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Dirty_DemSoc  Registered Demoncrat  1mo ago (text post)   3261 thread views

Why Bother?

There are two comments here on the Motte that have, for the past month or so, been sitting amidst the 71 tabs I've got opened in my browser.

The two comments are fairly different;

The first is a more personal meditation on the human desire to 'be a good person', and how that may or may not align with the equally-human desires to 'fit in', and 'pursue Truth'.

The second is a political argument over whether Democrats/progressives/libs are the real hypocrites, and whether or not they were the ones to 'defect first' in the game of American partisan politics; pretty standard stuff around here, really.

The thing they have in common is that I've been intending to respond to them.

And yet, I haven't.

Part of this is due to a dynamic that ought to be familiar to anyone with a maladaptive relationship with deadlines- if you're late turning something in, the longer you wait afterwards to get around to it, the harder it becomes to ever actually do it; it's easy to put it off for a day or two or three, and before you know it, a week's gone by, and length of the delay in your response might raise some eyebrows when you eventually do respond. Repeat this cycle a few times, and eventually a month or two has passed you by- at which point, you might as well just not bother to respond at all- assuming you're even still in the same headspace necessary to give a coherent response, and that events in the meantime haven't made your response irrelevant, the other person's really going to wondering about your penchant for necro-ing old threads.

A larger part, however, comes down to a much simpler -and much less easily overcome- barrier:

Why bother?

In my very first comment on this site, I noted that the 'two screens' effect is very real, and that the picture that the screen the self-identified 'Red Tribers' on this site are watching is showing a very different picture than the one the few self-identified 'Blue Tribers' still active on this site are watching.

This isn't particularly surprising. For decades, Americans have been slowly but steadily self-segregating along 'tribal' lines; fewer and fewer of us spend much time interacting with other Americans radically different from ourselves. We might live in the same neighborhoods, frequent the same shops and restaurants, and be theoretically 'close' to each other (or not; the same self-segregating dynamic increasingly applies to physical locations as well), but it's increasingly rare for us to ever actually interact with our Others to any real extent.

Combined with the general shifts in how people interact with and perceive what are 'their' communities (triply so in the online age!), the balkanization of 'common' hobbies & interests, the fracturing of the media landscape, and the overall decline in common cultural touchstones and trusted authorities, the end is result is that nowadays its easier than ever for all of us to live in our own Bespoke Realities™. It isn't just that political polarization & disagreements are tenser & higher-profile then they've been in decades (though they are!); now, we no longer even need to have similar conceptions of what it is we're even arguing over in the first place!

I can rage over how Republicans are trying to destroy the government and intentionally harm millions of the worst-off Americans with their new tariff, tax, & budget idiocies- and you can scoff and dispute my entire framing, say how I'm being absurdly hyperbolic and hysterical.

You can denounce the large-scale concerted push by progressives to trans the nations youth; to turn them into Marxist-indoctrinated eunuchs conscripted as soldiers in the frontlines of the culture wars. I can roll my eyes and say there is no such phenomenon, and it's all a conservative bogeyman.

Etc, etc.

So in light of this situation, where we not only argue endlessly about the most basic facts of any given political disagreement, without either side ever having to concede to either the opposition's arguments, or even their basic worldview and underlying framing of the situation...

Why bother?

Why bother continuing to argue (and especially why bother continuing to argue online- an exercise in futility if I ever heard one!) when doing so is unlikely to change the other person's mind?

Why bother continuing to argue when the people I'm disagreeing with seem to have beliefs & experiences so wildly opposite of my own that I have to wonder if we're even living in the same country?

Why bother continuing to argue when people I disagree with just seem like they fundamentally can't be reasoned with at all?

And especially why bother continuing to argue when doing so is only likely to be """rewarded""" with mass-downvotes and distributed dogpiles by commentators on a forum you don't even really like, and only stick around on out of some sort of... IDK, perverse masochism, I guess?

Seems kinda pointless to me, tbh.

Despite my faint hopes, the dysfunction in this country appears to be acclerating.

We seem to be waiting on the precipice, holding our breath to see if the next few days heralds the opening salvos of the beginning of true, active civil conflict.

So I ask again- why bother? Is the time for talking over?

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I can't tell you whether you should bother or not. But I will tell you why I read and occasionally post here.

The reason is that no one else will tolerate me. I'm the kind of person who is horrified both by the lack of concern for the poor among top republicans and the attempts to push transgender stuff on children by the democrats.

Sure, there are large parts of this board's culture I disagree with. There are certain opinions shared by the majority of board members that I find ridiculous or unconscionable. But I'd run into that anywhere. If you are the kind of person who thinks for yourself, you probably should run into that anywhere.

In my real life, I can't talk honestly to my left-wing friends about feminism or LGBT or abortion, and I can't talk to my right-wing friends about religion or the economy or the environment.

The best I can do is find people who are willing to talk.

Anecdata but my views have changed substantially (civ nat/soc dem to "quite a bit further right") via online discourse, osmosis, and frankly I think my views coming into contact with reality. A large amount of my IRL contacts have also moved further to the right on social issues specifically, mostly driven my immigration, or at least online discourse and media that is shaped by immigration. How much of this is driven my argumentation vs. just looking at reality is difficult to parse, but what I would say is once certain dominoes fall, one becomes much more receptive to argumentation around other points and policies. The nature of tribalism means that it's extremely hard to remain iconoclastic and the step from "I'm on the left except for the extreme culture war stuff" to "I'm on the right" is an order of magnitude smaller than the step from "I'm on the left" to "I'm on the right".

In about 10 years of shitposting on the internet about politics, I have come to the same conclusion. Pre-2020 clownworld, most of my writing was a mix of snark and observation with some anger, and everything since 2020 clownworld has been almost entirely anger. I have not changed anyone's mind on anything, and nor has anyone changed my mind on anything. Changes of opinion came entirely from reflection in my own time when I was alone, and certainly could not have occurred in the hyper-confrontational thunderdome that is the internet. At best, it was an outlet for my inner need to akshually when I see peace being valued over truth, and at worst a complete and total waste of my time.

Ultimately, the correct way to impose your will on others in a post industrial society is to form a sufficiently motivated group and use infiltration or intimidation to take over important insitutions and then use those institutions to enact your desire. Arguing on the internet is worse even than voting. Voting at least exposes the flaw the system and makes it clear to those aggreived that voting cannot get what they want.

I personally “bother” more as a way to test my hypothetical understanding of an issue against interested and sometimes hostile perspectives. I do so understanding that no idea is off limits, which makes it much more interesting. My perspectives are probably somewhat eccentric, which again makes things more fun. The point is to learn, to listen. I don’t honestly care if I change your mind. I care that I’m learning.

First of all: It's fun
Motte takes every possible step to be more grownup, but even this place can't escape the ultimate nature of political forums and maybe even human interaction in general - conflict, polemics, trying to appear clever, one upping each other, play. This place is a bit of an outlier, but internet forums are mostly for enjoying speechcraft skills of others, and exercise my own when (I'm under impression that) I have something witty to say. I find it inherently rewarding, if you don't, well, too bad.

I don't know what I think until I write it down

Another reason why is to polish your own thoughts.
Writing is inherently more rigorous than just letting thoughts float inside your head and things that feel vaguely sound may turn out to be less so when properly formulated, so you get a lot of the value even before pressing "post"
Yet there's only so much you can think of on your own. Bouncing your thoughts against others helps in ways that are hard to really quantify.
An entirely different human being can say things you'd never think of, bite back with retorts that help you understand your own values and beliefs better even if you ultimately don't change your mind.
Talking to others can force you into creative exercises like "explain this thought as if you're speaking to someone mentally challenged and/or separated from you by great inferential distance" which is also illuminating.
I sympathize with your sense of alienation. People can be vastly different, and can often feel insane and incomprehensible. Overall, most of them are relatively stupid, so their words can be explained away by them being hopelessly confused.
That said, I'm convinced that there exist divides between human mental architectures that are more profound than just political disagreements, and language more often serves to conceal the true depth of that gulf than to bridge it.
Next time you argue with someone saying what is seemingly just stupid and offensive, consider the possibility that if you somehow truly understood him you would recoil, and inherent limitations of language, as well as your mind's reflexive attempts to parse inputs as something you think is reasonable both do you a favor.
Overall, just treat people, especially faceless strangers on the internet less seriously, they don't deserve it. Let others sink or swim on their own merit.

If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to the dialogue of two fools in a comedy

First of all: It's fun

Came here to post this. Arguing online is entertaining. I possibly spent too much time in high school debate club as a teen

Hey, I’ve had a similar experience.

Not the nihilism, per se. The open tab with a strawman getting punched to thunderous applause. When it was fresh, I avoided responding cause I was at work and couldn’t do it justice. Then a week or two of waiting till the next Monday thread. After that, it felt awkward to bring it up like some sort of callout, and I quietly let it slip.

You’ve inspired me to actually put it in tomorrow’s thread.

One tip that can help: block the upvote/downvote numbers through Ublock origin. I'm using this filter:

www.themotte.org##button.m-0.p-0.nobackground.caction.btn > .score

You can also create the rule by right clicking, clicking "block element", then hovering over the upvote numbers.

Upvotes and downvotes really have no place on a political discussion site like this, as all they do is add unnecessary heat and a "boo outgroup" button for partisans to click. I found it very annoying when some MAGA clown would post low-effort sneers to my posts and get tons of upvotes since this site leans heavily right, and I found it'd cause me to react in ways that weren't helpful. Forcefully ignoring the upvotes has made the site much more tranquil in my eyes.

Another tip that can help: make concrete rules around discussions you want to have, and then stick to them, and then be willing to block people who break them. The mods on this site, while better than on many sites, are still pretty arbitrary and capricious. It's not uncommon for them to modhat leftists or centrists for things right-leaning commenters get away with all the time. The solution: block people who violate the rules. For me, I've started drawing a line at personal attacks and ad hominems. I (almost) never do those things to other posters here, and if anyone does it to me I block them in short order. What I've noticed is that a lot of the people who do that (like zeke and SlowBoy and FirmWeird) just post low effort partisan swipes almost exclusively, so you don't really lose much by blocking them. I did block Gattsuru when he was making personal attacks against me and refused to stop, which was somewhat sad since he posts a combination of low effort partisans wipes along with higher quality partisan swipes, so blocking isn't completely costless, but it's still good overall.

As for what arguments are actually for, I've found them quite useful to see the strongest arguments the other side has presented in short order. If you have a few arguments and they just have no clear response to something, you can be pretty sure that what you're saying is right on the money. For example, I had an argument with JarJarJedi on allegations that Joe Biden was accepting bribes and although he talked a bit game about how I was delusional if I disagreed with him on this point, it became clear he just had no evidence on this point. I'm now much more confident in my assertion that anyone saying Joe Biden took bribes is just spouting nonsense.

Upvotes and downvotes really have no place on a political discussion site like this, as all they do is add unnecessary heat and a "boo outgroup" button for partisans to click. ... Forcefully ignoring the upvotes has made the site much more tranquil in my eyes.

That's a fair take and I respect it, but it's different than my experience. I am often surprised which of my posts get upvoted and which are controversial or unremarkable. I find the feedback kind of interesting, although I don't update on it much.

The mods on this site, while better than on many sites, are still pretty arbitrary and capricious. It's not uncommon for them to modhat leftists or centrists for things right-leaning commenters get away with all the time.

For any site above tiny the modding can never be perfectly even. I disagree with your judgment on balance, though I'm sure there are valid examples, and evaluating their salience is kind of subjective.

One thing I have noticed is that long-time quality contributers do sometimes get more slack than most. But I think this applies regardless of one's political and social positions. Darwin got at least as much slack as Hlynka did.

For me the voting patterns were very consistent: anything I posted that was pro-right was upvoted even if it was devoid of logic. Anything I posted that was neutral (like on AI stuff) was generally upvoted if it was high-effort. Anything I posted that was anti-MAGA was highly contentious or net-downvoted, with poorly thought out responses by others on the level of "have you ever considered that maybe you're too retarded to understand Trump's brilliant 4D chess move?????" getting broadly upvoted. In other words, the upvotes and downvotes are mostly just an inverse mirror of /r/politics.

I'm actually fine with long time quality posters getting a bit more slack than randos, although I have some problems with how quality is determined, as there's a fair few AAQCs every month that are just swipes at the (leftist) outgroup in eloquent language.

Anything I posted that was anti-MAGA was highly contentious or net-downvoted, with poorly thought out responses by others on the level of "have you ever considered that maybe you're too retarded to understand Trump's brilliant 4D chess move?????" getting broadly upvoted.

It's a good thing there's no other possible distinguishing characteristics, here.

At this point, the main reason why I write about politics online isn't to change other people's minds necessarily, although I do enjoy that when it happens. I have too many more directly pressing personal concerns around money, personal relationships, and so on to dedicate any substantial amount of energy to attempting political change. I think at this point the main reason why I write about politics online is to get feedback that makes me feel less like an outlier. I equally dislike the left and the right, so it is affirming for me to discuss politics in places where not everyone is totally a fervent supporter of one political side or another. Places like Reddit and X generally disgust me, I dislike both the "everyone to the right of Bernie Sanders is an evil fascist and it is our duty to punch them" vibe and the "I am a based trad-wife-seeking Aryan and we should literally kill the libs" vibe. I wish I could find more places online with more of a detached, looking-at-politics-objectively vibe that avoids ideological dogmatism and that kind of simple "my political opponents are evil and we should kill them" moralism that is so common online. /r/moderatepolitics can be good sometimes. TheMotte is definitely more right-leaning than I am, but you can have decent interesting discussion here so I appreciate it. rdrama.net has a few sociopathic ghouls on it, but the politics discussion generally mocks both the fanatic left and the fanatic right so I appreciate that places as well. I can't really think of any other places, which really surprises me. One would think that, with hundreds of millions of people online, it should be easy to find many forums that avoid virtue/vice signaling, empty moralizing that treats the opponent as ontologicaly evil while saying nothing interesting about politics, or just general chimpanzee-like shit-flinging at others. But I haven't been able to find many.

With decades of seeking I've yet to find a group anywhere close to the Motte for interesting and thought-provoking conversations. Substack is a watered-down version that I don't fully appreciate. I've learned more and seen more in this forum than any other. All else is tribalism.

I'd say we're still plenty tribal, but I think we successfully avoided NPC-brain.

Don't. I mean don't argue. Are arguments with angry drivers worthwhile? They are unproductive at best. At worst, they end with a bullet in your gut. Unless arguments are with someone I trust to reconcile, then I consider arguments as unproductive affairs. Cathartic release at best. Don't argue.

From what I've observed, minority (or majority) opinion havers that come here primarily to defend the honor of their tribe burn out quickly. They crumble from their own hatred, or they generate too much heat to follow the rules. More interested in locking horns or drive-by shooting than discussion.

The few (bless them) minority opinion havers the forum retains seem to manage their engagement. They set limitations for themselves. They understand they aren't compelled to reply to every disagreement or grievance. They probably find a way to enjoy themselves or glean other value while they provide a minority opinion. This is a recreational activity. You should enjoy contributing. I know I appreciate the minorities who are willing to contribute honestly.

If it is impossible to enjoy or find value here because you are committed to conflict, then there's not a good reason to spend time here arguing or not. Not even if you're committed to pyramids due to other fading principles. If you're committed to conflict, then it'd be more productive to prepare. If you're interested in an exchange of ideas -- with all that comes with it -- this isn't the worst place to practice.

You should bother for people like me! I went from a standard progressive to far more conservative from reading rationalist forums/the Motte.

Then after a while, reading some of the more moderated takes on here, I came back from the far end of the conservative positions and am back closer in the middle. I no longer even support Trump, hah. There are people out there who have their minds changed, even if we aren't always the loudest.

If your goal is to convince a right-winger to not be a right-winger, you will fail. If your goal is to convince a left-winger to not be a left-winger, you will fail. If your goal is to convince a strange person through hostile interrogation that their values, opinions, or beliefs are wrong, you will fail.

You're arguing for the crowd, or yourself, never your opponent.

I'm not here to change people's minds. I'm here because this is the online equivalent of an Enlightenment-era coffee shop with a rotating cast of brilliant and eccentric characters with whom to play word games and perhaps learn a thing or two about the world. Like its 18th-century antecedants, it may spit out some future revolutionaries, philosophers, or reformers who will go on to change the world, but that will happen out in the real world, not in this training ground.

Here, the bold may sharpen their rhetorical knives in combat against ideological demons modern and ancient that have been banished from polite society; some of us are just around for the thrill of the fight and don't have any grand vision for remaking the world, while others may discover that they had no stomach for it to begin with.

As to what may happen down the line, I suppose I'm just a high enough decoupler that the fact that in some future conflict I may need to take up arms against the majority of my fellow posters here doesn't bother me too much. If that ends up being the case, then it was fun while it lasted and I wish you all good fortune in the civil wars to come.

I suppose I'm just a high enough decoupler that the fact that in some future conflict I may need to take up arms against the majority of my fellow posters here doesn't bother me too much.

A shame. Positive Mottezen identification should confer basic gentlemanly prisoner of war treatment. Ideally it would include a parole d'honneur standard of defeat that allows Mottezans to go home and post about it. We should make patches.

You could not have formulated it better for me.

To be honest you should probably stop, then, and this isn't meant in an antagonistic way; rather it's an acknowledgement of the practical futility of such an exercise. The idea that you ever end up changing anything by participating in forums like this one is laughable. Even if you somehow do manage to convert everyone here to your point of view the overall effect of such a thing would be hilariously tiny, tantamount to a drop in the bucket. You would have spent countless hours to ultimately achieve nothing.

People participate here because they feel like they get something out of it aside from trying to right the political ship, something this forum explicitly isn't meant for. They feel like hashing things out with other people who share their ethos of discourse helps them clarify and sharpen their own thought, even if there is no agreement between the parties (yes you can cherry-pick comments that aren’t high effort, the fact remains the standard of discourse here is far above average). If you don't get that out of it, then I genuinely think it would be better if you left.

This is so 2010's.

Look, I used to care about these periodic flameout posts, and I used to try to come up with solutions that would make hanging out here a little more enjoyable. I never got much of a response, and when I did it was usually in the form of this womanly exasperation that I haven't yet singlehandedly solved the problem.

On top of that, I am yet to here of a single space that gives half as much of a hoot about how rightwingers are comfortable there, as this place cares for the comfort of leftwingers, so it's hard to believe there's something uniquely wrong with this place.

What's the point? A better question is, how come you expect people to drop everything, and try to find one for you?

In addition to what all the others wrote, and keeping in mind that leftists are an increasingly rare but still essential resource on the motte, why not leave?

You can enjoy living in a bubble where you're right and everyone around you is right, everyone agrees on everything and there needn't be any controversial debates in which, god forbid, there might not be one side that is clearly correct and another side that falls in line after being shown the obvious truth. Instead, if your American bubbles are anything like our German bubbles, you and the well-aligned people around you who already know what is right and what is wrong can heap fire and brimstone on the outgroup with impunity. Not, mind you, that discourse on the motte is always better than that. But it'll feel good. It'll feel good to be right, and among other right-thinking people, and to hate the wrong-thinkers together. You can bond over your shared hatred, and if that ever gets boring, have a little purity spiral and ostracize some of your former own who didn't stand sufficiently far on the right side of history. And when you're done hating, you can go back to educating those around you, teaching them the latest and greatest in sociopolitical innovation.

Leftists do this. Rightists do this. Apolitical people who stumble into political bubbles and just try to fit in do this. Why shouldn't you do it too?

Leftists do this. Rightists do this.

The thing is that this is not true. As far as I can tell, the left is providing logically sound analysis and reasoning on the nature of reality and how to change it — ignoring some more extreme bubbles for the sake of argument — whereas the right is predominantly trying to frame the discussion in terms of tribes (as you are), which ignores basic principles of epistemology.

The case in point is immigration. (You and me had an exchange of posts about this.) A core sentiment on the right is that immigration is bad, but a rational analysis comes to the conclusion that it's not possible for both of the following statements to be true: immigrants taking jobs (net) and immigrants taking freebies from social security (net). It is telling that Trump is currently talking about reversing course due to business relying on immigrant workers — he got hit by reality.

Well, sure, you can tell me that my right-wing position is wrong by picking contradictory arguments that I haven't made, and then generalize from that to right-wingers in general. You can posit that immigration cannot possibly be bad because of logical reasons and that even right-wingers know this, as made evident through their revealed preferences. You can even argue that the left in general is soundly grounded in reality. Then we need to conclude that right-wingers are illogical and wrong and shouldn't be believed.

And then I'm left with either of the following scenarios:

  1. The epistemic gulf between us is so vast we can't even communicate our axioms by messenger pigeon.
  2. I'm an abject idiot and not worth talking to, why haven't you blocked me yet?
  3. You fail the ideological turing test very hard.

But seriously now. Some points to argue about:

  • The post you replied to described behaviors that I absolutely have seen from the left and the right, from numerous people, IRL as well as online. Leftists and rightists do in fact both do this. This is orthogonal to whether you believe that either side has the better arguments.
  • Anti-immigration arguments do not hinge exclusively on "muh jobs" and Trump is not the avatar of all right-wing thought. And even if that were the case - there are more than enough similarly bad and contradictory arguments made on the left. There has been more than enough spotlight on those on The Motte.
  • The portion of what you call "extreme bubbles" on the left isn't just very large but also disproportionately influential, and was able to shape public discourse with very little resistance in many spaces, including American academia and Europe in general until very recently (assuming "peak woke" has been passed). This is obviously hard to measure and easy to dispute, so deny it if you will, but with how far left the Overton Window has been in the past ten or so years I find it very obvious that the leftist fringe has been relatively close to the mainstream, and was able to exert far greater influence, compared to its right-wing equivalents.

You can posit that immigration cannot possibly be bad because of logical reasons and that even right-wingers know this, as made evident through their revealed preferences.

Sticking to logical reasoning: Could you please make the case for why immigration is bad again? Last time I asked this question here on the Motte, the reply I got was that "immigrants are doing personal harm to me", but the chain of reasoning did not hold up on further questioning.

Was that really the only reply you got?

I'll give you you my favorite argument, skipping all the lesser ones. And please excuse the rambling style; I'm writing in between numerous interruptions. The chiefest argument against immigration, in my view, is that of culture. Americans may scoff at this, but for a German it's obvious that our country worked at all and gained its orderly prosperity entirely due to the culture of the people who inhabit it.

In theory this isn't incompatible with immigration - immigrants come, adopt our culture, great, we're still just as orderly and even more productive! But that's not what happens, unless you set the bar for "cultural assimilation" about as low as "speaks some pidgin German when forced to, does not commit brazen rape and robbery, works and pays taxes, and might own a German passport.". Whick you can do, of course! If you see the whole issue purely through the lens of economy and you ignore any effects and dynamics that occur outside of economics, then you can stop at that point, see that immigration just means more workforce, checkmate nativists. If you want to go outside of economics, then the first stop is humanitarian concerns and you can even pat yourself on the back for being a good guy who saves the poor huddled masses of the world by letting them into the infinitely expandable first-world economic zone and human rights preservation area that makes everyone better off and even more so when there's more people inside. You did the right thing. And I suppose that for atomized, globalized urbanites, that's just the world as it is. Ground-level reality right there. Who cares what language your neighbors speak or what color the cashier's skin is? You don't want to talk to them or look at them anyways, you have your phone right here. So long as the economy keeps going and public welfare picks up the slack, everyone can do their own thing to nobody's harm.

But if I might invite you to step outside of your axiomatic comfort zone and enter mine for a spell, here's the countervailing world-view. Let's get back to my opening statement: Prosperity and social peace are mainly downstream of culture, and not the other way around. To someone on the right, this is as obviously true as the opposite might be to someone on the left. Where you might see that obviously people become peaceful and productive once their material and legal circumstances are agreeable to them, I would see instead that obviously a cooperative, high-trust society will be peaceful and productive. Maybe both are true to some extent, but I would give far greater weight to the latter. Can you lean slightly to the right for a moment so as to take a brief look through this lens together with me?

For a society to be thus - cooperative, trusting, mutually supportive - some conditions need to be fulfilled. A shared language is strictly necessary. And not some assortment of crude pidgins that are barely mutually intelligible, but an actual mature language that can convey subtleties with a high degree of fidelity, information with a high signal-to-noise ratio. And especially, dear God, not several mutually unintelligible languages from different language families that are spoken only by disjoint subsets of the population that each self-segregate into separate communities.

Beyond language, and less clear-cut: Shared commitments. If I consider myself a long-term inhabitant of a local community and responsible for its well-being, but my neighbor is only a transient dweller of opportunity, then what reason does each of us have to do the hard work of getting to know the other? What reason has he to contribute to the community, or I to welcome him? He'll just move on anyways, and if not, will very likely surround himself with others of his background instead of mingling with the natives, and work for the benefit of his relatives in his home country instead of his neighbors here. And this is not some self-fulfilling prophecy of social exclusion, but the plain fact of what one sees happen with solid regularity. An immigrant has numerous incentives to cohere more strongly with his co-immigrants than with the natives of his new country of residence; to take from the host country and give to his personal associates. Tragedy of the commons. And with each additional community-member-in-name-only (which includes asocial natives, of course), you have a defector who weakens the body social as a whole and shifts norms away from cooperation.

And then there's the big pitfall of public welfare. You've already pointed out that immigrants cannot simultaneously be net job-takers and net welfare-leeches. I don't know how this works in America, but here in Germany the issue of welfare parasitism is certainly not exclusively to immigrants - plenty of natives take more than they give. But this is still a perverse incentive that hits immigrants even harder because of their inherently greater difficulty in finding well-paid work that's actually worth doing instead of relying on gibs.

If we could and would force immigrants to assimilate, to become natives in all ways but their family history, to communicate with us like we do with each other and reliably commit to the common good, to cut ties with their former country and nation, then all these problems would probably be feasible to solve. But this is not the case. Instead Germany is absorbed by a cultural self-hatred and a refusal to see cultural differences between natives and immigrants. The immigrants themselves in turn see the floundering, self-effacing culture of the Germans and naturally stick to what they know instead. And funnily enough, native kids pick up on this, and so we get the "migrantisch" culture that many young people buy into regardless of whether they even have any recent immigrants in their family trees. And so we end up with a growing parallel society of immigrants and their hangers-on who have ample incentives to be game-theoretic defectors, and who instead of adopting more cooperative native norms end up weakening those norms across the country.

And I ramble and ramble and can't keep a train of thought for how frequently I need to go and do other things. Let me know if this makes the remotest lick of sense to you; if not I'll try again in a quieter hour.

You really can't think of any logical reason for somebody to oppose high levels of immigration? It's not a particularly important issue to me, and I can easily throw few lines of argument in the ring:

  1. <insert country> is overcrowded already -- bringing in more people is creating an inferior experience for the existing people in terms of overcrowding, cost of living, increased crime, etc. -- and is therefore undesirable to the current populace.

  2. If we are talking about immigration from less developed countries to richer western ones (which we usually are), and the pro-immigration interlocutor believes that AGW is a significant threat to the global environment (which he usually does), then bringing large numbers of people from a poorer, less carbon-intensive lifestyle to a more consumptive place where they produce more GHGs seems like an obviously bad idea.

  3. More spicily, if one considers the existing culture of one's country to be generally superior to that of other countries, then importing people from other cultures would dilute the existing culture, which would be undesirable. If this one is not logical enough for you, you will have no trouble at all finding somebody around here to make a similar argument based on extensively cited research around HBD -- it's not an argument I care to make, but seems to meet your criteria. (other than containing ideas that you undoubtedly disagree with of course)

The issue is not whether these arguments sound as if they could be logically compelling — the issue is whether these arguments actually are. Closer inspection reveals that they lack substance.

  1. The "overcrowding" argument applies to in-country movement of natives as well. By the same argument, from one part of the country to the other, or from countryside to cities would be detrimental. But people — native or not — move to cities because the concentration of people enables new kinds of services and collective works that would otherwise not be sustainable or even possible.
  2. That's a general argument against a higher standard of living — so why not lower the standard of living for the natives and then let the immigrants come? Another option would be to keep the immigrants where they are — and also force the other countries to stay poor at gunpoint.
  3. The culture argument is the only one where I see some merit, though it hinges on 1) the assumption that people do not adapt, and 2) that culture rather than power structures determine the success of individual countries.

In order to be logical, the arguments must hold up when replacing words, such as "immigrant" by "native", and they do not.

The common theme behind all these arguments against immigration is that they do not make sense as logical arguments for organizing how people can or should live together — but the core theme is "there is not enough for all of us!" and therefore "we need to cast out some people (based on random criteria)!".

Essentially, the premise is that "it's a game of musical chairs" and "we need to stop more people from playing", but the mental effort devoted to preventing people from getting in would be much better devoted to changing the game.

The issue is not whether these arguments sound as if they could be logically compelling — the issue is whether these arguments actually are.

incredibly weird qualifying statement. you are not the final arbiter of what someone could find logically compelling. a fool could find a paper bag logically compelling - can't you see the perfect symmetry, the lines of its folding, the uniformity of its manufacture?

a better statement would be "closer inspection of the evidence does not support this argument" followed by ammunition evidence, and then you guys can touch tips and have an evidence-off until you both leave still entirely unconvinced by each other's evidence and utterly certain of your own position.

In order to be logical, the arguments must hold up when replacing words, such as "immigrant" by "native", and they do not.

This lemma is not sound -- governments exist to protect the interests of their citizenry; no such obligation exists for people in other countries.

AFAICT the rest of your points rest on this assumption -- which is certainly something you can argue is a good idea a la Caplan, but is ultimately a moral/emotional argument -- so you don't get to privilege your own moral intuition over that of others by claiming to be using 'logic'.

This lemma is not sound -- governments exist to protect the interests of their citizenry; no such obligation exists for people in other countries.

No, it's sound. Any logically correct argument against "immigration" needs to be robust under switching the word "immigrant" with the word "native" or "human". It has nothing to do with morals, it's about the logical structure of the argument. Any argument of the form "More immigrants is bad because of X" that also generalizes to "More people is bad because of X" cannot be an argument against immigrants — it's an argument against people, including natives.

In order to be a genuine argument against "immigration", the structure of the argument must rely on a material distinguishing characteristic between "immigrant" and "native". That's where the culture argument has some merit, but the first two do not. "Is not a citizen of the country" is not a material distinction.

Any logically correct argument against "immigration" needs to be robust under switching the word "immigrant" with the word "native"

"Any logically correct argument needs to be robust under switching the variable 'A' with '¬A' or 'B' " is quite a take, logically speaking -- I understand the argument you are making, but it is not a logical one.

And especially why bother continuing to argue when doing so is only likely to be """rewarded""" with mass-downvotes and distributed dogpiles by commentators on a forum you don't even really like, and only stick around on out of some sort of... IDK, perverse masochism, I guess?

The majority of people here are willing to engage in reasonably good faith with fairly deep arguments , which you typically will not find on Reddit, Twitter or elsewhere. There is an obvious a rightwing bias, as this site's userbase is primarily composed of members of the right-leaning, abandoned themotte subreddit. Reddit's socialism or democratic subs may be more up your alley though; there are many to choose from, whereas Reddit by comparison has actively censored anything to the right of the mainstream, and is why this site was created.

Despite my faint hopes, the dysfunction in this country appears to be acclerating.

The thing is, both sides see the country spiraling down the drain or otherwise in decline, but in the opposite direction.

Why not bother?

By the sounds of it, you've become disillusioned by a sense of your impotence at changing others to your preferred views. Congratulations! You are recognizing a truth that already existed.

Be at ease. You have not become less persuasive over time, nor have humans become more unreasonable. Political tribalism did not begin in the last decades. The internet just brought the filters that already existed into clearer focus, by putting people who were previously behind regional media filters in contact with each other. The nature of connecting people is that you can now disagree with people who you previously never would have known strenuously disagreed with you.

But again, this was already the case. What has changed isn't the circumstances, but your cognition. If you only bothered to talk rather than fight because of a flawed and faulty cognition let you convince yourself that you were cleverer and more persuasive than you actually were, then perhaps you should not bother. (With either, obviously- if you can't trust your judgement on how well you can talk, you certainly shouldn't trust your judgement on whether and when to fight.)

But bothering doesn't require that sort of self-importance. And thanks to that, even if you can't force others to change, you can change your own thinking, and thus your reason to bother.

Why bother continuing to argue (and especially why bother continuing to argue online- an exercise in futility if I ever heard one!) when doing so is unlikely to change the other person's mind?

Why do you believe changing the other person's mind is the point of a public argument, as opposed to shaping the audience's opinion?

An internet forum is called a forum precisely because it involves more than two people. There are the debaters, and there is the audience, and the prize of any public debate has always been the opinion of the people not directly speaking. This is why the public fora have long been the political centers, and why part of rhetoric has been how to manage the appeals to the audience's sensibility.

The audience is almost never the opponent in the exchange. The audience is, by its nature, curious enough to pay attention, but ambivalent enough to not be taking part in the first place. The stage of a forum is for those who show up to speak, but the audience is many times larger. The prize is when successful arguments get echoed by people other than your opponent at the time, and/or when someone else re-iterates your previous rebuttal if the opponent tries that same line of argument again. Or, in a specific argument, when someone else enters with an unexpected concurrence, because you've written in a way that gives them something to build off of rather than focus on a solely personal bickering.

However, it is very hard to sway the audience if you do not bother to show up and try.

Why bother continuing to argue when the people I'm disagreeing with seem to have beliefs & experiences so wildly opposite of my own that I have to wonder if we're even living in the same country?

Because you live in the same country regardless of what you wonder, and your audience knows it.

If you are posting on this forum, you are part of a continental-scale civilization. There is no 'everyone has the same experience' commonality when some people face burning summers and others freezing winters, let alone more nuanced local institutional effects. Local political machines, dominant themes and trends in schools, different religiosity (let alone which religion), and so on. If you are only able to bother disagreeing with people who you have very similar beliefs and experiences, that is a limitation on your ability to persuade.

This limitation on persuading the audience is best addressed by.... interacting more with people whose beliefs and experiences contrast with your own.

Why bother continuing to argue when people I disagree with just seem like they fundamentally can't be reasoned with at all?

Because the validity of fundamental reasonableness is a judgement for the audience, not the arguer.

To paraphrase a certain book, if a man accuses his fellow of being fundamentally unreasonable, one of them is. If there are specific people you want to write off as being in bad faith, then by all means do so. The ignore feature is there for a reason. But when speaking with categories of people, part of intellectual humility is recognizing that we can stand accused of the same things. You can make any accusation you want, but the merit / weight it has comes from the people needing to be convinced. Namely, you have to convince the audience that you are not the unreasonable one.

Fortunately, the best way to win a challenge of reasonableness, and thus disqualify the other person's influence on the audience, is to publicly and persuasively be a more reasonable person.

And especially why bother continuing to argue when doing so is only likely to be """rewarded""" with mass-downvotes and distributed dogpiles by commentators on a forum you don't even really like, and only stick around on out of some sort of... IDK, perverse masochism, I guess?

Because there is an audience here that will recognize good effort, and good rhetoric.

The Motte is a place of contrarians, not conservatives. It is not hard to be north-of-neutral on even contentious topics if you phrase well. Distributed dogpiles, on the other hand, are consistent indicators of often substantial issues. This could be a lazy pejorative, blatant bias, or letting your personal contempt for others show through.

This is valuable insight to learn about one's self. If one actually wants to become persuasive, then they need to learn to recognize, and mitigate, their bad habits.

So I ask again- why bother?

Why not?

Are you the sort of person who only bothers to engage people you disagree with when you expect to win?

Is the time for talking over?

If the time for talking wasn't over during much larger and more violent political violence years ago, why would it be over now?

Why do you believe changing the other person's mind is the point of a public argument, as opposed to shaping the audience's opinion?

I will caution that going there tends to legitimise dishonest debating, flaming, and suchlike. It's a mode I've seen advocated by social justice warriors a decade ago (admittedly, they mostly then moved on to "why even allow the debate?"), and is related to why callout culture became a thing.

This is a fair failure mode to keep in mind!

So I ask again- why bother? Is the time for talking over?

Its a good question, although it appears I've come about to it from the opposite direction you have.

The factor that has gotten me to just about throw in the towel on the entire concept of political discourse is watching for four years while one side kept pointing out that Joe Biden was very probably demented in the most medically literal sense of the term, and the other side, the full weight of every mainstream/respectable media and academic outlet claimed this was a nutty conspiracy.

Then the presidential debate happened.

And now, having the exact same parties who maintained that he was just fine and dandy are doing the rounds on book tours and media interviews claiming "SOME (completely unidentifiable) PARTICULAR PERSONS IN THE WHITE HOUSE MISLED EVERYBODY ABOUT BIDEN'S MENTAL ACUITY." No way, really? Somehow they seemed quite eager to be misled in this way.

And now that we've admitted to being misled, are we casting blame anywhere? Why... no. Its all just a completely amorphous conspiracy comprised of nobody in particular. Oh well. What a weird chapter in history that we can now close while suffering no consequences whatsoever.

Just a perfect encapsulation of the problem: an enforced narrative that nobody is permitted to question, a breaking point where the narrative CANNOT be maintained in the face of unavoidable reality. A brief period of panicked denial... then distraction... and finally a very carefully constructed withdrawal that absolves anyone of blame and pretends the whole issue was just an honest mistake with little or no malicious motivation whatsoever.

How does one fight such a keenly evolved, utterly remorseless memetic entity, where its self-preservation is dependent solely on how many skulls it can lodge itself in as deeply as possible.

I admire its purity. Such a perfectly enclosed epistemic environment, policed by the most advanced egregore wranglers that history has ever produced.

Regardless of how logically sound and carefully researched my arguments are (and I really DO spend a lot of time researching my arguments) it cannot compete with an endless stream of repeated thought terminating cliches and carefully curated facts and stats that grant the pretense of knowledge but deny someone any real understanding of cause and effect.

And now we can add sycophantic LLMs to the mix, which can be curated to at least try to maintain a given narrative and write pleasingly-worded missives that either dodge the real question of what is 'true' or can lead you just far enough along the path towards truth to make you feel informed... then pull you off in a different direction, forgetting to take the last few steps and actually change your mind.

As the kids say, "We're fuckin' cooked."

Of course, I'm so rabidly averse to violent conflict as a first, or second, or even third resort that I am (perhaps irrationally so) very willing to seek peaceful, cooperative resolution options right up until the very moment somebody flicks a fist in my direction.

And my current solution has been to insulate myself from the attack vectors of that memetic entity. Adblock on. No cable tv. No influencers. Don't read the articles, don't listen to the podcast, don't watch the movie written by the hollywood leftist. Maybe read the books but definitely don't try to discuss the book on reddit. Do not give the hostile egregore full write access to your brain.

I live in one of the reddest areas of a red (formerly purple) state, and have manipulated enough about my immediate environment that the chances of the culture war frontlines ever reaching me are virtually nil. This comes at some level of personal cost, but I've placed such a high value on maintaining my sanity that I GLADLY pay it.

And so I sit here wondering WHY I still pop onto themotte to do a little bit of sparring, keeping my debate skills honed, when even around here the odds of any given argument or set of arguments moving the needle on someone's personal beliefs seem slim.

One of the arguments in favor of democratic modes of government is that it allows peaceful transition of power because elections are viable proxies for battles/military force.

Quoth Federalist No. 10:

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.

That is, the side that manages to pull 51% or more of the population that is engaged enough to vote can reasonably claim "if there was to be a physical war our side, being more numerous, is more likely to win it. In lieu of fighting that would be ruinous to both sides, you will accept our rule for a few years, we will rule with a certain amount of respect/deference, and then we can run another simulation to see if anythings changed."

Of course, it seems like the Dems/lefties haven't managed to process how they got trounced in the last election, even with some thumbs on the scale, and what this implies about their popularity in the country. So they "convulse the society" and "clog the administration" (how many national injunctions are we at?), but are 'unable to execute and mask its violence under... the Constitution.'

And yet we know that democratic elections don't completely avert violence, or else Mexico's most recent election wouldn't have been so damn bloody. Turns out that violence is also a way to influence outcomes in a democracy, when you don't expect the votes to go your way 'organically.' So there's a bit of a feedback loop.

So in a sense, the current upwelling of conflict doesn't read to me as a real instigation to war, but more just a disadvantaged minority faction pressing the 'foment chaos' button as a means of gumming up the works for the majority and maybe influencing outcomes, at least locally, towards their favor.

No, I'm not drawing a moral equivalence between drug cartels and ICE protestors, or even rioters. Just pointing out how these actions are closer to the "open violent conflict" end of the spectrum than the "free discourse and exchange of ideas as means of persuasion" that was idealized by, e.g., the Federalist Papers and that we try to maintain on this forum.

So what are we doing here? What's the point? Why bother?

I'd posit that everyone is in the continual stage of trying to size up the field and gauge the relative power of each tribe so as to determine if it is possible to make any decisive attacks or maneuvers that will lead to one group's victory and ascension to unquestioned rule over the cultural landscape. And the literal landscape, too.

Which faction has the best tacticians? The most guns? The most tightly organized units? The most efficient logistics? The most loyal/zealous footsoldiers? Which is favored by God? (love that scene, perfect illustration of this point about sizing up the force your opponent can bring to bear), which side has their Oppenheimer, their Feynman, their Von Neumann who can build superweapons, memetic or otherwise?

And as long as we're mostly convinced that the aggregate combat strength of each side is approximately at enough parity that the conflict would lead to uncapped casualties, including complete obliteration (which, in the age of nuclear MAD is a real possibility!), then even a conflict that you win is just not worth entering in the first place.

I'd argue that the more kinetic version of this is what led to the openly aggressive conflict with Israel and Palestine... and Israel and Iran, more recently. Israel knows it can pound Palestine into a fine powder if left to do it... but they can't ignore the various potential interlopers who might enter the fray. And so occasionally swatting Iran across the nose is a nice reminder to the rest to keep the claws sheathed.

Its why the Pakistan India thing didn't truly spiral out of control, neither side had a path to victory that wouldn't OBVIOUSLY leave both sides in ruins.

This little site is just one facet of a glittering jewel that is human social network, whose topology is beyond the comprehension of any individual human, but maybe if enough of us enlightened apes discuss our various perspectives and unique insights (we have those, right?) then the collective hivemind can manage to ascertain enough of the rough shape to determine if any particular faction has an egregious edge in power.

Because let me admit, about two years or so ago I would have told you that the Blue Tribe was close to locking insurmountable advantages which it could leverage to maintain complete control, and I was mentally gearing up to have to shoot at [redacted] agents in a last ditch effort to not be assimilated.

And now, though, now it looks like the ballgame is way closer than I anticipated, and I am now more uncertain than before about the current trajectory of U.S. political power. I guess Red Tribe is currently at bat, and they're trying to load up the bases, but really, really counting on some kind of grand slam to put them far ahead before, presumably, blue tribe grabs the levers of power again.

So I keep coming back here, hoping someone will hit on the observation or connect some dots that will help me foresee the unforeseeable and align myself with the right people (or, failing that, align myself AGAINST the right people) to ensure my longer term success and survival.

Some might actually be intending to get froggy if the tide is shown to turn in their favor, and are quietly trying to sense who might fight back, who might ally with them, who might look the other way. Maybe they want moral justification for doing some really nasty thing to the hated opposition. I don't know. But I think we're all at least idly, casually interested in figuring out the shape of the conflict and the ebb and flow of the battle and then making whatever use of that information we can.

And where else can we go for an actual clearheaded view of things?

egregore

First time seeing this term. Fascinating rabbit hole dive followed. Cheers.

It's the perfect shorthand for describing what at first seems like a whole variety of disparate effects and behaviors but that really has a lot of nonvisible connections and correlations.

Yes. What do you think of the rest of the concept? Is it worth reading a book on it?

I see that associated concepts and treatments veer into very strange and wacky stuff.

I might try Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human Destiny.

Chiming in to possibly offer assistance:

People try to diagnose what's going on with the world around them.

Approach 1: "it's that guy's fault!"; "that guy" may be the king or a vizier or an enemy general or whatever. This is sometimes true on the object level, as bad actors do exist and do create notable problems, but it obviously doesn't generalize.

Approach 2: "It's those peoples' fault!"; "those people" might be a social class or an ethnic group, jews, whites, blacks, capitalists, billionaires, whatever. This could at least potentially be true, but much more often appears to be false. Human behavior is too complicated and interconnected for it to all be caused by one small group.

But if it's not individuals, and it's not groups, what is left?

Approach 3: "it emerges from the negative space between various individuals and various groups." The negative space, the net incentives created by the intractably complex interaction of more limited individual or group action, generate pseudo-intentional action, a set of phenomena which are not the result of consciousness, but which can be much better understood and predicted if modelled as though they were.

Two examples: Scott's description of "Molech" from meditations on Molech, and Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand of the Market". A weaker example might be strong convergence on the idea of "The Algorythm" in social media analysis.

I don't have a good link on Egregores, but this back and forth has one participant attempting to articulate a mechanistic and materialist conception of egregore, while the other says Nah, that is just culture and "... egregores are, if they exist, psychic or supernatural, not computer bits and not cultures"

I think that is interesting even though the link contains nothing definitive or agreed.

If you are going to read some of the more wacky stuff about egregores, I'd suggest trying to view it as an early attempt at understanding memetics. Unless you like 19th century takes on the occult.

What does getting a good understanding of memetics involve? I've read some of Girard's writings and I read a few chapters of Wanting by Burgis. I should pick that book up again.

So I have been thinking about this since you asked, because I am no academic and because the answer for me was to become a slop vacuum that consumes all media - a good understanding of memetics requires a good understanding of the zeitgeist in which you are situated. But to understand how people talk about memetics, Girard is a good start, and Gramsci would be good too, Lyotard and Baudrillard are essential. Yes unfortunately you will need to develop a robust understanding of rationalism's evil twin, post modernism. But then you get to the good stuff - Boyd and Richerson, Dennett, and Blackmore's The Meme Machine. I want to say Cialdini is a huge help too, but I assume everyone here has read Influence already.

That's a lotta books... :(

I haven't read Cialdini yet. I actually got it, read a tiny bit, but was hit with a moral concern that it's wrong to 'manipulate' people. I guess I should discard that concern, since everyone else who gets shit done is doing it.

Egregores: The Occult Entities That Watch Over Human Destiny.

Can't speak to that one.

In keeping with the traditions of this forum, its probably worth starting with some of Scott Alexander's writings.

Have you read Meditations on Moloch?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Thanks for the link!

Why bother? Because forcing yourself and the other person to dig, think through unexpected things, etc. makes both of you come to more nuanced, defensible, in-touch-with-reality versions of your positions.

And secondly, for the sake of those watching, who may not yet have committed to positions.

I'm agreed with you that we're on a terrible trajectory. E.g. the judiciary and presidency are on a crash course almost no matter what happens, given that, right now, all the district judges are making ridiculous TROs far overstepping their power (so that ignoring the courts is a growing sentiment on the online right), and on the other hand, the democrats want to pack the court. The chances we have a judiciary functioning properly in 30 years feel much lower than I would like. That's just an example, across the board, from both sides we're seeing escalations, radicalization, degradation of norms, which invites more of the same.

I post on here because it's fun. And I hope I am smart enough to stop if it ever stops being so.

We may be having some of the highest quality political discourse on the internet right here, but in the grand scheme of things we're relatively inconsequential. Winning the discussion here won't stop knuckleheads from spouting idiotic lies elsewhere, and certainly won't result in political change.

Nothing ever happens.

We may be having some of the highest quality political discourse on the internet right here, but in the grand scheme of things we're relatively inconsequential.

I strongly feel the latter is causing the former too. The day you become consequential is the day the spambots and cyber warriors come for you.

Truth only ever seems to get its day in the halls of nerds who argue for sport. May we never be cursed with influence.

That bike lane discussion you linked to was so much fun.

Very illuminating however, your point about living in entirely different worlds really resonated with me. I haven't interacted with someone with such orthogonal views to mine in a long time. I can usually understand where people come from and why they think they way they do, but it was very hard here. The level of anger and reality denial was quite something.

Also very funny to see any pretense of "rationalism" or truth-seeking completely fly out the window to be replaced by personal anecdotes and confirmation bias.

Great time, would do again. I think my answer to "why bother" is because it's fun feeling self righteous anger and arguing circles around people. I'm happy I discovered this website.

Also very funny to see any pretense of "rationalism" or truth-seeking completely fly out the window to be replaced by personal anecdotes and confirmation bias.

Point of order: all rationalism is, is exactly that under a few layers of misdirection. Abandoning it is the good and honest thing to do.

While I don't disagree, I'm not sure if naked reliance on anecdotes and confirmation bias is much better.

At least """rationalists""" (I really can't type this with a straight face) pay lip service to Bayes, updating their opinions in the face of truth, etc.

While they're still human, that at least forces one to think about their thinking occasionally.

While I don't disagree, I'm not sure if naked reliance on anecdotes and confirmation bias is much better.

Why not? People are not that bad at coming up with heuristics that work for them. They have their limit's, of course, and offer no way of resolving disagreements, but it's really not a bad way of looking for the truth.q

At least """rationalists""" (I really can't type this with a straight face) pay lip service to Bayes, updating their opinions in the face of truth, etc.

Paying lip service to something, but not doing it is worse than just not doing it.

While they're still human, that at least forces one to think about their thinking occasionally.

Can't remember who it was, but someone wrote a book about how smart people aren't any less prone to falling for bad ideas, they're just a lot better at justifying them. This is all "thinking about your thinking" accomplishes.

Sorry I should have been more clear. I think that having things like "Bayesian reasoning" and "try to seek the truth, if you're wrong, adjust your understanding of the world" and "attempt to anchor your thoughts and arguments in real and truthful facts" are all great things to do. I think they make people make smarter decisions and be correct more often.

I don't think they're a silver bullet, and none of them will make you right when you're wrong. You can also justify stupid shit by dressing it up in smart language.

But I think people who incorporate such ideals/heuristics into their life critically think more, and thus it is useful. It's just that rationalists seem to lean into it a bit much (not "pay lip service but don't do it"). They, like most people, still overvalue their beliefs, see: the perpetual meltdown over p(doom).

Why not? People are not that bad at coming up with heuristics that work for them. They have their limit's, of course, and offer no way of resolving disagreements, but it's really not a bad way of looking for the truth.

I don't think you're trolling me (although if you are, bravo) but are you serious? You will struggle to be right about anything if all your evidence is just you noticing things that confirm your biases and ignoring things that show you may be wrong (or at least not right).

This is a first for me though. I've never seen someone say out loud "anecdotes and confirmation bias is fine, actually"

I think people underrate persuasion, its just often not visible.

When I was in high school I was a Diablo II forum moderator and trader, and ideas like that there are significant racial IQ gaps simply were not among the facts or topics I was in contact with. But as Diablo II kind of died (its not actually dead even now) the forum got interesting and political from time to time. And then topics were introduced. And I was able to learn about such topics, expand, etc.

Then don't argue with people here? Engage the way you want to be engaged with. I disagree with Nara's "why are you here", because telling people that don't like an area's culture to leave just makes for an echo chamber.

Personally, I would rather more discussion of process and fun pontificating, including more levity, but have been hard-pressed to, be the so-named change I want to see.

But I stay and lurk anyway, because maybe I'll find something entertaining and insightful to say. Unfortunately, the law of the internet is here to stay. 90% of everything is shit.

Why bother?

I've thought about this question a lot. It's why I've never really posted on this site. I spend lots of time on many other forums but post very infrequently. In-person I don't talk much either.

I often reflect on the things I do write or say. In hindsight, many of them seem obvious and therefore unnecessary. Others I regret because my opinion has changed. But occasionally I'll look at something I wrote and feel glad, because I was right. Whether it's because I predicted something, I made someone else agree; or it's something I wrote when I was much younger, and despite having far more experience, my opinion hasn't changed at all.

Here are some reasons why you should argue for your beliefs:

  • To convince yourself: people aren't perfectly rational, we form beliefs for illogical reasons (e.g. because we heard them from friends or family), and we hold beliefs without understanding why. When you argue for such a belief, you create the argument on the fly. If it's a "justifiable" belief (i.e. aligns with your other beliefs), the argument can reinforce your confidence in it later; or if it's not, you may start writing, realize you can't find a good argument, then change your belief for the better (happens to me).

  • Because it may convince some people: the vast majority probably approach your argument firmly holding their own conclusions, but perhaps one or two are unsure, and your argument moves them to your side. I believe this happens, everyone has some concepts they don't hold a firm opinion on and can be persuaded either way. If your giant wall of text convinces just one or two people, was it worth writing? That's up for you to decide, but note that enough "one or two people"s can sway an election.

  • Because it appeases people who already agree with you: It makes me happy to read and hear nuanced opinions similar to mine among a sea of surface-level takes. I appreciate them even though I already agree with them. It makes me more confident, because it signals there are more people like me in this world, and that my worldview may not be "wrong" because others hold it. If the opinion is backed with evidence, I can use it if/when I restate the opinion in my own social spaces. Thus, even if everyone that reads your post agrees, it may still have positive consequences.

  • Because it appeases people who don't agree with you (if you care about people in general): I like reading some nuanced opinions that I strongly disagree with, because they make me think. As much as I dislike some parts of society, I wouldn't want everyone to think exactly like me, because it would be much more boring.

  • Because of pride, and/or because you want to for some other reason: people aren't perfectly rational, we can't control what we want. If posting makes you feel better about yourself, or feel like you accomplished something, then even if there's no other reason I believe it's worth it. Scott Alexander has written a lot, he's written that people have said (paraphrasing) "wow, you write so much. How do you do it? Isn't it hard?"; and he replied, he just really likes to write, for him it's not work, it's relaxation.

To elaborate on "because you want to" and expand on "why bother": why bother with anything? I have a dog, and dogs seem to live meaningless lives: they sleep, eat, go for walks mostly around the same places, play a repetitive game (fetch), get pet, and occasionally meet people who are invited over. People live much more meaningfully: we travel, build things, lead corporations and governments, go into space, etc. But those things are only more meaningful because we feel they are; for depressed nihilistic people they aren't meaningful at all. Likewise, I think a post is intrinsically "meaningful" if the author feels it is, even if there's no other reason...

...I don't know, I guess I "bothered" to write that last part, and this whole post.

So I ask again- why bother? Is the time for talking over?

Well... it isn't 100% on point, given the different context, but I would invite you to read what I wrote to Kulak's exit and imagine how the substance of my post might apply to you.

Back in 2010 and 2011 and 2012, all of the liberal news opinion sources that I had read when I was an I AM VERY SMART New Atheist suddenly shifted on a dime, and they started repeating an intersectional line of politics that none of them had evinced back when all of us were extremely mad about Bush. It was the early rumblings of the politics of wokeness, essentially. And for several years, I found my blood pressure going up more and more every time I would read these formerly sympathetic sources. I found them painting with broader and broader brushes, and casting more and more groups that I still identified with in a worse light, and I kept wrestling with the "why bother" question... until a point finally came, in 2014, where a discontinuous break happened. And all of those voices suddenly went from being an "us" to a "them", and I was no longer a sympathetic reader of those voices.

But what I want to say is... that process of me reading, and getting more frustrated, was an essential part of the process of me shifting my perspective, and realizing a whole lot of things about politics and ideology that I had been totally in the dark about. That was, for a time, an actual answer to "why bother". It led me to a lot of much smarter, sharper reading (mostly in the form of actual, rigorous books) than I had done when I was coasting on anti-Bush vibes and Obama charisma. In retrospect, I would say, interacting with those conversations was really important, because it was interacting with it that led to the point where I could be confident that that conversation was entirely over. You could say that's sad, I guess, but I think it's just pragmatic, and possibly healthy, too. If you're blithely in a Schmidt-ian relationship with powerful forces, much better to remove the scales from your eyes, accept reality, and move on (possibly reconfiguring your life so your surface area is minimized as much as possible) than to be a gas lit cuckold, if I can haul out a fraught term.

So there's that. And unfortunately, this cycle feeds on itself - at this point, I simply can't and won't give progressives much of hearing unless they really bend over backwards to repudiate most of the last 15 years of politics and culture. And that's extremely unlikely, so I'm not particularly reachable. And that's too bad, I guess - but I already went on this rodeo before, back when I was being activisted out of my home conservative culture between 1996 and 2008. Fool me once, shame on me...

And of course, and I'm far from alone in this, I'm socially still surrounded by highly presumptuous, true-believing progressives for professional and class reasons, so at least in my case (and I think I'm far from alone in this), it's not like I no idea what evolving progressive thought looks like these days.

I believe, and I think this was once a much more common American belief, that there are much, much, much worse things in the world than different groups with different world views and different values giving each other some generous space. If we are lucky, maybe America will return to that form of organization. But it's going to be very difficult in the interim, because we have all sorts of institutions in place (the New Deal state, universities, Hollywood, multinational corporations) that assume a degree of integration that is possibly no longer supportable given how America is drifting. Or maybe other blacks swan events will conspire that restore a sense of unity - but if so, they'll almost certainly have to involve a massive amount of suffering and death, just like the Great Depression and World War 2 did.

So, to return to your original question, why bother? Well, pragmatically, it's likely that Trump and the new version of the right will overplay their hand in certain key ways. And as they do, there will likely be people who are receptive to new arguments again. You can only make those arguments if you're mixing it up in mixed communities and have gotten good at doing so rhetorically. And the old wisdom I've always seen is, far more people read than write, so if you make good arguments on a forum, even if you're downvoted, you might be reaching an audience that's invisible - that's a thankless road to hoe in the short-term, but if you time it right, and you're fortunate in picking where you participate, you could well reach people that way. I mean, even for me, there is no possible future where I'm reachable by American progressives in a positive sense... but I could be persuaded that whatever gets called the right is more or less supportable, depending on what's going on. But this is all about "what's politically effective", not "what's a fun way to spend my evenings".

Well, there's a thesis in the culture war thread OP that we've had for actual years:

Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics.

Why bother? Well, you're here, aren'tcha?

Filing this under "posts I really hope I end up being wrong about".

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