After a recent argument with my brother in which he kept insisting we lived in different moral and factual realities, I've become much more interested in who and what we allow to form our worldview than what it ends up being. I realized during our conversation that he was citing mainstream media news sources, whereas I was citing primary sources. For example, we were talking about a change in a law and I was comparing the actual text of the law before and after the change, and he was citing commentary on it, or he was telling me he didn't believe certain things ever happened, and I was citing research data that said they actually happen consistently.
I don't know how to speak to what someone has allowed to create the "reality" they believe they live in when it's abstracted away from primary sources. It would be one thing if he were citing different studies, different research, different legal records, but he's not. He's saying if a commenter he likes/trusts interprets something one way, it doesn't matter if there are facts that prove otherwise.
Ironically, our dad is the same way, just with the politically opposite set of non-primary sources my brother relies on, and it frustrates my brother to no end. But if the foundations of each of their worldviews are several levels abstracted from the original source material, how are they ever going to live in the same "reality"?
It was the first time in a long time that I've realized just how removed from what actually happens so many people are. So few people are actually even looking at primary sources anymore, and partially because they've become so hard to find beneath all the layers of commentary on them. But how are we ever supposed to talk about reality if we can't even agree what counts?
> But how are we ever supposed to talk about reality if we can't even agree what counts?
One of my tactics here is to refuse to discuss politics at all, but to encourage any/all discussion of economics and philosophy. One effect of this is to remove lots of trigger words and names, which helps those who feel persecuted or embattled to take a step back. Another effect is you get a much more clear perspective on how they actually operate wrt to belief and evidence.
If you find an economic or philosophical/ethical/moral POV that’s directly contradicting a persons stated political views, don’t just leap on the opportunity to point it out. First realize that the person you’re talking to is probably in a significant amount of psychic pain already from shouldering this kind of cognitive dissonance for decades. Activate your compassion/empathy. This way you can twist the knife better when you do leap on the hypocrisy to try and kill it! Soon you’ll have no friends left and that solves the problem of dealing with political discussions
There was an interesting thread in reddit's /r/AskHistorians about common mistakes amateur historians make, and the top comment was this
> Valuing primary sources over secondary, and first person accounts over records.
Primary sources are great in that they are created in or near the moment; however, the lack the scope and broader understanding hindsight provides to secondary sources.
First person accounts are great until you start accounting for perspective bias, mirror imaging, qui bono, intended audience, and time between experience and narration; all of these can have drastic effects on first person accounts.
Now, the context of the OP is less about history and more about contemporary events, but the key point here is that there is different value in primary vs secondary sources, and that primary sources aren't always categorically better.
As a personal example, I grew up not knowing a lot of racist dog whistles that some politicians use, something I would have missed if I had only read or listened to the primary source (ie the politician). Having secondary sources interpret and explain things was highly valuable to me.
However, the OP also has a really good point that sometimes these secondary sources can't always be fully trusted. It's a tough epistemological problem about who and what you can trust, interleaved with social influences, mass media, and personal worldview.
On a practical level, some reliance on commentary is necessary, no? Or at least a combination of commentary and curation of the constant firehose of new information, which feels like a form of implied commentary itself.
Primary sources are only an improvement on commentary if, between you and the commentator, you are the one with the combination of expertise, time, and objectivity better suited to extract truth from the source, and this weighing of suitability is going to vary from source to source.
New Computer Science research? Maybe I can parse it better than some. New novel treatment for insert-disease-here? I need some help.
You just don't talk about it with them. You can't change the mind of someone who doesn't care what's real.
The problem comes down to consequences. He can run his mouth and basically second-hand-make-up how he says reality is, and he gets to enjoy the benefits of that, whatever those may be (e.g. being able to pretend he's smarter and more moral than he is).
But he suffers no costs for it. In fact, he imposes all the costs on you - it's bothering you enough you're posting on the internet about how much mental and emotional effort you're spending arguing with him.
This is why there should be way more of people putting their money where their mouths are, or else being called cowards. Wagers should become commonplace - skin in the game.
E.g. if you're talking about a point of law, that's easy to get an objective answer on. Agree with him that you'll pick a lawyer at random, and put the question to them.
The loser has to either pay $1 and admit they were wrong publicly (plus the lawyer's fee), or pay $10k if they refuse to admit it even after that (or held on trust for a charity or whatever).
And be sure to get it in writing so the weasel can't squirm out of it.
Unless you are an extremely astute observer of every human endeavour, relying on primary sources like this is a way to bake in your biases. Of course relying on a small number of specific commentators is as well. But don't pretend you are being more rational here.
I'm not sure the reliance on primary sources is necessarily superior - or at least results in less of a reality "creation".
I would say the important thing is to have trust in who or what is curating/filtering and commenting/interpreting your inputs (which in itself is a very challenging problem), whether primary or secondary.
Maybe both your brother and father expect the influencers whom they trust to not break their trust. Which should be a decent expectation. Not everyone has the time and energy to dig after primary sources of truth, sometimes multiple sources of truth, read, comprehend and summarize what happened. They rather depend on someone to distill the whole thing for them.
It's the problem of human culture, not of the world. Today all astronomers agree in what position the Sun will be in a particular time. On the other hand, humans can't agree on basic facts which are heavily politicized (e.g., how immigration affects economy). In such questions people don't care about respecting the truth, they care about what would be more profitable to them.
I do lean on commentary a bit. Primary sources tend to be dense, or rely on specialist knowledge. But the key difference, I think, is I prefer commentators who refer to primary sources, explain what it means, and explain the ways it could be or is misunderstood. So my main input on a subject I'm not invested in enough to be knowledgeable about might be (for example) Abigail Thorn or LegalEagle, but they don't stand in for the source with their own heavily biased spin.
I think the main difference is how seriously an entertainer takes the material. Even John Oliver cites sources and has a team of researchers and writers who try to make sure they represent the source material accurately.
The word that stands out to me most in this comment is "mainstream" where it appears before "media". If the issue is primary sources vs commentary, it shouldn't matter if the person is listening to NBC, CNN, FOX, or Joe Rogan Experience -- those are /all/ commentary.
And by the way, which ones are mainstream? What does "mainstream" even mean? The only people I ever hear complain about the "mainstream media" are on one side of the political spectrum and who somehow always fail to notice that their media is actually more popular. More mainstream, if you will.
> It was the first time in a long time that I've realized just how removed from what actually happens so many people are.
Yeah I mean no matter how you look at it, it comes down to the individual ability to appraise the quality of something. You're always going to be bottlenecked by that. Its hard to talk someone out of their own judgment because you have to pass their test at the same time. Also you're assuming everyone values the cold hard truth above all else. They're probably getting more emotional validation out of their sources.
As I get older, the nuances of linguistic meaning of words and the personal variation of the linguistic deconstruction across political viewpoints, sometimes individual, is becoming apparent.
"Freedom" for example in the political sphere ultimately comes down to what aspects of opposed politics you want to oppress. Like the actual fictional meaning of libertarianism, it really is defined as the freedom to do what you want, but regulate anything that people may do to you.
So much of rhetoric is linguistically clarified by gender swapping to reveal sexist double standards, or appending "white" to key words to make the racist undercurrent component more apparent.
I know this is incendiary, but for example in huge amounts of right wing rhetoric like something as basic as "I'm voting for America", a classic vapid pseudo patriotic statement that somehow marks a divide between parties, if you translate it to "white America" on the right vs "multicultural America" on the left, all of a sudden the organizing emotional undercurrents become clear.
Obviously loaded rhetoric exists on the left. Oh course my opinion is that it is far more pervasive on the right however.
Such is the media universality we exist in, the assault of media advertising, we often aren't even aware of the loaded meanings.
So let organizing linguistic phrasings, which becomes psychological worldviews, are compounded with deeply complex and layered visual and audio aspects: stalwart conservative white man with authoritative voice., for example. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.
I find Trump's often smorgasborg of word political salad instructive often because such ramblings are actually a mass deconstruction of right wing rhetoric. It removes the framing and just goes to the loaded words
And while anyone can observe the very significant differences in income and wealth among individuals, on its own that observation implies nothing under the constrained vision in which “equality” is seen as a “process characteristic” (everyone is treated equally), but is proof positive of injustice in the unconstrained vision, where equality is seen as a “result characteristic” (everyone achieves equal outcomes).
I think she puts her finger on a really fundamental divide here. I see variations on this theme argued about constantly, and neither side seems influenced by the other's arguments. On one extreme a rich man's wealth is evidence of his good character, on the other, his bad character. These world views can't be reconciled except by moral contortionists. If we let each camp vote for their own government the results would be at least as different as Kamala and Donald.
Going a little further with this idea: how well do unequal outcomes reflect equal treatment? People like Pareto would say some people get better outcomes only because they make better life decisions; people like Veblen would say some people get better outcomes because they make better life decisions, like the decision of which parents to be born to.
It's highly likely that outcomes reflect both decisions and chance (including initial aptitudes for decision making), but I'm unsure anyone to this point has been able to demonstrate what the breakdown between those two factors might be.
(and indeed Pareto predicted that people will tend to fundamentally lean to favouring one or the other explanation, and only secondarily come up with rationalisations that support their basic worldview)
A flagged/dead comment alleged that this was written by an LLM.
While I disagree, I don't think that their accusation was made in bad faith. This article reads like someone whose only human interactions are borne from text books and discussions with others about what comes from the text books.
What if "worldviews" are simply a cheating mechanism invented by the brain to (ex-post) explain, organize and rationalize more innate responses?
Hence, no point to try to deconstruct them because they have no internal consistency whatsoever. E.g., a person lacking in empathy (and acting on it) will find a mental scheme to justify the validity of their actions.
I like to think of world view as Weltaunschauung. A framework that is less defined by individuals but more by big and small power brokers, media, social media, hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, activists, entertainment industry, celebrities, influencers, activists, academics.
In most of the West, this people create the world view the society is supposed to adhere. By that they are the de facto policy makers, not the government.
When regular people, simple people refuse to vouch for that world view, then there will be tensions.
> And in general, to disagree with the postmodern conception of truth doesn’t imply that you think power is
> irrelevant. Just that you believe it’s at least possible to construct rational or adaptive
> processes for finding truth and designating authority, and that it’s possible to compare such systems and to
> evaluate truth claims in light of the processes that produced them.
Well, "postmodernists believe it's impossible to construct rational processes for finding truth" is a strawman if I've ever seen one.
Ironically, a postmodern approach would have likely been more fruitful in this attempt to deconstruct ideology, er-hem, I meant to say, to discuss "some sort of complex, multi-layered construct that shapes and constrains our beliefs, values, and positions on a wide range of issues".
1. On prediction: If you had a maximally detailed model of someone's worldview, you would be able to predict their views accurately at a given time. I'm sympathetic to this in principle, because people are often very predictable and stick within their rubric. I would add, though, that worldviews change and evolve in weird ways, and sometimes people also have views that ... don't seem entirely predetermined by their worldviews or their own history? I think there can be something situational and emergent about our views, and this isn't completely predetermined by a worldview. (Let's leave aside that we don't have enough data to accurately construct the originally suggested model — we aren't omniscient, but I for one am OK with that.)
2. On hidden premises: Sometimes you try to have a conversation with someone and find out that they have some basic differences in their theory of knowledge such that you can't get through to them at all. Like "No matter what you say is true, I will hypothesize that evil hidden forces are misleading us." (It's kind of the postmodern version of Descartes' evil demon hypothesis, if you like.) I don't find this claim too surprising in the general case, but I do think, in the specific political context of the USA at the moment, it's worth remembering that it is a nation divided not only by political but also by epistemological differences.
It's a long post but these were the parts I found the most interesting.
1. This was a hypothetical situation where perfect prediction were possible, explicitly stated as an assumption. Not as fact, but as the basis of a thought experiment.
2. I'm not sure what part of the article you're referring to here, because as far as I understand it, the author is speaking about political and epistemological and every other possible difference, framed as axes in a worldview space.
I don’t see how a maximally detailed model of someone’s worldview isn’t just a list of their views. Or at least it would be inclusive of their views. And so by definition you’d be able to predict them, as you already have them.
> help to explain seemingly unrelated differences among groups of individuals
I always try to be sceptical of explaining behaviours by certain traits of people because it feels like sooner or later you’re gonna assume things about people which are moreso leaning on the trait than on the person and I think that’s a slippery slope.
I wonder if other people feel like this too sometimes and how they deal with it
If you’re discussing large groups of people, you have to somehow compress the data. On the other hand, yeah, you probably shouldn’t prefer things like this to explain your neighbor/friend/in-laws over personal interactions with them.
A certain subset of conservative evangelical Christians have this whole shtick in which they construct a typology of worldviews – see for example "Hidden worldviews : eight cultural stories that shape our lives" (IVP Academic, 2009), by Mark Sanford and Steve Wilkens, both Azusa Pacific University professors. I can't remember if I've read that specific book, but it was either that book or a similar entry in the genre.
In the abstract it is an interesting idea, but their approach to it is very tendentious. But this post reminded me of it, because it is gesturing in the same direction, even if it never proposes a specific listing of worldviews.
maybe related: Geert Hofstede's cultural dimensions
Started with 4 of them, added 5th, nowadays about 6-7 depending who you ask :/
Note they apply to the individual, group/s and larger/country level - each one can be different point/blob in that space..
Yeah I actually read just about all of this. It’s amusing to me because the language used to express banal ideas is so over the top but the subject matter borders on pseudoscience. “Cultish academia”? Not sure. I’m still trying to determine if this is an elaborate troll.
My thoughts are similar. I don’t think it’s a troll, this type of thing is very common.
You don’t have to engage or understand a topic if you can intellectualize it and create “theories” about it.
It’s like when you read blog posts on dating filled with game theory and statistics.
I would have liked to see the author try to spend a year or more trying to earnestly adopt an opposing worldview. Not to try to model another worldview from within their own, but to know what it’s like to be another way.
This is quite interesting. I'm not convinced of the core hypothesis, ie. "Psychological Progressives" and "Psychological Conservatives" based on desire to create vs. a desire to preserve.
People who are associated with the current "Progressive" culture are in a lot of cases involved in the project of preserving a number of traditions which have persisted for some time, e.g. access to abortion, or "centralised control of education policy". In this instance, "Conservatives" here are the ones calling for a change.
I think that Carl Schmitt's view of politics as a set of interest groups which are naturally opposed to each other is much more valuable. The middle classes are now default-progressive, whereas the working classes are now default-conservative. Why has this changed? It's changed because the interests of these groups are now served by different policies than was the case 50 years ago as a result of structural economic changes, not because the big-5 personality characteristics of the working class have changed en masse.
access to safe abortions has less tenure as a ‘tradition’ than the previous policy of only unsafe and illegal ocurring. not sure how advancing an enlightened society stands to be categorized as stubborn and traditional resisting change when progress is sought to be repealed.
I'm not sure I'm totally convinced by the overall political analysis either. It can be both, though, right? There's a material-interests part of politics and there can also be an epistemic culture or worldview part of political divides.
>I think that Carl Schmitt's view of politics as a set of interest groups which are naturally opposed to each other is much more valuable.
I think that is the marxist view of politics, where society is divided in classes that have different views, different interests and a struggle appears between them.
glad to see people thinking metacognitively, and now meta-ideologically about these things. while the author concludes there isn't a lower dimensional model of worldviews that is analogous to the big-5 personality traits yet, my pet theory is that there in fact one available that comprises at least some types of views, and it's made up of categories of rules.
there is a set of what I can only think of calling synthetic ideologies, which someone produces as a way to entrain others. they're basically mystery cults, where someone finds a recipe for internally consistent complexity based on an explanation, presents it as a model, and then acts as a gatekeeper to the model. my favourite version is ancient astronaut theory because it's a perfect instructive model, but things like astrology, critical theory, antisemitism, the occult, strains of esoteric conspiracy theory, some deep ecology, and transhumanism, are all analogs of each other in that they are predicated on the same iterative loop. string theory begins to look like a fancy one after listening to anyone talk about it at length at all as well.
does the system have predictive power about the physical world, or does it just generate evidence for itself and non-contradictions of it's unfalsifiable premises, and centralize the "guide" to its mysteries? some ideas are filters that are structured very much like comedy, but for credulity instead of laughter. (hate figures fit into this meta model as a pattern of idolatry as well.)
you can generate these logics of ideas and mystery cults with literally anything, and they are interpretive patterns over some legitimate or real things. critical theory appeals to a sense of unfairness, conspiracy theories are often predictive, racism uses a sense of other, the stars imply a sense of place and order, but it's the entrainment step into the promise of transformation and enlightenment that draws people into a worldview.
"here is a solipsism with a seeming paradox that produces uncertainty, nobody has satisfying explanations, could it be our brainworms? virtuous people are open to the possibility!" etc...
Maybe we're turning a corner where we can reason about why we believe things and how to evaluate the quality of a given belief. praise Bob, I am hopeful.
Ancient Aliens is interesting precisely because it doesn't explicitly advocate Ancient Astronaut Theory. Sure, there's a lot of weasel-wording and implication, but they regularly go up to that line without ever crossing it.
I think it ought to be required viewing in elementary schools: spot the point in each episode where they jump the shark.
A) love to see some serious philosophy on hacker news! Well argued, and impressively interdisciplinary. Of course, this also means I’ve just gotta nitpick.
B) The analytic mindset (worldview, even) rears its head yet again, with the same old “I’ll ask a question, list the possible answers, and select the best one” paradigm as always. It’s an understandable urge of course, but when it comes to philosophy it’s often applied to questions we should not feel quite so confident about our answers to.
More specifically: the idea that worldviews exist as a thing is, IMHO, what the Churchlands (famous philosophy of mind duo in their 90s) would pejoratively call a “folk psychology” concept, a category that also includes Free Will, True Belief, Conscious Awareness, and other things that we feel like should exist but don’t really have a scientific way to phrase, much less prove the existence of.
In this case, what makes it so obvious that worldviews exist in a “high dimensional space” that’s not simply the vector space representing each persons entire cognitive apparatus? You can construct models for this like you can construct models for anything, but the article talks like there really is an underlying structure that we just need to find, both for Personality and Worldview. This quickly leads us astray; rather than starting with political/philosophical/sociological goals and constructing one or more models accordingly, shes seemingly trying to build an argumentative decision tree and arrive at an ultimate conclusion. And it’s not that I don’t like her approach therein, I just don’t think that conclusion exists.
This brings me to the most provocative part of the essay, the discussion (and quick dismissal) of postmodernism. Sure, some artists and Foucaultians can be read as having embraced the “there’s no true reality, all knowledge is derived only from power” thesis discussed here, but I think that’s mostly done for rhetorical and/or political effect. I prefer the “Standpoint Theory”/“Feminist Epistemolgy” phrasing: as imperfect cognitive apparatuses, we are all necessarily and inherently biased. This isn’t to say that we should abandon the (folk?) concept of “truth”, because it’s obviously insanely useful on an instrumental level, and hard to imagine a world-without on a metaphysical one; rather, it’s just to say that we should be realistically humble therein.
*TL;DR:* there is no such thing as worldview or personality to discover, only to engineer. This essay is a great start on that, but seemingly too ambitious in scope.
C) this quote made me throw up in my mouth a lil:
the old vicissitudes of hard work, discovery, improvement, and fecundity.
Let’s abandon some vicissitudes, y'all. Tradition for its own sake is how you get vague synonyms for “good” lumped in with “fecundity”!
That piece was well written; surprisingly coherent on a topic that's very difficult to write about. The fact you didn't understand it on first read does not mean it was "probably written by an AI".
Imo there's no chance whatsoever that it was written by an AI. You can google the author and see her consistent writing style, her qualifications, etc. There were no hallucinations or non sequiturs. The article was structured, with a clear thread through, and relevant examples. There were even quite human proofreading errors.
The LLM you gave this to correctly delineated the thrust of the article, and gave a decent summary. Maybe try reading it again after coffee? And, please, refrain from accusing writers of being LLMs without the slightest bit of proof. It's terribly rude.
[+] [-] smeej|1 year ago|reply
I don't know how to speak to what someone has allowed to create the "reality" they believe they live in when it's abstracted away from primary sources. It would be one thing if he were citing different studies, different research, different legal records, but he's not. He's saying if a commenter he likes/trusts interprets something one way, it doesn't matter if there are facts that prove otherwise.
Ironically, our dad is the same way, just with the politically opposite set of non-primary sources my brother relies on, and it frustrates my brother to no end. But if the foundations of each of their worldviews are several levels abstracted from the original source material, how are they ever going to live in the same "reality"?
It was the first time in a long time that I've realized just how removed from what actually happens so many people are. So few people are actually even looking at primary sources anymore, and partially because they've become so hard to find beneath all the layers of commentary on them. But how are we ever supposed to talk about reality if we can't even agree what counts?
[+] [-] photonthug|1 year ago|reply
One of my tactics here is to refuse to discuss politics at all, but to encourage any/all discussion of economics and philosophy. One effect of this is to remove lots of trigger words and names, which helps those who feel persecuted or embattled to take a step back. Another effect is you get a much more clear perspective on how they actually operate wrt to belief and evidence.
If you find an economic or philosophical/ethical/moral POV that’s directly contradicting a persons stated political views, don’t just leap on the opportunity to point it out. First realize that the person you’re talking to is probably in a significant amount of psychic pain already from shouldering this kind of cognitive dissonance for decades. Activate your compassion/empathy. This way you can twist the knife better when you do leap on the hypocrisy to try and kill it! Soon you’ll have no friends left and that solves the problem of dealing with political discussions
[+] [-] jasonhong|1 year ago|reply
> Valuing primary sources over secondary, and first person accounts over records. Primary sources are great in that they are created in or near the moment; however, the lack the scope and broader understanding hindsight provides to secondary sources. First person accounts are great until you start accounting for perspective bias, mirror imaging, qui bono, intended audience, and time between experience and narration; all of these can have drastic effects on first person accounts.
See the whole thread here: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16d474n/what...
Now, the context of the OP is less about history and more about contemporary events, but the key point here is that there is different value in primary vs secondary sources, and that primary sources aren't always categorically better.
As a personal example, I grew up not knowing a lot of racist dog whistles that some politicians use, something I would have missed if I had only read or listened to the primary source (ie the politician). Having secondary sources interpret and explain things was highly valuable to me.
However, the OP also has a really good point that sometimes these secondary sources can't always be fully trusted. It's a tough epistemological problem about who and what you can trust, interleaved with social influences, mass media, and personal worldview.
[+] [-] bradleysz|1 year ago|reply
Primary sources are only an improvement on commentary if, between you and the commentator, you are the one with the combination of expertise, time, and objectivity better suited to extract truth from the source, and this weighing of suitability is going to vary from source to source.
New Computer Science research? Maybe I can parse it better than some. New novel treatment for insert-disease-here? I need some help.
[+] [-] jalapenos|1 year ago|reply
The problem comes down to consequences. He can run his mouth and basically second-hand-make-up how he says reality is, and he gets to enjoy the benefits of that, whatever those may be (e.g. being able to pretend he's smarter and more moral than he is).
But he suffers no costs for it. In fact, he imposes all the costs on you - it's bothering you enough you're posting on the internet about how much mental and emotional effort you're spending arguing with him.
This is why there should be way more of people putting their money where their mouths are, or else being called cowards. Wagers should become commonplace - skin in the game.
E.g. if you're talking about a point of law, that's easy to get an objective answer on. Agree with him that you'll pick a lawyer at random, and put the question to them.
The loser has to either pay $1 and admit they were wrong publicly (plus the lawyer's fee), or pay $10k if they refuse to admit it even after that (or held on trust for a charity or whatever).
And be sure to get it in writing so the weasel can't squirm out of it.
[+] [-] ccppurcell|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mellosouls|1 year ago|reply
I would say the important thing is to have trust in who or what is curating/filtering and commenting/interpreting your inputs (which in itself is a very challenging problem), whether primary or secondary.
[+] [-] DeathArrow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] navane|1 year ago|reply
Our thoughts are our lives. Other's thoughts shape our society, as we elect the people in power.
Just as in the stock market, the people can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent (sane?).
This makes the "reality" of today the collective minds of the people in our society. We're all on stage together and there are no rules.
[+] [-] dandanua|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] agoodonehere|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Kye|1 year ago|reply
I think the main difference is how seriously an entertainer takes the material. Even John Oliver cites sources and has a team of researchers and writers who try to make sure they represent the source material accurately.
[+] [-] sdeframond|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 77pt77|1 year ago|reply
This is your fundamental mistake. These are not people. They don't have personhood.
Nothing will ever change that.
[+] [-] dingnuts|1 year ago|reply
And by the way, which ones are mainstream? What does "mainstream" even mean? The only people I ever hear complain about the "mainstream media" are on one side of the political spectrum and who somehow always fail to notice that their media is actually more popular. More mainstream, if you will.
> It was the first time in a long time that I've realized just how removed from what actually happens so many people are.
"Wake up sheeple!"
Give me a break, lol.
[+] [-] disambiguation|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|1 year ago|reply
"Freedom" for example in the political sphere ultimately comes down to what aspects of opposed politics you want to oppress. Like the actual fictional meaning of libertarianism, it really is defined as the freedom to do what you want, but regulate anything that people may do to you.
So much of rhetoric is linguistically clarified by gender swapping to reveal sexist double standards, or appending "white" to key words to make the racist undercurrent component more apparent.
I know this is incendiary, but for example in huge amounts of right wing rhetoric like something as basic as "I'm voting for America", a classic vapid pseudo patriotic statement that somehow marks a divide between parties, if you translate it to "white America" on the right vs "multicultural America" on the left, all of a sudden the organizing emotional undercurrents become clear.
Obviously loaded rhetoric exists on the left. Oh course my opinion is that it is far more pervasive on the right however.
Such is the media universality we exist in, the assault of media advertising, we often aren't even aware of the loaded meanings.
So let organizing linguistic phrasings, which becomes psychological worldviews, are compounded with deeply complex and layered visual and audio aspects: stalwart conservative white man with authoritative voice., for example. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.
I find Trump's often smorgasborg of word political salad instructive often because such ramblings are actually a mass deconstruction of right wing rhetoric. It removes the framing and just goes to the loaded words
[+] [-] delichon|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] aebtebeten|1 year ago|reply
It's highly likely that outcomes reflect both decisions and chance (including initial aptitudes for decision making), but I'm unsure anyone to this point has been able to demonstrate what the breakdown between those two factors might be.
(and indeed Pareto predicted that people will tend to fundamentally lean to favouring one or the other explanation, and only secondarily come up with rationalisations that support their basic worldview)
[+] [-] cbogie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] yapyap|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tolerance|1 year ago|reply
While I disagree, I don't think that their accusation was made in bad faith. This article reads like someone whose only human interactions are borne from text books and discussions with others about what comes from the text books.
[+] [-] openrisk|1 year ago|reply
Hence, no point to try to deconstruct them because they have no internal consistency whatsoever. E.g., a person lacking in empathy (and acting on it) will find a mental scheme to justify the validity of their actions.
[+] [-] DeathArrow|1 year ago|reply
In most of the West, this people create the world view the society is supposed to adhere. By that they are the de facto policy makers, not the government.
When regular people, simple people refuse to vouch for that world view, then there will be tensions.
[+] [-] indigo945|1 year ago|reply
Ironically, a postmodern approach would have likely been more fruitful in this attempt to deconstruct ideology, er-hem, I meant to say, to discuss "some sort of complex, multi-layered construct that shapes and constrains our beliefs, values, and positions on a wide range of issues".
[+] [-] decasia|1 year ago|reply
1. On prediction: If you had a maximally detailed model of someone's worldview, you would be able to predict their views accurately at a given time. I'm sympathetic to this in principle, because people are often very predictable and stick within their rubric. I would add, though, that worldviews change and evolve in weird ways, and sometimes people also have views that ... don't seem entirely predetermined by their worldviews or their own history? I think there can be something situational and emergent about our views, and this isn't completely predetermined by a worldview. (Let's leave aside that we don't have enough data to accurately construct the originally suggested model — we aren't omniscient, but I for one am OK with that.)
2. On hidden premises: Sometimes you try to have a conversation with someone and find out that they have some basic differences in their theory of knowledge such that you can't get through to them at all. Like "No matter what you say is true, I will hypothesize that evil hidden forces are misleading us." (It's kind of the postmodern version of Descartes' evil demon hypothesis, if you like.) I don't find this claim too surprising in the general case, but I do think, in the specific political context of the USA at the moment, it's worth remembering that it is a nation divided not only by political but also by epistemological differences.
It's a long post but these were the parts I found the most interesting.
[+] [-] mandmandam|1 year ago|reply
2. I'm not sure what part of the article you're referring to here, because as far as I understand it, the author is speaking about political and epistemological and every other possible difference, framed as axes in a worldview space.
[+] [-] keiferski|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] yapyap|1 year ago|reply
I always try to be sceptical of explaining behaviours by certain traits of people because it feels like sooner or later you’re gonna assume things about people which are moreso leaning on the trait than on the person and I think that’s a slippery slope.
I wonder if other people feel like this too sometimes and how they deal with it
[+] [-] bgoated01|1 year ago|reply
If you’re discussing large groups of people, you have to somehow compress the data. On the other hand, yeah, you probably shouldn’t prefer things like this to explain your neighbor/friend/in-laws over personal interactions with them.
[+] [-] skissane|1 year ago|reply
In the abstract it is an interesting idea, but their approach to it is very tendentious. But this post reminded me of it, because it is gesturing in the same direction, even if it never proposes a specific listing of worldviews.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] cynicalsecurity|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] svilen_dobrev|1 year ago|reply
Started with 4 of them, added 5th, nowadays about 6-7 depending who you ask :/ Note they apply to the individual, group/s and larger/country level - each one can be different point/blob in that space..
https://www.theculturefactor.com/country-comparison-tool
https://clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensio...
https://geerthofstede.com/landing-page/
[+] [-] bargainbot3k|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zvorygin|1 year ago|reply
You don’t have to engage or understand a topic if you can intellectualize it and create “theories” about it.
It’s like when you read blog posts on dating filled with game theory and statistics.
I would have liked to see the author try to spend a year or more trying to earnestly adopt an opposing worldview. Not to try to model another worldview from within their own, but to know what it’s like to be another way.
That would have been more interesting.
[+] [-] DeathArrow|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] robertlagrant|1 year ago|reply
The subject matter being "fundamental worldviews"? How is that pseudoscience?
[+] [-] b800h|1 year ago|reply
People who are associated with the current "Progressive" culture are in a lot of cases involved in the project of preserving a number of traditions which have persisted for some time, e.g. access to abortion, or "centralised control of education policy". In this instance, "Conservatives" here are the ones calling for a change.
I think that Carl Schmitt's view of politics as a set of interest groups which are naturally opposed to each other is much more valuable. The middle classes are now default-progressive, whereas the working classes are now default-conservative. Why has this changed? It's changed because the interests of these groups are now served by different policies than was the case 50 years ago as a result of structural economic changes, not because the big-5 personality characteristics of the working class have changed en masse.
[+] [-] cbogie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] decasia|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] DeathArrow|1 year ago|reply
I think that is the marxist view of politics, where society is divided in classes that have different views, different interests and a struggle appears between them.
I never seen this theory work in practice.
[+] [-] motohagiography|1 year ago|reply
there is a set of what I can only think of calling synthetic ideologies, which someone produces as a way to entrain others. they're basically mystery cults, where someone finds a recipe for internally consistent complexity based on an explanation, presents it as a model, and then acts as a gatekeeper to the model. my favourite version is ancient astronaut theory because it's a perfect instructive model, but things like astrology, critical theory, antisemitism, the occult, strains of esoteric conspiracy theory, some deep ecology, and transhumanism, are all analogs of each other in that they are predicated on the same iterative loop. string theory begins to look like a fancy one after listening to anyone talk about it at length at all as well.
does the system have predictive power about the physical world, or does it just generate evidence for itself and non-contradictions of it's unfalsifiable premises, and centralize the "guide" to its mysteries? some ideas are filters that are structured very much like comedy, but for credulity instead of laughter. (hate figures fit into this meta model as a pattern of idolatry as well.)
you can generate these logics of ideas and mystery cults with literally anything, and they are interpretive patterns over some legitimate or real things. critical theory appeals to a sense of unfairness, conspiracy theories are often predictive, racism uses a sense of other, the stars imply a sense of place and order, but it's the entrainment step into the promise of transformation and enlightenment that draws people into a worldview.
"here is a solipsism with a seeming paradox that produces uncertainty, nobody has satisfying explanations, could it be our brainworms? virtuous people are open to the possibility!" etc...
Maybe we're turning a corner where we can reason about why we believe things and how to evaluate the quality of a given belief. praise Bob, I am hopeful.
[+] [-] aebtebeten|1 year ago|reply
I think it ought to be required viewing in elementary schools: spot the point in each episode where they jump the shark.
see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42094214
EDIT: > the stars imply a sense of place and order
that order changes every now and then; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38761574 (in conjunction with https://xkcd.com/3012/ ?)
[+] [-] bbor|1 year ago|reply
B) The analytic mindset (worldview, even) rears its head yet again, with the same old “I’ll ask a question, list the possible answers, and select the best one” paradigm as always. It’s an understandable urge of course, but when it comes to philosophy it’s often applied to questions we should not feel quite so confident about our answers to.
More specifically: the idea that worldviews exist as a thing is, IMHO, what the Churchlands (famous philosophy of mind duo in their 90s) would pejoratively call a “folk psychology” concept, a category that also includes Free Will, True Belief, Conscious Awareness, and other things that we feel like should exist but don’t really have a scientific way to phrase, much less prove the existence of.
In this case, what makes it so obvious that worldviews exist in a “high dimensional space” that’s not simply the vector space representing each persons entire cognitive apparatus? You can construct models for this like you can construct models for anything, but the article talks like there really is an underlying structure that we just need to find, both for Personality and Worldview. This quickly leads us astray; rather than starting with political/philosophical/sociological goals and constructing one or more models accordingly, shes seemingly trying to build an argumentative decision tree and arrive at an ultimate conclusion. And it’s not that I don’t like her approach therein, I just don’t think that conclusion exists.
This brings me to the most provocative part of the essay, the discussion (and quick dismissal) of postmodernism. Sure, some artists and Foucaultians can be read as having embraced the “there’s no true reality, all knowledge is derived only from power” thesis discussed here, but I think that’s mostly done for rhetorical and/or political effect. I prefer the “Standpoint Theory”/“Feminist Epistemolgy” phrasing: as imperfect cognitive apparatuses, we are all necessarily and inherently biased. This isn’t to say that we should abandon the (folk?) concept of “truth”, because it’s obviously insanely useful on an instrumental level, and hard to imagine a world-without on a metaphysical one; rather, it’s just to say that we should be realistically humble therein.
*TL;DR:* there is no such thing as worldview or personality to discover, only to engineer. This essay is a great start on that, but seemingly too ambitious in scope.
C) this quote made me throw up in my mouth a lil:
Let’s abandon some vicissitudes, y'all. Tradition for its own sake is how you get vague synonyms for “good” lumped in with “fecundity”![+] [-] J05ephu5M13r|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] loveparade|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] mandmandam|1 year ago|reply
Imo there's no chance whatsoever that it was written by an AI. You can google the author and see her consistent writing style, her qualifications, etc. There were no hallucinations or non sequiturs. The article was structured, with a clear thread through, and relevant examples. There were even quite human proofreading errors.
The LLM you gave this to correctly delineated the thrust of the article, and gave a decent summary. Maybe try reading it again after coffee? And, please, refrain from accusing writers of being LLMs without the slightest bit of proof. It's terribly rude.