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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Notes -
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.
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.
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
Paying lip service to something, but not doing it is worse than just not doing it.
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).
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"
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