How I Got CyberBalkanized Despite My Good Intentions
One reason I can't stand politics is the pervasive intellectual derangement/dishonesty of the whole thing. Now suddenly everybody on my side of the aisle is twisting and spinning and nipping and tucking everything John McCain has ever done so that he comes out done up as an idiot, a crook, a monster. And, of course, derangement and dishonesty have run fairly rampant among our friends across the aisle for at least the last fifteen years or so. And everybody acts like this is normal and just peachy. Cripes.
I'd bet a good bit of money that all this has lasting negative effects on our rationality. It breeds and reinforces bad epistemic habits. If you knew an individual who believed all the kinds of things, say, that show up as headlines on the Huffington Post, you'd correctly classify them as a political loon. Most of the crazy people I know are crazy because of the extraordinary one-sidedness of their beliefs. They seem almost constitutionally incapable of understanding or even considering the other side of the argument.
I find myself falling into these bad habits, too, and not entirely for bad reasons.
Some folks (myself included) worry about cyberbalkanization, i.e. the tendency of denizens of he political blogosphere to separate into isolated, relatively monolithic communities of opinion. But traditionally the worry has been that cyberbalkanization would be the result of intellectual vice on the part of the balkanized--tending to seek out confirmation and avoid intellectual challenges, they settle into congenial echo chambers. So pre-existing intellectual vice is amplified.
I'm not saying that that's not part of my problem, but it's not all of it. I used to make a serious effort to seek out opinions from the rightosphere as well as the leftosphere. But the irrationality on the right eventually became so angrifying that I found it driving me farther left. In particular, the slavish Bush worship of so much of the rightosphere is what did it. There are folks over thattaway who are, well, pretty much completely out of touch with reality on the subject of the current occupant of the White House. It takes a great deal of dishonesty or delusionment to even argue that the guy has been merely a bad president rather than a terrible one; but it's not that uncommon for folks over there to, even to this day, say or say things that presuppose that he's a downright good one. Because of my undiagnosed ODD, such bullshit just pushes me even farther in the anti-Bush direction. And lord knows I'm far enough down that road as it is.
So, in order to prevent my judgments from being distorted by anger induced by mindless pro-Bushism, I find myself avoiding that world almost completely.
And, so, here I am, despite my best intentions, becoming ever more isolated in the group-thinky echo-chamber, just like a garden-variety Kossack.
Anybody has an idea how to cure this, please to cough it up.
One reason I can't stand politics is the pervasive intellectual derangement/dishonesty of the whole thing. Now suddenly everybody on my side of the aisle is twisting and spinning and nipping and tucking everything John McCain has ever done so that he comes out done up as an idiot, a crook, a monster. And, of course, derangement and dishonesty have run fairly rampant among our friends across the aisle for at least the last fifteen years or so. And everybody acts like this is normal and just peachy. Cripes.
I'd bet a good bit of money that all this has lasting negative effects on our rationality. It breeds and reinforces bad epistemic habits. If you knew an individual who believed all the kinds of things, say, that show up as headlines on the Huffington Post, you'd correctly classify them as a political loon. Most of the crazy people I know are crazy because of the extraordinary one-sidedness of their beliefs. They seem almost constitutionally incapable of understanding or even considering the other side of the argument.
I find myself falling into these bad habits, too, and not entirely for bad reasons.
Some folks (myself included) worry about cyberbalkanization, i.e. the tendency of denizens of he political blogosphere to separate into isolated, relatively monolithic communities of opinion. But traditionally the worry has been that cyberbalkanization would be the result of intellectual vice on the part of the balkanized--tending to seek out confirmation and avoid intellectual challenges, they settle into congenial echo chambers. So pre-existing intellectual vice is amplified.
I'm not saying that that's not part of my problem, but it's not all of it. I used to make a serious effort to seek out opinions from the rightosphere as well as the leftosphere. But the irrationality on the right eventually became so angrifying that I found it driving me farther left. In particular, the slavish Bush worship of so much of the rightosphere is what did it. There are folks over thattaway who are, well, pretty much completely out of touch with reality on the subject of the current occupant of the White House. It takes a great deal of dishonesty or delusionment to even argue that the guy has been merely a bad president rather than a terrible one; but it's not that uncommon for folks over there to, even to this day, say or say things that presuppose that he's a downright good one. Because of my undiagnosed ODD, such bullshit just pushes me even farther in the anti-Bush direction. And lord knows I'm far enough down that road as it is.
So, in order to prevent my judgments from being distorted by anger induced by mindless pro-Bushism, I find myself avoiding that world almost completely.
And, so, here I am, despite my best intentions, becoming ever more isolated in the group-thinky echo-chamber, just like a garden-variety Kossack.
Anybody has an idea how to cure this, please to cough it up.
posted by Winston Smith at
10:57 AM
7 Comments:
Winston,
Here's an idea: just look to Obsidian Wings, especially Hilzoy, for clear-eyed, reasonable and rational reasons why McCain would be an atrocious president.
I agree there have been some illegitimate criticisms of him. What I fear, though, is that the exposure of some of these criticisms as unjust will serve as the *National Guard Memo - kerning* means of obscuring the true degree to which McCain is ill-informed and unprincipled.
If people wish to take issue with the criticisms Hilzoy et al make of McCain, OW provides a forum for doing so on the basis of evidence and logical argument.
Just my $.02.
IMO, Overcoming Bias is good to read.
Here's what I do.
Frequent places where politics is NOT the primary subject of discussion.
If you find a smart blog that covers multiple subjects, politics is going to come up eventually, but since you're there for other reasons, chances are you're going to get intelligent discourse on a variety of subjects with a variety of opinions.
And since people have been chatting with each other about things that are not so polarizing, they tend to be much more polite, because those with differing opinions are more than words on the screen. They also people who share a love of (whatever) with you.
That's what I've been doing anyway. I read almost no political blogs anymore, but read plenty of multi-topic blogs that occasionally delve into politics.
Lemme know if you want some suggestions. :)
And as a bonus, you get to talk about fun things IN ADDITION to politics! Very good for your blood pressure.
I think that you're actually pretty justified to be avoiding the republican side of things at the moment, Winston. There's a difference between avoiding it temporarily and avoiding it permanently, of course. As long as you do the former and not the latter, I don't see that there's a problem. The problem lies with those who avoid the other side permanently, for no good reason, and avoid the consideration that their side could ever be wrong about anything. You're definitely not there. I wouldn't waste my time fretting about a well-earned sense of aversion towards the right for at least the remainder of this presidency.
I'm guessing that one's epistemic responsibility is not to continuously seek out the opposing argument for every single position that one holds. Certainly one should seek out the opposing argument for very important positions and for positions about which one is unsure, but when it comes to positions that have been thoroughly researched, thoroughly debated, and properly developed, I think that you're free of your epistemic responsibility to dive into every moronic group of people you can find who will merely irritate you with their inability to change their positions in the face of evidence.
I'm starting to think that once one has attained proficiency in analytic logic and reasoning, the next step is something more..hm..spiritual? The next step is to get oneself to a place where one is capable of using that analytic capability in the right way and with the right frame of mind. Part of that is learning how to deal with things when they become frustrating and stupid in a way that allows you to be as helpful as possible and that doesn't lead to an anyeurism.
I've got my ideas on ways of doing that, and I'm sure everyone else has their own if they think about it. If you've got the light of reason, just be a candle. Others can look if they want, but you can't make them look. If you can keep your state of mind the same regardless of their reaction to you, you'll be much happier, I'd think.
I'm a pretty orthodox liberal, and sometimes that orthodoxy worries me, because I'm trained to be and temperamentally a skeptic. So I try to take note of the times I depart from orthodoxy, and it turns out they aren't as rare as I might have thought.
For example, I do think that the Second Amendment has meaning, even if not quite the meaning you impute to it, WS. But there's a case in which you're heterodox, too.
I'm inclined to rework affirmative action on the basis of social class.
And Gov. Deval Patrick has just proposed a whole bunch of education reforms, some I agree with (higher pay for hard-to-find specialties such as math, higher pay for tough assignments such as urban schools), some I disagree with (uniform statewide teacher contract, push for regionalization of small- or medium-sized districts). The Mass Teachers' Assn., afaik, has positions on three of these, and I disagree with two of their positions.
It can also be helpful to do what you've done before and to look back and track records. In my lifetime, liberals have been right far more often than conservatives in all areas of government. Looking for an even split, which is the media's lazy shortcut, is not justified by experience. Sometimes, one side is just better than the other. Nonetheless, it's important that, however justly you might use this as a heuristic, the topics usually are not epistemically linked and should be separately assessed for truth.
Or you could check out this.
Remember not to take things seriously. It'll help.
Obama v. the living dead...so beautiful...so very, very beautiful...LMAO.
Thanks for all the advice, guys. Very sane and helpful. I in particular think the Mystic's distinction is important: avoiding the other side always, or avoiding them while they have BDS (Bush Deification Syndrome). That's just too damn much for any sane person to bear.
Of course, they seem to be segueing smoothly into ODS...so I'm not sure how congenial I'll find their writing even after Bush is gone...
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