5 ms·

> If we educated everyone on logic and reasoning, then each person could do their own fact checking. I'm a mathematician, my colleagues are mathematicians, yet

by neiman 6y ago

> If we educated everyone on logic and reasoning, then each person could do their own fact checking. I'm a mathematician, my colleagues are mathematicians, yet a good portion of them don't use logic and reasoning when it comes to news or other non-math Internet information. The battle is lost..

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
It's genetic - we're not designed to think rationally about tribal issues. We're designed to follow people who look like strong leaders - even if they aren't - and to believe simple us/them narratives. Add some shock value for stickiness - like QAnon with its paedophile shtick - and it's a home run for the liars. We don't have anything resembling a working science of politics and culture, which is why both seem to break so consistently. No matter what the ideals are supposed to be, cultures are not dynamically stable. As soon as you introduce stressors of any kind - internal or external - humans revert to running on instinct, dark triad types note the weaknesses and start taking advantage of them, and the illusion of stability falls apart.
- mistermann 6y ago
  Case in point: > It's genetic - we're not designed to think rationally about tribal issues. > like QAnon with its paedophile shtick - and it's a home run for the liars. Why? Because the actual truth of these child trafficking rumours is unknown. But it accentuates your point. There are exceptions here and there, but your initial point seems to be very true: generally speaking, people are literally unable to think logically about many things. And many additional things (that we do not yet understand) are surely layered on top to exacerbate the problem - one I've observed is that the mind seems to have an aversion to the unknown, which plausibly makes sense since the brain arguably evolved to optimize for fast decisions...at times, indecisiveness could be deadly, so a bias against it should be surprising. (Is there any truth to theories like this? Once again, it is largely unknown - at best we typically have a few (unreplicable) psychological studies that hint at it.) Although, I think all is not lost - while individuals may not be able to do it independently, perhaps more structured crowd sourced approaches could help. I think by decomposing a story down into discrete assertions, each with an epistemic status of some kind (with attached evidence), could go a long way to improving public perception of reality. Whether such an approach is in the interests of powerful people seems questionable. You may notice that the public discourse on important issues tends to take the form of a meme war (battle of mini-narratives repeated over and over), as opposed to a singular comprehensive document summarizing what is known, highlighting portions that are unknown or disputed (with competing arguments). Are meme wars how one would run a complex software project? Not me. But why do we run the planet this way? And why can nobody notice? For some answers to that last question....some people have complex theories to explain why people can't seem to think straight, this one is a bit deep but quite interesting. My very rough take is that our perception of reality largely consists of or is shaped/defined by the ideology we have been raised in, and as a result we simply can't "see" objective reality itself. Slavoj Žižek: The Sublime Object of Ideology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIckkHsUQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIckkHsUQ4 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18912.The_Sublime_Object_of_Ideology https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18912.The_Sublime_Object...
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    > But why do we run the planet this way? And why can nobody notice? I assume you are already familiar with it, since you are quoting Zizek, but Noam Chomsky has a pretty convincing theory about this, "the propaganda model", discussed in his book "Manufacturing Consent".
    - mistermann 6y ago
      Yes, it's excellent. Also Century of Self by Adam Curtis and many other documentaries. The reality of the situation spans so many disciplines (psychology/neurology, evolutionary theory, history, government, geopolitics, and so forth and so on) that getting a solid handle on what is actually true is impossible, but with the right effort and style of thinking it's not difficult to form a reasonable conclusion that the actual state of reality is quite different than the way it is advertised and perceived by the masses, which seems to me like a good epistemic position to work from.

by neiman 6y ago

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago

It's genetic - we're not designed to think rationally about tribal issues. We're designed to follow people who look like strong leaders - even if they aren't - and to believe simple us/them narratives. Add some shock value for stickiness - like QAnon with its paedophile shtick - and it's a home run for the liars. We don't have anything resembling a working science of politics and culture, which is why both seem to break so consistently. No matter what the ideals are supposed to be, cultures are not dynamically stable. As soon as you introduce stressors of any kind - internal or external - humans revert to running on instinct, dark triad types note the weaknesses and start taking advantage of them, and the illusion of stability falls apart.

mistermann 6y ago
Case in point: > It's genetic - we're not designed to think rationally about tribal issues. > like QAnon with its paedophile shtick - and it's a home run for the liars. Why? Because the actual truth of these child trafficking rumours is unknown. But it accentuates your point. There are exceptions here and there, but your initial point seems to be very true: generally speaking, people are literally unable to think logically about many things. And many additional things (that we do not yet understand) are surely layered on top to exacerbate the problem - one I've observed is that the mind seems to have an aversion to the unknown, which plausibly makes sense since the brain arguably evolved to optimize for fast decisions...at times, indecisiveness could be deadly, so a bias against it should be surprising. (Is there any truth to theories like this? Once again, it is largely unknown - at best we typically have a few (unreplicable) psychological studies that hint at it.) Although, I think all is not lost - while individuals may not be able to do it independently, perhaps more structured crowd sourced approaches could help. I think by decomposing a story down into discrete assertions, each with an epistemic status of some kind (with attached evidence), could go a long way to improving public perception of reality. Whether such an approach is in the interests of powerful people seems questionable. You may notice that the public discourse on important issues tends to take the form of a meme war (battle of mini-narratives repeated over and over), as opposed to a singular comprehensive document summarizing what is known, highlighting portions that are unknown or disputed (with competing arguments). Are meme wars how one would run a complex software project? Not me. But why do we run the planet this way? And why can nobody notice? For some answers to that last question....some people have complex theories to explain why people can't seem to think straight, this one is a bit deep but quite interesting. My very rough take is that our perception of reality largely consists of or is shaped/defined by the ideology we have been raised in, and as a result we simply can't "see" objective reality itself. Slavoj Žižek: The Sublime Object of Ideology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIckkHsUQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtIckkHsUQ4 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18912.The_Sublime_Object_of_Ideology https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18912.The_Sublime_Object...
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  > But why do we run the planet this way? And why can nobody notice? I assume you are already familiar with it, since you are quoting Zizek, but Noam Chomsky has a pretty convincing theory about this, "the propaganda model", discussed in his book "Manufacturing Consent".
  - mistermann 6y ago
    Yes, it's excellent. Also Century of Self by Adam Curtis and many other documentaries. The reality of the situation spans so many disciplines (psychology/neurology, evolutionary theory, history, government, geopolitics, and so forth and so on) that getting a solid handle on what is actually true is impossible, but with the right effort and style of thinking it's not difficult to form a reasonable conclusion that the actual state of reality is quite different than the way it is advertised and perceived by the masses, which seems to me like a good epistemic position to work from.