On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 6:06 PM, Platonist Guitar Cowboy < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 4:44 PM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I think this is a quite interesting read: >> >> http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ >> >> It made me think of the everything list. We clearly have members of the >> conventional tribes (red, blue and gray), with all the predictable >> frictions. >> > > There are thousands of social, psychological models that group people into > categories. The difference between quality and mush here, is that I can see > where an author is going ("what kind of people/world/proposition does this > suggest; how would that look like with varying degrees of > truth/implementation: relaxed to radical"), given that I put on his red, > blue, grey glasses or whatever. > I think the big question in this article is why do people criticise in blank statements groups that they conspicuously appear to belong to. I also observed an increase in this behaviour recently. E.g. men saying: "I'm a feminist, all men are pigs". Or white people saying that white people are to blame for everything, or americans saying that americans are dumb an so on. This is perplexing given what we know about human behaviour. I would say that the ontological status of such categories is beside the point. What I find convincing in the article is that implied categories are being sneaked into the discourse. So "americans" really means "the red tribe", gays really means "the blue tribe" and so on. Then I like the idea that real tolerance makes you sweat. If it doesn't cause you pain, it's fake tolerance. > > A model has to refer to something. And even then, even when we do our > best, I feel Gödel's incompleteness is such a double edged sword, it will > devour (thankfully), any set of categories in some theory about "all kinds > of people". > But there is indeed a lot of empirical evidence for memeplexes in political affiliation, so I do think the color tribes refer to something. If you ask a random person their position on gay marriage, you can infer with a lot of certainty their position on gun ownership and climate change, even though these three topics are completely unrelated. Of course some people analyse each issue separately by themselves, but that is quite rare. Even more rare (perhaps with N=0) to be able to do it free of bias. > > At the base of things, I see therefore no in- or out-group, but people who > cling to their categories radically (doesn't matter if they are moderate or > freaks) > But the entire point of clinging to a category is to be accepted in some group, and a group can only exist in relation to an out-group. The group "atheists" exists because religious people exist. If everyone was an atheist, nobody would use such a label anymore. There is no "pro-breathing" group. > and people who at least aspire to and can point to histories where they > minimize harm + share joy doing so, intuiting Gödel a bit. > I suspect everyone thinks they are doing that... > > The racism/religion bigot stuff are just tasteless, low examples of the > former. > True believers think they are sharing joy and reducing harm by spreading religious "truth". Even the true believers in racism think that everything would be better with more racial segregation. I would even say that, by showing some belief in the fundamental evilness of these people, you are already betraying who your out-group is. :) > Of course there is truth to such assertions, nobody doubts this. But where > such reasoning leads, the self-fulfilling prophecy scenarios that it sets > whole cultures into (Terror as a global threat, when it was just isolated > gangsters years ago; the West brought in the modern weapons to fertilize > tensions centuries old, that had been suppressed by violent dictatorship > recently) is brainwashing ourselves into truth of increasingly violent > spirals of politics. > > Cui bono, and what are proposed solutions? > I see this more as an effort toward clarity about what is really going on more than an attempt at solving any social issue. But I do think that clarity tends to entail the solution. > > Spud said "nothing", which is consistent with the rhetoric that since we > can't achieve cultural, economic advances, we should invest more into > military action. As if this will solve it. > And this is the crux of the mystery to me. Spud is in your out-group (and mine). Yet, this list doesn't collapse. > > Sure you have to put out fires, but without more freedom to search for > solutions + dumb media sensational feedback loop, that security gained by > temporary military measure will not provide the durable stability to move > forward towards common goals of higher living standard attainment etc., the > implementation of which should be at least as clear, convincing and > accurate as the weapons/people we send to fight. Otherwise, what are they > fighting for, other than downward infinite spiral? > > So am I red, blue, grey, or pink or what now? PGC > You're blue, I'm grey and spud is red. I'm not sure if grey is a real thing because most of my friends are blue, so maybe grey is just a type of blue. Of course, if you make enough distinctions you end up with individuals. And of course the categories don't _really_ exist exist :) Cheers Telmo. > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. 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