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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32449 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

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Don't labor under the illusion that, with just the right artfully chosen words, you will change their mind. People are not stupid. They will see through your disclaimers and will see only a Republican bigot. Because that's what you are to them.

So how do you change someone's mind? You raise or lower their status. Woke people are not, for the most part, following genuine principles. They are following incentives. In this case, the incentive is status. You change their mind by showing expressing disgust in their low status beliefs.

Don't try to convince someone that their opinions are wrong. Convince them that their opinions are boring and low status. Oh, you're still woke? Lol, okay. And then don't invite them to the party. If this works, the individual will gradually try on new better opinions which you can reward with laughs and invitations. They still won't have genuine principles. Almost no one does.

Of course, this only works if you yourself are popular and high status.

So how do you change someone's mind? Work on being high status. Be attractive. Don't be unattractive. If you are pimply face nerd with poor social skills, your efforts can only backfire.

Convince them that their opinions are boring and low status. [...] Of course, this only works if you yourself are popular and high status. [...] Work on being high status.

This implies that there is a second viable strategy, which is "be as visibly woke, and also as visibly low-status, as possible".

I do not endorse alternative this strategy, despite expecting that it probably would work.

This would probably work best, IMO. I think the political coding of the pandemic would have been much different if Donald Trump had gone full-blown Covidian. Early on, for example, there were many Democrats making a big show of going to Asian street festivals and such. But once Trump, the ultimate low status signifier, staked his claim, they had to react in opposition.

While I think that Trump's actions set the tone for much of how the pandemic camps ended up forming (within the US, though this would end up affecting in some ways Covid politics all around the world through Americanization), it should be noted that Trump was consistently and insistently gung-ho supporter of the development of mRNA vaccines, and vaccine politics still ended up becoming such that fervent pro-vaxxing is associated with the left and antivaxxery (mostly) with the right, leading to some obvious mental gymnastics on both sides as provaxxers try to ignore statements about "not taking the Trump vaccine" and antivaxxers declaring that mRNA vaccination is a gigantic plot to kill or sterilize the humanity and also it doesn't matter that Trump supported it since he didn't support mandates, or some such view.

Yup, people claim this, but all around the world, even where the fairly right-leaning government were also fairly pro-COVID measures, in almost all cases, the pressure to lessen COVID restrictions and against masks came from the right. Hell, by most measures, everybodies favorite NatCon leader Orban has COVID restrictions that would make Gavin Newsom blush, but even he felt pressure from his right to loosen them eventually.

One kind of sad thing is Trump seems to be dropping support of one of the few unequivocally good things he did (Operation Warp Drive) because the GOP base is so crazed on vaccines.

Come on, man, take one for the team!

So how do you change someone's mind? You raise or lower their status. Woke people are not, for the most part, following genuine principles. They are following incentives. In this case, the incentive is status. You change their mind by showing expressing disgust in their low status beliefs.

Just to be clear, is it your belief that only woke people are like this, or is this a more widely-shared trait?

Edit: Sorry, missed the part where you said "Almost no one does".

I sometimes wonder whether I have genuine principles myself or whether its merely a reflexive contrarianism.

I think he made it clear when he said:

They still won't have genuine principles. Almost no one does

Whoops, you're right. I think my eyes glazed over that, that's what I get for reading late at night.

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