5 ms·

From my perspective, the faulty programming being pumped into the older white guys (my dad included) is not the content of the message, but the methods of how t

From my perspective, the faulty programming being pumped into the older white guys (my dad included) is not the content of the message, but the methods of how to manipulate ideas to transform them into other ideas, and transform those into actions. For example, in my dad it started out around age 67 as the "bird people", the "green weenies", or the "save the whales" people. How they were ruining everything, stopping the corporations (of which he has no part in), stopping some business or something, and how it was such a travesty that someone could be so bold as to place the convenience of humans over the lives of critters we eat for lunch and dinner every day. So far so good, but the disturbing part I found was in how he responds to a rebuttal or a devils advocate. Even if I were to go out of my way and say several times: "I am not opposing your conclusion that your conclusion is absolutely right, I am simply offering the opposing view as a way to zoom in on the issue". Even if I ought right tell him that he can't get angry when I tell him that I'm about to disagree with him for purpose of having a debate. It's like those words don't have any meaning anymore. The opposition to his view causes anger like pushing down on a lever causes the other end to go up. He was not always like this. The faulty programmed response is one where the fox viewer should immediately sabotage, attack and oppose anyone taking up the alternate view. If I offer up an argument that tries to track in toward when animal protection is bad, and when it is good, immediately the anger kicks in. How can you be in bed with Them? How have you given up your soul to the enemies? It's THEM vs US and we have to protect what little we have. He's set in his ways, he's found the answer to everything in life, and the only thing left undone in the universe is to conform the universe to those structures. I would bring in hypotheticals, like what if mankind grows to 200 billion people, should we focus more on stopping corporations? It doesn't matter, the argument is not one that sparks discussion, it's one that reveals the position of the enemy. Things may be offered up to resist the opposing view. But I'm not opposing, I'm trying to clarify. I think its the Anterior cingulate gyrus that is responsible for causing pain when you hold two contradictory ideas in mind at once. As we age, this ability to juggle opposing views is reduced to nothing. And brains become like hashmaps, all we can do is map our universe onto predefined outputs. It's a descent from there down to other serious psychological and neurological problems, and when the damage spreads to necessary system functions, the person dies.

logfromblammo 13y ago
I love playing Devil's Advocate. Perhaps I have been participating on the Internet for too long, but I tend to think that anyone who cannot maintain composure in the face of dissent needs to be trolled hard and often. A lot of the rhetorical arsenal that works well in person, like the array of ad hominem attacks used to emotionally undermine the opponent's credibility in the eyes of a specific audience, just don't fly when all that you know about the guy behind the ideas is maybe his IP address and whatever else he chooses to tell you about himself, such as the shape of his cutie mark, the number of medals of honor he has been awarded, or the number of blood rubies in his eyepatch. Appeals to authority come crashing to a halt with a flippant [citation needed]. Bottled talking points can be countered with the bottled rebuttals. Physical bullying is, of course, a practical impossibility. It's like being on the Internet forces you to actually have a cogent argument and defend it instead of relying on all the rhetorical crutches.
- sentientmachine 13y ago
  Trolling someone who suffers great pain when holding two opposing positions in mind, and blames the pain on the person bringing the opposing position is counter productive. It feels like trying to paint a 3d rotating gif onto a canvas with a large brush. You may be able to paint one frame fairly well, but it will not rotate. The spirit of the gif cannot be hosted on this canvas. You can host subsets of it, but not the entire spirit of the duality of ideas. The "dance around the issues like a butterfly" is not something you teach. And trying to teach it, you just make the other person angry or depressed they can't do what you do.

logfromblammo 13y ago

I love playing Devil's Advocate. Perhaps I have been participating on the Internet for too long, but I tend to think that anyone who cannot maintain composure in the face of dissent needs to be trolled hard and often. A lot of the rhetorical arsenal that works well in person, like the array of ad hominem attacks used to emotionally undermine the opponent's credibility in the eyes of a specific audience, just don't fly when all that you know about the guy behind the ideas is maybe his IP address and whatever else he chooses to tell you about himself, such as the shape of his cutie mark, the number of medals of honor he has been awarded, or the number of blood rubies in his eyepatch. Appeals to authority come crashing to a halt with a flippant [citation needed]. Bottled talking points can be countered with the bottled rebuttals. Physical bullying is, of course, a practical impossibility. It's like being on the Internet forces you to actually have a cogent argument and defend it instead of relying on all the rhetorical crutches.

sentientmachine 13y ago
Trolling someone who suffers great pain when holding two opposing positions in mind, and blames the pain on the person bringing the opposing position is counter productive. It feels like trying to paint a 3d rotating gif onto a canvas with a large brush. You may be able to paint one frame fairly well, but it will not rotate. The spirit of the gif cannot be hosted on this canvas. You can host subsets of it, but not the entire spirit of the duality of ideas. The "dance around the issues like a butterfly" is not something you teach. And trying to teach it, you just make the other person angry or depressed they can't do what you do.