4 ms·

> The internet does not make me feel better informed. I feel more informed when I read books or.. 100% this, excellent observation. > FUD makes the truth hard

> The internet does not make me feel better informed. I feel more informed when I read books or.. 100% this, excellent observation. > FUD makes the truth hard to decipher One thing I try to do now is "filter out the FUD". I think I'm succeeding, but I don't know how to teach others to do it, so maybe I'm not, haha. Anyway! I filter out the FUD and then look at what's left. To, perhaps, step in it: my current case study for this is pro/anti-vax. "Both sides" definitely use and spread FUD. But, when I filter out the FUD, there's almost nothing left on the anti side, and still piles of stuff left on the pro side.

thenerdhead 5y ago
Would love to learn how you filter out the FUD!
- RangerScience 5y ago
  Like I said, I'm not sure how to describe it. You kind of have to... identify, and then strip out, the emotional content of a message. (Note: don't do this all the time, but if the emotions are FUD, most of the time is a good rubric). A big part of that is identifying how someone is saying something, as opposed to what they're saying. This can be word choice, italics/bold/caps; grammatical structures, narrative structures. That last one is large and subtle - I once called someone an "active psychological hazard" for the manipulation within their "narrative" structure; think about how good comedians build a kind of meandering story, and then apply that to an affect aside from humor, and you've got the right idea. It's... I don't know. People tell me things, or I read them, and it forms a sort of multidimensional "shape" inside my mind. Then I lop off / rotate the shape so the emotional affects aren't present, or aren't significant, or aren't "in view". But also like I said, I don't actually know if it's working; but I think it is. I know that before I do whatever it is, I feel things; afterwards, I feel them, but at a remove, so they're more like things I could feel, if I chose to. Does that all make any kind of sense, even a little bit?
  - thenerdhead 5y ago
    I think the "take the emotion out" part really resonates. The idea of avoiding people who artificially "raise the stakes" is pretty interesting too, it seems like you have a sound process for this. It sounds like you might enjoy comedy theory as this is where I learned majority of what you're talking about. Specifically improv comedy.
    - RangerScience 5y ago
      Thank you, I've wanted to poke into comedy for awhile now! Didn't realize there was established theory, but that makes sense. Note that I do think "raising the stakes" is a valid explorative method - you can use it to make small details much more visible, for example - even it's not so valid as an argument. So it's not so much about avoiding people who do that, as much as it about zeroing out the impact of them doing that.

thenerdhead 5y ago

Would love to learn how you filter out the FUD!

RangerScience 5y ago
Like I said, I'm not sure how to describe it. You kind of have to... identify, and then strip out, the emotional content of a message. (Note: don't do this all the time, but if the emotions are FUD, most of the time is a good rubric). A big part of that is identifying how someone is saying something, as opposed to what they're saying. This can be word choice, italics/bold/caps; grammatical structures, narrative structures. That last one is large and subtle - I once called someone an "active psychological hazard" for the manipulation within their "narrative" structure; think about how good comedians build a kind of meandering story, and then apply that to an affect aside from humor, and you've got the right idea. It's... I don't know. People tell me things, or I read them, and it forms a sort of multidimensional "shape" inside my mind. Then I lop off / rotate the shape so the emotional affects aren't present, or aren't significant, or aren't "in view". But also like I said, I don't actually know if it's working; but I think it is. I know that before I do whatever it is, I feel things; afterwards, I feel them, but at a remove, so they're more like things I could feel, if I chose to. Does that all make any kind of sense, even a little bit?
- thenerdhead 5y ago
  I think the "take the emotion out" part really resonates. The idea of avoiding people who artificially "raise the stakes" is pretty interesting too, it seems like you have a sound process for this. It sounds like you might enjoy comedy theory as this is where I learned majority of what you're talking about. Specifically improv comedy.
  - RangerScience 5y ago
    Thank you, I've wanted to poke into comedy for awhile now! Didn't realize there was established theory, but that makes sense. Note that I do think "raising the stakes" is a valid explorative method - you can use it to make small details much more visible, for example - even it's not so valid as an argument. So it's not so much about avoiding people who do that, as much as it about zeroing out the impact of them doing that.