then it's a général win.
Do you know of non violent communication (marshal rosenberg's définition of it)? It's a very powerfull tool to turn arguments into a sharing of perspective. Maybe that's more what your looking for (instead of focusing of thé macro, which i already explained why it doesn't really works).

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