There’s this trend I’ve noticed where bloggers who became popular
blogging about one specific field (that they have some relevant
expertise in) get a big head from all the praise they get from fanboys
and decide they’re some once-in-a-generation genius and they have a duty
to share their wisdom by writing a giant book called What’s Wrong With
The World And Who’s To Blame.
And the book fucking sucks, because of course it does. Their blog was
about technology (or psychiatry or statistics or bird-watching or
whatever) and they were an expert in that. They aren’t experts in
sociology, history, politics or any of the other shit they weigh in
on.
Sadly, Porn by The Last Psychiatrist is the most recent example I can
think of, but there must be enough of these to fill a library.
It's not a trend, it's a cognitive trap that has bedeviled specialists since the dawn of Western Civ. Basically every Greek philosopher except Diogenes was some jumped up rhetorician and physicists have been badly misunderstanding other fields with immense pride since the field developed.
You can fuck right off with that ancient philosophy dig, unless you're willing to say that Parmenides, Thales, Socrates, and Aristotle were "jumped up rhetoricians" rather than astronomers, biologists, statesmen, military leaders, businessmen, and more.
dropping the sneer for a moment to agree that there's plenty of value in Greek thought besides Diogenes, and putting it back up again to say Socrates was Plato's sock puppet, Thales had no drip, Parmenides is cool and Aristotle's best bit was his line about not letting the city of Athens sin against philosophy twice (by making him kill himself too).
From the summary, there's an interesting rhetorical pattern there I've seen a lot. Perhaps someone has a name for it:
You point out a flaw of some sort that's pretty general (in this case, lack of higher level thinking).
Then you spend a tiny amount of time pretending to apply it to the reader and your ideological allies. Then you finally spend way more time using it to discredit your enemies, having established a facade of impartiality.
Yeah, I see this \*all\* the time in various post-rationalist or (ugh) "meta-rationalist" circles. They all hate the left, but they always do that song-and-dance of pretending to be impartial and ineffectually scrutinizing themselves.
"What's our problem? It's THEM. Dear reader, THEY are the problem. Not you, though. No, dear reader, you must do no self-examination of yourself whatsoever, as you are perfect as you are."
You may be surprised to learn that self-examination is the first thing recommended to the readers in the book's conclusion. You may not agree with the author's assessment of what is happening, or his priorities for addressing it, but if you're looking for complacency or intellectual dishonesty, you will have to find it elsewhere.
Yeah, no, I think the author is full of shit, and if he was capable of a shred of self-examination then he would not have released this steaming pile of shit into the world.
I confess to being uncertain as to why you think that, so I may be overlooking something important. Is it because you don't think constructive speech can defeat harmful speech?
While I think constructive speech can defeat harmful speech, I will actively look for reasons I might be mistaken if that's why people don't like "What's Our Problem?".
Because if you're writing a book about improving the world, then self-examination isn't an idea that you mention in passing in the conclusion, but a core tenant that you structure the book around.
But \*real\* self-examination is \*difficult\*. Real self-examination makes people uncomfortable. So writing a book that forces people to self-examine the ugly parts of themselves isn't going to make you a best-selling author. So the easier way is to write a book where you painstakingly examine other people's flaws, and call them "our problem".
Tbh anyone who is self-centered enough to write a book called "Whats our problem" shouldn't be writing books about the problems of society to begin with.
\>Is it because you don't think constructive speech can defeat harmful speech?
Yeah, probably, but I don't think the author is that constructive to begin with. Whose harmful speech has the author defeated? It's mostly empty self-help platitudes with no real value.
I do agree that the book would have done well to spend more time on deconstructing the extremist conservative and progressive views from the inside as opposed to just from the outside, to show how people can apply "high-rung" thinking effectively to replace extremist beliefs with more nuanced and constructive ones. The outside view helps for context, but the inside view is more actionable for many people, and showing it would also demonstrate respect and understanding. There are steelman reasons for why people are leery of letting certain ideas into idea labs: Humans have not yet mastered the art of using free speech to defeat bad ideas, so it's understandable that people want some insurance against malicious memes festering into a hostile zeitgeist. That never ends well.
Also, in the part near the end where the author describes self-examination and mentions having done it himself, it would be good to see examples of how self-examination can not only refute conclusions, but also support them. The graph of conviction versus knowledge implies that conviction (I'd call it "intellectual confidence" or something) can go back up after dropping. However, if people don't see how that works, they won't see much value in self-examination on the topics they consider most important.
It took a bit of self-examination to figure out reasons to criticize the book, but once I knew that those reasons existed, my toolbox of foundational concepts helped find some. Was the above a good description of why you dislike the book? Thank you for sharing your perspective!
I think you did a good effort, actually.
I'd say if you want to go further, try rephrasing it using your \*own\* words, not the words of the author, or some subcommunity. ie try explaining it without words like "steelman" or "high rung" or "inside/outside view".
Thanks, I appreciate that!
Translating the concepts outside of the book's vocabulary is a good idea. So then it becomes: The author could have started from the perspectives of people with viewpoints he considers extreme, and then shown how applying uninvested thinking* can help them constructively achieve things they value.
*(It was the most neutral phrase I could come up with offhand; there might be a better one.)
There are compelling reasons for why people currently fear uninvested thinking: while it can be good that uninvested thinking teaches people to question values and be less certain about what they think they know, society will fall apart if there are no values which people will take decisive action to maintain and protect. People have been having trouble reconciling uninvested thinking with that decisiveness, which is probably why invested thinking took over the universities. People are a lot more decisive when they're invested in a particular conclusion.
How does that sound?
Thank you for challenging my take on the book. Our discussion clarified for me how the project I've been working on fills the role of a missing piece from the book. The goal is to demonstrate how we can indeed use uninvested thinking to help us decisively maintain constructive values. We can draw clear lines based on uninvested principles so people need not fear that free speech will convince people to do things that cause harm to others, intentionally or accidentally.
1: this whole framework seems to assume that action doesn't happen, only thought. This seems like a significant oversight when trying to examine political movements and discourse, especially when you start dealing with authoritarianism and fascism.
2: if this is a simple ladder, why is it on two axes? If it's a matrix, what goes in the top-right side? Or would that require acknowledging that "wokeness" does use a higher-level thinking about values and society and whatever else?
3: if the higher-minded thinking is about transcending tribalism and having values and whatever, why does it just boil down to "I'm willing to give up my values with less and less evidence?"
I can help clarify: this was written by a hack who draws stick figures and is adored by self-help gurus. See his Musk boot licking from a few years back. It’s gross.
1. I don't think its a matrix, the y axis is divided into 4 parts and which he compares to rungs of ladder. He further groups the these rungs with higher and lower rungs based on their higher mind to primitive mind ratio.
2. Higher Mind thinking isnt just about having values but valuing truth over anything else and he describes the culture of idea labs where different people discuss and cancel each other's biases and other blindspots to eventually figure out the truth about any situation.
3. The framework is basically saying it doesnt matter what you think, no matter what your beliefs are, whats more important is how you reached those conclusions. And then goes on to describe 4 different ways people think, which is a struggle between people's higher mind and lower mind.
1: if it's not a matrix then why is it laid out on two axes? It's either badly-presented or nonsensical.
2: See, this is the part that makes me actively angry. Because people's beliefs *do* matter, especially when you start talking politics. I don't give a rat's ass which god you pray to, but if you start arguing for *any* reason that parents should be thrown in jail and have their kids taken away for refusing to misgender their trans kids, we're gonna have a problem. When people push policies that criminalize miscarriage in the name of "pro-life" then we're gonna have a fucking problem. The beliefs pushed by the American right actively threaten the lives and livelihoods of myself and people like me, and trying to argue "but the left is epistemologically unsound too" or whatever just shows that you either don't get that or you don't give a damn. And I am perfectly content to be a "social bully" or even some brands of "authoritarian" in order to call out people in any of those camps as assholes. Because if we *don't* then being socially shamed is the *least* of the problems facing me.
1. Thats the thing. The individual and the idea are two different things. Bad ideas should be publicly beaten and shamed as much as possible but the weapons of combat should be directed at the ideas only not the person holding them. You can't reason with fools, i understand that. But the framework given above allows room for empathy. If the person is holding a foolish idea then clearly that person's manner of thinking is on the lower rungs of the ladder. So its worthless to fight, you wont change that individual's mind.
2. Why does it have to be a matrix, but if you insist upon it, you can then imagine it like a matrix of 4×1(4rows and 1 column). Each row of the matrix is a rung. And the first and last two are grouped as high and low rungs.
> the weapons of combat should be directed at the ideas only not the person holding them
Try to imagine that their bad idea could be to harm you personally, instead of just being an academic curiosity for you.
Yes Ofcourse,we defend ourselves, i am not talking about nutcases who talk the language of violence and physical assaulting is their form of debating, they are clearly low rung thinkers. But often times the ideas themselves become offensive to people, which means people are so attached with their beliefs that even a little thought against those become heresy. And when a group of people makes some ideas "sacred". Then its guaranteed to become an echo chamber. Thats why its important to have a very precise distinction between a physical and ideological fight. You shouldn't attack the person in an ideological fight. And if someone else is trying to attack you instead of your ideas then obviously the appropriate action should be taken
Okay but I'm not concerned about people whipping up an angry mob or grabbing a gun to come after me in the public square. We're not talking about assassination of public speakers here we're talking about policies that actively use the machinery of government and society to attack the security and safety of my family. The idea that trans people aren't the gender they say they are isn't ideologically anathema to me or opposed to some sacred whatever, it is directly used to justify policies that would break up my family, throw me in jail, and ultimately kill my daughter.
Having truth as your ultimate value sounds good but you run straight into the is-ought problem. If you start trying to argue about how the world should be or what kind of policies should or should not be in place you have to bring in something more than just the true state that the world is in right now, and those other things are where the real fight comes from. So many of the "facts" at issue are socially constructed. What is gender? What is a person? What is race? What is justice? The answers to these questions aren't going to be found by good-faith interrogation of the world around us, they're going to be decided by social forces and enforced by state policies, and by trying to be above that argument and serve only capital-T Truth you're surrendering the field to people who want to answer those questions in ways that will literally kill my family and throw me in prison.
Do you not understand how insulting it is to say that a political debate that could have such terrible consequences is "low-tier thought?" That rather than defend ourselves in the realm of public influence we should just climb into your ivory towers and contemplate the spheres while we wait for the brownshirts to come for us? Do you not see how the same ideology that enforces heteronormativity and white supremacy will gladly turn its very literal guns and prisons against you and your quest for Truth and Reason as soon as it runs out of easier targets or you start asking uncomfortable questions? Or in other words, if we're supposed to defend ourselves how exactly do you propose we do that when apparently every single actual method of doing so is beneath you?
We defend ourselves by having a precise understanding of our actual threat,aka, knowing the Truth behind exactly what is harming us and what is helping us. Historically speaking, one of the best weapon was misinformation, which is distorting "Truth" and using it as a weapon to control the massess. Truth as a value is important because humans have always exploited echo chambers to rule. French revolution was about abolishing the monarchy and establishing liberal values but became a brutal period of oppression by the revolutinaries themselves and finally ended with a dictatorship. Truth is not about being in an ivory tower, its about directly challenging the most deeply rooted ideas of a society. Life is already full of uncertainty on top of that if your government or your schools start engaging in a mass delusion, everyone suffers and indefinite pessimism takes over resulting in people giving up hope. Truth IS the weapon.
Right but this higher mind horseshit doesn't do that. By assuming that people are formulating beliefs based on some kind of abstract debate bro calculus it doesn't describe how people actually arrive at beliefs. Richard Dawkins doesn't think that church bells are beautiful and the Muezan's (sp) call is ghastly because of his well thought out ideology, he thinks this because he is a narrow-minded old man who loves what is familiar and disdains everything strange to him (which arguably undergirds and motivates his ideology). Stephen Pinker doesn't think that American society as it's exists is the culmination of human history so far because of a deep reading of history (hah) he believes this because American society and those who should power on it are very good to him. Random Motte fucksticks don't think that Siskind's drivel is gospel because of whatever bullshit they will tell you, but because it centers people like them as the most important and enlightened people on the world. The logical justifications of these beliefs are all post hoc, the social power structures and individual psychological needs being propped up is the actual cause of them.
TLDR the Postmodernists were right all along, listen more to black metal, read William Blake.
You are saying this higher mind bullshit doesnt work and then go on to list people who, according to you, have a flawed thinking process. And also, while you are criticizing these people, you are implying that there is a better way of thinking which require open mindedness towards new ideas. So even though you criticize this higher mind "horseshit". You are indulging in it yourself, which is a great thing, people should engage more like this, no idea should go unchallenged. So welcome bro, you are officially a higher mind now.
No, I am saying that the 'thinking process' is a red herring. All the people I list would probably pass this higher mind test according to the author. You can't just look at their arguments and figure out the reason why they believe what they do or even spot the most fundamental flaws (though there are a lot of them), you have to incorporate the social and political context of their project.
The test that the author mentions, is nothing new. If somebody is biased and is not open to new ideas, then he is not a higher mind. If Dawkins is biased towards his ideas and doesnt allow other people to criticize him or if he blocks new ideas, then he is not a higher mind. We are discussing an idea on this forum, why? Why should i allow you to debate me or why should i post my thoughts here? I do it because it matters to me that my ideas are exposed to dissent. I value truth and the author of the book mentioned above has proposed the same ideas. More discourse of ideas is good.
This schema of higher mind vs lower mind thing is just another way of saying rational and irrational. The person i was talking to said this schema isnt useful in evaluating how people "actually" arrive at their beliefs and then he gave examples of dawkins and pinker, and how these personalities have "flaws" in their ideas. One flaw he explicitly mentioned was "open-mindedness". This criticism itself is an activity of classifying ideas into rational and irrational category, and he classified pinker's ideas as irrational. Which is fine, but its not at all different than saying that pinker is lower minded or high minded. Thats why i said he was indulging in the activity of classifying ideas based on certain factors that might be considered irrational or rational, which is same as saying lower or higher.
Finally, the book has not militated my ability to reason. I dont consider discussion as a fight but more like a collaboration. And if anything, the book has taught me to be open to other's criticism more and more. Otherwise, i would be hesitant to share my thoughts on this platform in fear of being attacked.
We do have those categories, and it would have been a worthless book if that was the whole point of it. But the book defines precisely in detail what does it mean to be irrational or rational. The author gives 4 different methods of reasoning based on the struggle between a person's limbic system(lower mind) or neocortex(higher mind). Irrationals are defined as the people who let their primitive mind or their limbic system take over their life, which results in biased thinking and overall that person becomes less wise. Our brains were optimised to conform to a tribe because in 55k BC that was important for survival. But in modern environment its harder to do that because individual thinking has more value now. This is a very real struggle that i have personally gone through and still am going through. My disagreement with the person was simple, he thought this whole system of evaluating different methods of reasoning wasnt practical but he then went on to criticise some ideas of other thinkers based on some factors he considered rational or irrational, such as open-mindedness. He had his own system of evaluating reasonig methods, which is fine but its essentially the same thing as the schema.
I am here to collaborate means, i dont mind engaging in discussions that challenge my ideas constantly, which helps me to either update or strengthen my theories. I am discussing this schema with you here, and debating you is making me think about my stance from every angle to make sure i am not biased in my thinking. So maybe its not a collaboration in its usual sense but it is helping me to gather more data.
There was no dispute on the categories, there are mainly two categories made up of 4 sub-categories that are given in the link at the start of this thread. The dispute that the person had with me was that i was unrealistically categorizing between higher and lower minds and i was just pointing out that the commenter is using those categories himself while giving an arguement against them.
I don't care people buy it or not, its available for free online, and i dont care if they read it or not because its people's choice, but i will say that its very hard to debate key ideas of the book without ever reading it. Its like hating or liking the character of gandalf without watching or reading Lord of the Rings.
Sure hope this capital t truth of yours can protect me from bullets, batons and buff dudes or im gonna need something better
You can't Truth yourself out of cops breaking down your door lol
No you can't, i understand that. But root causes of these injustices will not be fixed if we dont define it. Actively investigating the causes and precisely defining the role of police and its powers. It was done by people back in the day, who enaged in a fair amount of biased thinking. Its fine, it was the past, we learn but then move on. When we talk about progressivism, the ideal is to fix social issues by defining it with rigorous methods of inquiry. And take necessary actions for it. But, there is a catch which is every situation has nuances and building Truth is hard. Thats why there are certain principles must be followed in any investigation, which is why i said it must be our core value.
It is good to have solid, well-considered foundations for your actions (although not unbiased, which is neither possible nor would it be desirable), but is anyone questioning that?
Truth cannot be a weapon in itself, but it should inform the wisdom of how to wield them
Truth is a weapon against uncertainty, if the whole world is divided into different camps about every topic. If no one is sure about anything, how do we figure it out? How do we build that confidence, that trust within ourselves, to be able to navigate in a society that keeps demanding our attention and effort to their own cause, how do we find our own cause? You are right though, its not truth itself that is the weapon, its the principles that allows us to determine what is truth or not. Thats why i agreed with the above mentioned book in this post. It proposes the foundation of truth should be determined by the scientific method. So, i should rephrase my above line , the best method weapon we have against uncertainty is the principles on which we use to find truth, and those are formally called the "Scientific Method".
You're ignoring the is/ought problem and social construction again. The problem isn't that people don't have access to scientific facts, or even that they refuse to accept them. You're treating it like people are starting off with confusion or disagreements of fact and then deriving their political beliefs when it's exactly the opposite. Most often the main disagreement has no distinct scientific answer. The core disagreement between the pro-trans and anti-trans folks has nothing to do with the scientific facts and everything to do with the socially constructed definition of gender. Once that disagreement is set then you can find scientific-looking facts to support the specific arguments you're making. Time and time again research shows that confronting people with facts that run counter to their beliefs doesn't actually change anyone's mind. Instead it comes down to breaking the social barriers and key to that is making yourself heard and forcing the wider society to acknowledge you. That's not compatible with sitting down and letting hate have it's day to argue in the court of public opinion with an expected rebuttal to be delivered afterwards if anyone sticks around to hear it. Instead it demands that you stand up to say that when they call the parents of trans kids abusers and groomers that they're talking about me, or my friend, or my family, and thousands of other real people who they already know. That's what actually gets through, is finding that connection to another person, and if you can't get that yourself then you can at least let everyone know that you won't go quietly, that you are loud and numerous and that you vote.
Because the book that this stick figure guy wrote talks about how people who get attached to their ideas so much that they start to perceive a criticism on their ideas as violence on themeselves. Its hard to separate yourselves from your ideas, because the brain is new to this whole intellectual exercise, our brain was programmed by evolution to conform to our tribes. But today' society requires authentic, original thoughts, which comes from individuals thinking for themselves. He mentions in the book, an opposite of an echo chamber, an "Idea Lab". And then he gives certain principles that are necessary to build an idea lab culture. Book is unique because it gives a good framework for a struggle between our limbic system and our neocortex, which he refers to as our "primitive mind" and "higher mind". But this framework is only first half or first third of the book. Rest of the book is a compilation of concrete evidence of this exact framework working in real world. Its worth a read, i recommend it.
Basically he says that sports fans are still on the high-rung half of the ladder because they don't put their desired outcome (team winning) over the integrity of the game. They (typically) allow the "science", or in this case the game, to play out fairly to see what happens, rather than starting from the other side: my team must win at all costs. After all, what's the point of a win if you had to cheat?
Missed opportunity for the midwit meme:
* Left of peak: I need to stop the talk from happening.
* Peak: I might change my mind if the speak makes good points.
* Right of peak: dear Lord, the speaker has been making the same terrible, refuted points for decades. *Someone* needs to get that guy off the stage.
I suspect the imbalance in the quantity of material is because a) it's more obvious what's wrong with the low-rung right, since their PR isn't as good, and b) while the low-rung right are dangerous, they aren't the ones succeeding at taking over Idea Labs. We need to understand how to protect Idea Labs in order to deal with low-rung thinking from every corner. Believe it or not, the Idea Labs being shut down by the low-rung left are the greatest defense against the low-rung right. Thoroughly deconstructing a bad conservative idea in an Idea Lab (not necessarily a college, but a space playing by free speech rules) is the first step to killing it deader than anything dogma and social coercion can accomplish.
…Timothy Leary did this better in the 1970s, tbh, and without all the
weird sneering at leftists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-circuit_model_of_consciousness
Wow that “diagnosis” is the most unoriginal breakdown I’ve ever heard
in my life. Both sides bad. Here’s an overly charitable description of
one side and a completely made up one about the left.
He did say both sides are bad but his position was very clear, lower rung ideas are bad and higher rung ideas are good. So doesnt matter you are right or left if you have reached your conculsions without considering all the facts and evidence than your ideas are not good. And as far as the criticism of woke is concerned, i agree with his criticism of postmodernism that reality is subjective. I think reality is hard a project but if we give up the only tools that we have to build our beliefs, which are intuition, logic and basically common sense, then we cant build anything at all
None of those are original ideas. They are also pretty trivial observations. People have been lobbing those same criticisms at postmodernism for decades.
As to your first point, that is objectively false. Anyone who is looking to political structures for “the way forward” is also an obtuse asshole. The only notable statement about the current political climate that matters is: “the democrats suck, but the republicans want to end life as we know it” Any time anyone brings up “woke” stuff, I can immediately tell how fucking stupid they are.
> i agree with his criticism of postmodernism that reality is subjective
THIS IS NOT WHAT POSTMODERNISM SAYS and anyone who asserts it is demonstrating that they are either a grifter or too stupid to breathe. Or, most likely, both.
Well both Hanson and Siskind have reviewed it.
Hanson seemed pretty keen to engage with the subject matter.
Siskind might have been more sceptical, but its paywalled so I'll never know.
Basically, it's doing the rat rounds.
>on and Siskind have reviewed it.
>
>Hanson seemed pretty keen to engage with the subject matter.
>
>Siskind might have been more sceptical, but its paywalled so I'll never know.
>
>Basically, it's doing the rat rounds.
oh ok cool mb
Huh, wonder why he only went back as far as the 1960’s when
discussing the history of the Republican party. Could some other things
have happened before then that might reframe the issue as being less
about Republicans having lost their principles and more about then never
having them to begin with? I suppose we may never know.
There’s this trend I’ve noticed where bloggers who became popular blogging about one specific field (that they have some relevant expertise in) get a big head from all the praise they get from fanboys and decide they’re some once-in-a-generation genius and they have a duty to share their wisdom by writing a giant book called What’s Wrong With The World And Who’s To Blame.
And the book fucking sucks, because of course it does. Their blog was about technology (or psychiatry or statistics or bird-watching or whatever) and they were an expert in that. They aren’t experts in sociology, history, politics or any of the other shit they weigh in on.
Sadly, Porn by The Last Psychiatrist is the most recent example I can think of, but there must be enough of these to fill a library.
one chapter on right-wingers and three (five?) on left-wingers, that sounds about right, lmao
…Timothy Leary did this better in the 1970s, tbh, and without all the weird sneering at leftists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-circuit_model_of_consciousness
Wow that “diagnosis” is the most unoriginal breakdown I’ve ever heard in my life. Both sides bad. Here’s an overly charitable description of one side and a completely made up one about the left.
Is this really relevant to the subreddit?
I liked some of that dude’s stuff in 2015 – some of his visualizations were helpful to me – but fuckin yikes
Huh, wonder why he only went back as far as the 1960’s when discussing the history of the Republican party. Could some other things have happened before then that might reframe the issue as being less about Republicans having lost their principles and more about then never having them to begin with? I suppose we may never know.