Sound Reasoning but Incorrect Information

[metis]

It was an observation over many years. The Modern Liberal Church; Democrat party, uses these same pressure tactics. For example, when Left wing morally decided gender bending was the way of the future, school children were taught to go along and even participate. If anyone did not go along, there was peer pressure applied to conform; modern public schools. This pressure tactic does not break the will of all the children. Some children will pretend to go along, to get along, rather than be a constant target of propaganda bullies. This is not new. It is Old school tactics, reborn. Freedom of speech makes it harder to accomplish forced compliance, which is why Left wing Social Media became a censor and whip; Twitter files.

In modern Russia for example, the state does not accept homosexuality. There are harsh penalties. Logically, it is not smart for any homosexual to flaunt their preferences, in public in Russia, like you can in the USA. In the USA, the Left leaning media tries to condition the public for mass acceptance; repetition. In Russia, to get along, the smart thing to do, is to stay below the radar, while secretly pursuing what you choose, but in the underground. What people do not know, usually, does not bother them.

There is another layer of people, with dual alliance. They are loyal to the overall cause; Russian way, will try to act mainstream, to not only get along, but to also help them move up the company ladder. They need to look like the perfect minion, since any bad rumors can end a budding career. The homosexual in this case, would learn to stay below then radar.

For example, if a Lefty in their upper management, was to come out against homosexuals, how long will they keep their job? Such people all know the answer and know they will have to pretend until retirement. Look around and watch how the Left works and you can observe what I observed.

Left wing tactics to force conformity is not new or just invented yesterday. This is based on classic ways. It is easy to observe. There is also ways to work around this. I have a friend, whose late grandfather owned a stored many decades ago. He would sell bacon to his Jewish clients, in discreet brown paper bags. Nobody, even many Jews, can resist the flavor of his bacon. The clients had to stay on the low, since pork is not Kosher, and being too open about deviation, could cause problems at Temple. So they knew enough to stay below the radar to avoid all the trouble that could occur. This is not new, but human nature trying to get along with the community, while being true to oneself.

The Democrats party has this tactic of creating division and then taking a side to split the vote. They convince people to flaunt what they know will cause push back. Anyone with half a brain should have known open homosexuality would cause a push back.

The DNC is like the gossip monger spreading rumors to couple, against each other, and then acting like they are a friend of one. It like those Jewish men being told polls say he can carry bacon proudly in public, wi the the gossip knowing this will cause a push back. In Russia, people who are discreet are not just rounded up based on rumors. Rather those who disturb the peace become a target.

You really should get off of using stereotypes that basically are "alternative facts". If you think the Russians are so much better, I'm sure Putin will open his arms for you-- and hand you a gun.

 

[wellwisher]

In general terms, sound reasoning is a process that can applied to any amount of data. If you add or take away data, the output inferences and/or deduction products; of the best reasoning, can change.

The Twitter files shows how censorship was slanted against the Right in 2020. The impact of censorship was to reduce the full possible data set, to just cherry picked data that favored the Left. This smaller biased data set was given to people to apply their best reasoning. The best conclusions all shifted, because of the data fix. There was less data, to move the curve to the middle, so it appeared to slope down.

As a practical example, if you assumed the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian Disinformation or if you assumed it was a genuine laptop, your conclusions, based on your best sound reasoning would be different, if you pick one or the other, data sets. If you pick both, the reasoning curve may also change.

If we then could cut off one of the two options, so only Russian Disinformation data is allowed as your onl data set, the best conclusion will, in 20/20 hindsight, have supported a scam. Reasoning to reach the right conclusion, can only happen with full and valid data set. This data manipulation needs to addressed,

Full data is why freedom of speech is so important. If we have to provide all the possible data, not throw anything out, reason will tend to average and intersect. Censorship is needed to cause divergence to the promised land of the scam; fake slope.

If we look at the Russian Collusion Coup and all the disinformation; data that was used, in an attempt to over throw a duly elected President, disinformation was able to flood the data base for reason, before the truth could add its own data. The lie move faster than the truth. One would initially draw the best conclusions being led by the bad data. The bad data was set up, in advance, to lead you, somewhere; rabbit hole.

Lies have the advantage of pandering to gossip and emotions. Such data, even if false, can get caught up in human psychology. It can satisfy emotional needs that are not rational. Once the lie and gossip data is accepted, one will then try to use sound to draw a curve, that appears rationally true, but still made false by the faux data.

For example, the serial rapist may scope the bar and reason who their best victims will be based on certain body language. Their deeper irrational psychological goal is the rape, which is a type of inner truth that is important to their unique inner needs. But this is not healthy or sane. But to achieve that end they will use reason to work the hunting data. I was amazed at the dark heart of the Left, getting so many jollies out of disinformation, that seemed to meet psychological needs; willingly reasoned the wrong conclusions. The may need to work on self awareness and how they have been programmed by their handlers.

 

[Augustus]

While I generally agree with this, I think it's quite possible that some people who say they wouldn't have accepted social norms back then would have lived up to that if they had been born then. We already see people on this forum who have significantly broken away from the prevalent norms in their respective societies and cultures, including some for whom doing so carries a major safety risk.

Extrapolating this capacity for dissent to past eras doesn't necessarily seem too far-fetched to me (although it is for a lot of the "dissenters" who are safe and sound in liberal, mostly irreligious democracies and religiously diverse societies but think they're special martyrs anyway).

Few people who say this are genuine outliers though, they just hold a position held by 20% of the population or whatever. They then think if they were in Ancient Greece they would have been abolitionists.

It also depends why they reject them today. Such people often see 'bad' social norms as irrational and thus harmful, but in this case you are talking about the idea is that these social norms are perceived as rational.

This leads to a different type of person rejecting them. So for example, eugenics was most likely to be rejected by people with string religious beliefs, somewhat similar to the pro-life movement.

Rejection of 'rational' actions (supported by utilitarian/consequentialists) is usually based on 'irrational' principles (held by those following deontological ethical systems or perhaps certain kinds of virtue ethics).

What do you think is an unwarranted level of trust in expert opinions and latest science? Generally, it seems to me that putting trust in those is a far safer and more reasonable bet than rejecting or strongly challenging them without being qualified to do so. Take evolution as an example: is it faddish or unreasonable to trust the overwhelming scientific consensus that evolution is a fact? Or, if we look at a medical example instead, is it giving the consensus of experts too much weight to trust them on the benefits of vaccines or toxicity of lead (which used to be far more accepted as a supposedly harmless substance)?

There are blurrier examples, of course, and it's crucial to remain open to new information and evidence. However, as a rule of thumb, I find that many people who tend to question or reject expert consensus on a subject are more often than not adopting an unreasonable and potentially harmful position (e.g., anti-vaxxers). Then we also have people who reject scholarly consensus in fields besides science, such as history, and you probably know how painful that is.

Evolution has withstood the test of time, it is not faddish. Things like social science, medicine, psychology, nutritions, etc. are prone faddishness.

It is a problem to talk about trusting 'experts' without discretion. It is really about fields in which you can differentiate between actual experts and pseudo-experts

A qualified plumber, geologist, pilot or electrical engineer is likely trustworthy because what they believe is tested against reality more directly.

An economist, social psychologist, nutritionist, etc. are experts who rely on models or verbalistic explanations of things that may or may not be true. Often an economic theory works great 99% of the time, but fails when it really matters and this negates all of the gains made and more.

Time is the filter.

The more 'cutting edge' you are in adopting the latest social science or medical science, the more faddish you will become.

The more news media you consume the more you will become misinformed. You can take all the precautions you like, filter out 'bad' sources, double check, read opposing views for balance, etc. but it's inescapable. The more news media you consume the more you will become misinformed (being misinformed on somethings is an independent variable of being informed on others, so consuming media leads to both increases in information and misinformation).

With 24h news media (fast moving), the ratio of misinformation to information is higher than say reading books/articles (slow moving) written months or years after the events being described. Time is the best filter.

The easies way to illustrate this is to watch breaking news of a major terrorist attack and note down all that is said and see how much turns out to have been true. You might get 80% misinformation/noise to 20% fact. Reading a book about it you might get 95% fact to 5% misinformation.

I see the utility (or lack thereof) of conservatism—in the sense of conserving the status quo, not in a culture-specific context like "American conservatism," "British conservatism," etc.—as a function of the society in which it exists. The same goes for change, or progressivism. For instance, in societies that still criminalize homosexuality, ban religious pluralism, and legally discriminate against women, it seems to me that conservatism is far less of a bulwark against faddishness and more of a hindrance to necessary change as well as a force enabling abuse.

It also seems to me that conservatism sometimes enshrines human hubris and even ascribes it to a divine source. The current Iranian regime is a textbook example of this: they kill in the name of their god, think they're divinely ordained, and brand those who want change as "traitors," "infidels," and a myriad of other demonizing designations. This is human hubris writ large: it is based in an intransigent sense of confidence in tradition and the status quo, to the point of elevating them to the rank of "God's law."

On the other hand, I don't support change just for the sake of it, which is something some Marxists-Leninists might do. We can see how deleterious that line of thinking can be when examining Lenin's "the end justifies the means" approach and how he was willing to sacrifice millions of lives just for the sake of what he perceived as a perfect goal. Change isn't always necessary, and it could sometimes be similar to blowing air at a neatly arranged house of cards just because one believes there should always be a breeze.

This is why balance is important.

Forces of change need to be balanced by forces of conservatism and vice versa.

I highlighted the part I found most striking, because I think it profoundly hits the nail on the head. After the Enlightenment, European colonialism displayed some of its most brutal, arrogant, and forceful manifestations, much of which contained overtones of spreading "civilization" to other parts of the world. I would argue that Manifest Destiny perhaps also had some of its roots in this culturally supremacist mentality.

British colonialism introduced anti-homosexuality laws in multiple countries, but now that Britain and most of Europe have moved on from those laws, many politicians in the region point the finger at other countries that still hold on to those laws without acknowledging Europe's historical role in buttressing them. Not that those laws don't warrant condemnation, but the self-centered discrepancy does paint a picture of being "over-impressed with [their] own accomplishment"—and sometimes being culturally supremacist—on the part of of the people who display this lack of self-awareness.

Other than perhaps nationalism, the Idea of Progress has contributed to perhaps more harm than any other belief (overall net +/- is debatable, but the harms are many).

To the Rationalist, nothing is of value merely because it exists (and certainly not because it has existed for many generations), familiarity has no worth, and nothing is to be left standing for want of scrutiny...

And having cut himself off from the traditional knowledge of his society, and denied the value of any education more extensive than a training in a technique of analysis, he is apt to attribute to mankind a necessary inexperience in all the critical moments of life, and if he were more self-critical he might begin to wonder how the race had ever succeeded in surviving...

Genuine knowledge must begin with a purge of the mind, because it must begin as well as end in certainty and must be complete in itself...

He does not recognize change unless it is a self-consciously induced change, and consequently he falls easily into the error of identifying the customary and the traditional with the changeless. This is aptly illustrated by the rationalist attitude towards a tradition of ideas. There is, of course, no question either of retaining or improving such a tradition, for both these involve an attitude of submission. It must be destroyed. And to fill its place the Rationalist puts something of his own making - an ideology, the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition...

And he conceives a contempt for what he does not understand; habit and custom appear bad in themselves, a kind of nescience of behaviour. And by some strange self-deception, he attributes to tradition (which, of course, is pre-eminently fluid) the rigidity and fixity of character which in fact belongs to ideological politics. Consequently, the Rationalist is a dangerous and expensive character to have in control of affairs, and he does most damage, not when he fails to master the situation (his politics, of course, are always in terms of mastering situations and surmounting crises), but when he appears to be successful; for the price we pay for each of his apparent successes is a firmer hold of the intellectual fashion of Rationalism upon the whole life of society.

- Michael Oakeshott

People like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris who fixate on perceived faults of religion, extol the supposed virtues of the Enlightenment in contrast to supposedly benighted past eras, and overlook historical nuance like the above play into the hands of culturally supremacist rhetoric whether they realize it or not, and they're far from unintelligent. I think they realize what they're doing but justify it on the grounds that they're fighting for "reason and science."

Liberal rationalism is in many ways like an evangelical fundamentalist religion as it tends to centralise power and promote The Truth™ to all. What is true at any given time is whatever the evidence best suggests is true, and any deviance from this is error.

It retains the universalism of monotheism as a cultural legacy, and doesn't really tolerate cultural diversity well. Of course it says it respects diversity on humanistic grounds, but it doesn't extend far below surface level diversity.

The direction of history is for people to become more like them as they embrace science and reason.

Christians brought the pagans into the light. Protestants brought the Catholics into the light. Rationalists brought everybody into the light.