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Righteous Mind, Why good people are divided by politics and religion by Jonathan Haidt (also applies to classic nerd feuds like Mac vs windows vs Linux) The Mo

by jacobn 8y ago

Righteous Mind, Why good people are divided by politics and religion by Jonathan Haidt (also applies to classic nerd feuds like Mac vs windows vs Linux) The Mom Test, how to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick (worst title ever, book is great)

ternaryoperator 8y ago
The Righteous Mind is brilliant. It gives an excellent framework by which to understand today's events better.
- freedomben 8y ago
  yep, very much agree. I wish everyone would read that. It increased my ability to feel empathy toward those who I disagree with, even strongly.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Seems somewhat of an odd tagline "why good people are divided by politics"... All people are divided by politics. Perhaps it's one to give a read though. I swear I'm noticing a systemic failure at a global level of people to recognize they are always-on 24/7 political machines living inside an always-on 24/7 political machine and it's mostly Garbage In, Garbage Out. That's the default mode of operation. Most people are wrong about most things. Couple that with the fact we are de-facto tribal animals that can't turn our politics off. All you get is one big, giant disagreement where everyone is likely wrong and nobody will admit it. But I keep noticing patterns in everyones language... Patterns that make an assumption that the crazy political debates we find ourselves in are somehow an abnormal state and the world has "descended into madness" or "we've gone mad" or "it seems people have really lost their minds lately". This pattern crops up over and over again. It's like no man, look at the hardware and software producing the outputs. This is the output the system is designed to produce. We haven't "lost our minds" or "gone crazy", we were always this batshit insane and this is always the protocol we have operated on. Curious what the framework the book lays out and what resemblance it bears to my own framework...
  - backpropaganda 8y ago
    The tagline is meant to emphasize that even good people are divided by politics, and the book is meant to target people who didn't find that obvious.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      Right but "good" itself is a moral/value judgement, so you wind up with the question "who is doing the defining?" And that descends into a disagreement. That is our M.O. Actually looking at description of this book and some of the reviews it's basically what I'm saying. Though my thesis contains a large component centering around our complete inability to calculate the truth value of most truth claims a priori and our inability to recognize that leads us to being utterly convinced our erroneous conclusions are correct and getting angry at people who disagree with us. This coupled with all the literature on how dissenters are treated and how groupthink takes hold. We are a walking recipe for disaster. This will make for a good read. Probably help me to expand on my own model even more. I think a lot of turmoil and confusion could be avoided if we collectively upgraded our protocols for dealing with each other.
  - losvedir 8y ago
    The point of the tag line is to humanize people on the other political side from you. > Curious what the framework the book lays out and what resemblance it bears to my own framework... I haven't read the book but I assume it follows the framework the author developed (he's a moral psychology academic, I believe) and laid out in a TED talk a while ago (back when they were still good). If you're curious about it, check out the talk on YouTube.
iamjk 8y ago
Absolutely loved The Righteous Mind, it was one of my favorites this year as well. I just ordered his next one, The Coddling of the American Mind.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  I should order that! I emailed him after I read The Righteous Mind (2016, 2017 maybe?) asking what his opinions were of the shifts we had seen since the book was published and whether his opinions have changed and how hopeful he was, etc. He did take the time to reply, even if it was short, and answered my questions; always appreciate when an author interacts with readers like that.
- Matticus_Rex 8y ago
  It's great, if troubling. I wasn't taking some of the cultural shifts very seriously until reading it. Very few books shift my thinking on current events so significantly.

by jacobn 8y ago

ternaryoperator 8y ago

The Righteous Mind is brilliant. It gives an excellent framework by which to understand today's events better.

freedomben 8y ago
yep, very much agree. I wish everyone would read that. It increased my ability to feel empathy toward those who I disagree with, even strongly.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
Seems somewhat of an odd tagline "why good people are divided by politics"... All people are divided by politics. Perhaps it's one to give a read though. I swear I'm noticing a systemic failure at a global level of people to recognize they are always-on 24/7 political machines living inside an always-on 24/7 political machine and it's mostly Garbage In, Garbage Out. That's the default mode of operation. Most people are wrong about most things. Couple that with the fact we are de-facto tribal animals that can't turn our politics off. All you get is one big, giant disagreement where everyone is likely wrong and nobody will admit it. But I keep noticing patterns in everyones language... Patterns that make an assumption that the crazy political debates we find ourselves in are somehow an abnormal state and the world has "descended into madness" or "we've gone mad" or "it seems people have really lost their minds lately". This pattern crops up over and over again. It's like no man, look at the hardware and software producing the outputs. This is the output the system is designed to produce. We haven't "lost our minds" or "gone crazy", we were always this batshit insane and this is always the protocol we have operated on. Curious what the framework the book lays out and what resemblance it bears to my own framework...
- backpropaganda 8y ago
  The tagline is meant to emphasize that even good people are divided by politics, and the book is meant to target people who didn't find that obvious.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    Right but "good" itself is a moral/value judgement, so you wind up with the question "who is doing the defining?" And that descends into a disagreement. That is our M.O. Actually looking at description of this book and some of the reviews it's basically what I'm saying. Though my thesis contains a large component centering around our complete inability to calculate the truth value of most truth claims a priori and our inability to recognize that leads us to being utterly convinced our erroneous conclusions are correct and getting angry at people who disagree with us. This coupled with all the literature on how dissenters are treated and how groupthink takes hold. We are a walking recipe for disaster. This will make for a good read. Probably help me to expand on my own model even more. I think a lot of turmoil and confusion could be avoided if we collectively upgraded our protocols for dealing with each other.
- losvedir 8y ago
  The point of the tag line is to humanize people on the other political side from you. > Curious what the framework the book lays out and what resemblance it bears to my own framework... I haven't read the book but I assume it follows the framework the author developed (he's a moral psychology academic, I believe) and laid out in a TED talk a while ago (back when they were still good). If you're curious about it, check out the talk on YouTube.

iamjk 8y ago

Absolutely loved The Righteous Mind, it was one of my favorites this year as well. I just ordered his next one, The Coddling of the American Mind.

dorchadas 8y ago
I should order that! I emailed him after I read The Righteous Mind (2016, 2017 maybe?) asking what his opinions were of the shifts we had seen since the book was published and whether his opinions have changed and how hopeful he was, etc. He did take the time to reply, even if it was short, and answered my questions; always appreciate when an author interacts with readers like that.
Matticus_Rex 8y ago
It's great, if troubling. I wasn't taking some of the cultural shifts very seriously until reading it. Very few books shift my thinking on current events so significantly.