When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?
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I do not value people who change their mind frequently because they cannot think for themselves.
The last decade has really shown to me that people do not think for themselves. The devastating effect of the great depression changed Keynes mind and he adapted his theories to it, you would think the same would happen for significant events that have happened recently too.
Dogmatists: unthinking, inflexible
Weathervanes: unthinking, flexible
Skeptics: thinking, inflexible
Pragmatists: thinking, flexible
The names are adhoc and should be taken with a grain of salt. The thinkingness axis we can attach a notion of good/bad to, since it is generally better to think things through than not.
Flexibility, not so much, but we can contrast the skeptic’s “I need more information before I can make a judgment” to the pragmatist’s “how can I use this right now?” and apply this to our workplaces. Certainly some of us are more skeptical than pragmatic, and vice versa.
And flexibility as having gone through the "thinking" phase and arriving at a conclusion and opinion, the ability to defend, bend or uproot the previous conclusion or opinion as supported by newer evidence and experience.
Then there's people who pretend to be one but are another, some who don't know who they are, some who are splendid pragmatists in some areas and astute dogmatists in others.
And then you come across some weathernerves who've done much better for themselves simply by following , some dogmatists who've done well for themselves by leading the skeptics. While the pragmatists, sit around gathering and categorizing others and themselves, and some others commenting on such comments, thinking they've finally; finally figured it out.
Oh! The variety. Such is life...
You could call them trendies, or in cybercultural terms: NPC, I SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING, etc
I took this to mean: “weathervanes” are people who attach themselves to some popular sentiment without giving it much thought.
Dogma is -- by its very denotation -- inflexible. Partisans have no issue with flexibility.
Sometimes it's good to take a weathervane approach if you don't know much about an area and get blown around a bit before you're able to form an opinion. And yes that might make you look silly, but that's ok.
Skepticals are fairly flexible given that you can convince them with accurate, fact based information. IMO this is probably the best default for all of them. Pragmatists by your definition sound too trusting.
There are times when changing your position is absolutely the right thing to do.
I think flexibility is orthogonal and turns this into a cube.
It's a paradox because dogmatism typically implies a fixed perspective, whereas a refusal to be dogmatic typically suggests an openness to various perspectives.
[1] https://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumb...
Full contrarianism would be to reject the dogmatic beliefs. "If authority X claims it is true, it must be wrong." You would seek out beliefs that are in opposition to the dogma.
But not being dogmatic might just be aiming for immunity to dogma? "Whatever authority X claims is irrelevant." You might try to evaluate ideas on your own and form beliefs that are uncorrelated with the dogma.
I forgot to mention a third form of "not being dogmatic" which is closer to my own idiomatic understanding of the phrase. Rather than focusing on your consumption or reaction to prevailing dogma, it is also a useful not to try to be a source of dogma. Don't consider your own beliefs to be "facts" and don't try to become an authority who promotes or evangelizes a new prevailing dogma...
Of the one, or that fiery death that never ends
To the heart of its description
Go through great changing of conciseness
It becomes what becomes the lesser, not to much more and not of us.
And without whining (or any sad crap)
One crappy song, you know is very much like this place
Goes the same way and that is:
“Thanks to you, and me, it’s super awesome!
I’m leaving all the bad times behind.“The practical reality is that nobody today can develop a sufficient depth of knowledge in more than a couple of niche subjects at best to be "right" about them at anything other than the most superficial of levels.
Somebody might read a book, or several books, or several books and some blogs about a subject, or even take one or several courses in it, but that doesn't mean they know it. They know some things about it, and some of the things they think they know about it will be wrong.
Maybe part of the disagreement here that isn't being addressed is the difference between ideas (or facts) and principles. My principles have changed very little over the years, and so the direction of my ideas haven't either. But my ideas change frequently because there are only a few subjects about which I know anything and I am a moron in the rest.
edit: and even in those couple of subjects where I might claim some expertise, I'm wrong frustratingly often.
Without thought/consideration, you can hold an obviously incorrect position for quite some time before someone else bothers to correct you, or until you discover the other information.
So, just because you _might_ be wrong, is not an excuse for not applying careful thought to all topics. This is especially true for 'strong opinions loosely held' people who seem to think that loosely holding an opinion is a replacement for putting even a modicum of thought into any given topic. It's not. You hold obviously wrong opinions and rely on people to correct you.
There's nothing wrong with taking time to really think through the presented argument, looking for holes, before you accept it. In fact, it helps you not fall for fine-sounding nonsense.
More succinctly, there are times when one should change their mind much more rapidly than gradually.
I suppose you think there are no circumstances under which a person ought to change their mind “on the spot” so to speak. If you can think of such a circumstance then what is the point you are tying to get across?
That's from the post you made. That's pretty general, not talking about just a "type of situation".
> I suppose you think there are no circumstances under which a person ought to change their mind “on the spot” so to speak.
I deny you the right to put words in my mouth. I did not say that, nor did I mean that.
Off topic: "I suppose you think" (and "Then you must think" and similar phrases) very often signal a distortion at best, and often a complete strawman. They have become red flags to me. Perhaps you did not mean it that way. But observing a fair number of HN comments, that's generally the way that phrase is used. To me, it has become a spectral signature of a certain kind of bad rebuttal.
You responded by repeating your original points. This gives the impression that you don’t think this is true. That is, that you don’t believe there are circumstances where someone ought to change their mind much more rapidly than gradually. I still don’t understand the purpose of your posts. They did not pertain the situation I was talking about.
Side discussion. Putting words into my mouth is not a good response. The statements we make have logical conclusions and implications. So while one may not say the words, for instance, I want to kill you. one can conclude this sentiment if other words/actions imply it.
You may attempt to deny me the right to put words into your mouth, so to speak, but as a person well trained in mathematics you won’t be successful. A collection of statements is rarely without valid, logical implications. I may not correctly make deductions on meaning/intent but the retort ought to be: That’s not a valid deduction for these reasons…
Strong evidence should update your beliefs strongly.
My general take is that people are too slow to update their beliefs when strong new evidence comes in. But are generally willing to update gradually over time even with bad/weak evidence.
You don't have to go hook line and sinker at the very first piece of evidence, because it's the preponderance of evidence that changes minds. The very first experiment that showed the duality of light didn't immediately change people's minds, but it broke the seal, and the accumulation of evidence did afterwards.
Change? No. Question? Yes. Question, probe, & investigate.
An argument may be good but applicable only to a narrow field of something, or be a valid exception to a general principle, etc. It also may be compelling but on further examination be fundamentally flawed or rely on logical errors (most of the more advanced religious apologetics are like this).
It should absolutely cause a reevaluation of your belief, but that’s not the same as necessitating it be outright changed.
It might sound like quibbling, but I feel that’s an important difference. One I feel is key to intellectual rigor & honesty.
It can happen, and has happened to me several times, as an adult. But, I agree that it probably shouldn't be frequent. Sometimes genuine facts are presented that should immediately change a perspective.
What I am talking about is the process that starts once you encounter a new piece of information that challenges your world view: the process of evaluating if it is of quality (ie. trustworthy), or just appears so superficially. That process is not instant, and if you treat it as an instantaneous process, you're probably going to accept a lot of superficially trustworthy information (including scams, mis- and disinformation, and so on).
Neither am I. I'm saying that instantaneous adjustment to ones beliefs is possible, and should be a regular occurrence, while developing ones world view.
> accept a lot of superficially trustworthy information
No. Sometimes you can see things with your own eyes, or have a person that is trustworthy say or demonstrate them to you. Sometimes occurrences can prove a belief immediately true or false. A great example is a child realizing, for the first time, that an adult can be wrong about something. Or, a young adult who voted for the first time, realizing that politicians lie to get elected. Or someone taking drugs for the first time, to realize that perception is fundamentally fragile. There are many many examples. Again, it should be a regular occurrence, when young.
> confrontational
I didn't mean to. I consider "bollocks" to show, somewhat silly, disagreement/defiance. I don't consider defiance or disagreement of an opinion to be confrontational.
I assume that your "statistical approach" translates to a much more haphazardly approach that's similar to how other people do it (gut feeling, based on rules of thumb and heuristics), and describing it as statistical is disingenious.
If I notice the same novel argument getting picked up from somewhat-independent multiple directions I revisit it and apply a more rigorous rethink. This is what I mean by a "statistical" approach. Perhaps some other word would have been better.
I do, however, pretty regularly sit down with some graph paper or an envelope and review/diversify my trusted sources.
It might be a tad hypocritical not to wrestle with how you got it so wrong previously, and why this time is different.
There might be some frustration with the "it happened to me and now I get it!" converts who've often had others desperately try to get them to understand prior.
When I'd tail him around work, he'd switch opinions to match the last person he was arguing with.
The old opinion was already debunked, so theres no need to consider it
- Change your mind when new information is given, that is thinking for yourself.
- Don't change it too much, that is not thinking for yourself.
- Not changing your mind is also not thinking for yourself.
Like I say, I agree with you but the nuance here is difficult to explain.
I understand your strong reaction to events in some countries in recent years, but the conclusion is both incomplete and unfair.
People can and do think... This is demonstrable, look at the good things around us in the world.
However, people can be brought very low intellectually and civically by their environment. They are vulnerable to a society that does not guarantee education and accurate information (in traditional or in modern media).
People are willing to conform, especially in exchange for food and opportunity for shelter. People are consummately manipulated by the control of the information around them.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0963721419862289
I think we're talking about data filtration here, not data processing. Does that make sense?
To expand on that, someone who gradually changes their view is a little skeptical, but can be convinced given enough accumulated data points to accept a new paradigm. They effectively reject new information up to a point. That's what slowly changing your mind means.
This is beautiful.
I subscribe to the belief that "intelligence" is any system that can meaningfully organize information on its own, and, perhaps, is more of an emergent behavior of organized information, rather than used to organize information. Although, I'm not sure those can be separated in a meaningful way.
When faced with a new idea, I love assuming it is correct and try to see things from that perspective. It makes it very hard to believe almost anything. I also change my mind if too many people think the same thing, I will be contrarian for the sake of defending the position no one else wants to take up.
But now you are making me think I've wasted my life. I probably have. Yep. I am almost certainly worthless like you said. I agree.
This isn't necessarily bad. Being able to understand the other side of some controversial topic, and even argue against your own position, is a sign of mental and emotional maturity.
Switching your position to whatever argument you heard most recently is not.
I think we're talking about data filtration here, not data processing. Yes?
Thinking takes time and effort. It's important to allocate those resources to things we care about. Some are lazy, but I suspect a lot don't really care.
Probably people on both sides of an issue feel this way - "how could the other side not have changed their mind".
1. Factual: These are beliefs based on models, e.g., "the Earth goes around the sun". You can test these models with predictions and if the predictions are wrong, you need to update your model.
2. Value preferences: E.g., "chocolate ice cream is the best dessert". These are non-testable beliefs because they do not have an objectively correct value. You can't say that a preference is "wrong" or "right".
The problem is that all important arguments are arguments about value preferences, but we treat them as factual arguments.
Take something like what to do about global warming. This seems like a factual argument because lots of people don't even agree that the world is getting warmer.
But the real problem is a value preference: People who don't believe in climate change simply don't think the effort required to solve the problem is worth the benefit, and they're using motivated reasoning to deny the warming.
This is obvious when you see them move the goalposts:
1. The climate is not changing.
2. The climate is changing, but not because of humans.
3. Humans are changing the climate, but it's too late to do anything about it.
The real issue is that we disagree on how much sacrifice we should make to help people of the future--people who, on current trends, will be richer than we are, just as we are richer than the world of the 1950s.
But there is no correct answer to "how much should we sacrifice to solve global warming." It's a value preference.
And this is true for every issue. Any issue can be reduced to a disagreement on value preferences.
[Thank you for putting up with my ranting--I just had to get it out.]
If it's true that "Chocolate ice cream is my favorite dessert", then that will be revealed in my preferences, when I always choose it over other desserts. As far as we know, the encoding for that preference exists somewhere in the brain, and we could predict a human's preferences, with sufficient brain-scanning technology.
I could be wrong about chocolate ice cream being my favorite dessert, maybe my brain is wired so that chocolate cake is the best dessert, but I've never had chocolate cake, and so I am left in ignorance of this fact. Humans can be wrong about their own preferences.
Asking "is chocolate cake the best dessert?", is a bit like saying "how far away is Mars". You could assume that the correctness of the preference lies within a particular human's neurology--yours or mine. You could also assume that the distance to Mars is relative to a particular point--Earth for example. But in both cases that would just be presumptuous. Both questions are under-specified; it's just a quirk of language that we can express them.
What values a given individual has, is purely a factual statement, as you said. If I tell you that chocolate ice cream is my favorite dessert, that's a testable fact.
But what's not testable is whether I ought to like chocolate ice cream. Suppose I told you I liked chocolate ice cream and you scanned my brain and it looks like I like chocolate ice cream, and you said, "Well, I see you like chocolate ice cream, but you really shouldn't because it tastes awful." That wouldn't make sense, right?
This is the is/ought divide. [As always, smarter people hundreds of years ago, have come up with better arguments than mine.]
In the same way, whether or not today's world is warmer than the 1970s is a testable fact. But whether we ought to join the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Accords is not. That's what I mean about the issue being about value preferences.
Consider your statement "I ought to like chocolate ice cream". That is an ambiguous claim, which I can try to interpret in one of two possible ways:
1. "I value that I like chocolate ice cream". If you were a rational agent, this would be an infinite regression, of course you like that your utility function is your utility function, and that liking goes on forever. It's interesting that humans, which are not rational, can also have thoughts about not liking that they enjoy certain things.
2. "It is good that I like chocolate ice cream". Good for who/what? there needs to be something that values that you like chocolate ice cream. "My friend values that I like ice cream" is not ambiguous, and firmly in factual territory again. Your friend is the valuer/agent with preferences. People hate the ambiguity and want to say the valuer is the universe or God or something else. But it's just an under-specified statement about whether one agent likes another agents preferences.
Your statement about "we ought to ___", cannot be well defined in all cases, because something could be good for one agent in the group, but bad for another. Any attempt to make a claim "good for the group" is no longer a statement about individual agents and their preferences. It's about something else, if it's coherent at all. Rarely does "good for the group" mean "good for all individuals in the group respectively", which is well defined.
1) The climate has been (dramatically) changing since literally the beginning of time on earth
2) Humans have only existed for a vanishingly small fraction of that time
What are your thoughts on global warming? I promise I will not try to change your mind--I just want to hear you out.
I'm with the 97% of scientists who agree it's happening (duh) and that man is probably contributing. There are a LOT of branched distinctions and decisions downstream from that broad statement.
It was the first scientific subject in my lifetime to be declared settled when in fact there was and is quite a bit to research and debate on the subject. The first subject on which credible voices were shouted down or waved away with ad hominem. Sadly, it was not the last, and the lessons about persuasion seem to have been lost.
There's an odd and frustrating lack of discussion about what the baseline climate change would be if man never existed.
Given that we're twenty years into this wildly unproductive dialogue, shouldn't there be more discussion of how to live/deal with it?
We're not going to 'stop' climate change (nor should we wish to), so what exactly does success look like?
Yes there is no strong evidence about “baseline climate change” but whatever is going on now is 1. Undeniably orders of magnitude faster than any core sample record of climate change 2. Undeniably spurned on by the huge amount of carbon we have been burning And yet reducing carbon output is not a priority.
This is more a comment than a response to your comment, so please don’t take it as an argument. You just reminded me about this particular bit. It just kills me that people who sometimes are otherwise willing to do a lot in terms of charity hit climate change and all of a sudden start questioning that it is a thing. I can’t believe that a genuine existential threat was politicised. You’re right about it all though, representatives not being persuasive, perhaps framing the problem poorly.
Lastly, in recent years we have seen progress thanks to renewables. It’s all because fossil fuel costs are increasing while renewables decreased. Economic incentives would absolutely have worked at the expense of the fossil fuel industry. I wonder how differently things could have gone
I wonder if we should just remove science from the equation. Let's focus on the fact that group A wants to act on climate change while group B does not. It's just a difference in value preferences.
At root, this is a political problem and it needs a political answer. If group A wants to act on climate change but group B will not vote for it, then there must be some trade-off or some exchange in which both groups benefit. Maybe group B would rather act on gun violence, or group B would rather lower taxes--it doesn't matter. But the whole purpose of having professional politicians is so that they resolve these political problems.
This type of approach only creates stiffer reaction over the long term. Your issue will be better off when you choose to make an effort to successfully argue for it well enough that the argument can withstand robust critique.
Seriously, though, yes--I often think that our political arguments would be less divisive if we kept that is/ought distinction in mind.
Those factual inconsistencies betray that it is just a value preference. Value arguments presented as factual arguments are the de facto mode of arguing. And this is wrong.
But even teaching someone to avoid motivated reasoning won't really change minds. It will make them argue better, but it won't change the underlying value preference.
Very often those people keep lying to themselves exactly because if they stopped they would discover they have some really bad values.
If you believe that it's better for people in the future to deal with global warming, that's not objectively right or wrong. There are no tests or proofs to validate. That's the thing about value preferences: they cannot be proven wrong because they are never wrong.
But I do agree with you that it's better to argue the root of the issue. If people could articulate what their actual beliefs/preferences are, then it would be easier to have a productive discussion.
Ultimately that's why debate and varied opinions are important .. as long as we all meet on equal footing and good intent.
However, I'm not sure we should start with facts.
If tomorrow you found out that confessions under torture were mostly accurate, would that fact cause you to accept torture as a policing tool? Probably not.
The core insight of the Enlightenment--that we are all equal--is itself a statement of values rather than a factual observation. In truth, we are not equal.
But if we started with the fact that we are not equal and then tried to build a society out of that, we would end up with a pretty distopian and stratified civilization.
The issue though is when pigs get to make the laws.
But Mr Reeves says about (not) trying to change someone else's mind, not own mind.
And if their idea of fun consists of imposing laws on you by force?
Nice one. I say something more aggressive like: "excuse me, I go back down to earth talking with doctors saving patients' lives and engineers creating the planes in which you fly!".
This is a great personality for leaders/CEOs/politicians because the time-scale of large multi-person coordination requires that change is limited in scope and that only justifiable/authorized change is allowed. Allocation of power and authority being the purpose of social organization.
If you are not a leader, than you need to stop holding onto this terrible world view. The only path to truthy-knowledge, that we know of, is empirical observation and testing of hypothesis; The Scientific Method. Believe it or not, leading people is a skill older than science and has it's foundations in manipulation and control. And, in this system, "truth" does not matter at all. Or, even worse, "alternative truth" is acceptable as long as it suits your power-structure and social goals.
I am not a king/CEO/Pharaoh/President and, as such, hold consistency in about as high regard as used toilet-paper. I am, alternatively, an engineer and I have an ethical obligation to be correct. I have this duty, regardless of what people and their "common sense" or opinions may be. In other-words: I reserve the right to change my mind, at any time, when presented with new information. It absolutely must be this way. It may infuriate folks around me and make me look like a fool; yet, what is ethics if it's not doing the right thing in the face of adversity?
I'm also going to leave this [here](https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-c...) as a starting point for any young or maturing software engineers who need a foundation or jumping-off point to expand their understanding about ethics.
I don't think i've seen this. Can you share some examples?
"But I thought you'd proven that black holes do exist?" inquires the guest.
"That was my Ph.D. thesis," says Hawking.
When before confidence came as the result of skill and experience, now it's all "fake it till you make it".
The fact that we can't distinguigh between the two is a problem with our culture, which we actually can improve upon by explicitly condemning in public baseless confidence.
or woman
Or if someone would say that "Celebrity X visited a factory of company Y in China". Even if you find a Chinese search engine and use online translator, you can easily waste days. E.g. how do you find out how Western names are spelled in Chinese text? There's no single answer, especially if a person is not worldwide popular.
From my personal experience: I live in Russia. When I read what is published in Western media about life in Russia, I'm flabbergasted every time at the blatant lies and exaggerations. Though I guess it's roughly similar to what I read in our media about Western countries. But if I'd try to dispel some myths on social networks or in comments, I'll be banned or at best called "Kremlin troll", so I no longer even try to do it.
So, for example I followed a Ukrainian youtuber who said he was leaving because of the invasion, that added considerably to my confidence. Also, meeting refugees arrive in the UK displaced from the Russian invasion made for near 100% confidence that it was actually happening (a video of a couple of tanks on a highway just looks like propaganda however, but the tanks were probably there, something happened [it wasn't impressive enough to be AI generated!]).
As for comparatives: if BBC, Al Jazeera, Russia Today all agree on details (in the context of the Russian war) then I'm pretty confident. Though the Wagner situation appears to be a subterfuge, as all these sources are reporting it I'm confident that vehicles were driven towards Moscow in at least an attempt to display to the World that something was happening.
What is an example of a large lie that you see in Western media today, that you confirm to be untrue from direct personal experience?
What is a trusted source? How can I find one? I think this is close to impossible. Of course, everyone reads what one consider "trusted" source, but I have doubt any of them is.
> So, for example I followed a Ukrainian youtuber who said he was leaving because of the invasion, that added considerably to my confidence. Also, meeting refugees arrive in the UK displaced from the Russian invasion made for near 100% confidence that it was actually happening (a video of a couple of tanks on a highway just looks like propaganda however, but the tanks were probably there, something happened [it wasn't impressive enough to be AI generated!]).
But does this prove anything at all? E.g. half of my family lives in Ukraine. You wouldn't believe and it's never mentioned in Western media, but large percent of Ukraine population is Russian. Actually, it's almost impossible to distinguish who's Russian and who's Ukrainian. What is the difference? My family is originally from Ukraine, but I consider myself Russian.
So, my relatives from Ukraine were always telling me completely different stories from official Western stories. E.g. about neo-nazi movement in Ukraine which became very active since 1991 according to my relatives.
> What is an example of a large lie that you see in Western media today, that you confirm to be untrue from direct personal experience?
I do not collect such stories (what would be the point?), but meanwhile I'm looking for some examples, I'll tell you that for several years I've browsed Western media and specifically searched for news from Russia on CNN, Washington Post, Bloomberg, and other prominent Western media websites.
One thing that is impossible to ignore is that all news from Russia are strictly negative. Even if they're true, this is clearly one sided presentation of situation to demonstrate to Western readers that "Everything is bad in Russia". I couldn't read anything positive about Russia in English for many years. It's always the same bingo bullshit composed out of "dictatorship", "bad Putin", "bad Russians", "Russian hackers", yadda, yadda.
I've just did a search `russia site:https://www.washingtonpost.com/`. While I cannot pinpoint an outright lie, because there're tons of results and I don't have much time now, you can easily see that there's a common theme in all the news articles: "Russia is bad", "Situation in Russia is awful", "Some unnamed source confirms that Putin is bad/afraid/eats babies for breakfast". Whatever year you put in the search: 2023, 2022, 2020, 2018, etc.
Sounds like you have become a perfect specimen of Putinist Russia: trusting no-one, doubting everything, doing nothing.
>> So, my relatives from Ukraine were always telling me completely different stories from official Western stories. E.g. about neo-nazi movement in Ukraine which became very active since 1991 according to my relatives.
Have you tried quantifying it? For example, when someone from that part of political spectrum participated in elections, how well did they do? Did the "very active movement" ever reach even 1% of support?
>> While I cannot pinpoint an outright lie, because there're tons of results and I don't have much time now, you can easily see that there's a common theme in all the news articles: "Russia is bad", "Situation in Russia is awful", "Some unnamed source confirms that Putin is bad/afraid/eats babies for breakfast".
Why would you expect to see much positive coverage? When you google Nazi Germany, the first results aren't innovations in TV transmission nor advancements in wildlife protection either. Should they be? Is that the main contribution of Germany to the world between 1933 and 1945?
Notice how the sibling/parent commenter avoids answering the question.
Yep, this is typical of Westerners. We know you Russians are dumb and don't appreciate our "great democracy". Yeah, we had a taste of it in the 1990s. USA came and destroyed the country, economy, jobs, the future. CIA "advisors" with their "shock therapy" destroyed economy overnight, put dumb drunkard Yeltsin in power, and stole everything valuable they could get a hold of.
People here were dying of hunger, but West was extremely happy with the "democracy" they built here.
> trusting no-one, doubting everything, doing nothing.
I trust myself and trust my country. I have no doubts we'll win. I'm doing my job, care about my family, and do many other things. I guess by "doing nothing" you mean that I'm not staging mutiny against the government in the interest of United States. Why would I? I've already lived through what US is calling "help to other countries". Also I've seen what US had done to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and many other countries.
Only a dumb person would believe that US is interested in helping any other nation. US is destroying the economy even of its closest allies like Germany, which is especially evident now.
We call this kind of US politics: "you die today, but I die tomorrow", meaning that it would destroy anyone and anything to be able to consume more. Not only I do not support anything coming from the West because of that, but try to dissuade everyone around me if people have doubts.
> Have you tried quantifying it? For example, when someone from that part of political spectrum participated in elections, how well did they do?
How would I quantify it? From what trusted sources? Do you think there was an official neo-Nazi party in Ukraine?
> Did the "very active movement" ever reach even 1% of support?
I don't know how to quantify it, but I know that long before 2014 and 2022, Nazies were drawing crosses on doors of "Russians" in apartment buildings and promising they'll come next night and assassinate "every Russian swine living there". Also, if you'd be able to read and speak Russian and Ukrainian, you'd be shocked how many promises were made on the Internet "to kill all Russians with the knives", "to hang up all Russians". If you'd check apparel of young Ukrainians even before 2022, many of them had t-shirts saying "Kill all Russians with the knives", or Nazi Germany slogans and insignia.
We also saw Ukrainian history books published by Western funds that promoted absolute nonsense, some confabulated stories like Russians were killing Ukrainians by millions all the history. And on back of all the books something like: "Printed by Freedom Press" or smth. like that.
For me that is more than enough to get a feeling of what is going on in Ukraine.
> Why would you expect to see much positive coverage? When you google Nazi Germany, the first results aren't innovations in TV transmission nor advancements in wildlife protection either. Should they be? Is that the main contribution of Germany to the world between 1933 and 1945?
Yeah, this is also a weapon of Western propaganda: instead of facts and thinking, just compare ~Stalin~ Putin to Hitler, and Russia to Nazi Germany. It's all the same!
Very good emotional argument. US propaganda is indeed the most advanced in the world. It's very hard to resist. But one thing gives me hope: it became so strong, that West started to believe in its wishful thinking. Like for example in February 2022 here on HN many commenters wrote something along the lines: "Russia is running out of ammo!", "Tens of thousands Russians are surrendering every day", "Russia has enough rockets only for the next three days!". Likewise, now, when Ukrainian counteroffensive failed miserably, they say: "It's not a counteroffensive but recon missions, counteroffensive will start later".
That is a good thing that you believe your own lies.
Along with bailing out your country's ass in its hour of greatest need.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ленд-лиз
Just a couple of years after it entered into an alliance with the Wehrmacht, and did you-know-what in the Baltics and the Katyń forest and all.
>> People here were dying of hunger, but West was extremely happy with the "democracy" they built here.
Please spare me of this pathetic loser mentality that blames all of your failures on someone else. The CIA did not force upon you Stalin and the murder of millions home and abroad, nor did the CIA choose you Brezhnev and stagnation in all walks of life, nor did the CIA lock up in psychiatric hospitals the people trying to change the system.
It was your own making that by the end of 1980s, the costly war in Afghanistan, industrial accidents like Chernobyl, and stagnation along with hopeless attempts to reboot the rotting economy pushed USSR on the verge of starvation. As to the west, have you forgotten grain ships that provided much needed food aid that prevented the worst?
Beyond that, nobody in the west really cares or ever cared what went on in Russia. Russian obsession with the US and the vast conspiracy theories are merely a manifestation of your inferiority complex. You may think of yourself as the Third Rome and a superpower, but the size of your economy does not support the delusion; you're just a bunch of losers who inherited nukes.
The rest of your comment is a bitter vatnik blab that doesn't deserve a reply. You may blame the CIA, Ukrainian-Jewish cryptonazis, etc all you want, but unless you get rid of this loser mentality and blame game, face your past crimes like Germans have and seek reconciliation with your victims, develop a free society that respects human rights, establish mutually beneficial relations with neighbors, and start participating in the global economy in a constructive manner like the rest, you'll never live even remotely as well as people in the west do. That's a cold hard fact that you can not bypass with rhetorics, propaganda, misdirections and lies.
Cynicism of Russian population - of which you are a perfect specimen - is perhaps the biggest obstacle to development in Russia. It leads to grassroot-level inability to take responsibility and cooperate in things like HOAs, and poisons the whole society as it leaks upstream to local governments, federal government, business culture, etc. Once you've poisoned everything and have a failed state on your hands, you blame the CIA.
If you dropped cynicism, stopped mocking """""democracy""""", took responsibility and actually tried to work with each other in the name of common good, perhaps you wouldn't be such a shithole and would see the same fast development as everyone else who have taken this path have since 1991? Perhaps there would not be a need for daily terror attacks against Ukrainian cities to salvage the image of your god-emperor in that world?
You wouldn't believe and it's never mentioned in Western media, but large percent of Ukraine population is Russian.
Actually it's mentioned all the time. As is the neo-Nazi stuff. That said, there are all kind of people in Western countries, and many (especially in the U.S.) are quite ignorant and couldn't even find Ukraine on the map. And certainly don't read anything that doesn't pop up whatever news feed they have on their phone.
So even though these details about Ukraine/Russian a certainly mentioned in the media often enough, not surprisingly they just won't stick with many people.
To try to get to the main content of what you're saying - it seems to come down to this (which I am editing down slightly, but only to keep it short):
It is impossible or next to impossible to investigate most of the facts... I think this is close to impossible [to find trusted sources].
I agree that it can easily seem so from the outside, if one reads these sources only occasionally. But over time ... a long time, especially when one grows up hearing and reading these news outlets all the time ... a certain pattern emerges.
Specifically some sources are, at least one it comes to the basic factual narrative -- much more reliable than others. That is, basically true to fact, basically professional. They do screw up sometimes, and are sometimes fooled.
It isn't easy to tell just be reading only a few sources, or reading them occasionally. But over time -- one sees that their reporting (again, of basic facts) largely overlaps with the others are saying. Also, some of them have highly professional journalists who have lived in these countries (including yours), and know what they're talking about.
And also, what they report (again as to facts) aligns closely with what one can gather from friends or relatives. And of course from visiting these countries directly, and talking to people there.
Basically one can put WSJ, NYT, WaPo, Bloomberg and a few others in this box. CNN and BBC to some extent also (though they are frankly somewhat "dumber" than the first 4 and have much less original reporting). I could mention other sources (in other languages even) because of course not everything revolves around U.S. media sources, but I'm trying to keep things simple here.
That said -- they do have strong biases as to opinion. But in the above group -- while sometimes irritating (and in my view basically wrong) -- still not obnoxiously or fanatically so. Some people call them "propaganda" outlets, but I disagree (and find those do say that to usually have extreme political views themselves, on one end of the spectrum or the other).
Bottom line -- yes one can learn to "navigate" the news, find (reasonably) trusted sources, enough to "tell up from down", that is, which ones are basicaly reliable, and which ones not.
Finally - to address one more thing you were saying - about bias and views about what's going on in Russia. I think what you're saying is partially valid, partially not. (Again, as applies to what Western media say about Russia -- not what is going on there yourself, which of course you know infinitely better than I).
For example, here are things Western media does say about Russia, often enough: "dictatorship", "bad/afraid Putin, "Russian hackers", "situation in Russia is bad".
What they don't say (and where I think you may be misreading here) are things like "Russia is bad", "bad Russians" (as a people), or "Putin eats babies for breakfast".
I hope you recognize the distinction between these two categories. Statements in the first category are either a matter of simple opinion... e.g. "Putin is bad" -- which is an opinion anyone can have about the leader of any country. Or at most a very "charged" statement, but I'm assuming you will acknowledge with a strong basis in fact -- e.g. "Russia is currently governed by a dictatorship".
However, stuff in the last category -- e.g. "Russians (as a people) are bad", "Russia is a bad country" -- these are of course very ugly things to say. But we just don't hear them said to any significant degree, in either society or the media (except from Ukrainians of course, but that's a completely different topic).
Nor does one hear absurd factual exaggerations about Putin (e.g. "eats babies"). They do say all kinds of things about what he has said and done, which I'm sure you also know about. But absurd exaggerations like this -- one just doesn't hear or read those, in mainstream outlets.
There are false facts, or lies. True facts and opinions
A "lie" implies intent to deceive or mislead, but not all false facts are shared with such intent. You may be interested in Harry Frankfurt's 1986 essay On Bullshit [0] and the 2005 book of the same name, which has been discussed on HN before [1].
[0] On Bullshit: http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_...
[1] https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on...
We also haven't had a official recession in the U.S. over that time period, I believe, so the topic of recession seems like a red herring.
Right, so there's your 8% per year upside risk. So during US recessions, do international stocks provide a differential return against US stocks that is high enough to support that 8% yearly upside risk?
(And, even if they do, now it's a matter of timing the market...)
> I don't see how that supports the idea that economies are very interconnected and investing outside the country can't produce a large return differential.
I didn't say it wouldn't provide any differential. I implied that that differential will either always be negative or positive but small enough that it's not worth moving.
Or, in other words, US or European recessions would equally tank foreign investments dependent on US or European consumers. Of course these markets would be somewhat resistant based on the strength of their own local economies, but are those economies strong enough to provide solid returns through a US or European recession? And if they are, is the differential high enough to risk the 8% yearly upside during non-recessions?
Look at it this way:
Imagine you have $200 dollars to invest. You can invest in country A or Country B. You know in a year one country will be up 10% and one will be up 1%. You don't know which country will be up the 10% and which will be up the 1%.
In a year, you need $205 dollars. Unless you like to live dangerously the rational thing to do is invest equally in both countries where you'll get a 6 dollar return. If you pick a single country you'll have a 50% chance of not having enough money.
Of course real world investing is more complicated, but my example demonstrates it's about probabilities of success at meeting your goals. Country A and country B have equal expected returns but investing in both decreases the probability of running out of money when you need it. Or it should, if we've modeled the expected returns of each country correctly.
Not if the change was to completely disregard anything that that user posts.
It's weird that people get mocked for changing their minds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36491735 - June 2023 (179 comments)
In all this the presumption is the "facts change", "information change", and "persuasion" is done from a basis of objective truth.
In Keyes (btw Sun Tzu 孫子 said something similar a wee bit earlier) notes this presumption is present, such that the information added to financial decision is objectively true.
But, in my experience in life (and even in investing) there are objective truths and then derivatives of objective & subjective truths. These second type of truths are often presented still as objective truths. To what percentage of the objective & subjective intermingle and when I decide the "truth" is now too subjective is... subjective.
Its that puzzled look in my inner monologue that triggers the question "is this truth objective enough to be considered to influence my current stance?"
In general I think as we gain more life experiences, the less subjective truths we tolerate in such derivative truths. Externally, this may manifest itself as jaded, or stubborn.
And, finally, even when we think something is objective -> 2+2=5
Not changing you mind may be appropriate* (I'll explain [1]) though it also reminds me of a famous and apt observation [2].
[1] New facts do not always permit a change of mind because they they may support. indisputable but incompatible explanations/opinions/points of view.More facts are needed to reconcile things.
For this reason a person should strive to cultivate the skill of believing positions at the some time opinions, wholly incompatible. This is difficult. It takes effort and practice to partition your mind in a way that separates belief in one viewpoint from the belief in the other.
It is often uncomfortable [3], and for me I can only truly achieve it for brief moments. Nonetheless it's an extremely useful skill to navigate encountering new information & consider another person's viewpoint when it contradicts my own.
Ideally new information eventually comes along that explains how both can be true at the time.
[2] Quote: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines" --Ralph Waldo Emerson
[3] To reveal some very personal details, I was helped in honing this skill by having to deal with mental health issues that force completely irrational thoughts on me at the same time that I attempt, with varying degrees of success, to bring down a hammer of rational reasoning and logic against those thoughts. The former makes for a tortuous experience in itself, while the later imposes an very strange but helpful contradictory belief with both held in my head simultaneously.
Almost everyone would find that almost all of their beliefs are based on very flimsy input/logic, and the bar for changing that belief is unfairly and wildly asymmetric.
I suspect most people believe themselves quite logical as to how they've arrived at their beliefs.
For that, it is necessary to allow oneself to be persuaded. Sometimes you become so hardened by argumentation that you react by becoming dismissive even when others attempt to engage seriously. I try not to fall into this trap especially when posting here but I don't think I always succeed.
There are truths I really do hold to be self-evident and it's tiring to have to constantly defend them. For example, it's extremely tiresome to defend encryption against endless "think of the children" arguments.
I mean, obviously LLM's would "change their minds" every time the "facts" change as they get retrained. Are all of them Keynesians now? [1]
So maybe steadfast refusal to acknowledge reality is what makes us really human? An interesting thought. 8-)
If the latter - be very aware that adding one perhaps-important-feeling new fact will not substantially change the quality of your collection.
Politics is little more than a debate over the final authority to establish and contextualize facts, and the moral authority that arises out of that victory to tax and legally suppress the political competition.
Which means that politics, and their facts, are only the caveman survival competition moved to the realm of (mostly) Media and Law.
It is axiomatic that those who mostly win at establishing the facts are those who have most of the political and social power.
For most people, I get to sample their view on something occasionally. I have no idea how far they are in the process of being wrong. Someone who is almost always wrong until they are convinced is a low coefficient source of information.
It's not enough to be convinced. You have to be right a lot. That's just how it is. This has served me well so far.
“Every time I’m wrong, I learn something new.”
I repeat this to myself. I look for reasons to be wrong. Everything I think I know how to do well, I assume someone has a better way of doing it, and I want to know that way.
I don’t even stop short when it comes to religion or politics. You believe in God, convince me, that sounds great. Your political views are right? Okay, show me the evidence, I’ll listen and explore the idea.
But I do stand by what I am pretty certain is a fact if there would be consequences otherwise. That being said, I have very little confidence that I know any actual “facts”.
Arguably, Bayes and Laplace already expressed that idea.
"But since there are people who deem it creditable if one does not change one’s mind, I should like to get what kudos I can from not having done so on this occasion!"
And I thought it was some kind of youth slang :D (English is my second language but I've been using it primarily for most of my life).
"Oh, so in the face of new information, you doggedly stick to your original conclusion? You magnificent bastard, you."
Life is massively ambiguous with an infinite myriad of solutions to any problem.
I think the smart way to be is to simply say I truly don't know but the data I'm currently using leads me to believe such and such...
Just a random observation
Edit: it’s fixed by requesting the desktop website.
But anyway, on my laptop, the article was just clean text and a byline with some well-formatted images.
Failing to install ublock on your parents computer is a form of abuse! :-)
So it is possible to go back in time! Good to know.
Isn’t this why Kelly Anne Conways was blasted for her “alternative facts” statement? Apologies for adding a controversial political aspect to this, btw, it’s just that it seems to be an excellent example of the use of the word.
No clue about the “alternative facts” quote but that sounds a lot like “facts which I would prefer to believe” and was perhaps rightly condemned (from an epistemological perspective). Note that “alternative” does not mean the same thing as “changed” or “updated”.
As far as “changing or updating facts”, think about what this statement means at each hour of a 24-hour period: “It is currently daytime.”
Where this affected me personally was growing up under Reaganomics, watching Bill Clinton roll back social safety nets under Friedman-driven republican pressure to "control" spending (note that I didn't say "reduce"), then witnessing the abandon of common sense after the Dot Bomb and 9/11 as we entered an us-vs-them black and white view of reality where experienced people like John Kerry were called flip-floppers and discredited through propaganda campaigns.
The COVID-19 pandemic, among other things, finally revealed how disconnected monetary policy is from outcomes. We now live in a world where we witnessed the lowest-paid people die on the front lines feeding us, while people shrilly squealed about the excess of $1400 relief checks. We see how the fight for a $15/hr living wage was eliminated overnight by profit-driven inflation and home prices increasing by 500% or more since 2000. Now half the US and global population lives on basically no money, having no wealth or access to capital to speak of, while a few hundred billionaires own everything, due to the free market abandon of progressive tax rates. I could go on literally forever here, because things have gotten so bad along so many indicators that now everyone can see that the emperor has no clothes.
We could very easily undo all of this today through the democratic process of using our voting power to choose policies which actually help people. The total wealth of US billionaires is $4.5 trillion, about 15% of the national debt. The top 10% owns $95 trillion:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/14/business/economy/wealth-g...
So the money is out there, it's just held in the hands of a small minority of people. Why are we paying the taxes? The national debt is an assured investment that provides those with capital (money) a guaranteed income, while working people barred from capital are the ones paying. In what reality does it make sense for workers to pay people who already have money? Yet this is the basis of our current economic system.
Soo... now what? I highly recommend reading up on Keynes, check out people like Thom Hartmann for an alternative reading of these trends, and avoid broadcast news. Loosely that means to endorse policies which increase the median quality of life, not the average (which is skewed by wealthy outliers). I know that many of you will disagree with my analysis here, but we're past that now. Gen X as a whole has about half the disposable income of Boomers, Millennials and Gen Z have more like 1/4. With the consolidation of most resources and capital under a handful of companies and Congress only aligning with the public's majority vote 10% of the time, we're facing the loss of the American Dream and America itself if geopolitical forces align against the dogmatic policies we cling to.
Either way, it's irrelevant what Keynes actual theory was; the point of my argument is that he continued to offer proposal after proposal and excuse after excuse for why his theory didn't actually work in practice (to end the Great Depression) instead of changing his mind and accepting that he was just wrong.
You should see the guy above complaining that woke liberals want to declare math to be white supremacy.
If you understand his liquidity preference theory and his Bancor proposal, then you would understand that the irrationality of deficit spending mirrors the irrationality of the system.
Why bother with deficit spending if the system worked even if you leave it alone? Oh right the problem is that the system won't work if you leave it alone. Thus any attempt to bring it back to rationality will look as irrational as the system that is being fixed. The system leaves an irrational gap that needs to be closed with a filler that takes on the shape of the irrationality.
Anyone who thinks that Keynes wasn't aware of the temporary nature of deficit spending doesn't know Keynes and instead fell for some caricature of him.
The answer to neutralising liquidity preference is to charge symmetric fees to both positive and negative money balances that are immediately available. The Bancor plan was an implementation of that concept for trade/current account balances between nations.
If your country generates too many export surpluses, then it has an incentive to reduce the surplus. If your country has an port surplus it also has an incentive to reduce the surplus. Thus there is an automatic stabilising mechanism that requires no intervention whatsoever. Countries can voluntarily join the Bancor system and although you might object that a perfect implementation requires strong capital controls, as long as there are political levers to encourage or discourage exports/imports, no capital controls are necessary. Balanced trade between nations means that the inequality between nations would quickly disappear because poorer countries are no longer building up foreign debt and richer countries are no longer piling up favours that they can use as geopolitical poker chips to go against the people's wishes in the poorer country.
Alas there is no Bancor system. So deficit spending it is. Politicians love deficit spending so at least you can accomplish a tiny massively distorted fragment of the original plan instead of nothing at all.
Applying symmetrical liquidity fees to domestic balances would result in intervention free full employment at which point the vast majority of neoclassical predictions would become true. If unemployment is nonexistent then there will be fewer unemployment benefits to pay out, which in turn means taxes can be cut, which in turn means that the purchasing power of workers goes up, which in turn means a lot of public spending becomes unnecessary. The one thing it wouldn't fix is that the rent will still be too damn high but since people have jobs they can afford to pay rent.
The business cycle isn't irrational. It's a rational outgrowth of the basic fact that there is a lag between investment and the realized gains (or losses) from that investment. The only thing needed to deal with this problem is a reliable and relatively quick system for liquidating debt.
> Anyone who thinks that Keynes wasn't aware of the temporary nature of deficit spending
I've heard this argument before and it still doesn't save him. If a theory includes a provision that is never actually recommended in practice, it's not really part of the theory.
Even if conceded this point (that deficit spending was temporary and would be replaced by austerity at-some-unnamed-point-in-the-future-when-everything-was-amazing), his theory on deficit spending is still wrong, because it assumes that the malinvestment (rational or irrational) that lead to the business cycle will somehow be improved by what will likely be *even more malinvestment* in the form of deficit spending.