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The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It’s not wrong to say that there are life and d
by throwaway9980 6y ago
The grace to be wrong has been increasing replaced by some sort of fight or flight response to being challenged. It’s not wrong to say that there are life and death consequences w/r/t to the important issues. That said, the increasingly emotional response to that is detrimental to discourse. The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view, the more difficult it is to hear their arguments. When someone is extremely emotional it triggers a natural skepticism. Not because we think they are wrong per se, rather because we know that when we are emotionally distressed it is more difficult to be rational.
Basically: everyone needs to calm down.
- abernard1 6y ago> The more hysterical people become advocating their point of view All the examples I provided have been very calmly, very thoroughly promulgated in popular, mainstream media. They're not a matter of my opinion (and my opinion on them was not stated). According to their own standards, the experts have been spreading misinformation this year. The same people saying one thing and then retracting a few months later.
- cle 6y agoThis is a part of the positive feedback loop. People have isolated bubbles of sensational information, lots of little positive reinforcements for consuming it (social proof, widgets, dings and badges, etc), and it all feeds back into their personal and political identity. In terms of the drug analogy, telling someone to “calm down” is like telling a junkie to “just quit”. It’s not going to break the feedback loop.