The magical thinking of guys who love logic | Hacker News Reader

The magical thinking of guys who love logic

theoutline.com

20 pointsskilled24 comments

The author has a couple valid points. E.g.

> But for the Logic Guys, the purpose of using these words — the sacred, magic words like “logic,” “objectivity,” “reason,” “rationality,” “fact” — is not to invoke the actual concepts themselves. It’s more a kind of incantation, whereby declaring your argument the single “logical” and “rational” one magically makes it so — and by extension, makes you both smart and correct, regardless of the actual rigor or sources of your beliefs.

However, like other commenter noticed, it uses a bit of manipulative language making "guys" = "white males". Also it makes a disregarding assumption that those who criticise postmodern philosophers haven't read them. So here is a problem: one thing is being claiming that you are rational and your opponents are not, another thing is being openly opposed to the idea of reason which seems to be the common denominator amongst postmodernists (yes, I've read some of them).

> They are also massive fans of declaring that they have “facts,” that their analysis is “unbiased,” that they only use “‘reason” and “logic” and not “emotions” to make decisions.

Ha! So true. I’ve yet to meet a single individual repeatedly mention their “logic” and “unbiased analysis” without basking in utter self-satisfaction over it.

Do you ever fall into the same trap yourself? Everyone (hyperbole) thinks that they are unbiased, but it’s rare to find someone who actually is.

There's no way of measuring this kind of "bias", as far as I know. I get the impression it's a bogus concept.

Realistically it is far better to own your biases; they are ineradicable, and often fundamental to your personality, taste, relationships and values. But you should know what they are so you don't get led too far astray by them.

This is packed full of manipulative language. It reads like propaganda.

that's because it's the outline. It's comparable to Jacobin.

You have to be funny to be read. One of the ways to be funny is to make fun of the people you are writing about.

The style and the language don't make the point false though. Logic can only tell you what you can't be possibly sure of. That does not provide as great foundation for people with strong opinions as they claim.

It's funny to realize its doing the same thing as the "red pilled" or "woke" communities do: Show some good information, to then tell you their own kind of information (some extreme or emotional non-sense)

> squished together in a vague Play-Doh ball of smug superiority

kind of describes the article itself.

You have put it into perfect terms. Thank you for noticing that.

This has been posted twice in the past couple of days https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19188003

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19171942

So this turns out to be the article about U.S right-wing "logic" and the word "guys" = white males. It's not about the actual logic and "cargo culting", instead it's about the youtube-politics videos, this title seems like some click bait to me.

I was also hoping it will be about something else. I'm a very logical person but I'm prone to magical thinking when I do DIY projects. For example when I expect that holes drilled with a hand drill without any sort of template will land where I want them to be just because I put a dot on the material and aimed the drill at the dot.

Well, that was an irritating read. Every sentence felt manipulative, and the ones I knew something about mostly seemed misleading or wrong.

I highly recommend JR Saul's Voltaire's Bastards, which is (among many things) a history of reason and rationality, from about 1800 to the late 20th C. (Rationality isn't the good guy here that you might expect) One of the best books I've ever read. It's also about Paoli, technocrats, Nazi science, military strategy, democracy, and 50 other things. His next books after it are an attempted solution to the problems described. If it sounds dry, it's not at all. Very dark, thrilling, mind-blowing - wonderful writing.

Reminds me of programmers who like to think of themselves as hyper-rational fact processors; it allows one to deny that one is even capable of having biases.

Some of them could actually be an hyper-rational fact processor.

It would be perceived by fellow humans as an anomaly and mistreated.

That's what usually happens to people suffering from high functional autism.

They can't get a lot of the nuances of non verbal human communication, so they are usually more unbiased, but are perceived as cold-hearted, because people are usually very biased towards those different from them.

While the author has come across somewhat passive-aggressive throughout the article, I do agree with the premise. I have many male friends who have quite clearly been gripped by YouTube's recommendation algorithms, and they have no interest in sensible discourse. I've had to distance myself from them because they have become almost religiously zealous in their praise of various right-learning, far-right, and alt-right political commentators. All of them young males with no real career path, hobbies or purpose, and these videos have done an excellent job of painting targets that they can now blame for all their woes. It's an easy trap to fall into.

I remember watching a Joe Rogan podcast with Jordan Peterson, followed it with a few of his lectures, and all of a sudden my feed was brimming with "Ben Shapiro DESTROYS SJW with FACTS and LOGIC" videos, or "Debunking feminism" and various other bile. It's a consequence of YouTube trying to keep people engaged on their platform, and it's only going to get worse if these algorithms keep feeding groups, both left and right, politically divisive content. I'm not sure what can be done about it either, other than heavy-handed government legislation.

As a foreigner, when I read reddit I feel exactly the same way about left-wing politics. Reading subreddits such as /r/politics or /r/worldnews feels like people are so caught up in their bubble that they refuse to see anything other than what they have already decided upon. Edit: I'm sure the same applies to right wing subreddits, but I don't run into explicitly right wing ones too often.

I think that this is not really an algorithm's or any specific platform's fault. It's a fault of ourselves, because we buy into this stuff so heavily. The only way around it is to teach people to keep an open mind.

Gee, left-wing politics on reddit! I immediately went to /r/politics to see for myself.. Every story on the landing page is Trump-related.. I looked at one story, the comments are all juvenile, mindless Trump-bashing. Utter waste of time reading it. That is 'left-wing politics'?! I was very disappointed.

Going onto /r/politics for left wing political commentary is like going on /r/The_Donald for right wing political commentary. Why dive into one sphere of the internet and use that to sum up a majority ideology? If I were to do that for the right-wing, and apply your formatting; "Every story on the landing page is Trump-related. I looked at one story, the comments are all juvenile, mindless Trump-worshiping. Utter waste of time reading it. That is 'right-wing politics'?! I was very disappointed." - to be so single-minded about the political spectrum is childish.

You want to understand left-wing politics? Don't go on Reddit, and pick up a book. "The Limits of Neoliberalism", "The Coming Insurrection", "Debt: the First 5,000 Years", "Politics in a Time of Crisis", or "On Intersectionality: Essential Writings" are great reading, or something by Chomski perhaps.

If I was more aligned with the right-wing I'd like people to read "The Free Economy and the Strong State" or "Leviathan", or "The Conservatives Mind". Also all great reading. Not for them to go on Voat or read YouTube comments, and think that the right-wing just wants Trump on a throne because he has some sort of divine right.

>to be so single-minded about the political spectrum is childish

Uh, what? You've utterly misunderstood; knowing nothing about me hasn't stopped you insulting me.. I consider myself left-wing, I just had never seen anything remotely like that on reddit, still haven't - not that I've seen much of reddit. Sorry I didn't make that clear enough. Not very interested in your recommendations after that, thanks; who would be?

The problem I have with that view is that the information that get reported from current left-wing political parties and politicians do not match books like those. It could be that:

1) The journalist reporting is wrong.

2) the current left-wing political parties are not left-wing.

3) the books are not about current left-wing politics, which has changed compared to when those books were written.

For example, Debt: the First 5,000 Years has quite a lot to say about bridge gifts and gender roles which do not blame white men or use some "Patriarchy" theory where women are slaves to men. It does not make women to victim and men to conquers, but rather looking at the issue from a tribal/family resource perspective from an age when those practices were more common. That would be right-wing political view for a lot of people.

> Repeat after me: calling something logic doesn’t make it so. Calling someone rational doesn’t make it so. Opinions from Youtube men are not facts. Getting mad about philosophers you haven’t read isn’t reason.

Finally somebody nailed it.

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