Comment by 0x4d464d48 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 0x4d464d48 | Hacker News Reader

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"If policies are promoted that people actually like as opposed to barely resent, they'll start reading and talking and you won't hear the end of it."

I like the sound of that but at the same time it gets tricky when you have a legal system that stands up for the rights of everyone, including people that you, they or I don't like. Look at the civil rights movement in the 1950's and 1960's, the current LGBT rights movements or the debates about civil rights as they pertain to Muslims. There's a plurality of citizens that would gladly chastise these groups or violate their rights in other ways such as putting them under constant surveillance or restrictions due to their religion, race or sexuality but that is incongruous with a society that holds all individuals are to be treated the same and only held to account when their actions violate a law, not before.

I'm a bigger believer that the problem is cultural when, especially in American society, we started to hold that feelings mattered far more than thought. Debate began to get watered down and the winner was not the person who could show their position reflected what was objectively true and morally correct but instead who could virtue signal the loudest and express their grievance in the most emotional manner possible. It's always 'dream this', 'dream that', 'as an American it is your God-given right to' or 'America is the best nation in the world and there's nothing we can't do' but almost never 'here are the facts about issues the Americans are facing and here are some reasonable ideas about what we can do about it. Let's discuss what you think about it'.

Politicians are very in-tuned with what people want to hear and they do tell them what they want to hear. Even worse, pundits know what people want to hear and actually have an influence on the opinions of their listeners and they'll be damned if they'll let facts and honesty get in the way of their ratings, wealth and access.

America needs to start fostering a culture where they stop equating feelings and sense of self-worth with reality before we can really start discussing how giving primers on good policy will make a difference. Until that happens it's just a waste of oxygen, ink or electricity.

I would turn this around: the people on the intellectual side seem to think that being in touch with the emotions of the people they're addressing is below them, and often even make it worse by treating the people they're addressing poorly (if emotions don't matter, why do this at all?).

Emotions matter for most people, including the people who claim they don't, that's just the reality. I don't know why it's fashionable among folk who prefer intellectual pursuits to discard emotions so much.

I agree with you that they matter but there has to be balance. Right now the pendulum is stuck so far to the emotional side that people are willing to eschew facts that would make them challenge their own biases and actively look for material that would only reinforce it.

Emotion is the root of all action and social interaction. It's also why I or anyone else chooses to pursue anything intellectual. But that doesn't justify manipulating the emotions for destructive and self-serving purposes. I consider deliberately flattering people and dealing in overly simplistic platitudes to foresake intellectual honesty and reinforce their bias because they consider it comfortable to qualify as destructive and self-serving.

I don't know if there's just one pendulum (I would at least say there's a chunk of people who are too emotional, and a chunk of people who are ignoring emotions too much), but none of what you are mentioning sounds new or unusual in regards to human nature.

People are generally fairly reluctant to challenge their own biases. There are some reasons for that, but this doesn't represent some abnormal pendulum swing.

Same for manipulating emotions for self-serving purposes.

This isn't a problem with emotions, it's a problem with incentives, and, well, corruption. Something like this can actually be very, very rational.

If people are acting in self-serving and self-preserving ways that's a fairly clear message that they do not feel terribly safe and do not trust the systems around them to accept their mistakes.

I don't think they're wrong.

I wouldn't think there's just one pendulum that governs how people view an issue either but there's certainly a continuum for how emotional people will get over certain issues. Obviously if you have no emotion over an issue you won't care one way or the other but if anyone gets too emotional they're much more likely to be irrational, cave to bias and tune out altering view points.

Most people on this site are aware that objectivity and not caving to their own bias isn't easy and, more or less, requires constant effort and that is the same kind of effort that should be promoted amongst the public at large. As almost anybody here could tell you, just because something feels true certainly does not make it true but we seem to relish a culture that seems to believe that person's emotions should never be challenged and doing so is merely cruel rather than, at times, necessary.

Just because confronting bias is hard to do, and may hurt someone's feelings, doesn't mean that that bias should be ignored, or worse promoted. I'm not talking about whether or not conservatives, liberals, libertarians or whoever else is right but instead challenging the notion that what we need to promote more civic engagement is to tell people what is going on in the country and the world in a manner they want to hear it. What we should be doing is telling people what is going in the world and country in a manner that actually is and at the same time the public needs to be calling out demagogues for what they are and understanding why they are dangerous.

Dismissing the arguments of others as mere "virtue signaling" is not debating with them.

Edit: autocorrect

Apologies, I meant 'virtue signalling.'

Disparaging others with the intention of trying to show your own value and grandstanding with no intention of actually refuting someone else's argument, isn't debate either.

Examples:

"Goddamned priveleged white males will never understand oppression like us."

or

"Liberalism is a mental disease amongst emotionally unstable snowflakes who can't think clearly like conservatives."

I know many people are above talking like that but it's not uncommon. If someone is willing to talk like that to you because you disagree with them do you really think they're going to take any interest in what you have to say that would contradict their views?

You appear to be blaming your own bad behavior on others.

How so?

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