"Whether it’s the belief that Trump won the election, that humans can change their sex just by saying so, or that the COVID vaccine contains location-tracking microchips, there’s are growing contingent of people on the political left and right whose instinctive reaction when faced with facts they don’t like is to fabricate new ones.....
…
"Whether it’s the belief that Trump won the election, that humans can change their sex just by saying so, or that the COVID vaccine contains location-tracking microchips, there’s are growing contingent of people on the political left and right whose instinctive reaction when faced with facts they don’t like is to fabricate new ones.....
Increasingly, this is the only divide that matters."
What the political extremes share are reality-shattering ideologies. Full disclosure: I describe myself as a "committed anti-ideologue."
Sometimes I wonder whether there are certain traits that are hard-wired into people. There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation. There are some people who see conspiracies in everything, and others who shrug and say, "shit happens." Some are comfortable with moral ambiguity, while others have to have clarity and issue judgment accordingly. Some see the universe as unknowable and mysterious, while others see an "intelligent design."
I think the ideologues and the anti-ideologues crack along the same fissure. Beware of the former.
"There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation."
Yes, yes yes. This is at the root of so many flawed ways of thinking. Starting at the root, of course, which is religious fundamentalism.
The humility to say "I don't know" is pretty much entirely absent from discourse. And that's by necessity. Because for many people, any answer, even a bad one, is preferable to uncertainty. The people willing to say "I don't know" are drowned out by those who would rather die than admit the same.
Uncertainty is scary and complex and requires continuous attention to resolve. Simple, black and white ideologies are far more comforting. And allow you to focus all your energy on hating the "enemies" preventing your ideology from being implemented.
Vaccines with mind-control nanotechnology, Trump won, women with XY chromosomes ... this has nothing to do with ideology on any axis, this is psychosis.
It's a small part of an epistemological crisis, a collapse of belief in any distinction between truth and falsehood, a disdain for expertise, a distrust of education, a hatred of intelligence.
Most alarming of all, it is not limited to The Usual Suspects, the grade school dropouts and those whose lives have included serial institutionalizations. Freeman Dyson, he of the Sphere, who was with Einstein at the Princeton Institute, was an AGW denier. So was Michael Crichton, author of some of the most intelligent fiction of the last half century.
I personally know several people who would have been at the absolute end of any list of people I expected to catch this illness, but caught it they have.
And the timing could not be worse. We are heading into environmental collapse and need all hands to the pumps. Instead we have people whose ability to reason has fundamentally broken down, and we are too dedicated to diversity and inclusion to even think of doing anything about it.
Really well said. I have a (former( good friend whom I debated with for years. I would generally take the old liberal view and he the conservative.
But some years ago he just went off the ultra right deep end. Nothing is by accident any more.. And this guy is no red neck. He’s a public school Brit with a Cambridge mathematiics degree.
But he’s gone full MAGA with the big lie and everything. When he tried to dismiss Jan 6 I finally told him where to stick it.
I've seen several cases of this. My ex is one of the most jarring; he was sane and compassionate, once we bought a large live fish from a tank in a Chinese restaurant and released it into a lake.
Last time I talked to him he said he would take a bullet for Trump. That he was moving to Texas (he's Chinese) because they blocked mask mandates. Then he told me that COVID came from the vaccines; when I asked him why the vaccines were created in the first place (COVID preceded them) he ended the call.
He's very "spiritual" and has thrown his life away chasing rainbows and unicorn farts, so he was prone to that kind of manipulation. He's smart, hexalingual, but never had a real job.
"Whether it’s the belief that Trump won the election, that humans can change their sex just by saying so, or that the COVID vaccine contains location-tracking microchips, there’s are growing contingent of people on the political left and right whose instinctive reaction when faced with facts they don’t like is to fabricate new ones.....
Increasingly, this is the only divide that matters."
What the political extremes share are reality-shattering ideologies. Full disclosure: I describe myself as a "committed anti-ideologue."
Sometimes I wonder whether there are certain traits that are hard-wired into people. There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation. There are some people who see conspiracies in everything, and others who shrug and say, "shit happens." Some are comfortable with moral ambiguity, while others have to have clarity and issue judgment accordingly. Some see the universe as unknowable and mysterious, while others see an "intelligent design."
I think the ideologues and the anti-ideologues crack along the same fissure. Beware of the former.
"There are some people who are comfortable with saying "I don't know," while others HAVE to have an explanation."
Yes, yes yes. This is at the root of so many flawed ways of thinking. Starting at the root, of course, which is religious fundamentalism.
The humility to say "I don't know" is pretty much entirely absent from discourse. And that's by necessity. Because for many people, any answer, even a bad one, is preferable to uncertainty. The people willing to say "I don't know" are drowned out by those who would rather die than admit the same.
Uncertainty is scary and complex and requires continuous attention to resolve. Simple, black and white ideologies are far more comforting. And allow you to focus all your energy on hating the "enemies" preventing your ideology from being implemented.
Vaccines with mind-control nanotechnology, Trump won, women with XY chromosomes ... this has nothing to do with ideology on any axis, this is psychosis.
It's a small part of an epistemological crisis, a collapse of belief in any distinction between truth and falsehood, a disdain for expertise, a distrust of education, a hatred of intelligence.
Most alarming of all, it is not limited to The Usual Suspects, the grade school dropouts and those whose lives have included serial institutionalizations. Freeman Dyson, he of the Sphere, who was with Einstein at the Princeton Institute, was an AGW denier. So was Michael Crichton, author of some of the most intelligent fiction of the last half century.
I personally know several people who would have been at the absolute end of any list of people I expected to catch this illness, but caught it they have.
And the timing could not be worse. We are heading into environmental collapse and need all hands to the pumps. Instead we have people whose ability to reason has fundamentally broken down, and we are too dedicated to diversity and inclusion to even think of doing anything about it.
Really well said. I have a (former( good friend whom I debated with for years. I would generally take the old liberal view and he the conservative.
But some years ago he just went off the ultra right deep end. Nothing is by accident any more.. And this guy is no red neck. He’s a public school Brit with a Cambridge mathematiics degree.
But he’s gone full MAGA with the big lie and everything. When he tried to dismiss Jan 6 I finally told him where to stick it.
Go figure.
I've seen several cases of this. My ex is one of the most jarring; he was sane and compassionate, once we bought a large live fish from a tank in a Chinese restaurant and released it into a lake.
Last time I talked to him he said he would take a bullet for Trump. That he was moving to Texas (he's Chinese) because they blocked mask mandates. Then he told me that COVID came from the vaccines; when I asked him why the vaccines were created in the first place (COVID preceded them) he ended the call.
He's very "spiritual" and has thrown his life away chasing rainbows and unicorn farts, so he was prone to that kind of manipulation. He's smart, hexalingual, but never had a real job.