7 ms·

Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expens

by neilk 3y ago

Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? Religion ticks all these boxes. In some contexts, so does patriotism, racism, worship of the military, publicly dumping cases of Bud Light, etc etc etc. In some ways, even disdain for education is a sort of expensive status display. The author is just describing what people of all kinds do. Yes, there are very silly beliefs which sometimes seduce educated elites. But that just makes them like everybody else. Also, the author is picking on some trendy ideas which are currently held by some of the elites, but so what? It would be truly surprising if a decade-plus of higher education and immersion in data and discourse did not produce a different consensus. The author offers no evidence that “defund the police” is an inherently absurd idea, no more than other formerly radical ideas like universal suffrage or abolishing slavery. In my town, the police absorb over 20% of the city budget, have doubled their spend in the past decade, and are unaccountable to the people. So I think it’s at least a topic worthy of interest!

cmcaleer 3y ago
Defund the police was an inherently absurd idea. It especially bothers me that proponents gave no reasonable explanation for what happens next after defunding[1] and many seemed to have no appetite for reform. Portland was kind of a poster child for this. Just look at how things have changed after their budget slash. - Police staffing levels are at critical levels [2] - Violent crime has shot way up in 2021 (along with the rest of the country) [3] - Things got so bad so quickly that in just a year millions of dollars were added back to the budget [4] - Things have continued to get worse relative to the rest of the country (which has seen crime drop back down) [5] When someone believes that there's semen in a beer, or they go to church, or they reply 'thank you for your service' to someone on the internet, that doesn't have real consequences for people. It might get spoken about in the media sometimes, but it's more just a side-show. When a stupid slogan ruined the best chance America had for wide police reform in decades, that does have consequences. Even more now, nobody (who should be a cop) in Portland wants to be a cop. Lower class communities that need more patrols don't have them. People don't feel safe in their houses. Who do you think took the brunt of this: those who chanted the slogan, or those in the huge minority ethnic groups in East Portland? And the most critical part about this: defund the police was treated with some amount of legitimacy by the media because it was their in group saying it. It should have been treated as the fringe belief it really was. Imagine if that airtime was used to campaign for reform. The real frustration of it all is that it was a zeitgeist that could have been an opportunity for real reform, and really making people want to be cops. Instead the moment was pissed away by a dumb slogan, rather than constructive debate. [1] Besides at best a hand-wavy 'community policing', which conjures up memories of that one Simpsons episode. [2] https://manhattan.institute/article/portlands-police-staffing-crisis https://manhattan.institute/article/portlands-police-staffin... [3] https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/figure-2-Shootings-in-Portland-January-2019-June-2023.png https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/fi... [4] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/portland-among-u-s-cities-adding-funds-to-police-departments https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/portland-among-u-s-citie... [5] https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2023/10/30/oregon-crime-data-statistics-violent-police-shortage https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2023/10/30/oregon-crime...
- gizmo 3y ago
  Your comment is pretty incendiary so I won't go through it point by point, but I'd like to emphasize the distinction between defunding (i.e. demilitarizing) and abolishing the police. Abolishing the police altogether is more of a utopian goal and very few people think society can function today without some kind of police. That said, the typical day-to-day work for a police officer doesn't require violence or the threat of violence, and the police force shouldn't behave like some kind of paramilitary unit.
  - RubberbandSoul 3y ago
    > defunding (i.e. demilitarizing) Redefining words in order to win arguments. Nice. Defunding means exactly that. I know this because that is what happened to the police forces that were defunded. Not entirely defunded, but they ended up with less money in their budget. > the typical day-to-day work for a police officer doesn't require violence or the threat of violence Says who? Are you a cop? Do you have cops in the family? Are you a law enforcement expert? Do you have any source or statistic whatsoever to back that up?
    - jyounker 3y ago
      > Redefining words in order to win arguments. Nice. Defunding means exactly > that. I know this because that is what happened to the police forces that > were defunded. Not entirely defunded, but they ended up with less money > in their budget. The poster is not redefining the term. The "Defund The Police" movement has very specific and very well documented goals: Use police only for law-enforcement, and use specialized responders for non-law enforcement interactions. For example, you send mental health specialists when someone is threatening suicide. This will reduce funding for the police, but it also reduces the police's workload. Is the movement poorly named? Yes. Is their goal to eliminate police? Absolutely not.
      - RubberbandSoul 3y ago
        There's a person waving a knife or gun around in public threatening to commit suicide. Now what? There's a person threatening suicide in public and then pulling out a knife or gun when the authorities show up. Now what? It's easy to be an armchair law enforcement expert and dream up scenarios where the good guys always wins. But reality doesn't conform to your utopian ideas.
newsclues 3y ago
Modern activists are religious cult followers. Environmentalism, anti racism are both good things taken over by a religious cult
lmm 3y ago
> The author is just describing what people of all kinds do. Yes, there are very silly beliefs which sometimes seduce educated elites. But that just makes them like everybody else. The idea that some of these beliefs are popular specifically because you have to be rich to afford them was a new insight to me when I first heard it. Maybe I should've come up with it myself from first principles, but I didn't.
- neilk 3y ago
  You should come up with any belief from first principles
  - joenot443 3y ago
    Really? A lot of my beliefs came from books, not from first principle inference.
    - neilk 3y ago
      typo! I meant “not”
jlos 3y ago
> Religion ticks all these boxes Regular participation in religious services is of the most beneficial activities a person can do for their mental health. I'm not saying this as a platitude, but as a well documented observed phenomenom [0][1]. To the point, I regularly see studies on benefits to those who regularly attend religious services and have never seen a study showing any adverse affects from it. That is not to say religion is an unalloyed good, far from it. But human communities are built around shared values and beliefs - and religions provide community, cohesion, and existential value that is not replicable in any other way. This kinda knee-jerk anti-religious sentiment is something I'd personally label a luxury belief that is largely damaging to the population as a whole. If you are sufficiently wealthy, you can probably fill some of the voids left by a lack of religion. But irreligiosity does not scale [0] https://psyche.co/ideas/why-religious-belief-provides-a-real-buffer-against-suicide-risk?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://psyche.co/ideas/why-religious-belief-provides-a-real... [1] https://www.nber.org/digest/oct05/religion-good-you https://www.nber.org/digest/oct05/religion-good-you
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- derivative7 3y ago
  Correlation does not imply causation
- XajniN 3y ago
  > But irreligiosity does not scale It does scale, only ~13% of the population of the Czech Republic are religious (affiliated) [1], and additional ~10% are not affiliated but consider themselves as believers [2]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220121163456/https://www.czso.cz/documents/142154812/176236044/sldb2021_pv_obyvatelstvo_podle_cirkvi_a_kraju.xlsx https://web.archive.org/web/20220121163456/https://www.czso.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic#Census_statistics,_1921–2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic...
- tenacious_tuna 3y ago
  I broadly agree with your statements that in general religion brings better mental health to a population and that there's a void of community in populations that aren't centered around religion. That's something I've personally felt, growing up in the Christian church and existing outside of it as an adult. I feel like saying there's never adverse effects or that "irreligiosity does not scale" misses the point in a few ways. First, there's pretty obvious harmful effects of religion: on the minor end, feeling ostracized if you happen to be different than what the stated beliefs say are correct, i.e. being queer in the Christian church and ostracized or driven to suicide for it. (Or even more fundamental issues, like taking issue with men being the head of households.) On the extreme end, you have crusades, pogroms, wars that engulf nations. Obviously relatively harmful. Or even on the individual scale, ritual killings of those who defy the religious order. I'd also posit that, again from the Christian faith, believing there's an all-powerful god who will sort out justice in the afterlife leads to negative outcomes here on Earth: believing you'll have everlasting life in heaven is of course going to limit your investment in systems here on Earth. I've had religious people cite (paraphrased) that "god will sort it all out" when I ask why they don't push to directly address more of the problems in the world. There's an abdication of responsibility I've found relatively common amongst my religious family on such issues. (Not universally, notably, but still.) Regardless, for those who have "lost faith" on epistemological grounds, what is the alternative to irreligiosity? I don't "choose" not to believe in the Christian (or any other) god, I'm unconvinced by the evidence put forward by their evangelists. I have no philosophically sound alternative to atheism unless and until I encounter convincing evidence to the contrary. I also worry about people "giving up" some of their philosophical beliefs just to belong to that kind of community. I've talked before [0] about how other more extreme communities (e.g. flat earth) aren't so much comprised of people who believe the premise of the group so much as people who _want to belong somewhere_. > But irreligiosity does not scale What's the alternative? The atheist segment of the population giving up portions of their ethical and philosophical autonomy to churches in exchange for a sense of community? Continuing to enable the hold of said autonomy over those who believe largely because they aren't exposed to other epistemologies because their community center discourages it? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068007
nec4b 3y ago
>> Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? I would consider those beliefs pretty harmless compared to what intelligentsia believes in, even after 100 millions of people died because of their social experiment in the 20th century.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > I would consider those beliefs pretty harmless compared to what intelligentsia believes in Is it that the beliefs are inherently less harmful or that poverty inherently involves less capacity to affect the material conditions of others? That is, are poor people's dangerous beliefs less dangerous than those of richer people because of their content, or simply because the people holding them are less powerful?
  - nec4b 3y ago
    I guess both, one hand they don't have the time to come up elaborate ideological concepts/fantasies and on the other hand they don't really have the power to change anything. If the most egregious thing you can be accused of is "publicly dumping cases of Bud Light", I don't think you are at the same level as the inventors and executioners of the cultural revolution for example.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > If the most egregious thing you can be accused of is "publicly dumping cases of Bud Light", I don't think you are at the same level as the inventors and executioners of the cultural revolution for example. The people doing that (and moreso, spreading the idea of it) largely are the intelligentsia (and largely not the proletarian intelligentsia), and while that’s one particular demonstrative act, its not by far the worst the faction doing it can be accused of. So I’m not so sure that works as an example on multiple levels.
      - 3y ago

by neilk 3y ago

cmcaleer 3y ago

Defund the police was an inherently absurd idea. It especially bothers me that proponents gave no reasonable explanation for what happens next after defunding[1] and many seemed to have no appetite for reform. Portland was kind of a poster child for this. Just look at how things have changed after their budget slash. - Police staffing levels are at critical levels [2] - Violent crime has shot way up in 2021 (along with the rest of the country) [3] - Things got so bad so quickly that in just a year millions of dollars were added back to the budget [4] - Things have continued to get worse relative to the rest of the country (which has seen crime drop back down) [5] When someone believes that there's semen in a beer, or they go to church, or they reply 'thank you for your service' to someone on the internet, that doesn't have real consequences for people. It might get spoken about in the media sometimes, but it's more just a side-show. When a stupid slogan ruined the best chance America had for wide police reform in decades, that does have consequences. Even more now, nobody (who should be a cop) in Portland wants to be a cop. Lower class communities that need more patrols don't have them. People don't feel safe in their houses. Who do you think took the brunt of this: those who chanted the slogan, or those in the huge minority ethnic groups in East Portland? And the most critical part about this: defund the police was treated with some amount of legitimacy by the media because it was their in group saying it. It should have been treated as the fringe belief it really was. Imagine if that airtime was used to campaign for reform. The real frustration of it all is that it was a zeitgeist that could have been an opportunity for real reform, and really making people want to be cops. Instead the moment was pissed away by a dumb slogan, rather than constructive debate. [1] Besides at best a hand-wavy 'community policing', which conjures up memories of that one Simpsons episode. [2] https://manhattan.institute/article/portlands-police-staffing-crisis https://manhattan.institute/article/portlands-police-staffin... [3] https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/figure-2-Shootings-in-Portland-January-2019-June-2023.png https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/fi... [4] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/portland-among-u-s-cities-adding-funds-to-police-departments https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/portland-among-u-s-citie... [5] https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2023/10/30/oregon-crime-data-statistics-violent-police-shortage https://www.axios.com/local/portland/2023/10/30/oregon-crime...

gizmo 3y ago
Your comment is pretty incendiary so I won't go through it point by point, but I'd like to emphasize the distinction between defunding (i.e. demilitarizing) and abolishing the police. Abolishing the police altogether is more of a utopian goal and very few people think society can function today without some kind of police. That said, the typical day-to-day work for a police officer doesn't require violence or the threat of violence, and the police force shouldn't behave like some kind of paramilitary unit.
- RubberbandSoul 3y ago
  > defunding (i.e. demilitarizing) Redefining words in order to win arguments. Nice. Defunding means exactly that. I know this because that is what happened to the police forces that were defunded. Not entirely defunded, but they ended up with less money in their budget. > the typical day-to-day work for a police officer doesn't require violence or the threat of violence Says who? Are you a cop? Do you have cops in the family? Are you a law enforcement expert? Do you have any source or statistic whatsoever to back that up?
  - jyounker 3y ago
    > Redefining words in order to win arguments. Nice. Defunding means exactly > that. I know this because that is what happened to the police forces that > were defunded. Not entirely defunded, but they ended up with less money > in their budget. The poster is not redefining the term. The "Defund The Police" movement has very specific and very well documented goals: Use police only for law-enforcement, and use specialized responders for non-law enforcement interactions. For example, you send mental health specialists when someone is threatening suicide. This will reduce funding for the police, but it also reduces the police's workload. Is the movement poorly named? Yes. Is their goal to eliminate police? Absolutely not.
    - RubberbandSoul 3y ago
      There's a person waving a knife or gun around in public threatening to commit suicide. Now what? There's a person threatening suicide in public and then pulling out a knife or gun when the authorities show up. Now what? It's easy to be an armchair law enforcement expert and dream up scenarios where the good guys always wins. But reality doesn't conform to your utopian ideas.

newsclues 3y ago

Modern activists are religious cult followers. Environmentalism, anti racism are both good things taken over by a religious cult

lmm 3y ago

> The author is just describing what people of all kinds do. Yes, there are very silly beliefs which sometimes seduce educated elites. But that just makes them like everybody else. The idea that some of these beliefs are popular specifically because you have to be rich to afford them was a new insight to me when I first heard it. Maybe I should've come up with it myself from first principles, but I didn't.

neilk 3y ago
You should come up with any belief from first principles
- joenot443 3y ago
  Really? A lot of my beliefs came from books, not from first principle inference.
  - neilk 3y ago
    typo! I meant “not”

jlos 3y ago

> Religion ticks all these boxes Regular participation in religious services is of the most beneficial activities a person can do for their mental health. I'm not saying this as a platitude, but as a well documented observed phenomenom [0][1]. To the point, I regularly see studies on benefits to those who regularly attend religious services and have never seen a study showing any adverse affects from it. That is not to say religion is an unalloyed good, far from it. But human communities are built around shared values and beliefs - and religions provide community, cohesion, and existential value that is not replicable in any other way. This kinda knee-jerk anti-religious sentiment is something I'd personally label a luxury belief that is largely damaging to the population as a whole. If you are sufficiently wealthy, you can probably fill some of the voids left by a lack of religion. But irreligiosity does not scale [0] https://psyche.co/ideas/why-religious-belief-provides-a-real-buffer-against-suicide-risk?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email https://psyche.co/ideas/why-religious-belief-provides-a-real... [1] https://www.nber.org/digest/oct05/religion-good-you https://www.nber.org/digest/oct05/religion-good-you

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
derivative7 3y ago
Correlation does not imply causation
XajniN 3y ago
> But irreligiosity does not scale It does scale, only ~13% of the population of the Czech Republic are religious (affiliated) [1], and additional ~10% are not affiliated but consider themselves as believers [2]. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220121163456/https://www.czso.cz/documents/142154812/176236044/sldb2021_pv_obyvatelstvo_podle_cirkvi_a_kraju.xlsx https://web.archive.org/web/20220121163456/https://www.czso.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic#Census_statistics,_1921–2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Czech_Republic...
tenacious_tuna 3y ago
I broadly agree with your statements that in general religion brings better mental health to a population and that there's a void of community in populations that aren't centered around religion. That's something I've personally felt, growing up in the Christian church and existing outside of it as an adult. I feel like saying there's never adverse effects or that "irreligiosity does not scale" misses the point in a few ways. First, there's pretty obvious harmful effects of religion: on the minor end, feeling ostracized if you happen to be different than what the stated beliefs say are correct, i.e. being queer in the Christian church and ostracized or driven to suicide for it. (Or even more fundamental issues, like taking issue with men being the head of households.) On the extreme end, you have crusades, pogroms, wars that engulf nations. Obviously relatively harmful. Or even on the individual scale, ritual killings of those who defy the religious order. I'd also posit that, again from the Christian faith, believing there's an all-powerful god who will sort out justice in the afterlife leads to negative outcomes here on Earth: believing you'll have everlasting life in heaven is of course going to limit your investment in systems here on Earth. I've had religious people cite (paraphrased) that "god will sort it all out" when I ask why they don't push to directly address more of the problems in the world. There's an abdication of responsibility I've found relatively common amongst my religious family on such issues. (Not universally, notably, but still.) Regardless, for those who have "lost faith" on epistemological grounds, what is the alternative to irreligiosity? I don't "choose" not to believe in the Christian (or any other) god, I'm unconvinced by the evidence put forward by their evangelists. I have no philosophically sound alternative to atheism unless and until I encounter convincing evidence to the contrary. I also worry about people "giving up" some of their philosophical beliefs just to belong to that kind of community. I've talked before [0] about how other more extreme communities (e.g. flat earth) aren't so much comprised of people who believe the premise of the group so much as people who _want to belong somewhere_. > But irreligiosity does not scale What's the alternative? The atheist segment of the population giving up portions of their ethical and philosophical autonomy to churches in exchange for a sense of community? Continuing to enable the hold of said autonomy over those who believe largely because they aren't exposed to other epistemologies because their community center discourages it? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068007 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37068007

nec4b 3y ago

>> Let’s consider the contrary. Do poor people sometimes hold highly questionable beliefs, promulgated by institutions, and does professing these beliefs in expensive and flamboyant ways confer status? I would consider those beliefs pretty harmless compared to what intelligentsia believes in, even after 100 millions of people died because of their social experiment in the 20th century.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> I would consider those beliefs pretty harmless compared to what intelligentsia believes in Is it that the beliefs are inherently less harmful or that poverty inherently involves less capacity to affect the material conditions of others? That is, are poor people's dangerous beliefs less dangerous than those of richer people because of their content, or simply because the people holding them are less powerful?
- nec4b 3y ago
  I guess both, one hand they don't have the time to come up elaborate ideological concepts/fantasies and on the other hand they don't really have the power to change anything. If the most egregious thing you can be accused of is "publicly dumping cases of Bud Light", I don't think you are at the same level as the inventors and executioners of the cultural revolution for example.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > If the most egregious thing you can be accused of is "publicly dumping cases of Bud Light", I don't think you are at the same level as the inventors and executioners of the cultural revolution for example. The people doing that (and moreso, spreading the idea of it) largely are the intelligentsia (and largely not the proletarian intelligentsia), and while that’s one particular demonstrative act, its not by far the worst the faction doing it can be accused of. So I’m not so sure that works as an example on multiple levels.
    - 3y ago