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I would tend to take the view that when the issue is the welfare of others, fundamentally the divide is between people who have empathy and people who don't, and no amount of information exposure can change the fact that when exposed to it, someone without empathy is not going to process it and come to the desired conclusion, because fundamentally they aren't equipped for it. The only thing that ever really works on them is when it happens to them. They're incapable of internalizing the suffering of people who aren't them, so they can only be brought to support half decent politics is if it will benefit them personally, and they'll never be steady allies to anyone else because they'll drop them as soon as it's expedient. You can't debate empathy into people, it's something you're supposed to learn as a child but which a lot of people don't get taught and don't bother to exercise over their life.
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Nov 11, 2017 12:37
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most people have empathy, but you have empathy towards things you define as 'us'...and definitions of us vary greatly. But people can be convinced to change their perception of Us.
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Nov 11, 2017 12:52
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I'm not so sure, because a lot of people's idea of "us" is easily correlated with things they feel they have some kind of ownership over. Like immediate family. And many more don't actually exhibit what I'd call empathy when faced with actual conflict with their ingroups. I would characterise that still as a lack of empathy, so underdeveloped that it only works in very specific situations and can't deal with conflict or be applied generally. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Nov 11, 2017 |
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Nov 11, 2017 12:59
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It's easier to influence people and change their minds when you are friendly and approachable toward them; it's easier to get someone to listen to you if they have some rapport with you. Debating with these "centrist" types is valuable because most of them got their political worldview from South Park. They have no sociological perspective on anything outside of and possibly not even their own life. The worst thing that has ever happened to them is someone online thinks they're evil for being born white. A lot of them may eventually decide to justify their edgy jokes with racist statistics and go full alt-right, but there are plenty who just need another perspective presented to them, and may listen if the person engaging them in discussion isn't immediately hostile. Most people do have empathy, they just have been conditioned to not apply it in various situations. The best way to exercise someone's empathy is to encourage them to imagine themselves in other circumstances; even attempting this introduces someone to a new perspective.
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Nov 11, 2017 13:56
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Generally I find people would rather simply not engage with the subject matter than apply any sense of empathy.
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Nov 11, 2017 14:33
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The Ninth Layer posted:It's easier to influence people and change their minds when you are friendly and approachable toward them; it's easier to get someone to listen to you if they have some rapport with you. I can agree with this but it assumes the right and center-right are interested in debate or having their views changed and aren't only interested in amplifying their message and making money from dipshits. ArmoredSkeptic, Shoe0nHead, Sargon, ChrisRayGun, and the rest are ignorant assholes and are paid to be such and have no incentive to change. They may not authentically believe what they espouse and that may allow them to maintain relationships with leftists offline but what they do makes them bad people who are amplifying real harm to real people - being friends with them makes you bad by association. You are the company you keep. Anyone seriously believing the right can be debated out of their positions after 2016 is delusional. These are people who, when debated and then banned from platforms, will just start their own, see: gab, hatreon, 8chan, voat, teapartycommunity, etc. They want to believe what they want to believe - they just want their beliefs mainstreamed again; that is the only purpose they have in debating. They project about safe-spaces because they want a safe space, but more they want mainstream culture to be a safe space for their dumb views. Huzanko fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Nov 11, 2017 |
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Nov 11, 2017 20:08
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Huzanko posted:You are the company you keep. I'm... no-one? e: Checks out 
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Nov 11, 2017 20:16
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After some thinking I do think a real heart to heart conversation can work in some circumstances. If you can angle it to a "Why do you believe the things you believe" sort of way they will at some point have to admit their points have no merit or cite a racist study. If the former happens they have to admit their opinions are bad or recoil hard enough to avoid touching that stuff again. If the latter happens you have to debate a super racist. Good luck with that.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:19
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Midig posted:After some thinking I do think a real heart to heart conversation can work in some circumstances. If you can angle it to a "Why do you believe the things you do", they will at some point have to admit their points have no merit or cite a racist study. If the former happens they have to admit their opinions are bad or recoil hard enough to avoid touching that stuff again. If the latter happens you have to debate a super racist. Good luck with that. It can work temporarily, during the conversation, but as long as they can flee back to a network of people who believe as they do - family, friends, an online community - they will just revert back to their lovely views. It's about social groups and ties, and life circumstances and has absolutely nothing to do with facts or debate as liberals seem to believe.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:21
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OwlFancier posted:I would tend to take the view that when the issue is the welfare of others, fundamentally the divide is between people who have empathy and people who don't, and no amount of information exposure can change the fact that when exposed to it, someone without empathy is not going to process it and come to the desired conclusion, because fundamentally they aren't equipped for it. The only thing that ever really works on them is when it happens to them. They're incapable of internalizing the suffering of people who aren't them, so they can only be brought to support half decent politics is if it will benefit them personally, and they'll never be steady allies to anyone else because they'll drop them as soon as it's expedient. it's why i can't be friends with people on the "other" side. quote:I cannot have political debates with these people. Our disagreement is not merely political, but a fundamental divide on what it means to live in a society, how to be a good person, and why any of that matters. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_us_59519811e4b0f078efd98440
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Nov 11, 2017 20:22
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Huzanko posted:It can work temporarily, during the conversation, but as long as they can flee back to a network of people who believe as they do - family, friends, an online community - they will just revert back to their lovely views. It's about social groups and ties, and life circumstances and has absolutely nothing to do with facts or debate as liberals seem to believe. They will probably only do that if they see you as hostile (for a lack of a better term). If you lose a debate, sure you will go to whatever bubble you came from and reinvigorate your views. But if you are on their side, why would they need to flee to some corner in the first place? You are just doing them a favor, you are being honest and down to earth. If they respect you enough to change their views, then you can make a few dents and hope for a chain reaction.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:38
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Huzanko posted:I can agree with this but it assumes the right and center-right are interested in debate or having their views changed and aren't only interested in amplifying their message and making money from dipshits. Contrapoints has an archive of a long stream she did with Lindsay Ellis a week or so ago that touches on this issue more precisely than I had seen Contra discuss in the past. She says that she chose to debate Sargon because talking to her would force Sargon to acknowledge that she is a thinking feeling real human being and not just some abstract boogeyman. I might still consider that too optimistic, but she’s not laboring under some delusion that she can reach him and change his mind. She also said that ever speaking to Blaire White was a mistake and that she’s refused invitations from roaming millennial and other chud-adjacent “skeptics” because they don’t display a necessary minimum of good faith. How that squares with debating a oval office like Sargon I have no idea.
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Nov 11, 2017 20:39
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business hammocks posted:Contrapoints has an archive of a long stream she did with Lindsay Ellis a week or so ago that touches on this issue more precisely than I had seen Contra discuss in the past. She says that she chose to debate Sargon because talking to her would force Sargon to acknowledge that she is a thinking feeling real human being and not just some abstract boogeyman. I might still consider that too optimistic, but she’s not laboring under some delusion that she can reach him and change his mind. There may be an assumption of "british person being slightly smarter" thing that gets people into trouble.
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Nov 11, 2017 21:27
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Midig posted:They will probably only do that if they see you as hostile (for a lack of a better term). If you lose a debate, sure you will go to whatever bubble you came from and reinvigorate your views. But if you are on their side, why would they need to flee to some corner in the first place? You are just doing them a favor, you are being honest and down to earth. If they respect you enough to change their views, then you can make a few dents and hope for a chain reaction. I don't think you see what I'm saying. A person's larger social circle dictates their views to an extent. If they need racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and so on as cultural totems in order to fit in with their social circle, to any extent, you just aren't going to debate those away. It's about in-groups and out-groups.
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Nov 11, 2017 21:32
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(Bad language)  Millenial Woes above the facts. 35k subs, lol The worst submarine fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 02:06
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lol what incredible delusion.
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Nov 12, 2017 02:15
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You can engage with whoever you want. People today suck at it and its better if they didn't. William Buckley engaged with a lot of people like James Baldwin and Macolm X. They didn't shrink from the opportunity because they were used to arguing their points and they had major stakes in winning. This youtube crowd argues to argue and they couldn't convince a person to save their life. As much as I like Contra or H bomber guy, they only convince those that are already think like them or are leaning. Ridicule only goes but so far and due to the daily show and stuff like that, people think ridicule is convincing. I used to watch hours of youtube with various black religious/non religious types debating everything under the sun. Over time, the wheat is separated from the chaff and topics progress. Its because those guys have stakes in winning people's ears and eyes. They are passionate about it. Luckily, the more rational types have been winning but its constantly changing. The moral is Destiny and Contra should be dunking on the alt-right regularly. They don't so maybe they shouldn't be the ones engaged. There isn't enough personalities to develop a hierarchy, so whoever has a webcam and editing skills gets the most opportunities.
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Nov 12, 2017 03:38
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william buckley once threatened to punch gore vidal live on air while calling him a queer cuz vidal was dunking on him so hard.
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Nov 12, 2017 10:20
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I really really want to be nice to the people suggesting this, but i think a lot of people are throwing around the "talk to them earnestly" or "flatter the poo poo out of them, say they're smart enough to get it" suggestion and my experience online is that that's been really ineffective. I should totally disclaim that I've spent way more time arguing with committed nazidudes who were pretending not to be that; not enough time arguing with moderate friends in real life who are gradually sliding into that stuff. Most of the people I've argued with online were dudebros in programming communities who basically spent zero time actually talking about programming and 100% of the time posting actual nazi propaganda, then claiming not to be nazis. Maybe half of them came off as self-aware about what they were doing and half of them were just directionless idiots who wanted to be in a room that had smart people in it? I flattered people and acted nice a ton on one of my other online personas, and I initially thought i was doing a lot of good because a lot of them said "yeah, you have a good point," or "you should start a Youtube blog." but after hanging out in those communities for a while longer, basically none of their behavior had changed. I pointed out "we talked about this and you agreed it was lovely to treat transpeople like that" and it was like starting over from square one. I really want to emphasize that afaict, I was seen as genuine even though I was harboring a lot of disgust for these people and their ideology. I didn't get a lot of comments along the lines of "gently caress you, you're not being sincere" even though you could make a really good argument that I wasn't being sincere. Most of them didn't meme at me or anything, I think because they wanted to be seen as smart and they felt like there were moderates in the room. I eventually came to the conclusion that very few of these guys change their mind (not that you shouldn't try to do it) but a lot of them have taken on the next-level strategy of pretending to conclude their ideological opponents have some good points too. I pressed them a little more on this in the future and found out most of them basically had no idea what my ideological positions were, but they knew I disagreed with them and they knew if they flattered the gently caress out of me that I'd keep flattering them. It was really hard to tell because a lot of them did normal performative I-am-so-rational noises all along the way or said "well gee, I'm sorry you feel like that" and other annoyingly backhanded altright equivocation bullshit. So while I thought they were listening-but-oblivious-enough-they-needed-me-to-walk-them-through-every-step-of-the-argument, they were actually just tuning me out and saying the bare minimum it would take to convince me they were listening. They would later bring up to their nazi friends, in my presence, that obviously they must have a point since liberal Krotera was still hanging around to be educated. What bugs me is that I have the strong feeling that tons of people are doing this to Contrapoints. I think Contrapoints is smart but I also don't think she spends that much time in the same spaces as the people who write into her every so often claiming she's convinced them on things, just because the nature of the situation means it would be really hard for her to follow up. I bet most of the people who write into her saying they found her convincing are saying exactly the same racist or anti-LGBTQ poo poo they were saying beforehand -- just tempering it with "and I listen to both sides on these issues, so I'm not part of the problem." I also noticed I had started leaning into the flattery a little bit. I don't really have a super fragile ego but when people gave me basically no response on idea X and they gave me *some* response, slightly positive, on idea Y, it kinda encouraged me to lean into idea Y. That's bad because I found I was starting more arguments over stuff they saw as uncontentious and less arguments over the actual really bad stuff in their ideologies. It also made me look like I was obsessed with stupid marginal issues because those were the only issues I could get them to engage with me in a substantive way about. I think if Contrapoints keeps hanging out with TERFs and nazis she's in danger of engaging them on what she sees as areas of common ground and on-screen tolerating the really bad areas of their ideology. I would basically say discussing things with committed nazis is a waste of time. (Discussing things with moderates might be worth it but i'm increasingly unconvinced that moderates actually exist: in the programming communities I talked about, there were a lot of people who identified as moderates in the communities I visited, but followed the nazi party line on every issue; probably because having literally no empathy for other people is really really easy if your hobbies all involve staring at a computer.) The devoted nazis were often really horrible people in ways outside of political ideas -- one of them gave a running account of how he treated his girlfriend and unsurprisingly, he basically saw her as furniture, she broke up with him, and he embraced redpill poo poo and created a passive-aggressive OKcupid profile that earned him no click. I think that if I had managed to bring them away from the side of fascism they'd probably just act like horrible people until the left disowned them and then they'd go back to Sargon. Krotera fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Nov 12, 2017 |
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Nov 12, 2017 20:50
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Krotera posted:What bugs me is that I have the strong feeling that tons of people are doing this to Contrapoints. I think Contrapoints is smart but I also don't think she spends that much time in the same spaces as the people who write into her every so often claiming she's convinced them on things, just because the nature of the situation means it would be really hard for her to follow up. I bet most of the people who write into her saying they found her convincing are saying exactly the same racist or anti-LGBTQ poo poo they were saying beforehand -- just tempering it with "and I listen to both sides on these issues, so I'm not part of the problem." Yuuuup, this is exactly what has me scared for her, these people are insidious, all the loud nazis and their chud wannabes have started to break people's radar, so the "They have some bad opinions but are otherwise okay!" people start slipping through the cracks to keep on poisoning the well right under your nose, in service of their pals who don't even pretend to like you or have a single shred of humanity left. Of those couple interview things before, the last bit about "I keep some ~other side of the aisle~ friends secret" has me sweatin the worst, because this is literally point for point how otherwise good and sane people slid down the right winger slope, if you have friends pushing for pretty much anything the righty cultists do by this point, sever, drop them and don't look back, the brain rot already set in and they're only sticking around to spread it.
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Nov 13, 2017 04:46
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Anyone catch the H3 episode with Jordan Peterson? I jumped into some random part of it and Ethan and Hila came off as gargling Jordan's balls real hard so I didn't have the inclination to stick around much.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:29
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Jordan Peterson is a colossal loving dickwad and I haven't the slightest inclination to ever hear that sellout speak about anything, regardless of the host. He's a joke among most southern Ontario psych departments.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:40
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JVNO posted:Jordan Peterson is a colossal loving dickwad and I haven't the slightest inclination to ever hear that sellout speak about anything, regardless of the host. He's a joke among most southern Ontario psych departments. what gets me is that there's this whole cadre of shitheads and idiots who keep listening to him, and every time I point out how lovely he is they think I'm being reactionary. We need to make a convenient pamphlet that sums up what an idiotic piece of poo poo this guy is so it can be digestible to idiots.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:46
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It's kind of ridiculous how he's convinced people that he's the smartest guy around instead of the clueless hack that he is. His belief that anyone who disagrees with him is a "postmodern neo-Marxist" and his willingness to completely dismiss whole academic disciplines that he clearly has no understanding of is weird enough, but his desire to wage war against those he sees as corrupters of western culture is pretty concerning.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:48
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Al-Saqr posted:what gets me is that there's this whole cadre of shitheads and idiots who keep listening to him Mostly undergrads and non-college goers, I am sure. You can see them slobbering over his dick in comments sections whenever his name is brought up. His reputation among grad students and faculty is... Less than desirable. I belong to a psych department in southern Ontario, and his reputation is such that any mention of his name is met with an annoyed groan or condescending laughter. And it has little to do with his empirical work, and everything to do with selling out to intellectual nitwits on the alt-right. Oh, and harassing fellow faculty members.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:51
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JVNO posted:Mostly undergrads and non-college goers, I am sure. You can see them slobbering over his dick in comments sections whenever his name is brought up. How long until past victims start giving him the Roy Moore treatment? There’s no way he’s not a rapist or a molester.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:53
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JVNO posted:Mostly undergrads and non-college goers, I am sure. You can see them slobbering over his dick in comments sections whenever his name is brought up. you guys need to organize and make a pamphlet or document that debunks his claims and thoughts, you need to do this for the sake of the children.
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Nov 14, 2017 21:54
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Al-Saqr posted:you guys need to organize and make a pamphlet or document that debunks his claims and thoughts, you need to do this for the sake of the children. Unfortunately, Jordan Peterson enjoys dunking on fields and theories that are often outside his realm of expertise. Stuff like sociology, feminism, and LBGTQ issues. This also puts them far outside of most of our own expertise. Unlike cynical fools who sell out to the alt-right, most of us are conservative about lending expert opinion on things that are outside of our field.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:03
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I was arguing with some jerkoff a while back about this dude. This guy was complaining that people using the wrong gender term for trans people will cause them to go to jail cause of that law in Canada that Peterson is against. I pointed out to him that nowhere does it say anyone will be imprisoned (or even fined) if they accidentally misgender someone. At this point he shifted the goal posts to saying that okay, maybe no one will go to jail, but the law forces people to use the pronouns that the trans person in question wants, and that's "compelled speech" and is therefore a bridge too far.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:11
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aware of dog posted:It's kind of ridiculous how he's convinced people that he's the smartest guy around instead of the clueless hack that he is. His belief that anyone who disagrees with him is a "postmodern neo-Marxist" and his willingness to completely dismiss whole academic disciplines that he clearly has no understanding of is weird enough, but his desire to wage war against those he sees as corrupters of western culture is pretty concerning. because he is a rear end in a top hat who like most of the alt right, throws a bunch of humanity/sociological/poli-sci/history buzzwords and then attache them to the phrase marxist. then when they get called out and/or "trigger enough liberals" they double down. any original point they may have sorta had dies and gets thrown out the window so they can get hard to being contrarian "rationalists'.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:12
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Al-Saqr posted:you guys need to organize and make a pamphlet or document that debunks his claims and thoughts, you need to do this for the sake of the children. this.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:13
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Mr Interweb posted:I was arguing with some jerkoff a while back about this dude. This guy was complaining that people using the wrong gender term for trans people will cause them to go to jail cause of that law in Canada that Peterson is against. I pointed out to him that nowhere does it say anyone will be imprisoned (or even fined) if they accidentally misgender someone. At this point he shifted the goal posts to saying that okay, maybe no one will go to jail, but the law forces people to use the pronouns that the trans person in question wants, and that's "compelled speech" and is therefore a bridge too far. Does this idiot think the police just patrol around and fine people the minute they use the wrong word? Even Canada has crime.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:14
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What the hell is a postmodern neomarxist? Cos I think mostly just 150 year old marxism is good enough for me a lot of the time.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:14
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Dapper_Swindler posted:because he is a rear end in a top hat who like most of the alt right, throws a bunch of humanity/sociological/poli-sci/history buzzwords and then attache them to the phrase marxist. then when they get called out and/or "trigger enough liberals" they double down. any original point they may have sorta had dies and gets thrown out the window so they can get hard to being contrarian "rationalists'. That and his actual empirical history is somewhat impressive, even though it's barely tangentially related to the stuff he rambles about in media, speeches, and his books. Nonetheless, it grants him a veneer of legitimacy that he uses for cover.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:15
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JVNO posted:Unfortunately, Jordan Peterson enjoys dunking on fields and theories that are often outside his realm of expertise. Stuff like sociology, feminism, and LBGTQ issues. This also puts them far outside of most of our own expertise. Unlike cynical fools who sell out to the alt-right, most of us are conservative about lending expert opinion on things that are outside of our field. so basically you guys are gonna do nothing until he poisons a massive well of shitheads who will bite you in the rear end down the line and re-introduce phrenology to school curricula.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:16
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OwlFancier posted:What the hell is a postmodern neomarxist? I think it's just a dog whistle for "cultural Marxist"
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Nov 14, 2017 22:17
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Al-Saqr posted:so basically you guys are gonna do nothing until he poisons a massive well of shitheads who will bite you in the rear end down the line and re-introduce phrenology to school curricula. Or, you know, let the far more qualified people in the sociology departments and women's studies rebuke this poo poo head because that's the stuff he's commenting on? My psych department doesn't even have a social or clinical component. We're a deeply experimental department focused on neuroscience, cognition and animal psychology, so we're arguably even less qualified to speak on the matters than even Jordan Peterson. Most of us did oppose his presenting at our university though, if that means anything.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:18
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OwlFancier posted:What the hell is a postmodern neomarxist? i guess the new "cultural marxism" buzzword or some poo poo. these people dont know what either means. yeah parts of post modernist humanities can lovely,if the teacher is lovely or people take it in stupidly extreme directions. but most of it, "hey lets read a non-European primary source or teach a class about a non European subject with said non European sources(that are peer reviewed)).
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Nov 14, 2017 22:19
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Most of these guys seem to have become initially popular back when Dawkins, Harris, etc enjoyed the height of their popularity. Of those listed in the OP Thunderfoot was the only one I ever listened to, although I was at least aware of the others. I always did find it depressing that so many devolved into madness over feminism. I don’t know if anyone has brought it up before, but does anyone have examples of popular youtube atheists/skeptics that didn’t go this route into basically turning on their own liberal ideals, or losing sight of what made them initially begin their videos? A few that I still really enjoy are: AronRa – Popular for his fantastic Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism videos and the head of the Texas branch of American Atheists. Seems pretty predicated to the advocacy of liberal causes, especially in the realm of education. Potholer54 – Journalist who has made a large number of really good videos in support of climate change, directly addressing the lies and misinformation put out by deniers. TheraminTrees – Doesn’t put out much these days, but had a great video series that chronicled his movement from religious fundamentalist to skeptic. This guy really resonated with me at the time, and it is a shame he doesn’t do much anymore, also his voice is very soothing and easy to listen to.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:24
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JVNO posted:That and his actual empirical history is somewhat impressive, even though it's barely tangentially related to the stuff he rambles about in media, speeches, and his books. Nonetheless, it grants him a veneer of legitimacy that he uses for cover. so what the gently caress does he teach? I am history major and outside weird CJ minor and interest herptology, i dont know dick about your or his field. JVNO posted:Or, you know, let the far more qualified people in the sociology departments and women's studies rebuke this poo poo head because that's the stuff he's commenting on? My psych department doesn't even have a social or clinical component. We're a deeply experimental department focused on neuroscience, cognition and animal psychology, so we're arguably even less qualified to speak on the matters than even Jordan Peterson. animal psychology sounds cool.
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Nov 14, 2017 22:24
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