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Plus whenever powerful people are involved they get treated as these great masterminds, always conspiring, and it’s a given there’s more to the story than the p
by dmix 2y ago
Plus whenever powerful people are involved they get treated as these great masterminds, always conspiring, and it’s a given there’s more to the story than the plebs will never know about. So with that assumption people’s minds start filling in the blanks with all the things that are REALLY happening behind the scenes and anyone who doesn’t assume the same is naive at how the powerful operate (just look at Twitter discourse for anything related to the British monarchy).
IRL the vast majority of the time they are just flawed humans like the rest of us. Sometimes people take on more responsibilities in life than they can realistically handle. And everyone needs to be challenged and questioned whether they’re being honest with themselves at various points in their lives.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoYeah, there is a deep human drive to both form opinions on topics and fit them to narratives. Most people are deeply uncomfortable admitting that they don't know, cant know, or will never know something. As a result, random people on the street form strong opinions on everything, from Sama's psychology and internal narrative to nuclear reactor design. It is wildly delusional when you think about it.
- theGnuMe 2y agoThis is self-referential right?
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI think everyone is prone to it. Personally, i've been trying to be more selective about what I form opinions and stake claims about.
- theGnuMe 2y agoI’m highlighting the irony of your first comment. It’d make a great tweet.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoCan you explain the irony?
- theGnuMe 2y agoThe comment (what I said would make a great tweet) is autological (as in it defines itself). The intrinsic irony is that the author is also unaware therefore proving its own example. The reader who takes it at face value would be similarly unaware. In other words, the comment is a construct of that definition; And a demonstration of the fallacy of opinion.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI Think it is only ironic or autological if it is taken in terms of absolutes, (all opinions being equal), but I see where you are coming from.
- theGnuMe 2y agoI think there’s a third level to it as well. It is also a true statement which is a contradiction of itself. Logically then it is not self-consistent which also makes it logical. Is the only way out is to assert as you do that some opinions are less valid than others? I don’t think that resolves the paradox. Philosophers must have studied this... I understand that in math we have Gödel incompleteness which is an axiomatic version of a similar argument.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoI dont know anything about Gödel incompleteness, but of course some opinions are more and less "valid" than others. Some topics are also closer or more distant to the individual. There is no reason to assume equality. I can have a valid , well informed, and even actionable opinion about what my wife would like for dinner. Inversely, my opinions on what happened behind closed doors between PG and SamA in 2019 isnt informed, actionable, or generally useful. To the extent my post could be seen as critical of opinions(which is I think where you draw the irony from), it wasnt critical of holding just any opinion, but holding a certain class of poorly formed and completely unnecessary opinions. From the outside you might think that this itself is useless navel-gazing, but I have found it to be actionable. It has helped me to question some of my own compulsive behaviors.