I Have Learned

August 14, 2011

I have learned that I am an optimist.

The amount of poorly informed, rigid, Luddite, Malthusian claptrap that is pouring out seemingly everywhere is astonishing. I’ll try to counter some of this stuff but I don’t think much of it is founded in reason. You can’t reason somebody out of what they weren’t reasoned into in the first place.

7 comments… add one
  • michael reynolds Link

    For most people reason is a mechanism for rationalizing a prejudice or personal preference. First comes the emotion, then comes the felt need to explain same to themselves and others.

    So to convince someone of something they prefer not to believe involves a certain degree of bullying — you have to deprive them of their rationalization which leaves them exposed as purely emotional creatures. In rare cases the recognition that they’ve lost their capacity for rationalization forces them to re-examine the underlying assumptions. More often it renders them incapable of proselytizing. Usually it accomplishes nothing.

    As for objective data that’s irrelevant to just about everyone. The percentage of people who actually rank objective truth over feelings and intuition and self-interest is minuscule.

  • Andy Link

    Micheal,

    In my experience, bullying rarely works, especially verbal bullying on the internet. Usually it ends up doing the opposite – confirming their own views that the other side is a bunch of ignorant and nefarious hooligans.

    Personally I think Dave’s approach of taking a moderate tone and focusing on arguments is the best strategy.

    Your comment reminds me of this excellent essay I’ve kept bookmarked:

    It’s not just that partisans are vulnerable to believing fatuous nonsense. It’s that their beliefs, whether sensible or otherwise, about a whole range of empirical questions are determined by their political identity. There’s no epistemologically sound reason why one’s opinion about, say, the effects of gun control should predict one’s opinion about whether humans have contributed to climate change or how well Mexican immigrants are assimilating — these things have absolutely nothing to do with each other. Yet the fact is that views on these and a host of other matters are indeed highly correlated with each other. And the reason is that people start with political identities and then move to opinions about how the world works, not vice versa.

  • sam Link

    @Michael

    “For most people reason is a mechanism for rationalizing a prejudice or personal preference. First comes the emotion, then comes the felt need to explain same to themselves and others.”

    Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.
    David Hume

  • PD Shaw Link

    “Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy.” A. Lincoln

  • sam Link

    Deal with it.

  • michael reynolds Link

    Andy:
    Oh, I agree it doesn’t work very well. (And I love the quote you supplied.) But dispassionate logic works even less well since very few people are susceptible to it.

    Sam:
    Hume is, well, he’s Hume, but I would part with him on that. (With all due respect for one of the very few philosophers capable of writing a comprehensible paragraph.) I strive to separate passion from reason. Like all mortals, I fail, but I think the effort is worth making. I may want to add passion and reason back together, but first I want them as separate ingredients.

    PD:
    Score one for Abe. Like he needs to have score run up any further.

  • Ken Hoop Link

    I certainly believe James Kunstler is on the right track.
    http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/08/high-corn.html

    You don’t, Dave?

    Well then start complaining about the outsourcing of our jobs
    and be a part of the possible solution.

    http://economyincrisis.org/content/indiana-senator-introduces-bill-encouraging-disastrous-free-trade-10-asian-nations

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