Quotulatiousness

August 18, 2020

Political polarization, or why Liberals and Conservatives really don’t understand each other

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

John Miltimore discusses the findings of Jonathan Haidt on the differences in moral worldviews of conservative and liberal Americans which seem to explain why communication across the political “aisle” is so difficult:

Jonathan Haidt at the Miller Center of Public Affairs in Charlottesville, Virginia on 19 March, 2012.
Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

During a TED talk a number of years ago, Haidt shared his discovery that contrary to the idea that humans begin as a blank slate — “the worst idea in all psychology,” he says — humans are born with a “first draft” of moral knowledge. Essentially, Haidt argues, humans possess innate but malleable sets of values “organized in advance of experience.”

So if the slate is not blank, what’s on it?

To find out, Haidt and a colleague read the most current literature on anthropology, cultural variations, and evolutionary psychology to identify cross-cultural matches. They found five primary categories that serve as our moral foundation:

  1. Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
  2. Fairness/reciprocity: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives.]
  3. Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it’s “one for all, and all for one.”
  4. Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
  5. Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

[…]

What Haidt found is that both conservatives and liberals recognize the Harm/Care and Fairness/Reciprocity values. Liberal-minded people, however, tend to reject the three remaining foundational values — Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, and Sanctity/degradation — while conservatives accept them. It’s an extraordinary difference, and it helps explain why many liberals and conservatives in America think “the other side” is bonkers.

QotD: Stigma

Filed under: Britain, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Anthropologists used to divide societies into shame and guilt categories. The former depended on people’s public face to keep them in order, the latter on people’s internal sense of right and wrong. No doubt no pure forms of either exist in reality, though in my darker moments I sometimes wonder whether we have succeeded in creating a new type of society, one in which neither shame nor guilt are very much in evidence.

But in fact there is almost a law of conservation of stigma that operates in human societies, such that if it does not attach to one thing, it will attach to another. No doubt there is more stigma in shame societies than in guilt societies, but even in the latter everyone, except perhaps the most psychopathic of psychopaths, is afraid of being shown up in some respect or another.

Stigma begins early in life and children are much guided or influenced in their conduct by the fear of it. A teacher told me the following story. A child of about seven or eight came crying to her one day because another child had called him names.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He called me a virgin.”

“What is a virgin?” asked the teacher,

“I don’t know,” said the boy. “But I know it’s something horrible.”

Stigma is a kind of shorthand to indicate what we detest. Anyone who pretends that he never stigmatises is probably lying, or perhaps I should say not telling the truth, since not every untruth that emerges from the human mouth is a lie. There are people who can contradict themselves without disbelieving in the law of non-contradiction, and therefore people who can genuinely despise people who pass moral judgment on others.

What would living completely without stigma and stigmatisation mean? Surely that there was nothing that we or anyone else could do to make people think badly of us. One of the reasons — I don’t say the only one — that I don’t steal is that I don’t want to be stigmatised as a thief. One sin doesn’t define a person’s character, however, so that when we stigmatise we must be careful to be just and proportionate. If we called everyone a liar who had told a lie, then we should all be liars (quite apart from the fact that it is sometimes virtuous to tell a lie). We call a liar someone who habitually lies, so that untruthfulness is a central part of his character.

Stigma is one of those many things that is neither good nor bad in itself, and depends for its social beneficence or maleficence on what it attaches to and how strongly. In the company of rogues or scoundrels, one can be stigmatised for honesty. Many a cruel act has been performed to avoid the stigma of being too cowardly to be cruel.

Theodore Dalrymple, “The Situational Nature of Scorn and Stigma”, New English Review, 2020-04-28.

August 11, 2020

QotD: Our culture shapes what we can see

Filed under: Europe, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the things I keep trying to explain to my “woke” colleagues, when they stand tall and righteous and put their shoulders back and say that Heinlein was racisthomophobicsexist or that great authors of the past should have been better than to follow the prejudices of their time, is that when you’re immersed in your time, you don’t see the prejudices and the blind spots.

I have a little more insight into how culture shapes what’s possible to think, because I changed my culture as an adult. While this can be done (obviously) and immigrants should be encouraged to do it, (or go home), the acculturation is never complete. What happens is that you acquire a sort of cultural double vision. Depending on how far your acculturation goes, you’ll see the defects in thought or at least the unquestioned assumptions in one of the countries better, but also have a strong feeling of being outside enough to see some flaws in your dominant culture. In my case, for instance, I see the flaws in Portugal very clearly, like the obsession with speed over diligence or being decisive over being right, but I still see some in the US which is why sometimes I say “what people born and raised here don’t see.”

I have, of course, even more insight, due to being a conservative in the US, in a culture and profession (the arts/publishing) that is not only majority left, but majority extreme left. For many years, the only way to stay at least plausibly under cover was to see what they were seeing, and what they expected.

But without that, most people are blind to the … ah, unconscious or unthinking parts of their culture. Heck, even with what I’ve been through, I still tend to accept a lot of things unconsciously, unless I step back and go “Now wait a minute.”

Sarah Hoyt, “Slouching Into Shackles”, According to Hoyt, 2018-04-27.

August 9, 2020

QotD: The economic concept of “revealed preferences”

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Government, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Economists have a handy term called “revealed preferences”. In colloquial English it means “look at what people do, not what they say, and certainly never take notice of what they say others should do”.

Now, you can’t help but notice that there is a disparity between those who say that taxes should be higher and those who act as if they should be. Clearly, an individual who really believes that the Government is more effective at spending his money would voluntarily offer up more than the legal minimum of taxation. That we have fewer people acting in this manner than are to be found writing columns and making speeches calling for higher taxation shows a certain gap, does it not, between public utterances and private actions? Why, we could make such donations a litmus test for those believers in higher taxation and state spending who want to compel all of us to pay more. Only those who show their commitment by sending a cheque to the Treasury should be treated seriously.

Cheques, by the way, should be made out to “The Accountant, HM Treasury”, and sent to 1 Horse Guards Road, London SW1A 2HQ. A 2nd-class stamp is sufficient and you are encouraged to add a covering note so that your donation is spent in the way you like.

Tim Worstall, “Show us your cheques”, Times of London, quoted in Continental Telegraph, 2020-05-07.

August 1, 2020

Why incompetent people think they’re amazing – David Dunning

Filed under: Business, Education, Science — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

TED-Ed
Published 9 Nov 2017

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How good are you with money? What about reading people’s emotions? How healthy are you, compared to other people you know? Knowing how our skills stack up against others is useful in many ways. But psychological research suggests that we’re not very good at evaluating ourselves accurately. In fact, we frequently overestimate our own abilities. David Dunning describes the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Lesson by David Dunning, directed by Wednesday Studio, music and sound by Tom Drew.

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Masking stupidity

Filed under: Government, Health, Law, Liberty, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Critic, Patrick Fagan talks about the dehumanizing aspect of mandatory facemask orders:

“Utrecht: Facemask Store” by harry_nl is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

In Joost Meerloo’s analysis of false confessions and totalitarian regimes, The Rape of the Mind, he coins a phrase for the “dumbing down” of critical resistance – menticide. “In the totalitarian regime,” he wrote, “the doubting, inquisitive, and imaginative mind has to be suppressed. The totalitarian slave is only allowed to memorise, to salivate when the bell rings.”

[…]

Face masks can now be added to the list of mandates that make you stupid. As if Piers Morgan feverishly promoting them weren’t evidence enough, here are the facts on why you absolutely, categorically should not wear a face mask. They make you suggestible; they make you more likely to follow someone else’s direction and do things you wouldn’t otherwise do. In short, they switch off your executive function – your conscience.

A great example comes from a study by Mathes and Guest (1976), who asked participants how willing they would be, and how much they would have to be paid, to carry a sign around the university cafeteria reading “masturbation is fun” (this being 1976, doing such a thing would be considered embarrassing; these days it will probably earn you a course credit!). The results showed that when people wore a mask, they were more likely to carry the sign and required less money to do so ($30 compared to $48, on average).

Meanwhile, Miller and Rowold (1979) presented Halloween trick-or-treaters with a bowl of chocolates and told them they were allowed to take only two each. When the children thought they weren’t being watched, they helped themselves. Children without a mask broke the rule, taking more chocolates, 37% of the time, compared to 62% for masked children. The authors concluded that masks “lead to lower restraints on behaviour”.

The effect has similarly been found online: the online disinhibition effect refers to the tendency for people to act antisocially when anonymous online (Suler, 2004). There is even an infamous trolling movement calling itself Anonymous and using a mask as its symbol.

The disinhibiting effects of wearing a mask are described by psychologists in terms of a suspension of the superego’s control mechanisms, allowing subconscious impulses to take over. Saigre (1989) wrote that masks “short-cut” conscious defence systems and encourage “massive regression” to a more primitive state; Castle (1986) wrote that eighteenth century masquerades allowed mask-wearers to release their repressed hedonistic and sexual impulses; and Caillois (1962) similarly wrote about European masked carnivals involving libidinal activities including “indecencies, jostling, provocative laughter, exposed breasts, mimicking buffoonery, a permanent incitement to riot, feasting and excessive talk, noise and movement”. In the 12th Century, Pope Innocent III banned masks as part of his fight against immorality; and in 1845, New York State made it illegal for more than two people to wear masks in public, after farmers wore masks to attack their landlords.

From a neuroimaging perspective, masks are known to inhibit identity and impulse control – both associated with executive function in the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Glannon, 2005; Tacikowski, Berger & Ehrsson, 2017). In other words, masks silence the Jiminy Cricket in the brain.

July 30, 2020

QotD: The “strong female protagonist” in movies and on TV

Filed under: Media, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

And I wonder whether you’ve noticed a character that can be found in practically every movie made today? I call her the “all conquering female.” Almost without exception, she is underestimated by men and then proves herself more intelligent, cleverer, more courageous, and more skilled than any man. Whether we’re talking about a romantic comedy, an office-drama, or an adventure movie, the all conquering female will almost inevitably show up. And she has to show her worth in a domineering way, that is to say, over and against the men. For her to appear strong, they have to appear weak. For a particularly good case in point, watch the most recent Star Wars film.

Now I perfectly understand the legitimacy of feminist concerns regarding the portrayal of women in the media as consistently demure, retiring, and subservient to men. I grant that, in most of the action/adventure movies that I saw growing up, women would typically twist an ankle or get captured and then require rescuing by the swashbuckling male hero — and I realize how galling this must have been to generations of women. And therefore, a certain correction was undoubtedly in order. But what is problematic now is the Nietzschean quality of the reaction, by which I mean, the insistence that female power has to be asserted over and against males, that there is an either/or, zero-sum conflict between men and women. It is not enough, in a word, to show women as intelligent, savvy, and good; you have to portray men as stupid, witless, and irresponsible. That this savage contrast is having an effect especially on younger men is becoming increasingly apparent.

In the midst of a “you-go-girl” feminist culture, many boys and young men feel adrift, afraid that any expression of their own good qualities will be construed as aggressive or insensitive. If you want concrete proof of this, take a look at the statistics contrasting female and male success at the university level. And you can see the phenomenon in films such as Fight Club and The Intern. In the former, the Brad Pitt character turns to his friend and laments, “we’re thirty year old boys;” and in the latter, Robert De Niro’s classic male type tries to whip into shape a number of twenty-something male colleagues who are rumpled, unsure of themselves, without ambition — and of course under the dominance of an all conquering female.

It might be the case that, in regard to money, power, and honor, a zero-sum dynamic obtains, but it decidedly does not obtain in regard to real virtue. The truly courageous person is not threatened by another person’s courage; the truly temperate man is not intimidated by the temperance of someone else; the truly just person is not put off by the justice of a countryman; and authentic love positively rejoices in the love shown by another. And therefore, it should be altogether possible to hold up the virtue of a woman without denying virtue to a man. In point of fact, if we consult the “all conquering female” characters in films and TV, we see that they often exemplify the very worst of the traditional male qualities: aggression, suspicion, hyper-sensitivity, cruelty, etc. This is what happens when a Nietzschean framework has replaced a classical one.

Bishop Robert Barron, “The Trouble With the ‘You Go Girl’ Culture”, Word on Fire, 2016-10-18.

July 19, 2020

QotD: How to raise a God-Emperor son

Filed under: Health, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

When my now-adult daughter was a child, another child once hit her on the head with a metal toy truck. I watched that same child, one year later, viciously push his younger sister backwards over a fragile glass-surfaced coffee table. His mother picked him up, immediately afterward (but not her frightened daughter), and told him in hushed tones not to do such things, while she patted him comfortingly in a manner clearly indicative of approval. She was out to produce a little God-Emperor of the Universe. That’s the unstated goal of many a mother, including many who consider themselves advocates for full gender equality. Such women will object vociferously to any command uttered by an adult male, but will trot off in seconds to make their progeny a peanut-butter sandwich if he demands it while immersed self-importantly in a video game. The future mates of such boys have every reason to hate their mothers-in-law. Respect for women? That’s for other boys, other men — not for their dear sons.

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, 2018.

July 13, 2020

Sarah Hoyt on noblesse oblige

Filed under: Education, Government, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest edition of the Libertarian Enterprise, Sarah Hoyt explains how noblesse oblige can and is used as a tool to benefit the powerful:

Of all the traps a culture can fall into, the fact that Americans tend to fall into Noblesse Oblige traps says very good things about us. It also doesn’t make the trap any less dangerous.

Noblesse Oblige, aka “nobility obligates” was a way that the excesses of a hierarchical society was kept in check. While the peasants were obligated to obey the nobleman, the nobleman was obligated to look after them/not put extreme demands on them/behave in certain paternalistic ways. (One of these days I need to do a post on paternalistic versus patriarchal. remind me.)

It is what is notably lacking from ideologically driven totalitarianisms and hierarchies, probably because their basis being atheistic they don’t seem the humans they have power over as being worth anything or commanding any duty from them. This is why in places like Cuba, Venezuela or China, the officials of the “democratic” government give themselves airs as long-suffering public servants while treating the people under their power worse than any of us would treat a stray animal (let alone a pet.)

In the US — where the citizen is king! — we have evolved a form of noblesse oblige best described as “Them who can, do what they can for those who can’t.”

[…]

But the noblesse oblige that affects the common individual in America is the foundation of worse traps.

Most of the idiotic compliance with ridiculous Winnie the Flu rules and restrictions hooked directly into Noblesse Oblige. For instance, the brilliant idea that you should wear masks to show you care even though we pretty much know they are completely ineffective and quite deleterious for a vast swath of people.

The idea that our kids should be forced to perform “volunteer” labor to graduate school, to “teach them to care for others.” The idea that you can always do a little more/sacrifice a little more for “those worse off” (Who often aren’t.)

When Noblesse Oblige turns into toxic altruism, it can take society apart.

Much of the “Green” mania is part of the noblesse oblige trap. They’re trying to convince us that if we just do these little things — most of them counterproductive, like, say recycling, which uses more resources and causes more issues than just using stuff — we’ll make it better for everyone.

In a bigger sense, they’re trying to make it so that we commit polite suicide so that “others live better.”

It can result in truly horrible racism, too. A great part of the left’s being convinced, say, that meritocracy is white supremacy comes from the fact that, being white, (and racist) they assume that they’re more competent than any other race, and therefore following “merit” causes white people to rise to the top.

July 10, 2020

QotD: Marcus Aurelius for the incel demographic

Filed under: Books, Education, History, Humour, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

We all know that barren cat ladies of both sexes and all 57+ genders are the poz’s storm troopers. As I’ve written here probably ad nauseam, you can’t beat Trigglypuff, because — and only because — she has more free time than you do. You have a life, a job, a family, hobbies, interests. She doesn’t. Hell, you have to sleep sometime. She doesn’t, because the Trigglypuffs of the world are by definition jacked up on powerful prescription psychotropics. You just can’t beat that.

You just can’t beat it. But […] Our Thing has lots of potential Trigglypuffs. They’re called “incels,” I’m informed, but whatever the nomenclature, there are a lot of young single dudes out there who while away their pointless hours with video games and porn. Those are our potential storm troopers (it’s a metaphor, FBI goons). Why haven’t we weaponized them? (again: metaphor).

It’s probably as simple as giving them a role model. It goes without saying that your “incel” (or whatever) was raised by women. Even if there was a biological male living in the house during his childhood, it’s a thousand to one he was just that: a cohabiting male. Certainly not a father. And even if by some miracle he was, the poor guy can only do so much. You’ve got to let your sons out of the house sometime … where they’ll immediately be snapped up by the sour, shrieking cat ladies that control our educational system, our media, our professions, our culture. Both the son and his father have to be very, very hard-headed, and not a little lucky, to escape a poz infection …

… and that’s the best-case scenario. For the worst, look around — you’ll find incel and his soy-enfeebled twerp of a “male” parent cowering under the bed, scrubbing their hands and faces with Lysol, while Mommy scolds and caterwauls on Facebook.

There are role models out there, y’all. Stoicism in general, and Marcus Aurelius in particular, have seen a real upswing in popularity, especially on “Game” sites. This doesn’t represent a return to a Classical education; it’s that Marcus seems to be — Marcus is — a worthwhile role model for a fatherless boy. Strip out the “credits” at the start of book one and a few of the denser, more philosophical passages, and you could subtitle Meditations “how to drop your nuts on the carpet and act like a fucking man for once.” Loosely translated, of course.

Severian, “Be a Centurion!”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-04-07.

July 7, 2020

L. Neil Smith on the Progressive agenda

Filed under: Economics, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

His latest article in the Libertarian Enterprise:

For the full length of the last century, Western culture has been commanded by the blind, deaf, but never speechless entities who see things stubbornly as they prefer to see them, and “dream the impossible dream”, rather than see them as they really are. This mental habit has led to various messes that we find ourselves in today. To any extent that it might help us to get out of those messes, it might help to understand how we got into them.

Don’t look to the wrong assistance. Psychology, for example, is nothing at all like a science and those who practice it are nothing at all like scientists. Mostly they’re hyper-opinionated liberals. No two shrinks ever agree on a diagnosis, and official definitions of various mental illnesses are a grammatical and logical laugh riot. The great truth of life is that understanding character is an art, best left to master novelists and story-tellers.

Although they’ll seldom admit it, even to themselves, so-called Progressives know by now that they are wrong, that they have always been wrong. You might say that their wrongness has stood the test of time. So what is it that they really want? Their high-flown theories and values having failed them embarrassingly — a good example of that is the minimum wage, which destroys employment for entry-level and minority youth — rather than seeking new theories and values that might serve them and everybody better, they have turned to a kind of bitter nihilism. They hate and fear the society that has stubbornly refused to bend to their wills, and so it must die. Every single policy recommendation that they make — like the $15 minimum wage, for example, or defunding the police — is directed to that purpose.

Another good example would be “gun control”, which its opponents correctly label “victim disarmament”. As unconstitutional political pressures on private gun ownership increased, and self-defense culture was forced to organize itself (contrary to liberal belief, gun companies and the National Rifle Association were followers in this, not leaders) existing gun laws were gradually weakened. It became easier to obtain and carry a weapon — and necessary, in the view of those of us “delorables” who were constantly being threatened by left-wing political figures. During the Obama-Biden regime, at least 100 million guns were sold. And as they were, violent criminality began to decrease in double digits.

Today, except for many liberal-dominated hell-holes like Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, and a dozen others, Americans are headed to 19th century crime levels. Did Progressives ever notice or admit that crime had diminished? They did not. The process conflicted with their erroneous belief system, so they still call today for various measures punishing firearms manufacturers and retailers, and disarming individuals who have solved the problem that the politicians and the police have only made much worse for decades.

And so it goes, in all such matters as economics, education, the environment, nutrition, and everything else. Psychologists (who, like a broken clock, are right just this once) call the phenomenon projection: if Progressives can’t run their own lives (and very largely, judging from the kids they raise, they can’t), naturally that makes them and the rest of the bizarre menagerie that was typical of the Obama-Biden Administration qualified to run everybody else’s lives. And because Progressive policies are (at least one hopes) unconsciously suicidal, the rest of us are in for a rough ride.

June 30, 2020

QotD: Ideologies and belief systems

Filed under: Health, History, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

It’s really not a good thing because it manifests itself not only in individual psychopathologies, but also in social psychopathologies. That’s this proclivity of people to get tangled up in ideologies, and I really do think of them as crippled religions. That’s the right way to think about them. They’re like religion that’s missing an arm and a leg but can still hobble along. It provides a certain amount of security and group identity, but it’s warped and twisted and demented and bent, and it’s a parasite on something underlying that’s rich and true. That’s how it looks to me, anyways. I think it’s very important that we sort out this problem. I think that there isn’t anything more important that needs to be done than that. I’ve thought that for a long, long time, probably since the early ’80s when I started looking at the role that belief systems played in regulating psychological and social health. You can tell that they do that because of how upset people get if you challenge their belief systems. Why the hell do they care, exactly? What difference does it make if all of your ideological axioms are 100 percent correct?

People get unbelievable upset when you poke them in the axioms, so to speak, and it is not by any stretch of the imagination obvious why. There’s a fundamental truth that they’re standing on. It’s like they’re on a raft in the middle of the ocean. You’re starting to pull out the logs, and they’re afraid they’re going to fall in and drown. Drown in what? What are the logs protecting them from? Why are they so afraid to move beyond the confines of the ideological system? These are not obvious things. I’ve been trying to puzzle that out for a very long time. […]

Nietzsche’s idea was that human beings were going to have to create their own values. He understood that we had bodies and that we had motivations and emotions. He was a romantic thinker, in some sense, but way ahead of his time. He knew that our capacity to think wasn’t some free-floating soul but was embedded in our physiology, constrained by our emotions, shaped by our motivations, shaped by our body. He understood that. But he still believed that the only possible way out of the problem would be for human beings themselves to become something akin to God and to create their own values. He talked about the person who created their own values as the overman, or the superman. That was one part of the Nietzschean philosophy that the Nazis took out of context and used to fuel their superior man ideology. We know what happened with that. That didn’t seem to turn out very well, that’s for sure.

Jordan B. Peterson, “Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God” {transcript], jordanbpeterson.com, 2018-03-12.

June 18, 2020

QotD: The feminization of culture

Filed under: Health, Liberty, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

What’s happening to pop culture is a reflection of our age. We’ve been turned into Pandas by a smothering, soft totalitarianism. The feminization of the culture means we’re ruled by mothers, who refuse to ever let us wander from the nest, physically, spiritually, creatively or intellectually. That has had all sorts of effects, like the drop in sperm counts and the collapse of popular culture. A deracinated people, kept in adult daycare centers and tended to by belligerent spinsters is not going to have a lot to celebrate or live for.

“The Z Man”, “The Soundtrack Of This Age”, The Z Blog, 2018-03-15.

June 9, 2020

QotD: Groupthink

Filed under: Politics, Quotations — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[Groupthink author Irving] Janis’s first rule is that a group of people come to share a particular way of looking at the world which may seem hugely important to them but which turns out not to have been based on looking properly at all the evidence. It is therefore just a shared, untested belief.

Rule two is that, because they have shut their minds to any evidence which might contradict their belief, they like to insist that it is supported by a “consensus.” The one thing those caught up in groupthink cannot tolerate is that anyone should question it.

This leads on to the third rule, which is that they cannot properly debate the matter with those who disagree with their belief. Anyone holding a contrary view must simply be ignored, ridiculed, and dismissed as not worth listening to.

Christopher Booker, “Groupthink on Climate Change Ignores Inconvenient Facts”, Foundation for Economic Education, 2018-02-24.

June 6, 2020

Cognitive dissonance is real

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Matt Gurney had a discussion with one of his readers that left him shaking his head in disbelief:

The reader haughtily asked if I’d ever make such a criticism for a Liberal.

I said yes.

The reader didn’t believe me, and said, oh yeah, show me an example?

As it so happened, I actually had a column of mine open in another tab; I was referring back to it for research. +
—
The column in question contained a perfect example of me saying a very comparable thing about a Liberal as I had about the Conservative. So I had, OK, here you go. Pasted the link and replied.

And the reader replied right away. The reader was very confused.
—
The reader had questions about how I could criticize both a Conservative and a Liberal. The reader asked about agendas — who had insisted I write one piece, and why had they then permitted me to write the other?

I wrote both on my own initiative, I explained. +
—
And I made criticisms of both gentlemen, the Conservative and the Liberal, because they’d both done things that pissed me off.

The reader didn’t believe this was possible. There had to be another explanation, or an ulterior motive. +
—
I eventually disengaged. But I’ve been thinking about that all day. There’s a grown-ass person in Canada, totally literate and presents very normally, who really struggled to understand that someone could be critical of both the left and right without being compromised.

END

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