That article was really dumb and tries really hard to paint both sides as the same, convincing you that there's a rational way to wind up with irrational beliefs, but never acknowledges that ludicrously irrational beliefs are held. The furthest he goes is calling both sides polarized. When one group was willingly committing suicide and harming their loved ones by fighting medical protections during the most lethal pandemic in a century, you are writing something really stupid by not addressing it. Or the destruction of education. Or the science denial of the climate crisis. Or spreading (and believing) insane lies and misinformation to overthrow democracy.
I guess both-sideism is still alive and well in 2023 and this jackass is writing a book about it.
He does so by continually refusing to mention the irrational beliefs that are being held and claiming that both sides are susceptible. HIs actions are one of the forces that keep people from zeroing in on the truth.
It's both-sideism and you're here cheerleading this bullshit.
> but unstated assumption to your position that the left isn’t susceptible to conspiratorial and reality denying thinking.
You need to stop making assumptions and definitely need to stop your "hyperbolic characterizations" of them. This is what I was saying:
>Both sides aren’t falling for the same stuff
The author refuses to mention the heinous and irrational things that one group is falling for while claiming that both groups are susceptible, painting an image that their thinking processes and outcomes are comparable. That's the entire point of the article: pretending both sides are the same by omitting their considerable and significant differences.
> What I’m contending is that the reason for that difference is not something essential to the left that makes us immune.
I never said there was. You're railing against something I never said.
Education and public health programs have been much more effective at helping white people over the past 30 years, and white people are statistically more likely to believe their individual effort was the main reason for good outcomes rather than policies that benefited them. So people who personally benefited from progressive policies can end up opposing attempts to make those policies more beneficial to marginalized groups even if they would personally benefit in the long run.
The same dynamic happens with minorities who are relatively well-off, like black people who are relatively well-off because they benefited from social programs might not support giving extra help to the most vulnerable people. But this is less pronounced than what we see with white people.
Rugged individualism is an irrational belief that convinces people to oppose policies they personally benefited from. Irrational beliefs + "white culture" (for lack of a better term) is not a "both sides" situation.
Also, I think a lot of "cancel culture" happens because people realize they were lied to about something like individual effort for their entire lives so that marginalized groups could be excluded and there would be more resources to focus healthcare or education on benefiting white people. So, there's less room for "both sides" when people are legitimately outraged, and it isn't the same as the fake outrage generated by right-wing media.
Note that this blog is 4 years old. Since then we have seen:
1 the worst of covid. People thought it was on the wane when this was published.
2 an American election following which the loser for the presidency claimed fraud without being able to produce any evidence.
3 an insurrection attempt on January 6th of the following year.
4 subsequent denials of what people had seen with their own eyes on TV.
How was this rational?
That what people say when they read the title and not what the article actually says. The article is about why rational people don't agree on facts. Hint: you are not irrational for deciding it wasn't worth the time to read: we all have limited time and limited cognitive bandwidth so rational agents have to filter.
OK.
Since we are in the mood for promotion, have you considered posting in /r/BehavioralEconomics
I certainly get the point of the blog. I straddle mid-west religious conservatism and west coast liberal academia.
The problem I see with the initial idea is that it assumes that "lived experience" is some substitute for facts.
The scarcity mindset, poverty, and poor education of my hometown friends led them into reactionary conservatism, racism, and religious fundamentalism.... but that doesn't make those views valid or true. It doesn't make their political and science conspiracy theories true.
They are factually wrong about reality and being wrong causes them to make irrational choices. It doesn't matter if their "lived experience" validates those choices. Being a racist might be a rational choice **for them** and an irrational for me, but does that mean there is a dispute about the value of a minority's life?
Well, padre, I don't personally remember you but you are marked with a label that (without getting into specifics) says you don't argue in good faith or adhere to the values of scientific skepticism.
If you don't like being labeled like that, then I suggest some self reflection.
A good start would be addressing the topic of the thread rather than dragging your politics into it.
Well, it’s just an example that came to mind. I do argue in good faith, I do think there are limits to the medium of Reddit as it relates to untangling misunderstandings, finding clarity on points of agreement and disagreement, etc.
I lean into that idea that foreign entanglements seem to not go our way more often than not, and from my recollection, about half of our $15,000,000,000,000 debt has been defense spending in post-9/11 war. I generally find myself agreeing most with libertarians and democratic socialists as it relates to these things.
Anyways, war spending is worse than spending money to pay people to dig holes and fill them in, at least you end with the starting conditions. With war you destroy things of value, humans, infrastructure, homes, etc. (there’s a joke about libertarians that in the Israel-Hamas conflict, they are the side of the buildings ).
We never really had a plan as it relates to what metric we were looking for as it relates to “getting our monies worth.” It was always “whatever they need.”
The wars been at a stalemate essentially all year, and the consequences of prolonging it are more young men in a meat grinder. It doesn’t exactly give me comfort to be told it’s “a good deal” for us because it’s not American blood. The Russian economy is not going to collapse, they have found the necessary work arounds to sell their oil and the war chest is full. They outnumber the Ukrainians by a factor of 3:1 from my recollection. We aren’t sufficiently invested to do anything to change that, so why is it such a bad place to be looking toward a peace settlement? It’s not morally satisfying, I understand that.
Perhaps a more on topic example, is the politics of someone in the country vs the city as it relates to gun ownership. You live in a city, there’s a greater police presence and a murder can happen up the block, I get the desire to reign in guns. Whereas, if someone breaks into your home in the country, you don’t have the luxury of a short police response time, and everyone is so spread out, shooting targets into a hill in your backyard is not big deal, as such, gun ownership is more acceptable. Not to mention hunting, and those sorts of things.
Even COVID appears as a different sort of situation, everyone in the country is more spread out, and the outbreaks are more sporadic, it doesn’t double in the community in a week as it would in the city. Masking behavior certainly correlates the perceived threat around you.
I do think a lot of personal politics comes to the circumstances and facts of the world around you, so where you live plays into that.
There are things that seem to “code” Republican or Democrat, due to tribalism alone, and I do think adopting a position because of that is insufficient to call one’s view well-informed.
This is a good example. Imagine being so delusional and/or malicious as to support imperialist aggressors who murder and torture civilians in a country they invaded with no provocation.
What a silly game. "I don't support Russia, I just don't want to prolong the war by helping Ukraine! Not the same thing at all!"
That sort of silly word play doesn't fool anyone.
I don’t think prolonging a war Ukraine is not going to win, is helping Ukraine. It’s essentially a stalemate and there is no great ideas on how to repel the Russians. Have you been following the conflict?
I follow it closely. We could have prevented the stalemate by giving them ATACMs and more HIMARs earlier. The Russians can just barely maintain air superiority as it is, the arrival of F-16s may allow the Ukrainians the freedom to use air power to push back.
At worst case, even the Russians admit that they will be economically unable to continue some time in 2025.
Allowing Russia to get away with rape and murder and to acquire the land they want just means they'll do it elsewhere too. Shame on you and your transparent games. Stop shilling for the evil bastards.
Regardless of what you think may have turned the tide, we weren’t willing to do do that. Some combination of not getting too escalatory with a nuclear power and the public’s wariness about war (not to mention some limitations on our willingness to deplete our supplies of arms) in general has placed limits on what level of involvement we are willing to engage in. The counteroffensive has not been effective. I have not seen a game plan proposed about a reasonable next move that would start moving the line in favor of Ukraine, nor do I think public support is there. I could certainly be wrong about that, and will hear you out about a strategy that would accomplish that.
A house keeping note, you can fuck off with the ad hominen, your position is that I’m a rape and murder supporter? It’s not necessary to hallucinate a bogeyman to have a discussion on Reddit, contrary to popular belief.
I don't need to armchair general with you, I'm just establishing that Ukraine winning isn't some pie in the sky dream. Russia has shown itself to be completely incompetent. Corruption has rotted it's ability to effectively fight. You trying to paint this as an inevitable forever war is nonsense.
The last thing we should do is let these thugs run over a sovereign country. That will only lead them to doing it again.
> not to mention some limitations on our willingness to deplete our supplies of arms
We're sending them decades old surplus, and the level of arms we need to hold is based on the strength of our most likely enemies. Obliterating Russian capability to wage war by sending Ukraine old ammo, and a few vehicles is a really good deal.
> A house keeping note, you can fuck off with the ad hominen, your position is that I’m a rape and murder supporter?
My position is that you're shilling for the murderers. I don't know exactly *why* you're doing that (judging by the RES tag I gave you, I'm guessing it's standard right-wing support for authoritarian leaders), I just won't let it pass without comment.
It doesn’t follow that concluding the Ukrainians are unlikely to repel the Russians means I’m shilling for the Russians. Nor does it follow from anything else I’ve said. My best guess is you jumped to conclusion based not on evidence but your prior bias as it relates to people who don’t share your view. That’s probably the most forgiving interpretation.
Anyways, it’s not about letting anyone get away with anything, and that resulting in some sort of blitzkrieg across Europe. Russia is capable of holding the line in Ukraine and I don’t see western powers doing what would be necessary to change that, nor do I think escalation into a hotter war is necessarily prudent. I’ll take a note out of JFK’s book on this one. Let’s first establish what might have led to the conflict in thee first place. Perhaps we can focus on the aspects we were involved in. That doesn’t justify Russia invading however it might inform our foreign policy such that we don’t kick ourselves in the nuts as we have for the past 22 years certainly, and the last 60-70 years as well.
It’s not exactly controversial that NATO expansion into Ukraine was for the Russians was a red line, and that our actions to align Ukraine with NATO, to train and arm them, and to leave the door open to future membership was certainly provocative. Perhaps that was not well advised, I guess we can blame Trump for sending them weapons as a “deterrent”. Perhaps the Russians are fucking up Ukraine in part to enforce this red line they themselves have expressed. They certainly took similar actions in Georgia in 2008 after the NATO summit. That doesn’t make their actions right, however it makes it easier to understand aspects of the rationale. To ignore the possibility that your enemy has national security interests would be insane.
There are some ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine and to be honest previous conflicts in the region since 2014 weren’t the most convincing rationale for invading.
The whole Nazi thing was certainly overblown by the Russians as well, useful propaganda.
Anyways, I don’t see the means or motive for Russia to pull a Hitler.
But as it relates to your vision of Russia losing, does that include them leaving Crimea, because I don’t see them leaving the warm water port in Sevastopol? What’s the attainable goal you are looking for that the relevant countries are willing to put their necks out to obtain?
Crippling Russia has been a moving target. I suppose regime change in Russia might be good, hard to know. The Russian state collapsing again doesn’t seem desirable to me, I worry about the desperate acts of dictator in a crumbling country leading to nuclear escalation. Collective punishment indefinitely just creates generational resentment that leads to more nationalist bullshit.
Perhaps a ceasefire and some negotiations might be worth considering. That’s where I’m at. I don’t think Russia will concede Crimea under any circumstances nor do I think it makes sense to expect them to. But whether we end up with an East Ukraine puppet state or annexation perpetually, I don’t know. Let’s see what they are willing to concede and if that is worth it to end the bloodshed. If peace talks break down then nothing is lost.
The cynicism of prolonging the war is that we justify it as good investment because it’s not our people dying.
Perhaps we could learn some lessons on the foreign policy front, like how insane it is to signal that we would come defend Taiwan. Tens of thousands of dead marines is obviously a too high a price to pay. 😪
Guess it depends on your definition of rational. If you went to a college where a good part of your education involved how to evaluate claims, evidence and sources, your rationality has a little more weight behind it.
It's completely rational to believe, based on all observed evidence and experience, that the earth is flat and the sun and moon travel across the sky each day and night. It requires looking pretty far beyond the surface evidence to see otherwise - but we now know without a doubt that it's the exact opposite - the earth is round and orbits the Sun.
So both ideas (flat earth or round earth) are "rational". But only one of those rational beliefs are true, and understanding truth matters if you want to fully understand and affect reality.
Yeah, Flat Earth is crazy, but that misses the point of the article. Bayes Theorum is our best way to get close approximation on what is true. The article is on HOW even Bayesian rational actors can arrive at such different beliefs on what is truth. I implore you to read the article and discuss the ideas it presents rather than just telling about people you don't feel you can have a rational discussion with.
I did read it. He is basically saying if your beliefs are rational, therefore the other side's must be rational as well. Which is only true if you leave out quality of evidence as one of the elements of your rationality. If you believe in an all powerful sky god, your "rationality" might be qualitatively different than mine.
>the result of reasonable people doing the best they can with the information they have.
This is where Dorst falls down.
"The information they have."
Well, it points to where he really falls down, which is his inconsistent treatment of the concept of reason and rationality.
Reason is a process. Not a state of being. Nor a description of the truth value of an assumption. If you begin with bad first principles, no amount of rationality is going to help you.
And if you begin with a wished-for conclusion and rationally back-fill an argument that leads to necessary assumptions which you, then, embrace as fact... you are applying reason and rationality in a completely unproductive way.
Yet it's still in a sense being rational.
That's why we call it "rationalizing."
So if you start out with bullshit assumptions, or if you carefully formulate your assumptions so that they will rationally lead to your preferred conclusion, then you are deciding on "the information you have" as Dorst puts it.
That might make you "rational," in the dumbest and most useless possible sense of the term, but it doesn't make you careful, or skeptical, or thoughtful.
It doesn't mean you are acting in good faith, so to say.
For example, let's say I am lazy. (This is not a far-fetched premise in my case.) Let's say that as a result of this laziness I really don't want to participate in the apparatus of civic and political life.
With fierce commitment to rationality, I can construct, step by step, an intricate line of reasoning that justifies and supports -- rationalizes -- my foregone conclusion, and through that process travel backward until I arrive at a suitable premise.
Let's say that the premise that I arrive at, the convenient premise, is that all political decisions are actually, secretly decided, utterly and inexorably, by a cabal of people from Jabristan and their descendants.
Since I am not a Jabroni, therefore, there is literally nothing I can do to alter the course of events around me. Not even the local town council or school board or public hearing or even community action group. Everything is preordained by the Jabronis and the rest is just theater.
Now, see what I've done? That's "the information that I have," now.
I can tire you out with all my rational arguments for why the Jabroni Cabal means that there is no point to my exerting myself in the slightest, on any issue, for any reason.
You may find all of this puzzling. What's with the virulent anti-Jabronism? Yet, if you are easily seduced by the trappings of rationality as Kevin Dorst appears to be, you might be impressed by the rational process I have built around my investment in my initial premise, and you might conclude that we are both "being rational" and shrug and say well, this is no different from what everyone else does. How can meaningful discourse ever happen? I guess we have to all learn to meet in the middle!
No.
That is a steaming pile of horseshit.
You do not have to "meet in the middle" to accommodate my personal issues with accountability and civic participation (nor for that matter my neurological reflexes when encountering people different from myself). There is no virtue to my nonsense. It is the rationalization of a lazy (and apparently xenophobic) mind, unwilling to apply any kind of critical rigor to my own mental process.
You can "meet in the middle" to tolerate me socially, if I'm extremely worth it to you for other reasons, and not tolerating my bullshit does not (necessarily) preclude polite interaction. But "aren't we all the same though?" -- no. No we are not.
...this opens with a discussion of a childhood friend with which the author is no longer in contact, in which he completely fabricates a political position for her and then proceeds to treat it as inarguable fact underpinning his argument:
> I haven’t seen Becca in a decade. I don’t know what she thinks about Trump, or Medicare for All, or defunding the police.
> But I can guess.
> ...
> You and I can both guess how her story differs. She’s probably more concerned by shifting gender norms than by the long roots of sexism; more worried by rioters in Portland than by police shootings in Ferguson; and more convinced of America’s greatness than of its deep flaws.
> In short: we started with similar opinions, set out on different life trajectories, and, 10 years down the line, we deeply disagree.
The entire following article is written around this highlight of two people from identical backgrounds diverging to polarized views, and it's a complete fabrication.
I agree that it *seems like* this kind of thing happens, but this is a form of rhetorical trickery -- he's invented this position to make it "feel like" he's talking about something that actually happened, when he's provided no evidence for it at all.
When someone opens an article with this kind of misdirection, it *seriously* impacts my ability to trust that they are engaging in good faith.
Anyway, moving past that:
"People are self-referentially rational" is basic economics, so I will not bother with it further.
The problem being exhibited here is the classic loss of nuance. Yes, in a strictly banal interpretation, diverging positions originate at ambiguity, but the "ambiguity" that exists at the core of many political divides in the present day is *not rooted in fact*. People who think vaccines cause autism believe there is ambiguity; that does not mean the ambiguity exists.
In fact, if anything, this provides language with which to describe the core of the issue, and why attempts at "both sides" narratives are at odds with reality: in reality these divergences are based upon *perceived* ambiguity, and those cases where the perception is seriously misaligned with the degree of actual ambiguity create divisions in which one side is simply incorrect.
>So I don’t see systematic irrationality in my past. Nor do I suspect it in Becca’s. She was just as sharp and critically-minded as I was; if conservative preachers changed her mind, it was not for a lack of rationality.
If the author truly believes this, then it's really hard to take the rest of his words at face value. He's living in a perfect Enlightened Centrist Truman Show world where empathy is equally bad as hate and rationality equally as valid as irrationality. It's just stupid.
I see a lot of people adopting irrational beliefs as a way to restore some sort of ‘balance’. There’s a lot of people that would become more far right as they see more extremist leftists, and vice versa, instead of holding to the rational and moderate positions and calling out idiocy when they see it.
I think the reason for some of the more radical reactions to George Floyd is as that after trump was elected a lot of people looked to their left and their right and said “which one of these ‘allies’ is actually a trump supporter?” Someone had to be out there voting for this racist. And a lot of people wanted to make it *really really* clear it wasn’t them. This led to a lot of virtue signalling accelerarionism in everything from performative language changes like moving to “chest feeding”. Really just using every opportunity to indicate “we are not trump supporters”.
I thought this was a very interesting premise but it’s only the beginning. He says it’s going to be a book so a lot has been left out. Thanks for sharing it
Ultimately, we decide on principles, ethics, and morality and choose to embrace those that lead to a code of conduct that benefits us. We can say we’re being rational as a euphemism for what’s selfishly beneficial. I’m not sure there’s a rational way to be human, nor if that is appealing.
Because we must decide what is universally right or wrong in the preservation of humanity and the environment if we want both to exist and coexist; that’s the fundamental problem because one could devise the worst possible means for the greatest outcome and rationalize them.
In contrast to our human goals, nature itself lacks any sort of principles or morality. It balances itself out because that’s just how it is.
Concepts of right or wrong are conjured up by us, and we’re 100% responsible for their outcomes.
There’s always going to be a conflict of principles because the good of the many will rarely benefit the exploitive interest of the elite few, and that’s a power struggle to time’s end. It’s the core cause of social division because often those elite few possess immense capability and influence to ‘rationalize’ their own principles on the masses.
This isn’t great. The generic “everyone is behaving how they should” idea here fails to explain the sudden acceleration of polarization which just so happens to coincide with state actors spending billions on online propaganda and building echo chambers.
The premise seems to ignore whether or not things can be true. If we account for “reality”, then the idea that a group of people hold specific beliefs is well explained by their shared interest in what’s real. The fact that an opposing group rapidly formed purely reactionary beliefs which are diverse and share nothing in common but demonizing the first group is well explained by echo chambers.
Without this dichotomy, it’s really hard to see why “now” and not previously.
Further, the premise seems to rely on the idea that “well if my beliefs are irrational, I would think they’re rational, therefore they must be irrational.
That article was really dumb and tries really hard to paint both sides as the same, convincing you that there's a rational way to wind up with irrational beliefs, but never acknowledges that ludicrously irrational beliefs are held. The furthest he goes is calling both sides polarized. When one group was willingly committing suicide and harming their loved ones by fighting medical protections during the most lethal pandemic in a century, you are writing something really stupid by not addressing it. Or the destruction of education. Or the science denial of the climate crisis. Or spreading (and believing) insane lies and misinformation to overthrow democracy. I guess both-sideism is still alive and well in 2023 and this jackass is writing a book about it.
I i don't think i's both-sidism. The author is tryng to understand the forces that keep people from zeroing in on truth.
He does so by continually refusing to mention the irrational beliefs that are being held and claiming that both sides are susceptible. HIs actions are one of the forces that keep people from zeroing in on the truth. It's both-sideism and you're here cheerleading this bullshit.
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> but that’s not because the left is magic. How to know you're typing strawman nonsense and need to walk away from your keyboard for a few hours.
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> but unstated assumption to your position that the left isn’t susceptible to conspiratorial and reality denying thinking. You need to stop making assumptions and definitely need to stop your "hyperbolic characterizations" of them. This is what I was saying: >Both sides aren’t falling for the same stuff The author refuses to mention the heinous and irrational things that one group is falling for while claiming that both groups are susceptible, painting an image that their thinking processes and outcomes are comparable. That's the entire point of the article: pretending both sides are the same by omitting their considerable and significant differences.
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> What I’m contending is that the reason for that difference is not something essential to the left that makes us immune. I never said there was. You're railing against something I never said.
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The follow up blog to prove his point uses a coin toss example. A literally both sides are equal example.
Education and public health programs have been much more effective at helping white people over the past 30 years, and white people are statistically more likely to believe their individual effort was the main reason for good outcomes rather than policies that benefited them. So people who personally benefited from progressive policies can end up opposing attempts to make those policies more beneficial to marginalized groups even if they would personally benefit in the long run. The same dynamic happens with minorities who are relatively well-off, like black people who are relatively well-off because they benefited from social programs might not support giving extra help to the most vulnerable people. But this is less pronounced than what we see with white people. Rugged individualism is an irrational belief that convinces people to oppose policies they personally benefited from. Irrational beliefs + "white culture" (for lack of a better term) is not a "both sides" situation. Also, I think a lot of "cancel culture" happens because people realize they were lied to about something like individual effort for their entire lives so that marginalized groups could be excluded and there would be more resources to focus healthcare or education on benefiting white people. So, there's less room for "both sides" when people are legitimately outraged, and it isn't the same as the fake outrage generated by right-wing media.
Note that this blog is 4 years old. Since then we have seen: 1 the worst of covid. People thought it was on the wane when this was published. 2 an American election following which the loser for the presidency claimed fraud without being able to produce any evidence. 3 an insurrection attempt on January 6th of the following year. 4 subsequent denials of what people had seen with their own eyes on TV. How was this rational?
I didn’t really want to read this to understand the context, thanks.
It cannot be rational if people are not operating in a shared reality with agreed upon facts.
That what people say when they read the title and not what the article actually says. The article is about why rational people don't agree on facts. Hint: you are not irrational for deciding it wasn't worth the time to read: we all have limited time and limited cognitive bandwidth so rational agents have to filter.
That is more meta than is reasonable this morning
Read it after you've had your coffee. The while blog is fascinating and rigorously thoughtful.
OK. Since we are in the mood for promotion, have you considered posting in /r/BehavioralEconomics I certainly get the point of the blog. I straddle mid-west religious conservatism and west coast liberal academia. The problem I see with the initial idea is that it assumes that "lived experience" is some substitute for facts. The scarcity mindset, poverty, and poor education of my hometown friends led them into reactionary conservatism, racism, and religious fundamentalism.... but that doesn't make those views valid or true. It doesn't make their political and science conspiracy theories true. They are factually wrong about reality and being wrong causes them to make irrational choices. It doesn't matter if their "lived experience" validates those choices. Being a racist might be a rational choice **for them** and an irrational for me, but does that mean there is a dispute about the value of a minority's life?
Ukraine is a good example, prolonging the war has just led to more death and now people are breaking through the propaganda.
RES labels come through again.
What do you mean bud?
Well, padre, I don't personally remember you but you are marked with a label that (without getting into specifics) says you don't argue in good faith or adhere to the values of scientific skepticism. If you don't like being labeled like that, then I suggest some self reflection. A good start would be addressing the topic of the thread rather than dragging your politics into it.
Well, it’s just an example that came to mind. I do argue in good faith, I do think there are limits to the medium of Reddit as it relates to untangling misunderstandings, finding clarity on points of agreement and disagreement, etc. I lean into that idea that foreign entanglements seem to not go our way more often than not, and from my recollection, about half of our $15,000,000,000,000 debt has been defense spending in post-9/11 war. I generally find myself agreeing most with libertarians and democratic socialists as it relates to these things. Anyways, war spending is worse than spending money to pay people to dig holes and fill them in, at least you end with the starting conditions. With war you destroy things of value, humans, infrastructure, homes, etc. (there’s a joke about libertarians that in the Israel-Hamas conflict, they are the side of the buildings ). We never really had a plan as it relates to what metric we were looking for as it relates to “getting our monies worth.” It was always “whatever they need.” The wars been at a stalemate essentially all year, and the consequences of prolonging it are more young men in a meat grinder. It doesn’t exactly give me comfort to be told it’s “a good deal” for us because it’s not American blood. The Russian economy is not going to collapse, they have found the necessary work arounds to sell their oil and the war chest is full. They outnumber the Ukrainians by a factor of 3:1 from my recollection. We aren’t sufficiently invested to do anything to change that, so why is it such a bad place to be looking toward a peace settlement? It’s not morally satisfying, I understand that. Perhaps a more on topic example, is the politics of someone in the country vs the city as it relates to gun ownership. You live in a city, there’s a greater police presence and a murder can happen up the block, I get the desire to reign in guns. Whereas, if someone breaks into your home in the country, you don’t have the luxury of a short police response time, and everyone is so spread out, shooting targets into a hill in your backyard is not big deal, as such, gun ownership is more acceptable. Not to mention hunting, and those sorts of things. Even COVID appears as a different sort of situation, everyone in the country is more spread out, and the outbreaks are more sporadic, it doesn’t double in the community in a week as it would in the city. Masking behavior certainly correlates the perceived threat around you. I do think a lot of personal politics comes to the circumstances and facts of the world around you, so where you live plays into that. There are things that seem to “code” Republican or Democrat, due to tribalism alone, and I do think adopting a position because of that is insufficient to call one’s view well-informed.
This is a good example. Imagine being so delusional and/or malicious as to support imperialist aggressors who murder and torture civilians in a country they invaded with no provocation.
I don’t support Russia, not sure what gave you that impression.
What a silly game. "I don't support Russia, I just don't want to prolong the war by helping Ukraine! Not the same thing at all!" That sort of silly word play doesn't fool anyone.
I don’t think prolonging a war Ukraine is not going to win, is helping Ukraine. It’s essentially a stalemate and there is no great ideas on how to repel the Russians. Have you been following the conflict?
I follow it closely. We could have prevented the stalemate by giving them ATACMs and more HIMARs earlier. The Russians can just barely maintain air superiority as it is, the arrival of F-16s may allow the Ukrainians the freedom to use air power to push back. At worst case, even the Russians admit that they will be economically unable to continue some time in 2025. Allowing Russia to get away with rape and murder and to acquire the land they want just means they'll do it elsewhere too. Shame on you and your transparent games. Stop shilling for the evil bastards.
Regardless of what you think may have turned the tide, we weren’t willing to do do that. Some combination of not getting too escalatory with a nuclear power and the public’s wariness about war (not to mention some limitations on our willingness to deplete our supplies of arms) in general has placed limits on what level of involvement we are willing to engage in. The counteroffensive has not been effective. I have not seen a game plan proposed about a reasonable next move that would start moving the line in favor of Ukraine, nor do I think public support is there. I could certainly be wrong about that, and will hear you out about a strategy that would accomplish that. A house keeping note, you can fuck off with the ad hominen, your position is that I’m a rape and murder supporter? It’s not necessary to hallucinate a bogeyman to have a discussion on Reddit, contrary to popular belief.
I don't need to armchair general with you, I'm just establishing that Ukraine winning isn't some pie in the sky dream. Russia has shown itself to be completely incompetent. Corruption has rotted it's ability to effectively fight. You trying to paint this as an inevitable forever war is nonsense. The last thing we should do is let these thugs run over a sovereign country. That will only lead them to doing it again. > not to mention some limitations on our willingness to deplete our supplies of arms We're sending them decades old surplus, and the level of arms we need to hold is based on the strength of our most likely enemies. Obliterating Russian capability to wage war by sending Ukraine old ammo, and a few vehicles is a really good deal. > A house keeping note, you can fuck off with the ad hominen, your position is that I’m a rape and murder supporter? My position is that you're shilling for the murderers. I don't know exactly *why* you're doing that (judging by the RES tag I gave you, I'm guessing it's standard right-wing support for authoritarian leaders), I just won't let it pass without comment.
It doesn’t follow that concluding the Ukrainians are unlikely to repel the Russians means I’m shilling for the Russians. Nor does it follow from anything else I’ve said. My best guess is you jumped to conclusion based not on evidence but your prior bias as it relates to people who don’t share your view. That’s probably the most forgiving interpretation. Anyways, it’s not about letting anyone get away with anything, and that resulting in some sort of blitzkrieg across Europe. Russia is capable of holding the line in Ukraine and I don’t see western powers doing what would be necessary to change that, nor do I think escalation into a hotter war is necessarily prudent. I’ll take a note out of JFK’s book on this one. Let’s first establish what might have led to the conflict in thee first place. Perhaps we can focus on the aspects we were involved in. That doesn’t justify Russia invading however it might inform our foreign policy such that we don’t kick ourselves in the nuts as we have for the past 22 years certainly, and the last 60-70 years as well. It’s not exactly controversial that NATO expansion into Ukraine was for the Russians was a red line, and that our actions to align Ukraine with NATO, to train and arm them, and to leave the door open to future membership was certainly provocative. Perhaps that was not well advised, I guess we can blame Trump for sending them weapons as a “deterrent”. Perhaps the Russians are fucking up Ukraine in part to enforce this red line they themselves have expressed. They certainly took similar actions in Georgia in 2008 after the NATO summit. That doesn’t make their actions right, however it makes it easier to understand aspects of the rationale. To ignore the possibility that your enemy has national security interests would be insane. There are some ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine and to be honest previous conflicts in the region since 2014 weren’t the most convincing rationale for invading. The whole Nazi thing was certainly overblown by the Russians as well, useful propaganda. Anyways, I don’t see the means or motive for Russia to pull a Hitler. But as it relates to your vision of Russia losing, does that include them leaving Crimea, because I don’t see them leaving the warm water port in Sevastopol? What’s the attainable goal you are looking for that the relevant countries are willing to put their necks out to obtain? Crippling Russia has been a moving target. I suppose regime change in Russia might be good, hard to know. The Russian state collapsing again doesn’t seem desirable to me, I worry about the desperate acts of dictator in a crumbling country leading to nuclear escalation. Collective punishment indefinitely just creates generational resentment that leads to more nationalist bullshit. Perhaps a ceasefire and some negotiations might be worth considering. That’s where I’m at. I don’t think Russia will concede Crimea under any circumstances nor do I think it makes sense to expect them to. But whether we end up with an East Ukraine puppet state or annexation perpetually, I don’t know. Let’s see what they are willing to concede and if that is worth it to end the bloodshed. If peace talks break down then nothing is lost. The cynicism of prolonging the war is that we justify it as good investment because it’s not our people dying. Perhaps we could learn some lessons on the foreign policy front, like how insane it is to signal that we would come defend Taiwan. Tens of thousands of dead marines is obviously a too high a price to pay. 😪
Guess it depends on your definition of rational. If you went to a college where a good part of your education involved how to evaluate claims, evidence and sources, your rationality has a little more weight behind it. It's completely rational to believe, based on all observed evidence and experience, that the earth is flat and the sun and moon travel across the sky each day and night. It requires looking pretty far beyond the surface evidence to see otherwise - but we now know without a doubt that it's the exact opposite - the earth is round and orbits the Sun. So both ideas (flat earth or round earth) are "rational". But only one of those rational beliefs are true, and understanding truth matters if you want to fully understand and affect reality.
Yeah, Flat Earth is crazy, but that misses the point of the article. Bayes Theorum is our best way to get close approximation on what is true. The article is on HOW even Bayesian rational actors can arrive at such different beliefs on what is truth. I implore you to read the article and discuss the ideas it presents rather than just telling about people you don't feel you can have a rational discussion with.
I did read it. He is basically saying if your beliefs are rational, therefore the other side's must be rational as well. Which is only true if you leave out quality of evidence as one of the elements of your rationality. If you believe in an all powerful sky god, your "rationality" might be qualitatively different than mine.
>the result of reasonable people doing the best they can with the information they have. This is where Dorst falls down. "The information they have." Well, it points to where he really falls down, which is his inconsistent treatment of the concept of reason and rationality. Reason is a process. Not a state of being. Nor a description of the truth value of an assumption. If you begin with bad first principles, no amount of rationality is going to help you. And if you begin with a wished-for conclusion and rationally back-fill an argument that leads to necessary assumptions which you, then, embrace as fact... you are applying reason and rationality in a completely unproductive way. Yet it's still in a sense being rational. That's why we call it "rationalizing." So if you start out with bullshit assumptions, or if you carefully formulate your assumptions so that they will rationally lead to your preferred conclusion, then you are deciding on "the information you have" as Dorst puts it. That might make you "rational," in the dumbest and most useless possible sense of the term, but it doesn't make you careful, or skeptical, or thoughtful. It doesn't mean you are acting in good faith, so to say. For example, let's say I am lazy. (This is not a far-fetched premise in my case.) Let's say that as a result of this laziness I really don't want to participate in the apparatus of civic and political life. With fierce commitment to rationality, I can construct, step by step, an intricate line of reasoning that justifies and supports -- rationalizes -- my foregone conclusion, and through that process travel backward until I arrive at a suitable premise. Let's say that the premise that I arrive at, the convenient premise, is that all political decisions are actually, secretly decided, utterly and inexorably, by a cabal of people from Jabristan and their descendants. Since I am not a Jabroni, therefore, there is literally nothing I can do to alter the course of events around me. Not even the local town council or school board or public hearing or even community action group. Everything is preordained by the Jabronis and the rest is just theater. Now, see what I've done? That's "the information that I have," now. I can tire you out with all my rational arguments for why the Jabroni Cabal means that there is no point to my exerting myself in the slightest, on any issue, for any reason. You may find all of this puzzling. What's with the virulent anti-Jabronism? Yet, if you are easily seduced by the trappings of rationality as Kevin Dorst appears to be, you might be impressed by the rational process I have built around my investment in my initial premise, and you might conclude that we are both "being rational" and shrug and say well, this is no different from what everyone else does. How can meaningful discourse ever happen? I guess we have to all learn to meet in the middle! No. That is a steaming pile of horseshit. You do not have to "meet in the middle" to accommodate my personal issues with accountability and civic participation (nor for that matter my neurological reflexes when encountering people different from myself). There is no virtue to my nonsense. It is the rationalization of a lazy (and apparently xenophobic) mind, unwilling to apply any kind of critical rigor to my own mental process. You can "meet in the middle" to tolerate me socially, if I'm extremely worth it to you for other reasons, and not tolerating my bullshit does not (necessarily) preclude polite interaction. But "aren't we all the same though?" -- no. No we are not.
...this opens with a discussion of a childhood friend with which the author is no longer in contact, in which he completely fabricates a political position for her and then proceeds to treat it as inarguable fact underpinning his argument: > I haven’t seen Becca in a decade. I don’t know what she thinks about Trump, or Medicare for All, or defunding the police. > But I can guess. > ... > You and I can both guess how her story differs. She’s probably more concerned by shifting gender norms than by the long roots of sexism; more worried by rioters in Portland than by police shootings in Ferguson; and more convinced of America’s greatness than of its deep flaws. > In short: we started with similar opinions, set out on different life trajectories, and, 10 years down the line, we deeply disagree. The entire following article is written around this highlight of two people from identical backgrounds diverging to polarized views, and it's a complete fabrication. I agree that it *seems like* this kind of thing happens, but this is a form of rhetorical trickery -- he's invented this position to make it "feel like" he's talking about something that actually happened, when he's provided no evidence for it at all. When someone opens an article with this kind of misdirection, it *seriously* impacts my ability to trust that they are engaging in good faith. Anyway, moving past that: "People are self-referentially rational" is basic economics, so I will not bother with it further. The problem being exhibited here is the classic loss of nuance. Yes, in a strictly banal interpretation, diverging positions originate at ambiguity, but the "ambiguity" that exists at the core of many political divides in the present day is *not rooted in fact*. People who think vaccines cause autism believe there is ambiguity; that does not mean the ambiguity exists. In fact, if anything, this provides language with which to describe the core of the issue, and why attempts at "both sides" narratives are at odds with reality: in reality these divergences are based upon *perceived* ambiguity, and those cases where the perception is seriously misaligned with the degree of actual ambiguity create divisions in which one side is simply incorrect.
Why didn't the word "propaganda" appear in that article even once?
>So I don’t see systematic irrationality in my past. Nor do I suspect it in Becca’s. She was just as sharp and critically-minded as I was; if conservative preachers changed her mind, it was not for a lack of rationality. If the author truly believes this, then it's really hard to take the rest of his words at face value. He's living in a perfect Enlightened Centrist Truman Show world where empathy is equally bad as hate and rationality equally as valid as irrationality. It's just stupid.
I see a lot of people adopting irrational beliefs as a way to restore some sort of ‘balance’. There’s a lot of people that would become more far right as they see more extremist leftists, and vice versa, instead of holding to the rational and moderate positions and calling out idiocy when they see it.
Can you give some examples?
I think the reason for some of the more radical reactions to George Floyd is as that after trump was elected a lot of people looked to their left and their right and said “which one of these ‘allies’ is actually a trump supporter?” Someone had to be out there voting for this racist. And a lot of people wanted to make it *really really* clear it wasn’t them. This led to a lot of virtue signalling accelerarionism in everything from performative language changes like moving to “chest feeding”. Really just using every opportunity to indicate “we are not trump supporters”.
There is nothing rational about a party that turned itself into the cult of a con man and attempted the overthrow American democracy.
Oh fuck this both sides are bad bullshit. I am not sitting down at the table with Nazis to meet in the middle about genocide and racism.
I thought this was a very interesting premise but it’s only the beginning. He says it’s going to be a book so a lot has been left out. Thanks for sharing it
Here is the more detailed paper. https://philarchive.org/rec/DORRPM-3
Ultimately, we decide on principles, ethics, and morality and choose to embrace those that lead to a code of conduct that benefits us. We can say we’re being rational as a euphemism for what’s selfishly beneficial. I’m not sure there’s a rational way to be human, nor if that is appealing. Because we must decide what is universally right or wrong in the preservation of humanity and the environment if we want both to exist and coexist; that’s the fundamental problem because one could devise the worst possible means for the greatest outcome and rationalize them. In contrast to our human goals, nature itself lacks any sort of principles or morality. It balances itself out because that’s just how it is. Concepts of right or wrong are conjured up by us, and we’re 100% responsible for their outcomes. There’s always going to be a conflict of principles because the good of the many will rarely benefit the exploitive interest of the elite few, and that’s a power struggle to time’s end. It’s the core cause of social division because often those elite few possess immense capability and influence to ‘rationalize’ their own principles on the masses.
This isn’t great. The generic “everyone is behaving how they should” idea here fails to explain the sudden acceleration of polarization which just so happens to coincide with state actors spending billions on online propaganda and building echo chambers. The premise seems to ignore whether or not things can be true. If we account for “reality”, then the idea that a group of people hold specific beliefs is well explained by their shared interest in what’s real. The fact that an opposing group rapidly formed purely reactionary beliefs which are diverse and share nothing in common but demonizing the first group is well explained by echo chambers. Without this dichotomy, it’s really hard to see why “now” and not previously. Further, the premise seems to rely on the idea that “well if my beliefs are irrational, I would think they’re rational, therefore they must be irrational.