How are you attempting to separate preferences and best interests, outcome assessments, etc.? What's the distinction you attempt?

(I actually know/have known people who have swam with sharks, by the way, including Ron and Valerie Taylor . . .) — Terrapin Station

I don't know who they are. But I think you know what I'm getting at. The analogy doesn't have to be perfect.

Sure, so how are you attempting to separate preferences and best interests, outcome assessments, etc.? What's the distinction you attempt?

Here's the Wikipedia entry on 'demagogue':

A demagogue /ˈdɛməɡɒɡ/ (from Greek δημαγωγός, a popular leader, a leader of a mob, from δῆμος, people, populace, the commons + ἀγωγός leading, leader)[1] or rabble-rouser is a leader in a democracy who gains popularity by exploiting prejudice and ignorance among the common people, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation.[1][2][3][4] Demagogues have usually advocated immediate, violent action to address a national crisis while accusing moderate and thoughtful opponents of weakness or disloyalty. Demagogues violate established rules of political conduct; most who were elected to high office changed their democracy into some form of dictatorship.

Demagogues have appeared in democracies since ancient Athens. They exploit a fundamental weakness in democracy: because ultimate power is held by the people, nothing stops the people from giving that power to someone who appeals to the lowest common denominator of a large segment of the population.

Right on the mark. Note the observation about 'changing democracy into dictatorship'.

Sure, so how are you attempting to separate preferences and best interests, outcome assessments, etc.? What's the distinction you attempt? — Terrapin Station

Well, for starters, they each have distinct and inequivalent meanings.

Moreover, if it is possible for one's best interests to not always correspond to one's preferences, then they are separate. And if that specific knowledge can be obtained, then it can be used to differentiate between the one and the other.

The finer details aren't as important, since pointing to cases like the one in my analogy is sufficient to show that making decisions based on preference with disregard to what is in one's best interest can lead to detrimental consequences. The only way out of that one is to bite a bullet that most people wouldn't bite for good reason.

The question of what is in one's best interests, and the question of what is the best or worse outcome, are secondary questions, and open to debate. There is strong intuitive appeal in some cases, but perhaps the strongest arguments are based on using the person's own account of what is in their interests, and then comparing that with a decision which is counterproductive to those interests, as can be done in your case of voting for Trump.

I am not enthusiastic about a Trump win but I don't see it as a sign of the apocalypse. I hope that above all else, every pollster, media station, and complacent liberal who is 'surprised' right now takes a long hard look at themselves, and realizes 'I am completely out of touch with reality, with my country, and the desires of the people, and have little conception of the way that people think or what they value.'

That's the lesson to be learned from this. There are a lot of people who need to let sink in just how wrong they were. The media stations are all reporting that nobody saw it coming.' Yes, they did. You didn't see it coming. Because you are deeply, deeply deluded and incompetent.

I see it the opposite. The television told us all one thing, and reality smashed it.

Well, for starters, they each have distinct and inequivalent meanings. — Sapientia

Which I'm challenging analyzes to anything coherent.

Moreover, if it is possible for one's best interests to not always correspond to one's preferences, — Sapientia

Can you support how that would be possible? That would be a step in suggesting a coherent distinction.

Can you support how that would be possible? That would be a step in suggesting a coherent distinction. — Terrapin Station

I can raise a reductio ad absurdum against the alternative. If it isn't, then examples like the one that I provided wouldn't make any sense. But they clearly do. There are numerous and clearcut cases of this. You yourself have no doubt found this out the hard way through experience, just like the rest of us - although I wouldn't be surprised if you deny this, like in our previous discussion, where you seemed to prioritise consistency at the expense of plausibility.

Right on the mark. Note the observation about 'changing democracy into dictatorship'. — Wayfarer

That's the polite way of saying we've merely traded one mob rule with more of a pretense of democracy for one that has fewer illusions. Its a rude awakening for many of the democrats and republicans alike, but at least its more honest. It is what the I-Ching describes as a possible "turning point". Hitler's Nazi Germany had its ugly side, but that is precisely what the German people needed to come to the realization of after the war, that they could not continue on with business as usual constantly going to war with their neighbors and supporting their traditional extreme authoritarian culture and bigotry.

It doesn't make any sense that something being "in the best interest" of someone isn't (a) a subjective judgment of an individual, and (b) about their preferences.

I'm challening you to make sense of it not being (a) or (b).

Saying "it clearly makes sense" isn't any sort of philosophical support.

So the real question now is do we call it Califexit or Exitornia, apparently!

I see Trump as 'the triumph of television'. People can't differentiate reality and TV; when Trump waves his arms and says he's going to make America great, they don't ask how are you going to do that? They just cheer and wave.

He's a demagogue, pure and simple.

Yet what they saw on TV was literally just him talking. And then they went to his rallies and saw him in person.

The people who can't distinguish between media and reality are those who took anything CNN, Fox, or MSNBC said seriously for a second.

I am not enthusiastic about a Trump win but I don't see it as a sign of the apocalypse. I hope that above all else, every pollster, media station, and complacent liberal who is 'surprised' right now takes a long hard look at themselves, and realizes 'I am completely out of touch with reality, with my country, and the desires of the people, and have little conception of the way that people think or what they value.' — The Great Whatever

Well, given that Clinton seems to have won the popular vote I don't think it right to say that they're completely out of touch. They just underestimated Trump's support (or at least its geography).

But, you know, with only a 55.6% turn out, it's even more questionable.

They weren't predicting the popular vote. They were predicting the election.

I am not enthusiastic about a Trump win but I don't see it as a sign of the apocalypse. I hope that above all else, every pollster, media station, and complacent liberal who is 'surprised' right now takes a long hard look at themselves, and realizes 'I am completely out of touch with reality, with my country, and the desires of the people, and have little conception of the way that people think or what they value.'

That's the lesson to be learned from this. There are a lot of people who need to let sink in just how wrong they were. The media stations are all reporting that nobody saw it coming.' Yes, they did. You didn't see it coming. Because you are deeply, deeply deluded and incompetent.

Yeah, I'm pretty upset with the results, but I agree with this 100% (There were a few prescient voices among liberals, but they were drowned out by the consensus of their peers)

It doesn't make any sense that something being "in the best interest" of someone isn't (a) a subjective judgment of an individual, and (b) about their preferences.

I'm challening you to make sense of it not being (a) or (b). — Terrapin Station

My original point was that swimming with sharks, as opposed to not swimming with sharks, for example, might not be in one's best interests. And that, if it isn't, then swimming with sharks would be a worse outcome than not swimming with sharks. And that swimming with sharks because one likes sharks wouldn't change that. And that swimming with sharks for that reason would therefore be a poor reason for deciding to swim with sharks.

Whether or not not swimming with sharks being in one's best interests is (a) a subjective judgment of an individual, and (b) about their preferences, is irrelevant to my original point, and seems to have been a red herring from the start. What's your point? What if it is?

Saying "it clearly makes sense" isn't any sort of philosophical support. — Terrapin Station

That it wouldn't make sense is a consequence of your position, which, when the evidence suggests otherwise, can indeed be used as part of an argument against your position.

Would you like me to elaborate on why it wouldn't make sense?

The people shocked at Trump's Latino support really don't get it either. Have they talked to latinos? Beyond asking them stock questions for 15 minutes at a time before retreating to the suburbs? I spent the summer of 2015 in D.C., with nothing to do, wandering around (I took two months from work for personal reasons) and ended up speaking to whole lot of immigrants. Most identify as hard-working, enterprising individuals who, like anyone who is part of a large, diverse population harbor resentments toward many within that population, those they see as giving the whole group a bad name. So though I don't like the rhetoric myself, all that xenophobic stuff about keeping 'the bad ones out' can actually easily resonate with an immigrant population. "the bad ones" are always someone other than myself, the ones making it harder for me to be successful and respected.

What I'd like is for you to give the specific characterization of the two terms that makes a distinction between them coherent.

I was referring to your claim about them being "out of touch with the desires of the people, and hav[ing] little conception of the way that people think or what they value".

Another thing that bothers me is that my social circle (what little there is) is mostly academics, and academics have a smokescreen in front of them because they are largely cosmopolitan and rootless, having few ties to the country and/or state in which they work, either because they are originally foreigners, and almost always were at least born somewhere else entirely in the country, and even if they did grow up in the area know in the back of their minds that their work can and will taken them anywhere in the western world. Most people do not live like this. They do not go to conferences in Barcelona. They do not work in a discipline that is spread across several prestigious institutions none of which are in driving distance of each other. Their fortunes rise and fall with the land they live in, and they are tied to that land in a way academics are not. They do not have the luxury of making every election about hypersensitive, hysterical moralizing and tertiary social issues largely orthogonal to the presidency. Most people care about where they live more than academics do. The American heartland will never share academia's values, and that does not make them 'stupid' (code for 'poor').

Most identify as hard-working, enterprising individuals who, like any large, diverse population harbor resentments toward many within that population, those they see as giving the whole groups a bad name. — csalisbury

Yeah, particularly people who came to the country legally and who worked hard to change their status to permanent resident and then citizen, who worked hard above the table to make money to pay for the things they own, etc., tend to resent immigrants whom they see as being given a free pass--having their status changed just because they snuck into the country, went into the underground economy, maybe received other government assistance, etc.

it is in the interests of large corporations and the fattest of fat cats — Sapientia

This isn't entirely true. Corporations don't like him. They didn't give much to his campaign (whereas loads of them donated to Hillary) and they hate his trade protectionism. Look at the markets today, too. They will rebound, but there was real uncertainty about his presidency coming into the day.

By and large, the delusion does run that deep. Liberals have a serious problem with conceiving of minorities as people with opinions. And I say this because as of now liberalism is still a fundamentally white worldview with deep historical ties to racial guilt and messiah complexes.

One last thing re: liberals polling and interviewing minorities (or poor whites.) There's often a slightly bullying aspect to it. The undertone is you do realize how bad this person is for you (you whom I'm addressing as basically just a faceless representative of a demographic). X said Y - can you believe that? - as someone who should be offended by that, are you offended by that?

People are more likely to tell you what you want to hear if they think you're publically pressuring them, just to make you happy and go away.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty liberal myself, but it's hard not to see this dynamic at play.

It's the same with 'working white class people voting against their own interests.' As soon as the tides turn, it's always 'I can't believe these rednecks' [totally not a racial slur btw] have votes that count as much as mine.' And don't even get me started on Uncle Tomming.



Universities are heinous.

Nailed it.

Say goodbye to climate change action, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the bans on drilling and mining in sensitive wildlife areas. Trump is firmly in bed with Big Oil, it's back to the future as far as they're concerned.

Just look at the smug condescension of those Berkeley hipsters, haha. I encounter that soft bigotry of low expectations in academia too.