5 ms·

I was noticing that pattern as well, many people seem to be hurling the same insult but from opposite sides. In a way, it worries me, because the words lose the

I was noticing that pattern as well, many people seem to be hurling the same insult but from opposite sides. In a way, it worries me, because the words lose their theoretical meaning and stand more for the assumed malevolence of the other side. If I could wish one thing on the world at this moment it would be for us to realize that most of the people who we believe are attacking us don't actually believe that they are attacking us, just as they believe we are attacking them and we don't believe that we are.

dools 5y ago
Yep. I had this conversation with my daughter the other day. She was like "But ... they just think the same thing about what you're saying". I was like "Totally, the only difference is that I'm right, and they're wrong". She was like "how do you know?". That lead to a much longer session of reviewing types of biases and fallacies, the scientific method and various other critical thinking tools I've developed over the years, but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!! This was one of the videos we looked at, I think it's totally on point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvk2PQNcg8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvk2PQNcg8w
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  Lol exactly. This is why I try to remind myself to pay attention to how I and others may be feeling underneath, and have even dedicated my professional life to it, because I have honed very strong rationalizing skills. I find often the people who disagree with me the strongest can also go toe-to-toe with me in finding stories and evidence that confirms our beliefs and if I remember (and have the courage), I try to go deeper to talk about how I'm feeling afraid of this, this, and this, angry about this and this, ashamed of this, and so on, and try to imagine how they might be feeling across those contexts, and more often than not, realize we're both two humans trying our best. But goodness I can avoid going there sometimes, and if I do get there, it can be after a long long discussion with someone, and sometimes one or both of us gives up before we get to that point.
  - prox 5y ago
    What I find rampant these days is the rather extreme way of thinking “If you are not with me, you are against me.” And I think social media amplifies this, not only by algorithms, but also because text doesn’t provide good context (intonation, stance, emotional transference) , I mean we literally read other people’s thought in our own head, also those whose thoughts we are not congruent with. HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. Now with politics and politicians this a much harder pill to swallow, because their literal job these days is to stand on a soapbox, and we as the public have gotten rather used to it, and voting in those who do the soapbox act the best. This is also because in general it’s hard to choose politicians beyond the local who we can relate to, and be invested in beyond retoric.
    - nradov 5y ago
      “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” — Ronald Reagan
    - jimkleiber 5y ago
      I agree that much of the design of social media can contribute to this. As much as I love this: > HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. I also just thought how HN may contribute to this through design. I'm replying to your post right now and I can only see your post on my screen. While I can click "parent" in the menu to see the chain of replies or "context" to see your post in the context of all the replies, I'm not able to see both a reply box and the context before your post on the same page. So, it requires me to either keep in working memory what the parent said, and what the grandparent said and great grandparent, or maybe to have a multitabbed approach. Conversely, something like Discourse allows me to scroll up and down to see the previous posts while maintaining a compose window open. Maybe this isn't the place for such a comment, I guess I just felt frustrated in another thread and worried I'd give a reply that either repeated what someone said before or didn't encapsulate the conversation. I think these little details really matter in communication and how we often overlook them or discount them.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!!" I wish. And sometimes they do. But there are lots and lots of people who have various religious/ideological dogmas. They do not show their kid the scientific method - they preach their truth to them. Because they feel they are right.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    It has helped me to realize that most of politics is preference, and preference rarely need be informed by the scientific method, especially when most of our daily choices are preference based. E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc. Our culture has now taught a few generations that people get to decide their own truth, and they conflate preference for truth, and now we are witnessing what this means…
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      "E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc." Ok, my feelings of love are not guided by a scientific method (except analyzing and reflect on what I feel). But by deciding what to wear, eat, watch etc. I do apply the scientific method. Meaning I test out systematically, what works best for me. And I try to teach this to my children.
      - mensetmanusman 5y ago
        The scientific method applied to preferences is probably not the scientific method (in regards to control experiments (unless you have clones and access to the multi verse:)))
        hutzlibu 5y ago
        The very basic idea of the scientific method as I learned it, is: testing ideas by experiment. If it looks cold outside, but not too cold - I have the idea that a medium warm jacket of mine is enough. And then outside I see if it was adequate or not and next time under similar conditions I change accordingly, or go back to the house that instant. Sounds like common sense and it is. But not everyone is doing it. I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style. This sounds like insanity to me, even though I know in their specific setting it makes some sense - as style is important in their circles. But that just means those circles are far from science and rationality, if it leads to people wearing clothes not adequate for the weather and being cold and uncomfortable.
- dtech 5y ago
  This is basically a less-polished exposition of GGP Grey's excellent video [1], which he also mentions in the talk [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
  - teddyh 5y ago
    See also The Toxoplasma Of Rage: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... and You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe
native_samples 5y ago
This happens because there's a lot of cultural bias towards being centrist, being perceived as the reasonable middle. People like that a lot, it feels good, so whenever such people try to describe political disputes it's tempting to try and describe both parties as the same when arguably they're not. This Substack article is a good case in point. It makes it sound like there's two sides, both demanding censorship, and Substack standing in the reasonable middle. But in reality they're only describing one side. They say: "In the online Thunderdome, it is imperative that you are not seen to engage with ideas from the wrong group; on the contrary, you are expected to marshall whatever power is at your disposal – be it cultural, political, or technological – to silence their arguments" Are both sides here trying to silence the other? No. One side is and we've seen that a lot, hence why this post exists and that's partly why Substack has taken off. But the most "extreme" view promoted by sceptical Substackers on vaccines is that mandates are immoral and people should be free to decide, for various reasons. They aren't arguing that people promoting vaccines should be forcibly censored. At least I've never seen any such arguments, not even in comments. "It’s [always] the other side who shuts down criticism because they know they can’t win the argument." Is it? Again, people flagging red alerts over problematic COVID policies or data aren't trying to shut down criticism of themselves, in fact they routinely highlight and engage with it by writing long responses to people who disagree with them (knowing full well they'll never get a response). In reality, one side here speaks but never listens whilst simultaneously working hard to ensure nobody is allowed to disagree with them. And the other side does not. So whilst I applaud Substack's take, their framing of it is curious and maybe doesn't bode well. They aren't sitting in the middle here because there is no middle. There's one group that wants to wipe the others out completely and will use any tactics available to do so, and then there's Substack that's sheltering those people from the storm.
- bigger_inside 5y ago
  This seems to be the public perception: only one side demands censorship. This isn't quite true and only shows you how well one side is at publicizing that they're being censored, which, ironically, means they're censored -less-. Palestinian accounts on facebook have been deleted for years when they were trying to report on occupation. Facebook also deleted all the accounts of Nicaraguan socialists trying to counter the Western narratives about their election. Anything on social media that is anti-imperialist, especially when it comes from the actual global south, has been silenced, and also silently silenced - because it' not part of the mainstream discourse, so people often don't realize it's gone because they never knew it was there to begin with. It was easy to quietly sweep under the rug. The new right isn't so easy to quietly sweep under the rug, because it's loud and it's next door to many people in the West, so you notice when the posts are gone, people yell about it and call wolf - which means they have the voice to yell, and the power to cry wolf. It's an old (very, very old) insight that rules for censorship are made with the the excesses of the right as legitimation for it, and then used against the left. Which is why, on the left, it would be pragmatically and strategically smart to stop clamoring for the censorship of the right. We're just handing the agents of control the tools to silence us with.

dools 5y ago

Yep. I had this conversation with my daughter the other day. She was like "But ... they just think the same thing about what you're saying". I was like "Totally, the only difference is that I'm right, and they're wrong". She was like "how do you know?". That lead to a much longer session of reviewing types of biases and fallacies, the scientific method and various other critical thinking tools I've developed over the years, but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!! This was one of the videos we looked at, I think it's totally on point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvk2PQNcg8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvk2PQNcg8w

jimkleiber 5y ago
Lol exactly. This is why I try to remind myself to pay attention to how I and others may be feeling underneath, and have even dedicated my professional life to it, because I have honed very strong rationalizing skills. I find often the people who disagree with me the strongest can also go toe-to-toe with me in finding stories and evidence that confirms our beliefs and if I remember (and have the courage), I try to go deeper to talk about how I'm feeling afraid of this, this, and this, angry about this and this, ashamed of this, and so on, and try to imagine how they might be feeling across those contexts, and more often than not, realize we're both two humans trying our best. But goodness I can avoid going there sometimes, and if I do get there, it can be after a long long discussion with someone, and sometimes one or both of us gives up before we get to that point.
- prox 5y ago
  What I find rampant these days is the rather extreme way of thinking “If you are not with me, you are against me.” And I think social media amplifies this, not only by algorithms, but also because text doesn’t provide good context (intonation, stance, emotional transference) , I mean we literally read other people’s thought in our own head, also those whose thoughts we are not congruent with. HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. Now with politics and politicians this a much harder pill to swallow, because their literal job these days is to stand on a soapbox, and we as the public have gotten rather used to it, and voting in those who do the soapbox act the best. This is also because in general it’s hard to choose politicians beyond the local who we can relate to, and be invested in beyond retoric.
  - nradov 5y ago
    “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally – not a 20 percent traitor.” — Ronald Reagan
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I agree that much of the design of social media can contribute to this. As much as I love this: > HNs rules are great in this sense, to continuously seek out curious conversations instead of the rather solipsist tendency to soapbox. I also just thought how HN may contribute to this through design. I'm replying to your post right now and I can only see your post on my screen. While I can click "parent" in the menu to see the chain of replies or "context" to see your post in the context of all the replies, I'm not able to see both a reply box and the context before your post on the same page. So, it requires me to either keep in working memory what the parent said, and what the grandparent said and great grandparent, or maybe to have a multitabbed approach. Conversely, something like Discourse allows me to scroll up and down to see the previous posts while maintaining a compose window open. Maybe this isn't the place for such a comment, I guess I just felt frustrated in another thread and worried I'd give a reply that either repeated what someone said before or didn't encapsulate the conversation. I think these little details really matter in communication and how we often overlook them or discount them.
hutzlibu 5y ago
"but whoever is on the "other side" is having the same conversation with their kids, and showing them tools and resources they've developed over the years to decide what information to trust and, to the kid, it's just as convincing!!" I wish. And sometimes they do. But there are lots and lots of people who have various religious/ideological dogmas. They do not show their kid the scientific method - they preach their truth to them. Because they feel they are right.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  It has helped me to realize that most of politics is preference, and preference rarely need be informed by the scientific method, especially when most of our daily choices are preference based. E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc. Our culture has now taught a few generations that people get to decide their own truth, and they conflate preference for truth, and now we are witnessing what this means…
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "E.g. who do I love, what should I wear/watch/eat, where should I spend my money, etc." Ok, my feelings of love are not guided by a scientific method (except analyzing and reflect on what I feel). But by deciding what to wear, eat, watch etc. I do apply the scientific method. Meaning I test out systematically, what works best for me. And I try to teach this to my children.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      The scientific method applied to preferences is probably not the scientific method (in regards to control experiments (unless you have clones and access to the multi verse:)))
      - hutzlibu 5y ago
        The very basic idea of the scientific method as I learned it, is: testing ideas by experiment. If it looks cold outside, but not too cold - I have the idea that a medium warm jacket of mine is enough. And then outside I see if it was adequate or not and next time under similar conditions I change accordingly, or go back to the house that instant. Sounds like common sense and it is. But not everyone is doing it. I seriously got shocked by people telling me, they walk in shoes hurting them, but they did so because of style. This sounds like insanity to me, even though I know in their specific setting it makes some sense - as style is important in their circles. But that just means those circles are far from science and rationality, if it leads to people wearing clothes not adequate for the weather and being cold and uncomfortable.
dtech 5y ago
This is basically a less-polished exposition of GGP Grey's excellent video [1], which he also mentions in the talk [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
- teddyh 5y ago
  See also The Toxoplasma Of Rage: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage... and You're not going to believe what I'm about to tell you: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

native_samples 5y ago

This happens because there's a lot of cultural bias towards being centrist, being perceived as the reasonable middle. People like that a lot, it feels good, so whenever such people try to describe political disputes it's tempting to try and describe both parties as the same when arguably they're not. This Substack article is a good case in point. It makes it sound like there's two sides, both demanding censorship, and Substack standing in the reasonable middle. But in reality they're only describing one side. They say: "In the online Thunderdome, it is imperative that you are not seen to engage with ideas from the wrong group; on the contrary, you are expected to marshall whatever power is at your disposal – be it cultural, political, or technological – to silence their arguments" Are both sides here trying to silence the other? No. One side is and we've seen that a lot, hence why this post exists and that's partly why Substack has taken off. But the most "extreme" view promoted by sceptical Substackers on vaccines is that mandates are immoral and people should be free to decide, for various reasons. They aren't arguing that people promoting vaccines should be forcibly censored. At least I've never seen any such arguments, not even in comments. "It’s [always] the other side who shuts down criticism because they know they can’t win the argument." Is it? Again, people flagging red alerts over problematic COVID policies or data aren't trying to shut down criticism of themselves, in fact they routinely highlight and engage with it by writing long responses to people who disagree with them (knowing full well they'll never get a response). In reality, one side here speaks but never listens whilst simultaneously working hard to ensure nobody is allowed to disagree with them. And the other side does not. So whilst I applaud Substack's take, their framing of it is curious and maybe doesn't bode well. They aren't sitting in the middle here because there is no middle. There's one group that wants to wipe the others out completely and will use any tactics available to do so, and then there's Substack that's sheltering those people from the storm.

bigger_inside 5y ago
This seems to be the public perception: only one side demands censorship. This isn't quite true and only shows you how well one side is at publicizing that they're being censored, which, ironically, means they're censored -less-. Palestinian accounts on facebook have been deleted for years when they were trying to report on occupation. Facebook also deleted all the accounts of Nicaraguan socialists trying to counter the Western narratives about their election. Anything on social media that is anti-imperialist, especially when it comes from the actual global south, has been silenced, and also silently silenced - because it' not part of the mainstream discourse, so people often don't realize it's gone because they never knew it was there to begin with. It was easy to quietly sweep under the rug. The new right isn't so easy to quietly sweep under the rug, because it's loud and it's next door to many people in the West, so you notice when the posts are gone, people yell about it and call wolf - which means they have the voice to yell, and the power to cry wolf. It's an old (very, very old) insight that rules for censorship are made with the the excesses of the right as legitimation for it, and then used against the left. Which is why, on the left, it would be pragmatically and strategically smart to stop clamoring for the censorship of the right. We're just handing the agents of control the tools to silence us with.