8 ms·

Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire and take things at the first degree, particularly if it reinforces thei

by cm2187 7y ago

Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire and take things at the first degree, particularly if it reinforces their convictions. If it is true, and I think he may have a point, there would be some value in labelling humour or satire as such. It sounds ridiculous, but like it is ridiculous to have a label “not suitable for your pets” on a microwave!

jerrre 7y ago
I'm already looking forward to serious articles that are going to be ironically labeled as satire (obviously again misunderstood by some percentage of the population)
- MaysonL 7y ago
  As opposed to the Onion articles which are confusingly close to actual news. [or are merely prescient]
  - rjf72 7y ago
    For what it's worth this is new, and intentional. In 2016 Haim Saban, Clinton's top financial supporter, purchased The Onion and immediately transitioned it to an outlet for propaganda under the guise of satire. [1] They rapidly went from running articles like 'Hillary Clinton Tries To Woo Voters By Rescinding Candidacy' [2] to "Why Don't People Like Hillary Clinton?" [3] with reasons such as suggesting in allusion to her being a woman (twice), because she's smart, or verbatim because she "Suffers from unfortunate speech impediment of sounding like a capable, self-possessed woman". [1] - https://theintercept.com/2016/01/26/ha-ha-hillary-clintons-top-financial-supporter-now-controls-the-onion/ https://theintercept.com/2016/01/26/ha-ha-hillary-clintons-t... [2] - https://politics.theonion.com/hillary-clinton-tries-to-woo-voters-by-rescinding-candi-1819569003 https://politics.theonion.com/hillary-clinton-tries-to-woo-v... [3] - https://politics.theonion.com/why-don-t-people-like-hillary-clinton-1819594012 https://politics.theonion.com/why-don-t-people-like-hillary-...
chrisseaton 7y ago
> Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire Satire, snark, and sarcasm have to be least effective way you could possibly choose to communicate. You are absolutely begging to be misunderstood and misquoted, either genuinely or maliciously, and then it's nigh on impossible to explain yourself as all your excuses just sound like like it-was-a-prank-bro. Another huge problem is that satire is often used as cover for telling not-quite-truths. I listen to satirical radio programmes (we have a lot of those in the UK) and sometimes I think they're really bending the truth quite a bit to get the joke and their criticism isn't really fair. That'd be fine if these people weren't simultaneously actual political activists who the next night are saying they're making genuine political arguments, and if people didn't think it's-funny-because-it's-true. I'm pretty sure some of them do satire just to get away with attacking without having to back any of it up, and so they can absolve themselves from responsibility when challenged. Quite often, I think really I'm just listening to some nasty bullies. All-in-all, I think satire is a bit toxic for everyone involved.
- andybak 7y ago
  Aren't all the reasons you state, reasons why satire, snark, and sarcasm are actually incredibly effective ways to communicate? Not many people have the fortitude to resist their charms or the self-awareness to police themselves indefinitely. I know I don't.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- INGELRII 7y ago
  Satire is effective influencing method. The additional benefit is avoiding the requirement for reliability and responsibility because it's not real journalism. In the US The Daily Show established satirical ha-ha as effective method to deliver news and discuss politics for younger generations. It started as pure satire but turned into real institution people used to learn about the world. The spinoffs like The Colbert Report and related shows from people who worked in the show is impressive: The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn , Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The Break with Michelle Wolf and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj all continue using similar framework. In the right the effective satire seems to come mainly in the form of internet trolls. It's more hostile, less intellectual. It's for people who see hostility as funny. Despite being very crude, this kind of satire can have huge influence.
ForHackernews 7y ago
Scott Adams also claimed that women are treated with deference for the same reason children and mentally handicapped people are[0], so you'll have to forgive me for not giving too much credence to his unsourced statistics about the incompetence of a large fraction of humanity. [0] https://jezebel.com/dilbert-creator-deletes-misogynist-rant-5786019 https://jezebel.com/dilbert-creator-deletes-misogynist-rant-...
- ramblerman 7y ago
  Go after the argument please. This attempted character assassination is petty and weak.
  - ForHackernews 7y ago
    An argument only holds if its premises are true. "Scott Adams claims X" is very weak evidence for X. He's a cartoonist with a history of making flimsy, self-flattering pronouncements. Let's see some actual research supporting the notion that a third of the population reads and interprets satirical content as straight fact.
    - nosianu2 7y ago
      You write > Let's see some actual research which I find ironic given that you present your personal opinion about that person as if it were a fact. Maybe we should all start cleaning up in front of our own doors first whenever we feel an urge to not criticize (which would be okay) to bad-mouth other people. In addition, you also do exactly what the comment you replied to ask you not to, seemingly without having given its content any thought whatsoever. More, Scott Adams didn't say anything here. You merely read a comment from someone making a claim about what he said, in a short sentence. So you don't even have anything from the person you talk about himself. On top of that that claim would not be worth any severe criticism in the given context. Even if it were shown to be wrong, so what? It does not seem to me like anything substantial hinges on it, even if you took it as just a tongue in cheek kind of comment. Anecdotal evidence from reading online forums and discussions seem to indicate that the described phenomenon indeed exists, how many people are involved and if it's always the same ones or not don't seem to me to be of great importance since no quantitative predictions are involved.
probably_wrong 7y ago
I'm glad you brought this specific quote from this specific author, because to me it presents some very interesting questions. On one hand, I used to follow Scott Adams' blog when he made that assertion and a couple other ones. His point, if I remember correctly, boiled down to "I'm going to present an obviously wrong idea, argue in favor of it, and see where it takes us". In this context, his assertion about people not "getting" humor referred to people taking his hypotheticals for a fact even though he clearly labeled them as "but what if...?". The example that comes to mind is when he argued "What if we assumed that men are rapists by nature, and modeled society around this fact?" and people attacked him for "affirming" that all men are rapists. On the other hand, he has become one of the stronger Trump supporters I've ever seen (which is not necessarily bad), pointing out how everything he does is a great calculated move to what I consider a delusional extent (which is kind of bad - his POV currently seems to be "by asking Ukraine to investigate his opponent, Trump was doing the country a service"). By reading his blog, I got more and more the feeling that his "what if" questions were not an academic thought exercise, but rather a way to push some toxic beliefs he holds while having the plausible deniability of "it's just a hypotetical". So my point being: this quote by Scott Adams can go both ways. Maybe he's right and humans are very bad at understanding humor and/or satire, and my two points are in no way related. But I wouldn't rule out the other possibility: that humans are actually very good at spotting what's behind the mask, and that those 30% of people are those who didn't fall for his trick and rightfully called him out for it.
- richardwhiuk 7y ago
  If you want to hold an opinion which is viewed by society as dangerous, presenting as just a hypothetical, might allow you to reduce your criticism, while still openly stating it. Given all opinions are based around what you would do in a hypothetical circumstance, the limits should be pretty low. Also, there's a strong difference between satire and hypothetically asserting that rape is innate.
  - MaysonL 7y ago
    Or as Lord Buckley always said "If you must tell the truth, be sure to leave them laughing!".

by cm2187 7y ago

jerrre 7y ago

I'm already looking forward to serious articles that are going to be ironically labeled as satire (obviously again misunderstood by some percentage of the population)

MaysonL 7y ago
As opposed to the Onion articles which are confusingly close to actual news. [or are merely prescient]
- rjf72 7y ago
  For what it's worth this is new, and intentional. In 2016 Haim Saban, Clinton's top financial supporter, purchased The Onion and immediately transitioned it to an outlet for propaganda under the guise of satire. [1] They rapidly went from running articles like 'Hillary Clinton Tries To Woo Voters By Rescinding Candidacy' [2] to "Why Don't People Like Hillary Clinton?" [3] with reasons such as suggesting in allusion to her being a woman (twice), because she's smart, or verbatim because she "Suffers from unfortunate speech impediment of sounding like a capable, self-possessed woman". [1] - https://theintercept.com/2016/01/26/ha-ha-hillary-clintons-top-financial-supporter-now-controls-the-onion/ https://theintercept.com/2016/01/26/ha-ha-hillary-clintons-t... [2] - https://politics.theonion.com/hillary-clinton-tries-to-woo-voters-by-rescinding-candi-1819569003 https://politics.theonion.com/hillary-clinton-tries-to-woo-v... [3] - https://politics.theonion.com/why-don-t-people-like-hillary-clinton-1819594012 https://politics.theonion.com/why-don-t-people-like-hillary-...

chrisseaton 7y ago

> Scott Adams claims that about 30% of people in a society just do not get humour / satire Satire, snark, and sarcasm have to be least effective way you could possibly choose to communicate. You are absolutely begging to be misunderstood and misquoted, either genuinely or maliciously, and then it's nigh on impossible to explain yourself as all your excuses just sound like like it-was-a-prank-bro. Another huge problem is that satire is often used as cover for telling not-quite-truths. I listen to satirical radio programmes (we have a lot of those in the UK) and sometimes I think they're really bending the truth quite a bit to get the joke and their criticism isn't really fair. That'd be fine if these people weren't simultaneously actual political activists who the next night are saying they're making genuine political arguments, and if people didn't think it's-funny-because-it's-true. I'm pretty sure some of them do satire just to get away with attacking without having to back any of it up, and so they can absolve themselves from responsibility when challenged. Quite often, I think really I'm just listening to some nasty bullies. All-in-all, I think satire is a bit toxic for everyone involved.

andybak 7y ago
Aren't all the reasons you state, reasons why satire, snark, and sarcasm are actually incredibly effective ways to communicate? Not many people have the fortitude to resist their charms or the self-awareness to police themselves indefinitely. I know I don't.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
INGELRII 7y ago
Satire is effective influencing method. The additional benefit is avoiding the requirement for reliability and responsibility because it's not real journalism. In the US The Daily Show established satirical ha-ha as effective method to deliver news and discuss politics for younger generations. It started as pure satire but turned into real institution people used to learn about the world. The spinoffs like The Colbert Report and related shows from people who worked in the show is impressive: The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn , Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, The Break with Michelle Wolf and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj all continue using similar framework. In the right the effective satire seems to come mainly in the form of internet trolls. It's more hostile, less intellectual. It's for people who see hostility as funny. Despite being very crude, this kind of satire can have huge influence.

ForHackernews 7y ago

Scott Adams also claimed that women are treated with deference for the same reason children and mentally handicapped people are[0], so you'll have to forgive me for not giving too much credence to his unsourced statistics about the incompetence of a large fraction of humanity. [0] https://jezebel.com/dilbert-creator-deletes-misogynist-rant-5786019 https://jezebel.com/dilbert-creator-deletes-misogynist-rant-...

ramblerman 7y ago
Go after the argument please. This attempted character assassination is petty and weak.
- ForHackernews 7y ago
  An argument only holds if its premises are true. "Scott Adams claims X" is very weak evidence for X. He's a cartoonist with a history of making flimsy, self-flattering pronouncements. Let's see some actual research supporting the notion that a third of the population reads and interprets satirical content as straight fact.
  - nosianu2 7y ago
    You write > Let's see some actual research which I find ironic given that you present your personal opinion about that person as if it were a fact. Maybe we should all start cleaning up in front of our own doors first whenever we feel an urge to not criticize (which would be okay) to bad-mouth other people. In addition, you also do exactly what the comment you replied to ask you not to, seemingly without having given its content any thought whatsoever. More, Scott Adams didn't say anything here. You merely read a comment from someone making a claim about what he said, in a short sentence. So you don't even have anything from the person you talk about himself. On top of that that claim would not be worth any severe criticism in the given context. Even if it were shown to be wrong, so what? It does not seem to me like anything substantial hinges on it, even if you took it as just a tongue in cheek kind of comment. Anecdotal evidence from reading online forums and discussions seem to indicate that the described phenomenon indeed exists, how many people are involved and if it's always the same ones or not don't seem to me to be of great importance since no quantitative predictions are involved.

probably_wrong 7y ago

I'm glad you brought this specific quote from this specific author, because to me it presents some very interesting questions. On one hand, I used to follow Scott Adams' blog when he made that assertion and a couple other ones. His point, if I remember correctly, boiled down to "I'm going to present an obviously wrong idea, argue in favor of it, and see where it takes us". In this context, his assertion about people not "getting" humor referred to people taking his hypotheticals for a fact even though he clearly labeled them as "but what if...?". The example that comes to mind is when he argued "What if we assumed that men are rapists by nature, and modeled society around this fact?" and people attacked him for "affirming" that all men are rapists. On the other hand, he has become one of the stronger Trump supporters I've ever seen (which is not necessarily bad), pointing out how everything he does is a great calculated move to what I consider a delusional extent (which is kind of bad - his POV currently seems to be "by asking Ukraine to investigate his opponent, Trump was doing the country a service"). By reading his blog, I got more and more the feeling that his "what if" questions were not an academic thought exercise, but rather a way to push some toxic beliefs he holds while having the plausible deniability of "it's just a hypotetical". So my point being: this quote by Scott Adams can go both ways. Maybe he's right and humans are very bad at understanding humor and/or satire, and my two points are in no way related. But I wouldn't rule out the other possibility: that humans are actually very good at spotting what's behind the mask, and that those 30% of people are those who didn't fall for his trick and rightfully called him out for it.

richardwhiuk 7y ago
If you want to hold an opinion which is viewed by society as dangerous, presenting as just a hypothetical, might allow you to reduce your criticism, while still openly stating it. Given all opinions are based around what you would do in a hypothetical circumstance, the limits should be pretty low. Also, there's a strong difference between satire and hypothetically asserting that rape is innate.
- MaysonL 7y ago
  Or as Lord Buckley always said "If you must tell the truth, be sure to leave them laughing!".