I greatly enjoy talking with people in person (outdoors of course) these days about interesting things because it's such a rare occurrence... One of the most troubling things though is how many people get easily wound up (and aren't forgiving) about misunderstandings in conversations.
People seem to be increasingly concrete in their judgements about social, economic, and political issues that have nothing to do with them as individuals, and often it results in fighting words, and that's crazy to me. A deep polarization is coming from many fronts, and it also over-emphasizes issues, making people far more offensive and defensive than before -- possibly heightened because of pandemic-related isolation and economic stress.
I think a lot of people judge the world based on tropes... The small-minded view based only on the people they've observed, rather than being able to place themselves in the shoes of others they don't know, and it's a growing problem when narrowly focused people like this lead and make decisions for us all. I think we really need to reject the use of tropes in discussions as fact because it's toxic, but at the same time, I work hard to not be triggered by anything that's well intended. We all make mistakes, and as long as you can choose to walk away, being misunderstood is a small price to pay for regular human communication.
It's even worse: the views that folks are getting all worked up about, aren't their own personally formed opinions -- they are being programmed with these opinions via media, advertising, etc.
Then we hold these opinions so strongly that if we disagree about anything at all -- any nuance, out of the infinite menu of "correct" opinions -- we argue bitterly ... driving apart friends, families, etc.
We must learn to hold opinions more lightly and to value direct experiences & physical relationships with real people, more than virtual experience.
It's sad because at the end of the day we all have so much in common, but we are becoming convinced that we're so different and what's more, that others are in fact evil people. Great pain and trouble might come from this trend.
This. Talking to people on both sides, it's all just regurgitation of headlines and pundits. Most people know how to deal with people who are "with" them or "against" them, but don't know how to react to someone who partially agrees, or agrees on issues, but not solutions. Anything outside of mainstream rhetoric is immediately labeled conspiratorial. Which is strange to me. Most people on both sides seem to recognize the media is rigged by big money, but they don't seem equipped or encouraged to form their own opinions that incorporate this knowledge.
Also I think experience has been devalued because its anecdotal. Only facts from an omniscient source are accepted, no matter their often dubious original.
It seems crazy to say but I think it may all boil down to a massive influx of inexperienced readers. That plus the fact that most content on on the internet is not to be taken quite at face value.
Counterintuitively I believe there are more people reading and communicating textually than ever before. Way more! That would be good except they are doing it all via the Internet which is an absolute free for all of weaponized content, created for commercial or political purposes.
Critical reading and thinking skills are needed to navigate the internet.
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This book is kind of funny: [The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind](https://www.amazon.com/Origin-Consciousness-Breakdown-Bicame...) ... but it is good for hypothesizing about how consciousness has evolved. The relevant part to this discussion is when he writes about people literally being driven insane by the birth of writing. They were just unable to integrate the new influx of information quickly enough. Imagine your dog for example, learning to read. It would be quite the experience for poor Fido.
The printing press, in time, caused the reformation, the enlightenment, etc. But it was a bumpy road along the way.
My point is that, everyone having the internet in their pocket will have a larger impact than anyone anticipates today.
I agree it's not crazy. To me the best explanation is that Facebook introduced many inexperienced people to political topics, and they had trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. Someone told me something similar happened when radio first got popular. Hopefully our societies will get better at filtering information as these technologies mature.
It actually does make me wonder if we can see a connection between what's happening now and what happened when Protestant Christianity started spreading with the whole "priesthood of the believer" deal where everyone can read the Bible in whatever translation and interpret it just as well, supposedly, as those who are trained in Greek/Hebrew/Latin and actually studied the historical context of it. Seems very similar, in some ways, on a rough look.
I think you nailed it there. Forgot where I read it but there's a similar principle/observation of software devs where every year the number of new developers grows exponentially larger and so as we move into the future, the industry racks up an increasingly larger share of novices compared to experts.
Seems to be a similar phenomenon playing out in larger society - we who've been around the block know where the potholes are and how to deal with them appropriately but the flood of newcomers fall prey to them in increasing numbers every day.
I think it’s a function of information overload. It’s all just too much for people, so they look for the quickest “conclusion” in the truest sense of the word, i.e. the interpretation that allows them to end the discussion and no longer be bothered about it.
The internet, it seems to me, is the primary cause of this information overload. And it also makes it so much easier to just “swipe left” on people. In the real world, in a local community, you would not have been able to just walk away from conflict. But in the internet, you almost have to do it to stay sane.
I agree with this, and I would add that groups interacting under the influence of such rapid, impersonal dismissals, has the effect of removing all nuance and subtlety from their language. I have a fear that if I were to take a time machine forward, Jules Verne style, I would see emoticons have entirely supplanted the alphabet.
almost feels like there's no room for nuance, but I know that there is, just not in public. i have a conjecture that every public platform where people are even slightly concerned about their opinions being attached to their identity turns into an echo chamber dominated by the vocal group. its crucial that people understand that identity is not just about the opinions you hold and you can agree on some things but not on others. its very simple if you think about it, but that's precisely what's missing when you constantly consume content mindlessly. try consuming content you don't agree with at all. for a week. a month. a few months. then you'll find yourself surprisingly slipping into agreeing with the content. it happens. its happened to me when I purposely did this as an experiment. the only way out is to THINK and listen to all sides
> Anything outside of mainstream rhetoric is immediately labeled conspiratorial. Which is strange to me. Most people on both sides seem to recognize the media is rigged by big money, but they don't seem equipped or encouraged to form their own opinions that incorporate this knowledge.
I propose that if you think of a human mind as a neural network that is trained by the information it ingests, much of the mysteries of human behavior makes almost complete sense.
"people on both sides seem to recognize the media is rigged by big money" is a bit of a hanging chad, but I suspect that is explained by something like this:
What you say seems to be the case. I've been thinking a lot about it lately.
It's pretty easy to see this programing in others, but remarkably more difficult to perceive regarding oneself.
The thing is (in my opinion) we can't really get by without some level of automatic programming. If we had to stop and weigh each decision and figure everything out from first principals we would have immense trouble operating. So we get cultures, religions, customs and ethical "hard facts" to help us get by. They work in a limited time and space but often break down as circumstances change and many (most?) people have a very hard time adjusting to the new reality.
I still think people should be a bit more critical (and cynical even), looking at who benefits from masses holding a belief and trying to determine "truth" from first principals more then they do now, but think I understand why this isn't the general case.
> they are being programmed with these opinions via media, advertising, etc.
The opinions of peers and social media seems to power most of the clichéd responses, from what I see.
It is less clear where those clichés originate or who are the originating amplifiers/influencers.
I hear people regurgitate canned memes, but it isn't obvious where they were programmed. My mum repeats some memes that I think she learnt from her peer group, even though the memes are conflicting with the underlying beliefs I know her to have.
I think you are implying traditional media and advertising has an outsized influence. That is weird to me, although I agree their influence definitely exists as a background swamp.
Edit: Is using the word “tropes” like this common? (“tropes” as used in this thread). Meme or stereotype or cliché seem better word fits for some of the usages I have read so far. I’m guessing “meme” has been stolen for visual gags.
The media is the only source of anyone's information about anything beyond our immediate personal relationships and direct worldly interactions. For the vast majority of people, the scope of direct worldly interactions is extremely limited.
Take a moment to think about what we believe to be the fundamental facts about the biggest topics in the world at the moment. How many of those facts have originated outside of our own minds?
This set of basic facts are almost all sourced from the media. It's interesting to think about whether this same set of facts also set limits to the scope of opinions that could be formed to explain them.
And yet here you are sharing opinions on a social media site.
> The media is the only source of anyone's information
Citation please (perhaps using Fox News?). I am being cheeky, but you are being black&white absolute, and stating your opinions as facts (which I don’t like).
There are plenty of people that don’t watch TV, don’t listen to radio, and don’t read traditional media sources. Talk to a teenager - where do their opinions come from? Not traditional news sources.
The guy at the pub that is bashing me with QAnon and “do your research” has not picked that up from any traditional media in New Zealand. I see the same pattern with plenty of other memes (left or right), where the meme has definitely not been transmitted by big media. Memes that are too far out to be publicised on our local media (due to stronger laws against bullshit).
I don't think I need a citation to back up the full statement. You chopped my sentence in half, then argued against that half.
I'm happy to discuss the full idea with you, and I'll try to reiterate it again more clearly.
The facts relating to topics and events that exist beyond our own experience, and the direct experience of the people we interact with in our lives have to come from somewhere. That somewhere is always a form of media (social or traditional).
The set of facts that we receive about these topics may also set limits on any independent ideas we, and others with the same set of facts, can come up with to explain them.
When the QAnon guy at the pub is delivering his ideas and talking points, he is doing so using a different set of basic facts that he has received about the topic. The set of facts that he has been exposed to are quite different to yours. So different that there isn't much overlap at all in the set of ideas and opinions that each of you can generate to explain them.
The interesting thing to think about is that we all place some trust in the media we consume (social or traditional) to deliver us the set of facts that accurately describes topics we have no direct exposure to. That includes the QAnon guy at the pub.
You have a good point. It doesn't necessarily need to be consciously programmed into people. Maybe it's just the hive mind forming memes. All those minds reading, thinking, looking, creating ... causes strange ideas (myths?) to percolate throughout society. Similar to the birth of religions perhaps?
This is a point Scott Adams talks about at length in his podcasts.
"People don't have opinions. People are assigned their opinions according to their choice of media that they opted to consume."
(obviously phrased as an absolute for punchiness. the context here is "unless you're the kind of person who makes it their business to observe media on different sides and analyse the differences", which is generally the focus of his podcasts these days)
> It's sad because at the end of the day we all have so much in common, but we are becoming convinced that we're so different and what's more, that others are in fact evil people.
Divide and conquere is the working management strategy. It helps a lot to increase control over population in the country.
Traditionally it was 'ideology' now it's 'populism'.
To take a 'very sensitive' concept, even the framing of a subject creates dissonance i.e. 'pro choice' or 'pro life' etc. - the literal framing of the issue from 'either side' goes right past the other argument.
Personally, what do to move past that is ask myself the question 'when does life begin'. That's a difficult question, and all but the most ardent ideologues would have to at least ponder that. And FYI I'm not even hinting at an answer to it etc. just illustrating how a simple question, which kind of speaks to the hart of the matter can 'reframe' away from slogans.
Most people have 'radar' for 'people in the other group' and tend to diminish everything, i.e. assume people are acting in bad faith, when this behaviour itself is acting in bad faith.
In the last 20 years or so, my persona 'radar' now is for people who are caught up in memes, populism, bubbles etc..
Being outside of a bubble doesn't mean information in those bubbles is necessarily 'wrong' but it helps to contextualize.
American media in particular is a bit pernicious, the capitalist element of it, the fact the stakes are so high (America has power and influence), my god.
I'm so extremely grateful that almost my entire family is 'non aligned'. You could never really tell the 'side' that people are on, often, they don't even have a 'side'. I can't imagine what living in a bubble situation i.e. family, work, local politics might be like. I wouldn't want to move the 'state that shares my values' so much as the 'state that isn't wrapped up in everything being a social war'.
You want to know what's funny? Even on the 'most sensitive issue' of abortion, you are right 'we have more in common' than not. Vast majorities of Americans believe that 'abortions in 3rd trimesters are problematic' while '1s trimester' are not. That's oversimplifying a bit for sure, nevertheless, there is a very crude kind of consensus except at the margins.
But the way the parties deal with each other is not equal. The right wing is conservative and holds by its definition “conserved” ideas, aka not up to date.
A majority (which runs in the millions) already knows what it wants and voted accordingly, and a minority conservative SCOTUS voted against it. So now the states can vote on it, but the information I am getting that some states find all abortions being illegal is just as a fundamentalist a position as any. Aka for one party in particular there is no grey. This has largely to do with the power/voting dynamics of the right.
One side is not equal in its approach to issues by its nature (conservation)
It would be a lot more interesting if conservatism would mean “skeptic” in practice, but we all know it has gone far beyond it.
Not to say I welcome curious conversations with anyone, but to say the two sides are equal in their approach and methodology is not true (in my experience)
You say “information I am getting”—are you not US-based? I can tell you the two parties are pretty much the same in their approach (other than some minor differences in organizational structure). It’s professionalized and data-driven. They are just trying to win elections.
Party dynamics in the US evolves a lot. GOP is nothing like what it was 10 years ago, and nothing like it was during the 1990's. Democrats used to be the 'Party of the South' etc.. SCOTUS confirmation has changed.
Also, it's really not quite appropriate to say conservatives are even 'conservation', even if that were true, it doesn't make the posture inherently unfair etc..
Finally, you say 'both sides' - there are not '2 sides' that's a myth. The GOP is utterly divided between Trumpers and non, and the Left is divided between the Woke and Classical socialists. A lot of people in private have ideas across the spectrum.
Do you have a breakdown on numbers approximately between the divisions? It’s also interesting you say “in private” , so what people say and do differs from what they believe at home?
Bob Woodward on TV yesterday said that 20% of Republicans want Trump gone, 50% support him, and 30% just want to 'win'.
More than 1/2 of GOP Senators probably despise Trump, they see him for what he is, but he's popular. Meaning, he can 'have them fired' like he's 'firing' Liz Cheney by supporting her attackers. That's how politics works. Mitch McConnell utterly despises Trump, but he'll come out publicly and support him if he's he man.
All 'public' politics is posturing and populism, it's just a bit worse in the USA.
No, 50% of GOP voters are beholden to Trump and will do what he says. Liz Cheney is being ousted by him right now. Trump is backing candidates who support him against those who do not, making a lot of GOP afraid to speak out.
Oddly, if he does announce he's not running, he may lose influence.
Trump has to keep the appearance of power otherwise the structure will eat him alive, they hate him.
He'll have to keep fighting all the way to the grave.
The 'people' are stupid and put their egos before reality.
They are also inclined to support people over ideas, and many of them legitimately believe the election was rigged because Trump and Newsmax/Foxnews told them so. So in a weird and perverse way, they are 'acting in good faith'.
'The Big Lies' are possible when people are already sensitive about it and 'want to believe it' i.e. they just need a reason to believe.
This is likely the result of the recent braindead 'your intentions don't matter, only impact' mantra that has taken hold. Gone are the days of just trying to assume people mean the best, it's just about how things make us feel. It's hard for me to understand how we can progress as a country, or society perhaps, where collective reasoning and assuming the best in people has been replaced with focus on each person as an individual on an emotional level. Just seems like a recipe for...well, the way things are today.
> Gone are the days of just trying to assume people mean the best
I think people have been bitten in the back enough time by assuming the best that people have switched to thinking this way. When you try to be nice and keep getting taken advantage of then it's hard to stay nice.
People meaning the best isn't good enough in a world where people are dying from polluted water in Flint... It doesn't mean much when racial hate groups are growing in membership as much as inflation... People meaning the best also doesn't mean much when government grants PPP loans to companies that abuse it.
We're living in a scam economy... My best policy is to not really extend trust as much as extending "tiered courtesy" and carefully observing the results to determine how much more to give... I primarily work hardest on my own trustworthiness, because I know very well how easily any of us can become corrupted by bad times.
Even some of the strongest marriages and families are being torn apart right now because of broken trust.. In my experience, trust is never a permanent state, although I wish it could be. One thing's for certain, there's not a single corporation I trust right now at all, they've been pretty merciless towards everyone except for their Investors and vested leadership.
> Why worry all the time if you can just worry when something actually happens
At least in the USA, one small mistake in trust or lack of safety in certain things ("something happening") could cause you to be on the street within months, even for people like those here on HN who generally have good jobs and such. I think it's getting a bit primal due to that here. We're acting like animals because we've been treated as such for decades and generations and we're finally sick of it. That's my opinion, not really backed up by anything.
There's a prisoner's dilemma thing going on: if you meet someone who assumes good intentions, you can scam them at least once for free. Normally the incidence of this is low, but it has been rising. Politics has always had a flexible relationship with the truth, but now the dishonesty and bait-and-switch is getting to a point where people feel they have been scammed.
Conversely if you do have good intentions and you meet a person who has just been ripped off, do not expect them to take your "trust me bro" at face value.
There is however an odd effect where people take a breach of trust as a reason to give themselves over to an even less trustworthy institution. 2008 financial crisis means you can't trust banks? Why not invest in a Singapore-based defi organisation promising much higher interest rates? MSM trust lost after Iraq war? Why not get your news from the Russian state propaganda channel instead?
judging people by the consequences their actions have in the world is fine. Supervillains tend to be in short supply so generally even most heinous acts committed usually are done with, in the mind of the perpetrator, good intent.
If someone affects you negatively you'd be smart to care about your own skin before you care about their intentions, that's not a recent invention and not an unreasonable way to navigate the world, it also has very little to do with emotions. On the contrary, trying to assume someone else's intent seems like a pretty emotional way to operate if anything.
> judging people by the consequences their actions have in the world is fine.
It depends very much on the consequences and their evaluation.
If, exaggerating a bit for illustrative purposes, I say "Hello" to a colleague and that colleague is angry, disappointed, upset that I did not use a more formal "Good morning," which in their mind is reserved for more distinguished colleagues, it becomes a "monkey in the circus" problem.
That is, I have to change my behavior because I am being manipulated as the more astute and cynical colleague wants: my intentions might be good, but the result is that they are angry and ready to talk to HR.
One might read this and think, "This is an absurd case," it will never happen, of course HR, colleagues and all the people in the world will see clearly what is happening.
But it does happen, and something similar has happened to me, when we believe that whatever way people react in their minds should be "honored."
> If someone affects you negatively you'd be smart to care about your own skin before you care about their intentions,
THAT IS TRUTH... You cannot save a drowning person if you first can't swim.... You're both likely to drown... Try to maybe throw them a life vest or rope if you're on the boat, but only sacrifice yourself if you can't live without them. Trustworthiness is of infinite value, but most never learn where that gold is buried.
It's interesting what you say about supervillains being in short supply.
I generally don't think of people as evil, as others have pointed out, it seems more of a societal/group miasma that envelops us. Lots of people are misinformed, and this misinformation hurts. Lots of people are trying to protect their own interests because they have their own believes on how the world should be and they generate and spread misinformation. Is that evil? I would say it's rather irresponsible.
We can't ignore that actually there are people out there purposefully creating and spreading misinformation, none of them are supervillains. But together? This sort of bad-faith acting compounds quickly and harms society a great deal.
And then as you go up the chain of power, what starts happening when powerful people put their interests and world view above everything? Would you say when Bill Gates actively campaigned against laws in Africa to lower AIDS medicines prices (through the abolition of intellectual property for these) that he was being "evil". What kind of world view will put the lives of thousands below intellectual property rights protections? This behaviour was repeated with the COVID vaccine. What about politicians that spread misinformation through social media or tv-shows such as Fox News? Would we consider these people to be "supervillains"? Maybe not... but again... together?
I think the world is full of bad-faith and it's eating itself. But to me the real evil comes from individuals acting in their own self-interest without respecting others. Everyone is contributing a little bit, some contribute a lot more. But this situation is much more dangerous, in my opinion, than having a super-villain because evil seems to be hiding in everyone's best intentions.
Intimate talk to leaders may often reveal narcissistic traits bordering on psychopathy: The delight in feasting on others misery, and getting away with it!
Most people support this unknowingly, thus supporting scaffolding of psychopathic systems. Even though 98% are not psychopathic, most people will support adversarial and self-destructive systems.
It reminds me of the time when my Director asked me what the main strengths of my colleagues were. The Director was not, I write this euphemistically, a genius.
When asked about one of my peers, I said, "They are extraordinary at [this]"?
The Director followed up with, "So you wanna say they are not good at [that]"?
When bad intentions are assumed, there is always a firm grip on the climb to total idiocy. And that Director was in clear view of the summit.
That is because the benefit of doubt was applied asymmetrically (some people got infinite amount of it, others almost none) and was abused by bad actors quite a lot.
Also, ignoring impact meant that you could actively damage people you did not cared about while pretending ignorance again and again.
> Also, ignoring impact meant that you could actively damage people you did not cared about while pretending ignorance again and again.
I definitely agree with that. I don't think either should be ignored, but weighed against each other. That's pretty close to how our legal system works for a lot of crimes.
I'd also argue a person pretending innocence does -not- have good intentions, regardless of what they say.
Agreed, even posting online is extremely frustrating now as there is no real connection/association with real faces and posts. I understand the isolation and stress that people feel, as I feel it too, however it doesn't license people to take their frustration and anger out on others. We need to start dealing with online aggression, and the other negative behaviors exhibited with more seriousness than simply banning or ratioing users... We also need to hold sites and communities accountable for equal access and presentation of users.
People should be permitted to be wrong without getting banned or ratioed... That's what is not being allowed to play out properly... That experience only grows people who become moderators, and even politicians, that inflict the same hostile disregard and aggression towards others... "Hurt people hurt people".
We always should thoroughly address and protect each other online from conversational misconduct and of course verbal or physical abuse, but it seems that Twitter alone encourages it as a means of gaining popularity on the platform... They should be called out for that.
>> People seem to be increasingly concrete in their judgements about social, economic, and political issues that have nothing to do with them as individuals
I'm not discounting your point, I definitely know many people that get easily wound-up about issues that have nothing to do with them, but simply something to consider: If you're talking to strangers or acquaintances, are you really sure that the issues they are fighting about don't relate to them personally?
There are one or two political issues that I consider literally a matter of life-or-death. As in, I know people personally who would likely have died if a situation that happened to them a few years ago in one state in the US happened a few weeks ago in a different state in the US.
I agree with your general premise that people need to stop judging the world based on tropes - that's the problem that causes the political issues I'm thinking of - but it's hard not to occasionally get angry when people keep talking about life-or-death issues as if they're some sort of abstract galaxy brain.
Even if the political issue is literally life or death, chances are the actual person you're talking to has very little to do with the actual political outcomes. It still doesn't make sense to ostracize some for simply have different beliefs. For example, plenty of Muslims and Jews get along just fine in Jerusalem, even when they may have sympathies towards Hamas or Zionists respectively. It's these relationships that prevent future misunderstandings that lead to more suffering.
Yeah, it's suspect when people complain about getting judged for their views, then fail to state what the views are. It often turns out that the views in question are something that people have good reason to disapprove of - racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.
Sometimes tropes exist for a reason. After all, when someone says they think society judges certain views too harshly, it begs the question: which views?
Well, for example, the view that gay marriage should be legal. Until very recently this view was judged very harshly by society. Many people who had this view were afraid to express it. Of those people who today complain about not feeling safe to express their views, some of them may be horrible racist people as you suggest, but others are advanced thinkers who will eventually convince most of us to change our views. That is how and why the morals of society change and evolve with every generation.
No, it’s not the exact same logic, because I’m not discussing people’s immutable characteristics; I’m discussing communication styles, which are mutable, and the ideologies that tend to be associated with them, which are also mutable.
>No, it’s not the exact same logic, because I’m not discussing people’s immutable characteristics
It's literally the exact same logic, because racists discuss people's mutable characteristics as well.
>I’m discussing communication styles, which are mutable, and the ideologies that tend to be associated with them, which are also mutable.
You literally just described "SPEAK ENGLISH" and "if only Black people spoke properly and wore their pants up above their waist" (both mutable characteristics).
>Yeah, it's suspect when people complain about getting judged for their views, then fail to state what the views are.
Not at all. Definitely not in the era of "cancel culture".
>It often turns out that the views in question are something that people have good reason to disapprove of - racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.
It rarely turns out that the views in question are something that people have good reason to disapprove of - racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.
A few examples from past and current companies I've worked at:
1. Titling an apolitical presentation "Make Front-ends Great Again" caused several leftist activist employees to explode on Slack about fascist White supremacy culture.
2. "Believing" (this is an objective fact) that trans-women are biological male humans is hate speech and a firable offence.
3. Expressing the opinion that the company openly donating to shady BLM foundations[0], or any political group for that matter is not a good idea was shouted down as supporting the fascist, racist, White supremacist status quo.
The list goes on. These basic examples are more than enough to get a target on your back, and possibly fired.
> it's hard not to occasionally get angry when people keep talking about life-or-death issues as if they're some sort of abstract galaxy brain
I think that's the only way we can talk about life and death issues when we disagree. Of all the death I've been close to in my life, let's pick my father who died at least partly as a result of years of incompetent medical care in my hometown that wasn't uncovered until he landed in an ER in a different city. Does that give me the right get to angry and shut down conversations about medical care if people say something I disagree with?
I think there are a lot of people who would answer "yes," because they assume that a personal emotional connection to an issue, grounded in experience, always pushes people towards the truth. They love the rule that if somebody present has been personally affected by an issue, then they should get angry, and everybody else present should shut up and accept whatever they have to say. But they believe that because of the bubble they live in. On the rare occasions I get outside my bubble, I find that people's personal experiences most often deepen their commitment to whatever they already believed, even if it's something I think is wrong. For example, I met a conservative Christian who blamed permissive liberal culture for their gay brother suffering from drug addition and periodic homelessness (instead of thinking that maybe growing up gay in a conservative Christian household had something to do with it.) And of course you meet the people who consider themselves authorities on global warming because they grew up on a farm and remember how their family suffered during drought years. You don't know shit about the weather unless you've lived through that!
In truth both sides of the political divide in America tend to think that the other side must be emotionally disconnected and inauthentic, and emotional growth would naturally lead them to the truth. Growing up in a small town, I was frequently told that the reason I didn't believe in God was that I wasn't emotionally open to him. I was repressed and disconnected, too cerebral, and that's why I didn't feel His love. Most conservatives think that one reason liberals are able to believe such crazy things is that they derive their emotional sustenance from ideology instead of authentic connection with their neighbors and their community. Most liberals think the same thing about conservatives. Everyone thinks that their side's views are more grounded in authentic experience.
There is also a minority of people who value intellect over emotion, and those people believe the opposite: that their side is more rational and fact-driven, the other side is blindly emotional, and their side would triumph if emotion were excluded from discourse. That's not what I'm saying. I'm only saying that a personal connection to an issue shouldn't be treated as a trump card that can shut down a conversation.
Oh, I absolutely agree to the need to talk about life-and-death issues when we disagree. I don't want to shut down these conversations, but I want the conversation to be in good faith, and for people to really listen to each other's points. In particular, if someone does get angry or otherwise emotional in tone, that shouldn't forfeit their opportunity to present their opinion and supporting facts (as long as they aren't aggressive or belligerent about it).
It's entirely possible that I miss-interpreted what the GP meant by "fighting words". My interpretation was "passionate argument" not "verbal abuse."
I think this effect is actually highly dependent on who you are. In my experience people have actually become more open to discuss many subjects with me. I'm also visibly nonwhite in a white-majority country. In my youth, I was frequently bullied, harassed, and made to feel unsafe because of my nonwhite status. This has become less acceptable now that I'm older. I've also found I feel safer in cutting out racists from my social circle, whereas in the past I had to smile and accept being told immigrants like me are shitstains on the country while I am "one of the good ones".
There's pretty good reason to be quite concrete. The government is infringing on many peoples rights, aiming to force child rape victims to also become pre-teen parents, or to keep dead fetuses in the womb to promote infections for the sake of somebody else's religious purity.
Becoming concrete and opinionated isn't happening in a vaccuum. The high and mighty detached conversation was for 20 years+ ago
I avoided instances to avoid distraction from the main topic...
Nothing is worse online than expecting a specific on-topic discussion and then seeing a long trail of comments that have nothing to do with the source topic... hah. cough Reddit.
yeah. I'm lucky enough to have several circles of cafe/bar friends who also enjoy open conversations. Even if we all frequently disagree, that's part of the fun. I've run into so many of this new younger generation who seem incapable of abstractly considering a topic without dragging their emotional baggage into it. I guess it's a result of helicopter parenting and social media reinforcement of the notion that speech you don't like is a form of violence. For better or worse, I just hold my ground and ease them into the idea that we can disagree and still not be enemies. Just the same as I used to do with right wing lunatics for most of my life.
its all identity politics. its driving this sort of tribal behaviour that a. only let's you think in right and wrong, leaving no room for ambiguity or nuance and b. forms an in-group and an out-group to maintain an us versus them mentality. a lot of my peers do this. i don't know why. might have something to do with me not using social apps for consuming content idk
How so? By meeting outside to talk it has been widely confirmed by scientists to be better in preventing contraction of the virus... In addition to that, the one time I caught it was when I attended an indoor event for an extended period of time.... I don't however force my personal views on the matter upon others, it's just how I personally operate with people who don't live with me.
If it’s unwise to have conversations indoors for the next few decades, that’s a much more corrosive and concerning issue for society than everything else being discussed in this thread!
I doubt we would have ever discovered fire or invented the wheel if we didn’t have a nice warm cave to ruminate in.
I've rarely seen someone upset about social, economic or political issues that don't affect them. Given the very nature of social, economic or political issues though as matters of public concern by their definition that's also pretty rare to begin with.
The article talks about false personalization, giving the example of someone being wrongly upset about a friend not inviting them to a social event, misinterpreting something that didn't involve them.
Views on social issues inherently involve most people. If you hold, and exercise politically an opinion that as a result has a real, negative effect on me being defensive is reasonable.
>I've rarely seen someone upset about social, economic or political issues that don't affect them.
I’ve seen it a lot, some of the most vehemently lefty Marxists I’ve known or met came from very well off backgrounds. Class guilt is very much a thing. I’m fact the dissociation between middle class socialists and actual working class people has become a significant factor in UK politics recently.
Don't those issues affect all of us? I'm not poor, but having a lot of people without opportunities around me leads to rising crime, homeless camp and it's genuinely disheartening. I'm vehemently in favor of UBI even though I'd be likely a net payer. I don't want misery around me.
I completely agree, I think the comment I'm replying to was taking a very narrow view of how problems in society propagate, but the ways we are all affected are very different.
Political and economic opinions do not have to be purely self-serving or beneficial to their holder. Do you think whites in the US who agitated for civil rights were uneffected by segregation? How about Germans who helped Jews hide or escape during the Nazi period? Society is more than just each individual, it is a whole which cannot be reasonably considered in the small.
An eye-opening perspective came to me a few years ago when I first heard the quote,” When you’re 20, you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place“[0]
That can be good and bad, but is a personally useful frame of reference for the world. It helps to not take things too personally, but also to be intentionally active in people’s lives when I _want_ to be considered.
But it's only half true. The anxiety over how others' perceive you is perhaps overblown, but you'd discount a whole lot of anxiety as irrational if you say that nobody forms judgments about you.
I used to think that way, too. I used to tell myself, "This is who I am," "I am authentic," "Who cares what they think."
If your boss thinks you are an incompetent professional, or a rude and inadequate human being, or a weakling who gives in under pressure, it doesn't even matter if they are right or wrong, it's a big deal. The same goes for friends, family and all other people with whom we interact. We may or may not care, or care about some and not others, we may prefer "authenticity" to "appearance," but it is relevant. One thing I have learned over time: people think about you, not always and not all people. And you think about others, not all and not all the time.
The "no one cares what you do" is often an overreaction to insecurity.
It crosses boundary when it affects others though. i.e. in professional settings and performance related categories.
Being authentic does not translate to being a jerk or straight up sucking at work. But I don't quite worry about the fact that I'm growing bald or wearing a 15 year old tshirt half the time.
> But I don't quite worry about the fact that I'm growing bald or wearing a 15 year old tshirt half the time.
That's a very good example, and I use it for a question.
Let's say you are growing bald, you have been single for years, you have problems finding a partner, and it happens that (it is largely true according to my experience) women prefer men with hair (there are women who prefer bald, but having hair allows you to razor shave, so it means you can do hair and no hair).
It is expected that a hair transplant, for which you have the necessary money, will increase your chances of finding a partner from 10% to 70%, however you want to interpret these numbers.
Do you think that undergoing a hair transplant means (a) worrying excessively about the opinion of others, and thus you don't do it, (b) realizing that the world works a certain way and that listening to its feedback and adapting is, at least occasionally, a wise decision, and then having a transplant?
If you change your physical appearance to increase the chances of finding a partner, you are increasing the chances of attracting the wrong people.
Why do you assume that attracting more people (b), or having a partner, is better than being single (a)?
I'm not sure if adapting is always better. Especially, when morality and rules in society are evolving constantly. If society prefered tattooed guys, over non-tattooed, should you embrace your personality (a) or put ink under your skin (b) to be more desirable?
If we began, correctly, according to genetic and sociological findings, to think that our behavior is as much defined by genes as our physical traits are, we would also begin to think differently about ourselves.
That is, we might begin to think that our generosity, intelligence, kindness, and admirable determination are as much a product of ourselves--that is, of our choices, sufferings, struggles, and genius--as a full head of hair or being long of legs.
But we tend to believe, especially in modern times (think about the ancient Greek "kalokagathìa"), that our character, our intelligence should be admired and make candid souls fall in love with us.
In contrast, physical traits that are not so popular, say, among the ladies--whether being short, bald or graceful in movement like an elephant in a china shop--we tend to believe, or want to believe, that are of little importance, something circumstantial, which only superficial people would focus on.
I'm pretty utilitarian about things like this, being authentic here just means I don't quite care if my hair is gone, but if someone who I do care about cares about that my hair stays, I might be convinced to go through some of these hoops.
What I'm trying to get at is that most people are way too concerned about things that does not really matter. Either other people form an opinion that has no relevance, or that other people don't have an opinion but anxiety kicks in and one think they do. There are perfectly valid cases where opinions will have an impact but they are mostly going to be very obvious and rare in between.
It’s not easy to just stop caring about what people think of you or a lot of people would do it. We’re built to respond to social pressure whether we like it or not. The few that can not care (ie sociopaths) do incredibly well in our current society.
Of course people form judgments about you. But it is very easy to exaggerate how consequential these judgments are. In the end, people are remarkably tolerant. They may think e.g. that you are an inconsiderate lout but that is perfectly ok with them as long as this does not hamper them in their own pursuits. Call it constructive disinterest.
one way to look at it might be realizing that people mostly don't judge you but a stereotype they project onto you. or simply have their judgement clouded by their mood. with a bad mood seeking for people to judge badly and good mood seeking to judge people positively. also what they judge about you is often more telling about what is going on with them and their life, so at the end of the day most people judge themselves. in all meditation practices the goal is to stop judging and instead observe - for a good reason - it's healing b/c then you also stop judging yourself all the time.
> people mostly don't judge you but a stereotype they project onto you.
This point deserves expansion.
Goffman's approach is how I first learned it. In order to explain the complexities of the world including the social world, people learn to typify behaviors. Typifications can become frames when they are used to interpret people's actions[1], "She did this because she's a woman" or "He did this because he's tired" where woman and tired are framing devices. Even "I did this because I was upset."
It takes a lot of work to resist framing people's actions. Perhaps it's even impossible to truly apprehend unframed behavior since even language itself is a framing device. But, seeing people closer to who they are is always valuable, and overly applying frames or rushing to frame peoples' actions does them an injustice to seeing them for who they are.
1. These are specifically frames which explain behavior. There are an infinite variety of frames. Browsers are frames, this comment being on HN is a frame.
I came upon this today and thought you might enjoy it.
> An absolute perspective, one of unconditioned objectivity, would, as Nietzsche says, have us “think an eye which cannot be thought at all, an eye turned in no direction at all, an eye where the active and interpretative powers are to be suppressed, absent, but through which seeing still becomes a seeing-something, so it is an absurdity and nonconcept of eye that is demanded.”
That's a helpful perspective. Whenever I feel social anxiety or the spotlight effect creep up, I also try to remember how little I'm actually thinking about what others are doing around me. Maybe it's obvious, but simply flipping the point of view in that moment can help you not judge yourself so much.
Yes I do something similar and it seems to help. I'll ask myself, "How do I imagine this person might currently feel when they think about __?" And rotate thru different scenarios. Often I'll quickly realize how uncertain I am about their internal situation. I like how you talk about flipping it, maybe I can imagine how that person might imagine how I'm feeling right now as well. Thank you!
This of course only applies to the people who don't matter.
When you're going to face prison time for using your rights or helping other people use their rights, people are clearly thinking about you.
There's no lack of doctors in very public view right now.
Maybe nobody cares specifically about the doctor in particular, but they don't care about not ruining the doctor's life, let alone the woman who gets the abortion
People still care very much about what Warren Buffett says... I think it's all about the value you generate during your lifetime, nut there's also the factor that people care about what Buffett says because they want to gain benefits from what he says, not because he's a particularly radiant guy and the life of the party.
I just scanned the first few paragraphs, but saved this as I find it to be a great reminder. I try to read lists of the various human mis-perceptions periodically to build "muscle memory" into my consiousness. I first started looking into this about 10 years ago when I was baffled by the way people acted at work. Now that I realize that "rational" is not default behavior for most people I am way less confused in my daily life. Still amazed though. :)
When I read the first example, my initial thought was that the author wasn’t considering the friend who WAS invited. There was only one extra ticket; if the friend had invited the author instead of the other friend, then THEY would have been in the same situation wondering why they weren’t invited. In other words, the author was not thinking of the invited friend as having the same feelings and desires as the author.
I think this happens a lot. People get upset that their feelings aren’t considered, but fail to realize that everyone else is in the same boat. Only one friend gets to go, why is your not being invited a bigger sleight than the alternative?
I think about this sort of thing a lot in various zero sum situations. For example, people get upset in video games where they don’t win a majority of their matches, but fail to realize that for every winner, there is a loser. If they won a majority of their matches, someone else has to lose a majority of theirs.
It’s ok, but you also need to understand that everyone else is doing the same thing. You shouldn’t be surprised when someone else does the same thing you are doing, and if you expect other people to treat you better than others, you are in for disappointment.
Most of us treat our friends better than strangers. The closer we are, the more we want to spend time with them and give to them. When your close friend invites someone else to something like this -- long event, lots of time together, probably expensive -- it's understandable to ask whether they consider that person a better friend than you. You are probably wrong to jump to that as a conclusion, according to the article and my experience.
This person's reaction has nothing to do with the third person getting invited, and everything to do with them _not_ getting invited and what it says about their relationship with the gift giver.
Your statements seem orthogonal to what the author is actually thinking and concerned about.
If you have a strongly defined worldview and set of acceptable social guidelines and boundaries, then it's much easier to not fall into the "mind reading" pitfall. The author broaches this angle of the solution with the STUF model.
CBT is definitely the best way to go with changing your behavior. If the placebo effect can be up to 50% effective (depends on the study), that's scientific proof that mind over matter is a real phenomenon. Why not tap into it?
I believe the article serves as a nice and quick introduction to CBT. That shit works, but I would not say it's a matter of mind over matter, it's more like realising that your behaviour depends on how you feel and your thoughts --conscious or not-- are what control your feelings.
The tools of cognitive behavioral therapy are great to employ whether things are perfect or dire. Being present and mindful, and practicing those things when it counts: new experiences, events, spending time with loved ones only pays dividends.
I'd rephrase these two observations into more universal terms than personalization and mind-reading.
During a long emotional crisis I sought out existential therapy. The things it taught me can be summarized as: Everyone is having a bad day too and dealing with as much shit as you, and you are not the center of the universe even though you think you're the center of your own narrative. Once you internalize that, it's impossible to be too offended or even worried about slights from other people.
Additionally, we're products of these circumstances and anyone may be any way at any time for reasons you don't have a clue about.
Assume they mean well and prepare for the worst. But ultimately if someone slights you, it doesn't matter if it's because they think you're an asshole. You're you, they're them, and you're wasting your time if you're trying to be liked by people by being something other than yourself.
There's this thing in the culture about taking maximum offense at anything and everything possible. It's as though it's a hobby or sport. It also seems to be correlated with the number of viewers. If it's just 1-on-1, it's rare. If there's an audience, it's common, especially if the audience is social media.
Many times people will be put on mute or ostracized even without their knowing...
Many people still follow others just waiting for their downfall because of one thing they've said. The offender rarely gets a chance to know why, or that they're even being muted.
Modern social media controls often translate into and facilitate toxic habits in people... (e.g. Unfollow but still stay friends).
Perhaps we should possibly get rid of following altogether based on how social media now (Like TikTok) shares content to people outside of follower bases, and how Twitter does not show content to all followers.
Sheesh, some people are incapable of taking offense at anything and would love to. Don't stigmatize those people who have trouble feeling feelings. ;-)
I often think what Richard Feynman says "What do you care what other people think?"
In general I've found people don't really spend a lot of time dwelling on other people's actions. They have their own problems.
We are all our own worst critics. In most cases it's best to let things go until you have more information or feedback. Otherwise take note of your actions and try to let go of guessing what other people think.
If your intentions are good but you think you might have screwed up, try to give yourself the benefit of the doubt and return the favor in the reverse.
I took this to the extreme end over the past couple of years. Like all things, there's a balance. On one extreme there's apathy. On the other anxiety or worse.
There are a lot of similarities between CBT and Vipassana meditation.
Like the mind reading and personalisation Vipassana medidation suggest we have `sankharas` loosely translated as formations which is kind of a poison in our body and mind. After a consistent meditation you can examine and make peace with them. I'm not an expert but it worked for me, was kinda magical and interesting.
CBT and meditation has a lot to offer to our lives in our little concrete jungle.
An old stoic method. If we invested more energy in improving ourselves for ourselves without comparing and wondering what people will think, we would be better off.
CBT is the neatest thing since sliced bread. It's easy to learn, easy to apply in daily life and works to create a more balanced mood almost effortlessly. It's stops making sense to get so emotional about things. It's also free from material on YouTube and elsewhere. I think it a very handy tool for dealing with the constant stimulation of the modern world
I have recently come to realize that life can suck pretty bad if you don't have a high opinion of yourself.
In short you have to believe that you are the best regardless of what the real world feedback is.
Belief in absence of evidence is the very basis of religion , which is something we did ever since the very beginning of the specie, so it is certain that the brain is capable of going that route.
The extra step is to go from belief in absence of evidence (which is typical of religion) to belief in absence of evidence AND also absence of real world positive feedback all around you (which is needed for strong self-belief).
The person who can master this skill is going to have a hell of a good time, the separation between self-confidence and actual real world feedback would be so fundamental and pivotal in humans that it would completely eclipse the separation between Church and State.
It's unclear what utility this mindset has and how it will not lead to self-delusion.
If I convince myself I'm the most visionary product manager who ever lived, and I really believe that, it will either a) create blindspots and prevent me from proper self-reflection and self-correction or b) force me into a state of cognitive dissonance where I believe I'm the best, while knowing I'm not, creating a new and unnecessary problem for myself as I try to navigate the world.
Feedback from those around you is an important form of evidence. While it is true that ideally one should not internalize that feedback or bow to its pressure if it's related to a moral or ethical stance, it is similarly problematic to discard it entirely, and delude oneself into a form of irrational hubris.
> ...to belief in absence of evidence AND also absence of real world positive feedback all around you (which is needed for strong self-belief)
Belief in yourself is important, yes. Not taking feedback personally is important, yes.
> It's unclear what utility this mindset has and how it will not lead to self-delusion.
You gotta believe you are the best and let the chips fall where they may.
Matter of fact if self-confidence and faith is high enough, you'd be having such a blast that you won't care where the chips fall at all.
It's a way of cutting the corner, before you'd need accomplishments to be happy with yourself...after acquiring the faith you skip to the good part directly.
> you'd be having such a blast that you won't care where the chips fall at all
Why is this a good thing? This sounds like delusion, not having a blast.
Humility is required to self-correct when you're off track. Humility and blind faith are incompatible. Humility and self confidence can co-exist, however.
My religious parents will tell you how happy their faith makes them, but they also managed to traumatize their kids in the process. Blind faith leads to blind spots, predictably. Blind faith leads to dogmatism, which is at the root of today's tribalism. Blind faith should not be celebrated. Blind faith begets religion, of the god-variety and otherwise.
But blind faith isn't required to be confident in oneself.
It sounds counterintuitive, but If you want true peace, accepting and embracing your limitations is a freeing endeavor. The stoics figured this out, and have quite a few wise things to say about it.
Maybe you and I have different interpretations of what you mean by blind faith, but the version I've been exposed to is a road that leads to more problems than it solves.
You are approaching it like a problem to solve with the mindset of somebody who is trying to get self-confidence as a step in the direction of building something or achieve results.
If you manage to get the self-confidence at a sky high level you won't care about building something or achieving goals.
Mentally they'd be redundant and sort of pushing on a string given that your self satisfaction is maxed out already.
You can't grasp it now because you imagine a person like that as deluded and 'not going anywhere' or even worse regressing, but if you manage to get in that state of mind, you'd be the one living it and having a blast inside your own head, not being an external observer judging.
If you think about it's a way of cheating Mother Nature, for the rules are that she releases endorphines and satsifaction after a job well done. The person who manages to get in that state of mind endogenously would be de-facto ambushing Mother Nature and beating her up until she releases the endorphines without anything in exchange for it.
I don't think it's about convincing yourself of anything. A leap of faith doesn't work that way, you can't just say "I believe" and delude yourself into that belief. It requires actually having faith, which is experiential.
A leap of faith and blind faith are not the same thing at all.
A leap of faith is evidence of self-belief, and is hopefully founded on some reasonable basis. A leap of faith takes something you know, and makes a bet based on it.
Blind faith is based on nothing other than a wish, and persists even when presented with hard evidence that disagrees.
Absence of a positive self image is pretty much the definition of depression. Normally people have a defense mechanism against this in the form of cognitive dissonance. This is why people are so good at contextualising as the protagonist, or excusing their own wrongdoing, but on the flipside the better you are at honest self assessment the more vulnerable you are to breaking this defense mechanism.
I like this passage from the very underrated book "Winners" by Alastair Campbell.
He writes when he discusses leadership:
"Obviously, no skin should be so thick that you become impervious to critics who may have a point. But it does need to be thick enough to live with the hurt that criticism and attack may inflict. And thick enough to withstand criticisms that are just part and parcel of being a leader in any situation where others are entitled to express a view. Let them. But don’t let them stop you taking decisions that have to be taken. And don’t let second-guessing of what they might say guide the decision-making process."
Taking something personally does not mean getting mad or assuming some motive, but being that you're the only recipient and are a person, makes it personal by default.
When there is a conflict, poor communicators make it about the other person, using labels, rather than making it about the situation by indicating specific behaviour in a given moment. This is sadly very frequent and people are trained to expect things to be made personal.
If someone is labelling you and saying "don't take things personally" you can asume ignorance rather than evilness, and try to explain the difference, between personal labels and pointing a given situational behaviour.
It won't be over, because then the conflict will be about behaviours, and people have different expectations for those, what's ok and what it isn't.
Culture is a collection of expected behaviours, this is how it finally clicked for me that actually defining a culture in a startup is important when you think about it.
That's why hiring people you have worked with works so well, you don't expend time making expectations explicit.
If you don't want to read 10,000 words, why do you want to comment on the words? It makes little sense to read a four-word title and just assume that you know what the rest of it says.
Cognitive biases like the ones that are described in the article are the proverbial colors of the glasses with which you look at all what happens around you. If they are too negative you will react with fear, anger, rage, and then, like a self fulfilled prophecy, people around you will start reacting accordingly. Or put it another way, if you believe that something bad is going to happen, something bad is bound to happen but in an unexpected way.
Learning about one's cognitive biases is a powerful tool but is also really hard.
If you are an engineer, you could be making more money than your manager within months. In the post-COVID era it really isn't that difficult not to care about some jerk, unless you are a particularly sensitive individual.
My point is that work is not that personal anymore. The best example is probably Amazon, which is running out of people in some areas due to massive churn over the last few years. No point in taking stuff personally in a highly volatile environment - both you and your employer are expected to be replaced.
I read the article as some general advice for people who tend to "personalize" everything, I don't see how that relates to one specific type of relationship between individuals and society at large. I mean, even if "work is not personal anymore", there are still basically all other aspects of one's life which can lead to situations where you'd take things personally when you shouldn't.
Anyway, the whole article kind of falls flat for me. Maybe it's a generational thing, maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe I'm just lucky to have been built this way; but the idea of being anxious about what others think of you or "personalization" (i.e, not being able to read a social interaction and assume that the problem is with yourself) is almost alien... do people really need to be told about "distinguishing your feelings from your thoughts", and "accepting a reasonable amount of uncertainty"?
LinkedIn has worked wonders for me lately. So the key is something like networking, networking, then some networking. There is an acute shortage of senior engineers, tech leads, etc. that is not going to go away anytime soon.
People seem to be increasingly concrete in their judgements about social, economic, and political issues that have nothing to do with them as individuals, and often it results in fighting words, and that's crazy to me. A deep polarization is coming from many fronts, and it also over-emphasizes issues, making people far more offensive and defensive than before -- possibly heightened because of pandemic-related isolation and economic stress.
I think a lot of people judge the world based on tropes... The small-minded view based only on the people they've observed, rather than being able to place themselves in the shoes of others they don't know, and it's a growing problem when narrowly focused people like this lead and make decisions for us all. I think we really need to reject the use of tropes in discussions as fact because it's toxic, but at the same time, I work hard to not be triggered by anything that's well intended. We all make mistakes, and as long as you can choose to walk away, being misunderstood is a small price to pay for regular human communication.