Been noticing that (neo)liberals, not even just fascists/conservatives, dont know what words mean. Its becoming harder and harder to talk to people when they dont know how words even work. Twice this week people have stumbled into conversations I’m having and either havent read the conversation or just only a response and fucked their way into refuting their own point.
Its driving me up a wall to have some one say “The west is liberalism personified. Its the best thing ever” for me to respond “that doesnt make any sense, how would you even justify that? what about the world wars, imperialism, slavery, 400 years of liberal history of primitive accumulation and exploitation” and then for another dipshit to come in and say “you seem to be conflating the west and liberalism commiecuck.”
What. What the fuck did you just say. That was the basis of the entire conversation. This person isnt responding to the OP, refuting the OP, and even follows the OP and likes their posts. Are these people radioactive? Is interacting with these people and dunking on them just a memetic hazard at this point?
I dont see how someone or anyone can operate on a daily basis while being unable to parse something like that. It makes me feel like these people are just bot accounts, operating purely on hallucinations post to post. And this was just one of two this week, I’ve had a few others but the brain seepage seems to be accelerating out of control.
tl;dr America is cooked when even the smug “brain geniuses” cant seem to function.
Yeah, I meet a lot of people who have no idea how an actual argument is structured or how to identify and address someone’s underlying point.
One example that comes to mind from my own life is an argument with someone about “frivolous” science funding. I made the argument that it’s hard to argue that a scientific project is frivolous when science is so often advanced by researchers finding something they weren’t even looking for. I gave the example of Pavlov, who was just looking for ways to collect more dog saliva and accidentally discovered classical conditioning. But he fixated on my choice of example, simply said “Pavlov was an animal abuser” and completely ignored the actual point I was trying to make. Like, I don’t even disagree with him about Pavlov, but my argument had nothing to do with whether Pavlov was a good person.
I run into this problem a lot too. It seems like regardless of how people phrase things oftentimes they just mean, “thing is bad” or “thing causes bad things” so they will assume that you are going to say whatever your best example of, “thing is good.” Science funds assholes isnt a good counter argument in that situation. If you just kept things super simple and said something like “penicillin comes from bread mold.” They might have responded more positively.
Im on the spectrum so I’m always parsing through the ways in which other’s logic is different from mine.
People seem to use words as gestures rather than building blocks and its super frustrating for me.
My favorite example of this is the alchemist who accidentally discovered elemental phosphorous by repeatedly boiling his own piss
Exactly how saying the word “Uyghur” is just China=bad in actual content. Most libs know nothing about Xinjiang, nothing about Uyghurs, and rarely even spell it in am acceptable way. Propaganda often works to just have some phrase mean bad and be repeatable
I got into this argument with my uncle a few years back when he was complaining about “frivolous studies on worms when we can just use common sense.” This guy has a degree from a private university and was in the Air Force doing nerd (and ghoul) shit.
I tried explaining using a similar argument you used. Science is a gradual process where we try to eliminate/reduce bias to advance our knowledge. You can’t do fuck all going off your gut because you end up with non-falsifiable results nobody can replicate. Yeah, it’s tedious to have a ten year study on the mating habits of worms in New Hampshire vs. worms in Nebraska. But it’s necessary in order to find answers and eliminate wrong ones.
And again, like you say, so much of science is accidental. Penicillin, insulin, and x-rays were all stumbled upon by chance when their creators were working on something else. Then there’s the “common sense” catastrophes like phrenology, creationism, or that time those guys thought they discovered cold fusion.
There is nothing common or sensible about common sense.
Common Sense isnt.
that time those guys thought they discovered cold fusion.
Many such cases
I think another key issue is that most people view situations and events from a insular self and so their own sense of feeling toward an event is more valued than what a statement on a event means within a specific context. i.e. that America has troops that have committed horrible war crimes gets seen by so many as “your specific friend/child in the military is a grapist/murderer and should be put on death row” because having loyalty to something outweighs any actual realistic context when someone is emotionally invested. Similarly there’s the “vote blue no matter who” liberal rhetoric that gets proven false when progressives step up to bat but god forbid you point this out to a liberal as it’s seen as wanting to support Nazis (never mind that dems are Nazi enablers/their own flavor of fascist).
Are we really doing the “grapist” thing here?
The other term gets filtered out and sadly Trevor Moor forever planted it in my brain. Honestly wondering though if there’s a similar shorthand term that could be used that isn’t juvenile.
i believe terms regarding SA are terms to avoid without a CW and shouldnt be used without good reason; while I dont always agree with this stuff I did actually edit my post before submission for two different instances of mental health language that there was discussion about. I did actually like doing that, felt neat. Although there are a few terms I do want to use that get autofiltered (degen). As long as we avoid “unalived” that shit is weird.
We should add “unalived” to the slur filter
Pavlov, who was just looking for ways to collect more dog saliva
Is that true? What a weird and cool example.
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On the bright side, you can look at the man-made horrors and know that they are within your comprehension.
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Burnt out teachers that take it out on the students, many such cases.
(she fucking hated me I don’t know why every odd teacher has that issue with me)
Everyone I know had at least one teacher like that.
I think the “sardonic dr house internet brain genius” persona that really rose to prominence last decade was always actually a type of slow-burn psychic damage that leaves it’s victim’s unable to actually learn anything new on a level deeper than “collecting more snapple facts with which to bluegeon the unworthy stupids.”
Like if your self image and persona revolves around always being the smartest person in the room despite evidence to the contrary, at a certain point you lose the ability to admit to yourself that you don’t know something.
sardonic dr house internet brain genius
The condescending/contemptuous/antagonistic aspects of debate-nerdism just completely fucked online discourse imo, but maybe it was always fucked. I still do it sometimes and it just leaves a nasty taste in my mouth afterwards. Related to that, I’ve found that people are more than willing to let you know what you mean or believe. When it happens from friends or family it’s incredibly frustrating.
It’s hard to say if this is a lack of literacy skills and comprehension skills, or a lack of general argumentative and critical thinking skills, or just plain old stubborn ignorance and a refusal to “lose” an argument.
From my experience talking to Americans, there do seem to be a lot of people over there who will just flat out refuse to ever admit that they don’t understand something, or don’t know something, and will insist that they are “right” regardless of what the actual circumstances of the conversation are, even if they literally refute their own points, it doesn’t matter, they are right, you are wrong, shut up. It’s a culture of self-indulgence and narcissism.
So much this - as someone who lives in the US, I find some solace discussing matters with people who don’t, because apart from a few exceptions, it’s exactly like you said. There is no critical thinking, only “winning”. I try to stay grounded and remind myself that I’m not insane by interacting outside of the US.
It’s incredibly demoralizing watching the people around you actively support a fascist pedophile simply out of a complete unwillingness to admit they were wrong. Even people who I know are legitimately very intelligent cannot admit they could ever be wrong when it comes to politics specifically, and are willing to make a complete fool of themselves in the process of trying to “win”.
And no wonder, we have a culture that actively conditions that into people. It’s all about “owning the [insert political party here]”. There is no compromise, no mutual understanding, no learning, and no changing of minds. Just endless, spiteful arguing while we slowly get fucked by the rich.
I’m convinced it’s completely intentional. Americans are stupid because they’re trained to be.
I see it as extreme individualism. People have been made to think that they and their opinions not just matter, but need to be taken seriously, regardless of how misinformed or ignorant they are. And refuting their beliefs is an attack on not just those beliefs, but everything about them as a person.
I’ve heard this sort of thing described as “My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge” before.
The main issue there seems to be social skills rather than illiteracy as such, which makes sense given the level of atomization our society has reached that has far surpassed even the “extreme” level of atomization we had pre-covid.
Edit: Admittedly, maybe they are also illiterate regarding the structure of arguments (premises -> inference -> conclusion) because they are attacking you for premises that you did not supply despite the other person having just supplied them a few moments ago.
I would hugely agree with this, and think it’s an underaddressed point, even on better communities like Hexbear.
An ENORMOUS part of an effective conversation/argument is empathy - understanding what the other person is thinking. What their circumstances are. What they prioritise.
I’m always complaining about my nostalgia for ye olde internet days, but back then you’d be in a forum with known users who you’d chatted to for years. You’d know all about their lives, their friendship, what their daily mood has been like, etc. Not saying arguments always went well, but there was a huge level of understanding that meant you both had a decent idea where the other was coming from.
Nowadays, the likes of Twitter, Reddit, and even Hexbear to a much smaller degree, you can make any point, and some faceless person will jump in and start arguing or misunderstanding you. They won’t understand where you’re coming from, you don’t understand where they’re coming from, you’re both talking past each other, and this just seems to be every online interaction ever now. Human conversation was never ‘designed for’ an interaction between an individual and a million floating, unheard, not-understood, argumentative voices.
Far more people online need to start realising empathising with and understanding your conversing partner is like, step #1 of any worthwhile conversation.
It’s not what I was getting at, but I do think it’s one of the most prominent issues with Hexbear that it is at best very selective in who it finds it acceptable to empathise with. It’s critically important to exercise empathy in almost every conversation of consequence, even if the conversation is centered on someone else’s attitude/outlook being unequivocally reprehensible, because you just can’t get anywhere in a conversation if you don’t understand them, and merely denouncing them doesn’t really help to advance a conversation with them (though you should of course denounce what they say and them as an actor and that can be enough when addressing other people about that person).
Is interacting with these people and dunking on them just a memetic hazard at this point?
The thing that identifies you as a ‘brain genius’ is flattering power, not intelligence. Curtis Yarvin is an immense dumbass but there are people hanging on his every word, people with actual power, so he is framed as a genius. We have a large amount of the world’s most powerful people spending their entire days daring each other to say slurs in group chats and talking about how most people aren’t fully human so you can do whatever you want to them. If you don’t want to feel entirely like a ghoul just parrot whatever is the new liberal talking point, currently abundance bs but it could have been effective altruism an couple of years ago, and people will think you’re smart and kind. The smart people on TV are saying it after all. If you scratch past the very thin veneer of it you notice that it is also extremely ghoulish, but the trick is to not think about it. Trying to look deeper into issues or consider how things came to happen isn’t something that is rewarded outside of very niche circumstances.
And then we have people who simply refuse to concede an argument. Just don’t even try unless you are actually trying to convince a third person.
Are these people radioactive
and now the Star Spangled Banner sung by ALEX BRANSON!!!
I’m waking upppp
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
i know what words mean and i guess i CAN read so personally I’m more anti literate. I’ve seen what too many books can do to a person
(where do you think ultras come from)
I wouldn’t say that they read a lot of books, they read obscure books, memorise them and assume that obscure knowledge is superior to more accessible knowledge. And you could argue they don’t really read books at all, they memorise them, so they can recite them as needed, but never see to engage with them or understand them.
I just assumed that was why you need to pump out septic tanks every so often
The concept of literacy has evolved over time. It used to be the case that just being able to read was enough to put you ahead of your peers. But now, reading is just the baseline skill everyone is expected to be at.
After reading, there’s reading comprehension, and then there is media literacy one level above that, and there’s various forms of tech literacy which isn’t directly related but is heavily intertwined
most people in the US are bots now
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
