Comment by kcorbitt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kcorbitt | Hacker News Reader

I agree with this sentiment in general, especially that our own feeling of self-worth can be determined to a fair degree by the opinions of people we surround ourselves with, and that this drives conformity.

However, I'd add an important corollary, and one that is perhaps a bit less cynical :). Even if it's mostly true that you can only feel fulfilled when your actions and opinions are approved by your peers, you still get to chose who your peers are, and whose opinion you value. That's true today more than ever, with the world's interconnectedness and the huge diversity of on- and offline communities.

Near the end of the article, Mark Twain says "Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently." If you take the time to choose the parties/communities you align yourself with carefully, you can live a very principled and self-determined life even accepting the inevitability of some degree of group conformity.

I agree that it's more possible now to switch/choose alignment than it ever was. And being 'more possible' means that it must be happening more.

But "why people choose the communities they align with" doesn't seem much different than "why people have their opinions." Are we carefully choosing who we align ourselves with, any more than we're choosing our opinions?

I don't think there's any test for this, or any cure, other than making time to ruminate, meditate, and ponder. Alone. Free from distractions and other voices.

And if that's the case, isn't it at least possible that today it's both easier to switch communities, and less likely to be for any principled reason?

Good point - one might choose one's peers based on the desired feedback - the end result wouldn't be more healthy than adapting oneself to the feedback of a static peer group.

> you still get to chose who your peers are, and whose opinion you value.

It sounds like an easy way out, but I found it hard in practice. Not only it may be dangerous (filter bubble), but it also seems to be very similar to self-mind-hacking - which I found not to work at all. As long as I know I'm trying to trick my mind into believing something, it will refuse to do so. If it works at all, it must be on such a long timescale that you forget that it was all fake.

It doesn't seem that Twain thinks it's impossible to see through your interests. He also says to have "studied" some question, that suggest he believes it could be considered rationally.

Both the preacher and Twain's philosophy are very independent thinking themselves.

So it's a matter of numbers. A huge proportion of society is easily manipulated by showing them a "manufactured consensus." (Chomsky dixit)

> A huge proportion of society is easily manipulated by showing them a "manufactured consensus."

And for the rest, you just need to pander to their belief that they're immune to that sort of thing.

I think Twain is indulging himself. He's conflating trivial social conventions about dinner arrangements and clothes, with deeply-felt political positions, with social and financial farming of political influence.

There's evidence that far from being social conventions, political biases are partly neurological. Whether the biases are due to nature or nurture, brain function can't usefully be reduced to superficial observations about creative thinking or self interest.

Twain should at least have noticed that voters reliably support people who take away their bread/corn instead of supplying it.

In fact humans are quite incredibly bad at calculating genuine self interest. We seem to be programmed to equate effective leadership with a certain kind of strutting acquisitive self-indulgence and macho mammal posturing. Being a follower of same can often be a terrible way to meet your bread needs - but a very good way to be treated as a disposable resource.

Allow me to inject a cynical slant to your hopeful suggestion that people 'today more than ever' can chose their peers. People with a certain education supported by an infrastructure (personal and technological) that allows for choice have this flexibility, but those without see only the threat of 'the other,' not an opportunity to rethink fundamental principles. Worse, political leaders continue to exploit ignorance, but with sophisticated mass communication tools and technologies Twain could never have imagined.

Prominent examples:

1. Lower-middle class Southern whites in the U.S. (with whom Twain was intimately familiar) embrace right-wing rhetoric (devout opposition to a godless, liberal govt that rewards a free-loading underclass) while the Republican Party caves to the self-interest of the mega-corp oligarchy. These folks who would benefit from social reforms reject all such liberal notions because, well, they still believe anyone who's not white and Christian is out to take away what little they have. But regressive conservative tax policy is actually doing them harm. (tl;dr: see the success of Fox News, with its overwhelmingly white/old audience. http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/04/02/rat...)

2. Given the above in the U.S., is it any wonder radical Islam succeeds in less affluent, less educated areas of the world--where there's very little exposure to outside ideas. And there's certainly very little opportunity for social/intellectual/economic mobility.

Protestant conservatives support Republican corporatist policy for the same reason urban hipsters support Democrat corporatist policy: because the vote tallying rules strongly favour a two-party system, and the parties they respectively support at least pretend to care about them, while the majority of the Nation sees them as a laughing stock. It speaks to their moral fibre that they are willing to put up with economic disadvantages to prop up policies that they care about.

Suggesting people are somehow foolish because they put ideas before take-home is a weak argument. I'm sure you have a point, but maybe you could come up with better examples.

This characterization is often put forth to explain how the poor can support the Republicans:

>> These folks who would benefit from social reforms reject all such liberal notions because, well, they still believe anyone who's not white and Christian is out to take away what little they have.

In my experience, coming from fly over country, the real thought process could not be further removed. Where I came from, self reliance and self determination were prized. We might be poor as hell, heating our home with wood we cut, and eating food we grew and shot, but so was everyone else in our area, and there was nothing wrong with that. We weren't taking hand outs and getting along just fine (embellishing and paraphrasing try to make the point here). The idea being, everyone could do this, but were too lazy. We were poor, but not impoverished.

The gp's characterization is actually quite offensive to these people.

you still get to chose who your peers are, and whose opinion you value

Is that any less influenced by self-approval, and the approval of others?

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