if people are biased (and Sachs clearly is) — Jabberwock

Clearly, how? What evidence do you have of his bias?

I did not say that he said that he reported him inaccurately, I wrote that he reported him inaccurately. — Jabberwock

In your opinion.

Christ! what is happening to people. Are you really so egotistical that you cannot even conceive of the idea of being wrong? Is everything you happen to think just a 'fact' to you?

The New Yorker article is a good jumping off point from which I quoted heavily. — schopenhauer1

No it isn't. A newspaper article isn't a source in an attempt to undermine an entire academic field of enquiry - not even close.

You can trash the sources, but then you are simply circling the topic and not engaging it. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. How is that any different from you trashing all the papers, books and articles produced in favour of evolutionary psychology? It's a complex topic, one which has been wrangled over by some very dedicated professionals. It's perfectly possible they're all deluded (it happens), but, as I'm sure you've heard, we generally hold that extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. Declaring an entire field's worth of researchers to be deluded needs more than a newspaper article.

Observation and testing doesn't prove it is right. — schopenhauer1

My point was that your argument relied on them. You could not have written the post without those assumptions being the case, so if you say "we can't possibly know" then your argument falls down. You've made assumptions about what is 'human nature' and you've used those assumptions to present an argument throwing doubt on the ability of scientists to conduct research into human nature. So how did you do that research if they can't?

Evolutionary psychology is flawed. It's flawed by methodological issues which are mainly to do with experimental design and statistical analysis, some of which your later citations touch on.

What it's not flawed by (and no serious academic has accused it of) is a general inability to tell the difference between human nature and culture at all levels, which is what you'd need to further your "sex drive isn't biological in humans" project. No one is seriously suggesting such a thing, and you're clutching at straws trying to connect the two.

The effects of the endocrine system on behaviour are pretty easy to document, study, and draw relatively robust conclusions from and I don't know of a single academic in the field who questions that.

Corrective rather than constructive, and the consistency being enforced is that of the narrative your current model is organized around, rather than "the way the world really is" or something. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, that's the idea. Our lower order modelling cortices spit out all sorts of junk all the time, white noise random synapse firing, and it's all filtered out by the same mechanism, which is a higher order model saying "that doesn't sound very likely - it's not what I'm expecting". So it's all corrective to expectations until something breaks, the noise overwhelms the suppressive feedback (literally overwhelms, as in more signals), or as wonderer put it...

there can be sudden epiphanies, where a new paradigm 'snaps into focus' — wonderer1

...then the higher order model is expecting the noise (or what was noise) and starts suppressing anything which isn't it.

Some of that seems almost obviously true — Srap Tasmaner

Hey! A lot of hard work went into that!

unless the consistency I enforce (with that narrative) is also handmade and idiosyncratic, logic is still universal.

We don't have to go straight there. One of the things Joshs talks about is paradigm or culture as the constraints on what counts as evidence. You could see something like that operating at the layer we were describing here as the corrective constraints. — Srap Tasmaner

That's right. I've talked before about narratives being 'picked off the shelf' from the available narratives. Not that we can't make up our own, it's just easier to pick the available ones (less chance of surprise). Logic is just one such narrative model of how our various mid level cortices put data together and churn out belief states (tendencies to act as if). In fact I think Logic is even too broad to be a single narrative, it's more like a collection. I don't think we ever literally apply the rules, it's more a general feel for what might not work if we looked at it too hard.

That said, I don think there's scope for some hard-wired suppressive feedback models. There's evidence from infant studies of a few such mechanisms for basic physics, so I don't see any reason why there shouldn't be any for logic, but I expect they'd be limited as the physics ones are and they'd seem far more useful to have the full set hardwired in.

we're striving to conform to rules we ourselves have made and can take a hand in remaking and revising. All that's needed is a mechanism for generalizing and some motivation to undertake such a project. (And I swear to god this sounds almost like the old empiricist theory of generalizing from experience.) — Srap Tasmaner

I think, if I'm honest, my gut feeling is that we've got the category 'logic' wrong. I get what you're pointing at here and I think it's right, we can generalise some of this from experience (the light is never both on and off, so data suggesting it is can be suppressed on the basis of empirical priors, not the law of non-contradiction). It's just that I think habits of thinking, ways we expect our systems to output results, are also cultural. I think the category 'logic' may be just too broad and in cognitive psychology terms isn't a 'natural kind' at all, but rather two (or three) completely separate processes, which involve both sensory data, and interoceptive modelling.

The facts remains that the report that the peace deal was almost ready and it was blocked by the US is from a guy who before publicly claimed it is all the US fault and that the only way out is by peace negotiations. — Jabberwock

Right. So you're back so claiming that if people's theories are consistent that's grounds for suspicion.

the only source he actually did name he reported somewhat inaccurately — Jabberwock

Can you cite where he says he reported him inaccurately?

(Let's speed this section up. No. You can't cite where he says he reported him somewhat inaccurately because he don't think he did. You do. You have difference of opinion on the matter. Citing your own opinion isn't evidence against someone else's is it?)

effrey Sachs is an economist, actually. And has written about povetry. And now is rather famous for his pro-Russian and pro-Chinese views. — ssu

What do you mean "actually"? I haven't said he isn't any of those things.

the reality — ssu

Seriously, if you're just going to preface everything you say with "the reality...2 there's little point in discussing anything with you. You're' not the fucking Oracle of Delphi, you haven't got God-like insight into 'reality'. People disagree. If you're not prepared to accept disagreement, then what the fuck are you doing on a discussion site? Start a blog.

OK, that's a good question. I don't think we're at that level. The only people I've known who take intersectionality seriously are people who have tried to put it into practice in building alliances between organizations, and to be at a level of commitment of organizing people you kind of already have to be a believer at some level. You have to have conviction from something or you'd go off to do something else. — Moliere

That makes sense. If the argument is 'intersectionality hasn't really been implemented', I could quite happily substitute that for 'intersectionality has failed'. I'm certainly not in a position to dispute it, being out of the loop at that level now.

I can certainly acknowledge the self-righteousness that's arisen. For that I think it's a mixture of things, but often times when people are disagreeing so harshly it's either because the stakes are high and we have no power or the stakes are incredibly low and all that's at issue is some personal beef. I'm going with the first explanation as a guess. — Moliere

True, but, when have the stakes been lower?

I think to explain the change you need to add in what you were talking about earlier, the low cost of the key form of verbal action. It's too cheap to take actions that's too weak to work.

But I remain suspicious. This all does sound like a reasonable explanation in terms of human nature, unforeseen consequences of new tech, etc. but are we really saying that it all just so happens to act to remove meaningful opposition to capital? Did they just get lucky?

I'm not saying these are an honest toil in the service of equality. I'm directly answering your question. I don't think it's the fault of intersectionality, or Feminism, if that's what you're driving at. — Moliere

That's fair enough. So let me put it the other way round. If all that I've just alluded to is the "low cost propaganda", but intersectional approaches are intact, then where are they, on the ground? Which campaign approaches are not "low cost propaganda"? Which have sprung from the loins of the intersectional analysis?

Or is it more like...

Would that the left had enough power that our quibbles over intersectionality had any impact on society's "melting into air". We just don't. — fdrake

...for you too?

Why is thinking the US are to blame a 'strong' view, but thinking they are not to blame not? Views are surely either more or less well thought out and evidenced. Since you're not claiming to be either smarter than, nor better informed than Jeffrey Sachs, you can't raise a justified criticism of either.

What about that view makes it 'stronger' than, say, the view of David Frum?

s the material conditions, only the material is tracked through the value form rather than through mass. People interact on the internet differently than they do in meat-space. But as the media grew -- as measured through the value form, again -- so our ways of interacting on the regular changed up to and including meat-space. — Moliere

That's very interesting, I can totally see how it could work that way. So, my question is what's the product? What is the result of this activity, this process? What does it output?

You say...

self-righteous moralism — Moliere

... no argument there. And...

low-cost propaganda set up with people ready to spread it like a virus. — Moliere

... again, I've no dispute with you on that score.

So where is all this "low-cost propaganda"? If it's not Helen Mirren's speech, if it's not the bulk of #MeToo posts, if it's not the BLM knee-bending, or the the drag queen reading groups....

If we're to say all that is honest toil in the service of equality, then what's left to be your "low-cost propaganda"?

I am you trolling nitwit. Read my other posts. — schopenhauer1

I apolgise, I must have missed it. Which of the sources have you tackled? I've scanned back through the posts but can't see a reference.

But is it amenable to science is the question. — schopenhauer1

Hence the four quotes I selected from your OP. All are theories about human nature. Presumably you're not claiming you were born with that knowledge (that would automatically undermine your position about cultural acquisition), nor, I assume, are you claiming you acquired it by divine revelation?

So how did you come by it? Observation, and testing.

So you've answered your own question.

Jeffrey Sachs from the very beginning of the conflict blamed it on the US and claimed that the only reason for the war is the NATO expansion. Also, he strongly advised for 'territory for peace' scheme even before the talks collapsed. — Jabberwock

And...?

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

If an intelligent, well informed person thought from the very beginning of the conflict the US were to blame, then it's plausible that indeed from very beginning of the conflict the US were to blame. Unless you've got something which makes you smarter or better informed than Jeffrey Sachs, then you have to accept his position as plausible.

Likewise, if an intelligent, well informed person thought the only reason for the war is the NATO expansion, then it's plausible that indeed the only reason for the war is the NATO expansion. Unless you've got something which makes you smarter or better informed than Jeffrey Sachs, then you have to accept his position as plausible.

So given those two plausible positions, how does being consistent with them make a third position suspect?

You're basically arguing that is suspicious when people's theories are consistent.

Is this roughly where you are? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. Roughly.

I tend to frame the effect of reason in terms effects on our priors, so reasoning is still post hoc, but has an effect. Basically, if the process of reasoning (which is effectively predictive modeling of our own thinking process), flags up a part of the process that doesn't fit the narrative, it'll send suppressive constraints down to that part to filter out the 'crazy' answers that don't fit.

But all this is after the first crazy thought.

What I'm convinced doesn't happen (contrary to Kahneman, I think - long time since I've read him) is any cognitive hacking in real time. I can see how it might cash out like that on a human scale (one decision at a time), but at a deeper neurological scale, my commitments to an active inference model of cognition don't allow for such an intervention. We only get to improve for next time.

Right...

So you think was a good read, whilst also not lauding it?

And you think accusations of antisemitism are justified whilst also remaining charitably agnostic about it?

Got it.

And you are better than Naftali Bennett because? — neomac

I'm not claiming either he or you are factually wrong though, am I?

I'm taking issue with @ssu's response which frames his opinion as being what "really" happened, and what "in fact..." is the case.

Jeffrey Sachs is neither an idiot, nor a liar, so clearly there is room for more than one legitimate interpretation of the facts.

I'm quite happy to accept more than one legitimate interpretation and have only ever asked for reasons why people prefer one over the other. My dispute here is entirely over this utterly ludicrous sense of self-righteous aggrandisement that seems to promote this attitude that there's only one obviously 'true' theory and all others must be deliberately misleading for some insinuated goal.

Nafatali Bennett's claim is not about why "Then, one day, the Ukrainians [stopped the negotiations]."
but about why his mediation at the beginning of the war was stopped. — neomac

And you know better than Jeffrey Sachs because...?

All I'm addressing is, if you want to engage in such debates, then your argument better not contradict itself, or it won't be taken seriously or be of any use to anyone. — Janus


Maybe. I think Isaac would agree with that -- rules of the game we play here. — Srap Tasmaner

Partially, yes. I'd take issue with @Janus's use of "taken seriously", and "be of any use to anyone". Both of these responses are both possible and regularly seen consequent to arguments which are self-contradictory. So the claim is just not true on it's face. People do take contradictory arguments seriously and many find them useful - presumably. As you say...

the accused party universally denies that they have done so, and then there's a back and forth about whether what they said really is a contradiction or not. — Srap Tasmaner

... so we can safely assume that, in posting, they take this self-contradictory argument seriously (let's assume the interlocutor is right here), and we can (less safely perhaps) assume they find it useful.

An attempt not to self-contradict, is part of the rules, and that, I think, is why we don't even have a grammar covering "P and ~P", it fails off the bat. But beyond that, actual self-contradiction doesn't seem to be much of a problem because up until the point it's 'uncovered' things seemed to be going along perfectly well for the party holding that belief set.

Which raises the question of what the importance of the LNC actually is, apart from as a rule in a game.

If it's to give us better belief sets (where 'better' here could be any measure for now), then we're putting the cart before the horse in our argumentation methodology, we should be saying "look how successful my belief sets are - that proves they cannot be self-contradictory", forget logic - point and counter-point should be various successes and failures in our personal lives!

But we don't. We think it the other way round, we think that one ought hold a belief set which adheres to these argumentative rules regardless of whether it's useful or not. As if there were some nobility to doing so. Perhaps we'll be rewarded by God...?

But, as you said earlier (I've been reading along), the reality of our thought doesn't adhere to these argumentative rules anyway. We are only capable of thinking A then ~A, we are never capable of thinking A and ~A, but not because of logical contradiction - rather because of a physical limit on the construction of propositional thoughts. We can't think A and B either, only A then B.

So where does that leave argument? It can point to a contradiction which a) isn't ever really there in our thoughts, and b) is claiming a flaw which can more easily be demonstrated than argued anyway and if not demonstrable, doesn't seem to be a problem.

the reality... — ssu

And you know better than Jeffrey Sachs because...?

it seems worth pointing out that everyone has one, but some are based on looking into the evidence and some aren't. — wonderer1

Yes, that's sort of what I was trying to get at. No matter how bad our methodology is, it can't be abandoned unlike, say the study of black holes prior to the equipment needed to measure them. In the latter case we could say, "oh well, we'll never know" and go about our daily lives ignoring the issue. In the case of psychology, that's not an option, we have psychological theories, we act on them every day, our political policies are built on them. Even a modicum of slightly scientific analysis is better than none. a 1% replication rate is 1% more certainty than we had before.

We are fantastically complex creatures though, so of course progress takes time. — wonderer1

Yes. And ever changing. If psychology is affected by culture (and I'm certain it is) then what was true yesterday in psychology might not be true today. We're playing catch up.

As @Srap Tasmaner has already said, the vast majority of those sources are from within evolutionary psychology - the first citation is Henry Plotkin, for Christ's sake!

I don't even like evolutionary psychology that much, but I like less lazy hack jobs that purport to take down an entire field of investigation because you've had a bit of think about it and reached your own conclusions (in that exact field no less) without having done a shred of research beyond a misunderstanding of a Wikipedia article.

It seems your beef with evolutionary psychology amounts to little more than that it reaches conclusions that "don't seem right" to you. Well put your big boy boots on, read the material and engage with the criticism.

Careful! You know actual discussion with those who disagree with you can lead to a number of serious health conditions, are you sure we're ready...

I never "lauded" the articles you criticized — Baden

...

Good read. — Baden

Hardly a glowing review, I know, but...

Also, I (charitably, considering the context) expressed agnosticism on anti-semitic intentions. — Baden

So if you're charitable enough to express agnosticism on the matter, you're suggesting that a good way for Politics to proceed is to smear a person for something they possibly thought or didn't think because we disagree with them on some other policy which we can't argue directly against because...?

I'm having trouble following your reasoning here. It's a 'good' thing that a paper engage in slander on some unrelated topic rather than just address the politician's actual policies that it disagrees with?

Here's a game we can play. You know the black squiggly stuff that fills the space between emojis in people's posts? Why don't you have a crack at reading that, see if you can work out what it means and if that's not too hard we could have a little conversation about the things I've actually said? Sound fun?

Got it! Thinkology.

Naturalness Thinkology. I think it might catch on.

Cultural practices and beliefs can simply be universal because it is the most stable form that "works". — schopenhauer1

And that would be a ...what...theory?

Nothing in humans is that automatic. There is an element of learning everywhere and throughout all human behaviors. — schopenhauer1

Interesting. This theory of yours about the human psyche...it's like there might be some field dedicated to exactly these sorts of theories... about the psyche....what elements are cultural, which evolved...

They see what they want to see in it, and provide "just so" conclusions to justify their hunches. — schopenhauer1

Do they? Is that how people think a lot of time? You're really churning them out. You could get funding for this, possibly a whole university department if you play your cards right. Just need to think of a name for it...

these conclusions gain popularity and are broadcasted widely, leading people to act upon them as if they were natural — schopenhauer1

We're going to need a journal for these. Perhaps we should put some effort into testing them, or formalising the methodology a bit... But the name...the name

Actually I have some sympathy for John McWhorter's take, that wokism is a new religion. And that's not based on what young progressives advocate, but on the behavior. — Srap Tasmaner

Yeah, that's kind of where I'm going. Also, I think @fdrake might have even posted it earlier, but Mark Fisher's seminal article https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/exiting-vampire-castle/.

My concern really is that, if we follow the modern left, the neocons are basically right. After all we're currently seeing the largest income disparity for decades. The finance sector is making billions printing debt. Corporate lobbying is basically controlling government...

But blacks aren't oppressed by the banks, they're oppressed by white people refusing to check their privilege.

Women aren't oppressed by pernicious working practices, they're oppressed by men sitting with their legs too wide.

Worse, it's basically fine that corporations are running the government. The pharmaceuticals got it right with covid. The arms industry are on the right track with Ukraine...

Basically, left wing mainstream politics is promoting the idea that these unprecedented developments, the complete capture of government by the major corporate sectors, is just fine, not a problem.

@jorndoe Ask @Baden if he sees even the slightest hypocrisy in his now lauding an article condemning a man for taking quotes out of context and stringing them back together to insinuate something the sources did not originally intend.

That's hardly news though. Been the case since the Judean People's Front split off from the People's Front of Judea. — Srap Tasmaner

Possibly, but as I said to @fdrake I'm sort of looking for an explanation of this new phenomena it feels like there is. People (ones I know personally - colleagues at work) are finding themselves more constrained than they've felt before. I've felt it too. Maybe we're all just making it up and jumping at shadows, but to conclude mass delusion, I'm going to need something a bit stronger than 'twas ever thus.

I don't think that 20 years ago, I would have had the same kind of pushback I'm getting today for my 'different' views on the big topics of the day (Ukraine, Covid, Trans). Glen Greenwald is relegated to Rumble. Matt Taibbi has been hung out to dry. Seymour Hersh is a 'conspiracy theorist', Suzanne Moore is now a 'bigot'. These were big names in progressive, anti-corporate, feminist or otherwise generally leftist journalism exiled for what seem like minor disagreements over strategy. I don't recall anything similar happening over anti-apartheid campaigns, road protests, Poll tax, right up the Occupy movement. I'm clearly not alone in thinking something serious has changed (the authors I mentioned above, are saying the same thing).

So the explanation I'm looking is is for that. This new thing. "There's no new thing" is perfectly possible, but it leaves as much unanswered as answered. If there's no new thing, why do so many people think there is?

There's still something a little off though. — Srap Tasmaner

I feared as much...

now my trust in the modeling department has weakened, so by showing you their report, I'm also checking up on them, testing them. "Look, you seem to know something about this P business. Here's what my boys are telling me. Is this any good? Did they miss the boat here?" — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. So we can come at this from an information-first perspective and say that I'm using you (or vice versa) to update my beliefs about some external state, say a simple situation in which you've witnessed and event I didn't see - let's use last night's match as an example (what was Wenger thinking sending Walcott on that early? - no, let's not go there again). So I have virtually zero certainty about what happened, you tell me, and I update my beliefs. So far so simple, but if I have some certainty, I'm still going to use the same policy (maximise my model evidence) only this time, I have a more complete model. The consequence of model evidence maximisation policies is that they tend to be confirmatory. If we take perception as simpler example, perhaps. If I think what I'm seeing is a table, I'm not going to scan the whole scene like a dot-matrix printer, I'm going to go straight to where the legs should be, confirm there's four, and retire ("yep, table - called it"). So transferring to communication (still in enquiry mode for now), I'm going to use you to update my model, but only under my model evidence maximisation policy for whatever I already slightly believe. That means I'm interrogating those bits of your belief that will confirm mine.

So, my checking is directed, I'm not offering up all my model, nor am I interested in all of your model. I'm only interested in that specific bit of your model that might most efficiently confirm (or possibly rule out) my model.

So when you say...

Through these first few exchanges, there's been no sign of the need to bring your views into alignment with mine, only a brief flirtation with bringing mine into alignment with yours. — Srap Tasmaner

... I think this is right. Basically, my first pass is going to be so honed on model evidence maximisation that's it's almost more a test of how useful a source you are, a check to see if you're going to have the confirmatory evidence I need. When you give something completely unexpected in response, you're no longer a useful source for model evidence maximisation. The policy has to change. So...

There might be something else going on here though. When I recognize that you had a genuinely different view of what I assume is the same body of evidence, that piques the curiosity of the modeling team. "How did he come up with that?" There might be a bad algorithm there worth knowing about and avoiding, or there might be an interesting inference technique there we didn't know about, and even if it doesn't change our view in this case we're always on the lookout for new inference tech. So there's going to be a strong need to know why you had a thought that I didn't. Oh, and of course this plays directly into my need to model you better! My model of you was inaccurate; I need to update it with a model of the crappy inference algorithm you're using, in case I talk to you again. — Srap Tasmaner

... now it's about you the external state, not you the source. Coming back to perception, I've checked where the legs should be, disaster! (for the model), not only do I find no legs, but no ~legs either. Nothing. It's dark. My saccade policy has failed. Now it's about the external state 'darkness'. What's going on and what can I do to remedy this failure of my model optimisation?

I think here is where most interaction sits in philosophy-type conversations (politics, social arrangements etc. too). The cost of using you as a source is so high, since our respective models are so misaligned, that my best surprise minimisation strategy might well be to fix you. I need you thinking like me so that I can use you as a future source. You're no use to me constantly surprising me with completely left-field models, because I don't doubt my own models that much, that I'm going to 86 them and insert yours wholesale.

And I think this is where habits of thinking come in. The effect of this practice over time in communities is to hone in a basic set of thought habits that at least keep us all vaguely useful to each other as model evidence maximisation sources.

Or in your own words...

some hand-wavy thing about cooperation in the general project of all of us staying alive. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. Very strange. Can you think of a non-wealthy candidate they should have been supporting instead?

Shouldn't we suspect RFK (and Trump) of "[engaging] in underhand, clandestine deals (conspiracies) to extract more wealth"? That's what wealthy people do, right? — RogueAI

Yes.

Isn't RFK Jr's net worth $50 million? — RogueAI

If you say so. Your point?

You know what a caricature is, right? It doesn't just mean 'got wrong'.

I believe they should be helped as much as possible. I do hope they win, but I am far from certain that they will. — Jabberwock

...doesn't chime with...

Only if it has more chance of winning that defence than it does of being destroyed by it. Otherwise to provide weapons (alone) is monstrous. — Isaac


I agree. — Jabberwock

You agree above that it is "monstrous" to provide weapons (alone) to a country that doesn't have more chance of winning that defence than it does of being destroyed by it.

Yet here, you say you're "far from certain" they'll win, yet you think supplying arms is the right thing to do.

Which is it?

Honestly, it's hilarious watching you champagne socialists tying yourselves in knots to come up with explanations for why so many people think the wealthy are conspiring against them and don't trust the major institutions... The mental gymnastics required is truly impressive.

Of, course (just a conspiracy theory from left field here), it could be because the wealthy do in fact engage in underhand, clandestine deals (conspiracies) to extract more wealth, and that institutions have in fact demonstrated themselves again, and again, to be untrustworthy pawns of corporate power...

But of course we can rule that option out because of some reasons.

Yeah, 'cos rich people never engage in nefarious behaviour in order to profit from it...

Where do these people get their ideas from, eh?

Must be some pernicious mental illness or something.

@jorndoe tell @Baden I'm not talking to him either, but tell Baden that if he wants a candidate who's better than Biden he might want to think about not treating the electorate as if they were a bunch of schoolchildren who won't sit down and be quiet when they're told.

You dudes think to make a point just by caricaturing opponents' views.
That's intellectually abhorrent. — neomac

Uh huh... Something like...

your helpless craving for pinning roughly everything bad is happening primarily on the US. — neomac

... would be an example of caricaturing your opponent's views, yes. I'll be sure to try and avoid that kind of thing in future.

Funny how this has only just occurred to you after nearly 500 pages of having every single opposing view caricatured as Putin-loving, Putinistas, Russiophiles etc... but it's good that you're on top of it now.

Then how many exactly? Tell me exactly how you made the calculation. — neomac

I just did.

Ignore the bizarre defences of Kennedy. — Baden

The defence is of a politics that rises above petty slandering and appeals to cliché as substitutes for substantive argument. The reason why we might have any concern about someone like Trump of DeSantis gaining support is because there's a mass of disaffected voters out there they can tap into who are (quite justifiably) pissed off at this kind of supercilious sneering. Like you don't even have to bother presenting arguments any more...

I mean, ...

attacks on Fauci — Baden

...? What is he, fucking Mohammed? Since when has the act of attacking an authority figure become something worthy of condemnation simply by its very nature?

And yes, the quotes are available. We can all read what was said and none of was "the Jews created the covid 19 virus" which is what is heavily implied by the accusations of anti-semitism.

Here from the Jerusalem Post article...

Kennedy, the nephew of former US president John F. Kennedy, claimed that COVID-19 was a bioweapon that had been specifically engineered to impact white and black people

Literally the next paragraph...

“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,”

In what twisted world does "We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not” become "It was specifically engineered (by Jews) to target white and black people"? He literally said the exact opposite and is quoted as doing so in the actual article.

It's pathetic journalism lazily relying on a nod and a wink toward what "we all know, don't we...?" instead of actually doing the fucking legwork.

Here's what Kennedy himself had to say about it: — Tzeentch

Kennedy himself! What are you thinking?

We have an editor's cut of what a newspaper journalist's summary of a reported speech possibly implied... what more evidence to you need man!

Very nice. I'll respond simply by highlighting the differences and similarities with my own thinking...

Being in the habit of telling each other what we know, I tell you something I think I know -- about the mind or reality or some philosophical thing -- but instead of thanking me, you disagree. This is shocking and bewildering behavior on your part. (Surprise.) — Srap Tasmaner

I'm with you regarding the habits, but I think the expected behaviour os more agreement than thanks. I think what we're looking for is confirmation that we've got it right. that can take the form of an agreement, but also the form of a passive student (after all, if they accept what we say, they've agreed we're right). Minor difference (but you'll see there aren't any major ones). Then, yes, either way - "you don't agree! Now how am I going to predict your responses?"

If I do not understand your position at all, that's the worst case for me, because what kind of action (i.e., talking) can I engage in in response? Anything is better than this, so my first step will be to substitute for your position a position I believe I understand and can respond to. (There's a cart before the horse here. Have to fix later.) — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. Not only easing the discomfort, but this is also the most profitable policy for reducing surprise. If actual agreement (top priority) doesn't reduce surprise, then we can at least fall back on predictable narratives about conflict. If we see our 'opponent' as 'one of those types' and substitute a set of beliefs we think we know the causes of (erroneous ones), we can settle in to a little vignette which we know the script for. Recognise any of this from this very thread? "Someone mentioned history in a vaguely negative sense! I know the argument in favour of history, I'll substitute that for an argument against whatever this lunatic is actually saying".

Glance through the major conflict threads, you'll see hundreds of examples. The counter-argument isn't against the actual argument given, it's against the script that the interlocutor ought be following, given that they're 'one of those'.

I want to bring your views into alignment with mine, and that's why I make arguments in favor of my belief. But I probably don't really know why I believe what I believe, so I'll have to come up with reasons, and I'll convince myself that if I heard these reasons I would be convinced. But really I have no idea, since I already believe what I'm trying to convince you of; it's almost impossible for me to judge how much support these reasons give my claim. Finding reasons for what I already believe presents almost no challenge at all. — Srap Tasmaner

This is brilliant. If I could have explained it that well I would have saved myself a lot of trouble. The underlined is the part we deal with here. Of course your reasoning seems convincing to you, it already convinced you. It's what motivates the majority of the posts which begin with "Obviously..." It's such a strange beginning to a post, yet so common (I'm sure I've done it - this isn't exculpating). By the very nature of the activity you're engaged in, it 'obviously' isn't obvious, but here it is proclaiming that what you're expending all this effort demonstrating to (presumably) an epistemic peer, is, in fact, obvious.

I'd say more about this section because it's very inline with my thinking, but unfortunately that limits rather than extends what there is to say. Just 'yes'.

Denying the premises is really the least of my worries, because we're talking roughly about intuitions -- making this the fourth recent thread I've been in to use this word -- which I'm going to gloss here as beliefs I don't experience as needing justification. If you share my intuitions, we still have to fight about the support relation; if you don't, I can just keep daisy-chaining along until we find something we agree on. This is routine stuff, have to have common ground even to disagree let alone resolve such a disagreement. — Srap Tasmaner

Possibly. But that 'daisy-chaining' isn't at all risk free either. I think denying premises can become a serious worry when the denial is unexpected. There are premises which we hold, but expect people to genuinely hold the opposite of (like economic theory, what exactly happened last Tuesday, who's to blame for the 'state of the world', etc.), and there's premises we don't expect people to genuinely hold the opposite of and so it's easier to simply assume disingenuousness (moral sentiment, aesthetic judgement...). Coming back to what you said earlier, these areas are, not by coincidence, the same areas where we don't have a good set of reasons for why we believe what we do. As such, we lack a script for the persuasion game.

If you start from the idea that some people will just "get it", we're still talking intuitions; as you spell out more and more steps between what your audience accepts and what they don't, this is what logic looks like. The usual view, of course, is that "being logical" makes a connection a candidate for a step in the argument; the thing is, I think we spell things out only to the point where the audience agrees, which means something they accept without reasons -- and here we're talking precisely about the support relation that holds between one belief and another, and the sorts of things I come up with are just things that sound convincing to me as someone who already believes, which means my process for producing reasons is a kind of pretend. — Srap Tasmaner

Yep. It sounds like you've reached the same point I have. what makes a support relation convincing between two beliefs we already knew (but presumably didn't have the support relation for before hearing the argument)?

So currently (work very much in progress) I have it turned on its head. It's not that I'm looking for the support relation that my audience will accept as leading to the conclusion. It's that I'm selling the whole package of support relations as a whole (the more the better). So we might already agree that all support relations are just that, but that this whole package is less messy than that, or has fewer surprises (uncertainty), or whatever - depending on our rhetoric.

So if we come unstuck at step 7. it's not that there's disagreement about whether step 7 is a supporting step, it's over whether step 7 fits with step 6, 5, 4, etc. Does it make a good story? I think of it like characters in a book, the author is saying "and then he thought this, and then he thought that, and then he thought..." and you (if you dispute it) are thinking "hang on, he thought this other thing two pages ago, this guy just isn't very realistic..."

the support relation really shouldn't be presented as another belief itself, but as a rule or habit for passing from one idea to the other. (I think empiricists and pragmatists would agree on that.) So the issue at each step I have to spell out is not whether you accept a proposed connection, but your behavior -- do you pass from antecedent to consequent as I predict or desire? — Srap Tasmaner

I'm responding paragraph by paragraph (a bad habit of mine). I see you're pretty much saying what I've just said already - at least that's how I've interpreted it. I'd add that habits are heterogeneous, I don't think there's a single set, just an 'acceptable' set. Broadly, we're looking for predictability, adherence to one of the known sets, not going 'off script'.

It does seem to be an acquired taste, and some psychologies make acquisition much less likely. Still, there are those times when you can lead someone to a more accurate understanding of their own nature and change the rest of their lives for the better. — wonderer1

Absolutely. The thing about psychological theories is that everyone has them, you have to have, otherwise your strategies when interacting with others are random. We don't just throw darts blindfold when deciding how to respond, we have a theory about what our actions/speech is going to do, how it's going to work. That's a psychological theory.

People mistakenly disparage psychology for merely attempting such modelling, but we all do it by necessity. Psychology is simply trying to develop other methods of doing so, something supplementary to just passively taking in the experiences in your small social circles and then 'having a reckon' about it. If psychology fails, it is its methodology that's at fault, not it's objectives. So in order to be useful (unlike many other sciences), we only have to be better than guesswork, because there isn't a 'I just won't have a psychological theory then' option.

After I left academic research, I worked for a risk management company, and that was my exact job pitch - it's better than guesswork. That's enough, apparently to be worth a consultancy fee.

I'm really enjoying participating on TPF, and I've already received a warning for bringing up a psychological topic, so perhaps later in a different context. — wonderer1

Ahh. The mods are kittens really. I'd have about two thirds of the membership banned within the first day of having such powers invested in me - but yes, have a care. Sneak it in to a thread about something else...!

Oh. The tendency of capital to dissolve social forms also tends to dissolve stultifying ones. Disruption isn't always bad. — fdrake

I see. Then I misunderstood. I was talking about capital cementing social forms, concretising the differences and making convenient little units of identity in order to better market products, herd dissent, and prevent solidarity of the proletariat.

That can be granted without having any import onto intersectionality as critical tool in organising practice. Ineptness, affectation, pick your poison. — fdrake

I can be, sure. I see no reason to. Ineptness and affectation have, presumably, been around since humanity first attempted stuff. I'm looking for an explanation of the recent phenomena.

People are being ostracised, 'cancelled', as well as just flat out sacked, for disagreements about policy, minor infringements of preferred wording, and such. People whose credentials, as far as fighting for the weak against the powerful, are unimpeachable.

The scale of wealth accumulation that's being unopposed is unprecedented, exponentially higher than anything we've seen before. Action on poverty has stagnated whilst action on superficial rights in western countries has increased to the point where there's even some difficulties enacting the law (rights like speech protection, opportunity - not rights like foods, shelter, security...).

These are recent phenomena, so whatever the explanation is cannot be from the "'twas ever thus" category of human failings.

I notice that people bring political commitments too. Just that it doesn't matter if they're an anarchist or a Stalinist, since they agree on the issue. — fdrake

I agree, in those cases. I'm talking about the worryingly increasing number of cases where their commitments mean they don't agree on the issue so nothing gets done. Hence the stagnation on action against poverty, the 'normalising' of starvation on the African continent, the massive shoulder shrug as corporation profit from crises (they had a hand in creating) to degrees we've never before seen. Again, I'm looking for an explanation of what is a recent phenomena in left-wing activism (insofar as it's mainstream is concerned).

The folk getting disabled access ramps for the town hall are probably the local council these days - and that's part of the problem. — Isaac


You still do unfortunately. Getting the authorities to follow their own laws. — fdrake

Fair point, but progress is made (having laws to refer to is better than having none). Where's the equivalent on worker's pay, access to healthcare, housing, food...?

The broader point I'm making is that framing a big conflict between intersectional approaches and class first ones in terms of practical consequences isn't really directed to the audience it's intended to effect. If any org ends up shitting itself for reasons like this, it's our tendency toward forming a circular firing line and bullshit office politics. — fdrake

Again, I'm looking to explain two (possibly related) recent phenomena - namely what's dubiously termed 'cancel culture' and the disparity between the profiteering of the wealthy (unprecedented increase) and the push-back against it (basically 'nothing to see here'). These two phenomena have only arisen in the last couple of years (alongside the increased focus on identity). I might be way off the mark with what I'm suggesting as causal factors, but whatever they are, they're new, not just the same old...