Thinking Objectively

8 Signs You’re Not Thinking Critically

2026-03-01T14:25:00.000-05:00

I receive a newsletter from a site called Critical Thinking Secrets. The latest one covers eight signs of not thinking critically. I've provided the contents of this newsletter below.

8 Signs You’re Not Thinking Critically 🚩

Even the most brilliant minds can slip into "lazy thinking." Our brains are wired for efficiency, which often means taking the path of least resistance. Recognizing when you’ve fallen into a weak thinking pattern is the first step toward reclaiming your intellectual edge.

Here are eight warning signs that your critical thinking has gone offline—and how to reboot it.

1. You Feel a Surge of Defensive Anger

If your immediate reaction to a dissenting opinion is a "hot" emotional response rather than curiosity, you are likely protecting an identity, not a logic-based belief.

The Fix: Use the 5-Second Rule. Pause and ask: "Is this person attacking me, or just my current idea?"

2. You Can’t Explain the "Other Side"

If you think the people who disagree with you are simply "stupid" or "evil," you don't understand their argument well enough to critique it.

The Fix: Practice Steel-Manning. Try to write down the most rational version of their argument. If you can’t, you’re in an echo chamber.

3. You Search for Proof, Not Truth

If you find yourself Googling things like "Why [My Opinion] is right" instead of "Pros and cons of [Topic]," you are a victim of Confirmation Bias.

The Fix: Search for "disconfirming evidence." Force yourself to read one credible source that contradicts your view.

4. You Rely on Anecdotes Over Data

If you dismiss a statistical trend because "I know a guy who..." or "That didn't happen to me," you are letting a single story override reality.

The Fix: Check the Base Rate. Remember that your personal experience is a sample size of one. What does the data say about the other 99.9%?

5. You Defer Entirely to Your "Tribe"

If your opinions on politics, health, and technology perfectly align with your social circle or favorite influencer without exception, you aren't thinking—you're conforming.

The Fix: Find a "Point of Dissent." Identify one minor area where you disagree with your group and explore why.

6. You Use "All-or-Nothing" Language

Words like always, never, everyone, and nobody are red flags for False Dilemmas and oversimplification.

The Fix: Introduce nuance. Replace "always" with "frequently" or "under these specific conditions."

7. You’re "Moral Dumbfounded"

This happens when you feel a strong sense of "wrongness" but can't point to a logical reason why. You are letting Moral Intuition steer the ship without Moral Reasoning.

The Fix: Trace the harm. Ask: "Who is actually being hurt here, and what is the specific nature of that harm?"

8. You Accept Claims Because They Are "Common Sense"

"Common sense" is often just a collection of cultural biases. If you find yourself saying, "It’s just obvious," you’ve stopped investigating.

The Fix: Use First Principles. Strip away the "obvious" labels and look at the foundational facts. Is it really obvious, or just familiar?

Coffee & COVID: On Spotting Propaganda

2026-01-15T17:47:00.000-05:00

Jeff Childers, attorney and author of the daily newsletter Coffee & COVID, comments on a story in The New York Times that reports on the booming economy while poo-pooing that Trump’s tariffs have anything to do with it. Whether or not you agree with Childers take on the effects of the tariffs, he makes a valid point about how The Times and other news outlets shape their stories to steer you to the opinion they want you to have.

When reading this type of ‘news’ critically, balance is the first thing you should look for. Here’s the formula: the articles report a scrap of actual news (e.g., the economy is booming), and then round up several “experts” to tell readers what to think about the news.

If the “expert” portion of the story is unbalanced, then you are reading propaganda, not news. Corporate media uses experts to publish its own opinions —its bias— while hiding in the bushes behind the carefully curated people who all magically agree with its perspective. By publishing a totally lopsided group of voices, the reporter hopes to fool the reader into assuming expert “consensus” exists— without ever having to explicitly make that dubious argument.

Assuming you are masochistic enough to consume corporate media’s articles, when reading this type of piece, always first ask: “do all the quoted sources agree with each other, and varying expert opinions are conspicuously absent?” If so, you can safely ignore all the quotes and focus just on the factual reporting of what actually happened.

Believe it or not, this kind of reporting is what is most responsible for killing legacy media and driving people to social media for news. On social media, folks actually find the diversity of voices and opinions that is lacking in contemporary corporate media. Even allowing for all the noise of misinformation, outright lies, silliness, and unintelligent commentary, Twitter’s “town square” beats whatever the Times is serving up.

At least the bias is obvious on Twitter/X, which is all anybody asked for anyway.
It would be trivially easy for big news publishers like the Times to give readers right-click access to quoted experts’ biographies, previous comments, publication history, and political donation records. But they don’t. Think about that. And think about the claim that publications like the Times allegedly exist to “inform” us.

I’m old enough to remember “the good old days” when the news would offer more than one set of expert opinions. Now they refer to people who disagree with the experts they’re pushing as “deniers”, “discredited”, “debunked” and so on. Recently a lawyer friend told me he could almost always find an expert who would support the position the lawyer was taking in his case. Seems that’s exactly what our “news” media does too.

The Fallacy of Mind Reading + The Ladder of Misinference

2026-01-07T11:49:00.000-05:00

In his book Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America, Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert cartoon series) says: “We humans think we are good judges of what others are thinking. We are not. In fact, we’re dreadful at it. But people being people, we generally believe we are good at it while also believing other people are not.” (I highly recommend Adams’ book.)

Today’s edition of Coffee & COVID newsletter provides a typical example of mind reading.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal defecated a hurt-feelings story headlined, “Alarm Spreads Among U.S. Allies Over Trump’s Demand for Greenland”
In short, the Journal’s ‘news’ article reported that Trump is being mean to European élites, again, and it is making them feel unsafe, again. “Europeans are afraid of Trump,” said Pascal Boniface, director of the Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, a think tank in Paris. The Journal’s inelegantly implied theme, or thrust, was that European leaders’ fear of Trump explains why they didn’t criticize the recent arrest of Venezuelan narco-terrorist Maduro.
This is journalistic misdirection, and I’ll tell you why. The Journal was imputing a motive (fear of Trump) on all European leaders, without admitting that it was editorializing, [NOTE: emphasis added] to diminish the significance of the leaders’ apparent agreement with the move and thereby prevent it from legitimizing Trump’s actions. They only went along because they were afraid, was the Journal’s implied argument, which was dressed up as ‘news.’

Mind reading is one of the most common cognitive errors I see in critical thinking and news reporting.

On a related topic Alex Edmans points out two other common errors in his excellent book May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do about It. As he says in the Introduction:

We’ll take a deep dive into two psychological biases – confirmation bias and black-and-white thinking – that are the two biggest culprits in causing us to misinterpret information.

Edmans, professor of Finance at London Business School, introduces his Ladder of Misinference. This paragraph in the Introduction summarizes this ladder.

We accept a statement as fact, even if it’s not accurate – the information behind it may be unreliable and may even be misquoted in the first place. We accept a fact as data, even if it’s not representative but a hand-picked example – an exception that doesn’t prove the rule. We accept data as evidence, even if it’s not conclusive and many other interpretations exist. We accept evidence as proof, even if it’s not universal and doesn’t apply in other settings.

May Contain Lies takes a different approach than many of the books I’ve read on critical thinking. Those other books talk about common fallacies and cognitive biases. Edmans plows new ground by offering a new way of looking at statements and claims. Highly recommended!

Loserthink and May Contain Lies are two of my favorite books on critical thinking and being objective. They will help prevent us from falling into thinking traps.

Robert J. Bidinotto's Post: FROM EMOTIONS, TO NARRATIVES, TO IDEOLOGIES -- and my Response

2024-03-13T09:28:00.001-04:00

Below I’m sharing a post by Robert J. Bidinotto. Robert has been influential in Objectivist (the name of Ayn Rand's philosophy) circles since the 1980s. Before turning to writing a series of thrillers he served as editor-in-chief of The Atlas Society’s monthly magazine of politics and culture, The New Individualist. Robert and I met in college in the early 1970s when he introduced me to the work of Ayn Rand. Robert’s post starts below followed by my response.

ROBERT’S POST: FROM EMOTIONS, TO NARRATIVES, TO IDEOLOGIES.

In intellectual circles, it is common to believe that ideology is a decisive social force on its own -- that abstract philosophical systems underlie societies and cultures; and that to change a society, you need only promulgate a different philosophy/ideology.

Of course, intellectuals *want* to believe in the decisive "power of ideas," because as promulgators of ideas, this belief confirms their lofty view of their own social importance and power. And certainly the connection of ideologies to societies, movements, and governments is obvious and undeniable -- which is why I used to accept this conventional view, too.

But a lifetime of promoting philosophical ideas has caused me to reconsider my views about the role of philosophy/ideology in human life and society. Introspection, observation of people close to me, and sobering realizations about how marginal and fleeting the impacts of philosophical persuasion, by myself and by many other skilled communicators, have been -- all of that has led me to conclude that personal and cultural change is much more complicated than simply spreading the "right" philosophical ideas.

Summarized simply, I believe...

...that the vast majority of people, including intellectuals, are actually driven not by ideas, but by emotions, often fairly crude ones, rooted in values, often only implicit;

...that over time, these values-laden emotions, if widely shared, are transformed into Narratives -- into inspiring popular myths, legends, and stories -- which provide explanations and justifications for those feelings;

...that only later do the more intellectual believers in these emotionally appealing, values-laden stories, myths, and Narratives try to buttress them with more sophisticated, abstract theoretical rationalizations -- i.e., with explanatory philosophies, ideologies, theologies, etc. The intellectuals do this to flesh out and support the core themes and underlying motives of their Narratives, granting them the social weight and gravitas of an "intellectual" image and justification.

You see that pattern historically with every creed that has attracted significant followings and becomes a mass movement. They start with a set of core emotions, driven by values broadly shared across a large social group; then follows the development of a popular mythology that dramatizes and evokes the group's shared emotions and values; and finally comes a complex theoretical rationalization for the mythological Narrative (and its values-driven emotions), crafted by the social group's intellectuals. In this last stage, the abstract system can take on a life of its own: it is taught and promoted in "movement" schools and texts, to which believers cling tightly, because it offers reassuring intellectual support and explanations for their underlying feelings and Narratives.

But the foundational appeal of philosophical, ideological, or theological systems does not lie in their theoretical abstractions themselves; pure abstractions carry no emotional appeal or motivational power. Instead, the believers' commitments are fundamentally to their core Narrative -- to the explanatory mythology or story -- and to the emotions and values it embodies and evokes. All that the theoretical abstractions offer are rationalizations and reassurance that the story is valid.

This explains why you can so often argue with someone using reason, logic, and overwhelming facts, until you are blue in the face, and get nowhere. Or why a person's "intellectual" commitments can seem so shallow and fleeting. Or why politicians and dictators rely so heavily on storytelling about their target constituencies' collective "identity," in the form of a high-stakes drama about villains (their political adversaries), victims (their constituents), and heroic rescuers (themselves). Or why a person's (or society's) "conversion" requires not just a new ideological argument, but instead begins with an emotional upheaval rooted in profound personal dissatisfaction with the status quo -- and which then leads to a confrontation with some appealing new Narrative that promises the dissatisfied individual a fresh identity: a meaningful new life role and purpose. The philosophical argument then comes along as a reassuring explanation for the wisdom of the conversion; but it alone is not the motivator of the conversion.

Let me emphasize that an abstract philosophy *can* serve legitimate and important purposes. It does not have to offer merely a sophistic rationalization for a bogus Narrative. If the Narrative is grounded in reality, then philosophy can provide a valid *rationale* for it. A rationale differs from a rationalization, because the former is true (based on reality), while the latter is false. And a valid rationale can flesh out our understanding, teasing out many important and helpful implications of the Narrative.

But, to sum up, I now believe that personal persuasion and cultural change require us to effectively present a compelling alternative Narrative to those people open to its emotional appeal. Not everyone is -- not by a long shot. People who are emotionally committed to a Narrative that defines them, their identity, and their life purpose -- but which is hostile to one's own values -- aren't going to change, no matter how skilled and logical your presentation of facts and arguments. Abstract arguments will never penetrate the emotional/values barriers surrounding a contrary Narrative. Even a compelling counter-Narrative will not prove persuasive unless the target of your communication is already deeply dissatisfied with his own, and thus searching for (or at least open to) a fresh worldview.

One corollary point, and it's important. I believe people with good values, and correspondingly good emotions, will be attracted to good Narratives -- and perhaps later, to good philosophies. The fact that they, too, are "Narrative-driven" is *not* necessarily a bad thing: it doesn't mean they are *irrationally* driven. If a kid is raised without any explicit philosophy, or even a bad one, yet becomes enamored of heroes in TV shows, movies, and comic books (oops, "graphic novels"), and then, inspired, goes on to do great things - - is that irrational?

To my Objectivist friends, I would point out that I've just described the childhood-to-adulthood trajectory of your heroine, Ayn Rand, if you know anything about her autobiography. After all, *she* didn't start out with a conceptual philosophical understanding of the world; she started out, in the hellish environment of post-revolutionary Soviet Russia, simply as a brilliant child who became captivated by heroic literature and movies. That *emotional* orientation, driven by some core values she didn't understand at the time, were sufficient to propel her on a remarkable journey to becoming, as an adult, a storyteller and philosopher whose worldview was opposite everything around her.

And those values-driven emotions first took form as a romantic Narrative of heroic individualism. That Narrative was a core part of her character by the time she reached her early teens. Rand didn't even encounter Aristotle, Aquinas, Spinoza, and other thinkers who influenced her philosophical thinking until college -- by which time *her character and sense of life was already formed*. Her systematic philosophy did not fully take form until she was middle-aged, during the writing of ATLAS SHRUGGED; and I would argue that she managed to become a heroic individualist long before figuring it all out.

Again, Rand's life and character were shaped indelibly and enduringly by a Narrative -- not by abstract philosophy or ideology. If that is true of her, then how can it not be true of others? Do we need formal, systematic philosophy in order to be rational, honest, independent, just, and productive? Were there no such people on Planet Earth before Rand incorporated those virtues formally into her Objectivist system?

I commend to you her book THE ROMANTIC MANIFESTO, especially its opening chapters, where -- in words different from mine here, but I believe very similar in meaning -- she explains the enormous power of stories, of Narratives, in shaping the human soul and our world.

--------------------------------------------

MY RESPONSE

I agree with Bidinotto's position on this. I’d add a couple corollary points that don’t contradict his. (At least I don’t think they do!)

1. We are influenced by dozens of subconscious cognitive biases such as confirmation bias. We think we’re being objective without realizing how much of what we believe is influenced by these biases.

2. Once we form our favored narratives, we tend to get our news from sources that reflect these narratives and discount someone who cites sources considered untrustworthy. This becomes a self-supporting cycle in which people consume news only from their trusted sources and don’t expose themselves to other sources. For instance, I’ve seen arguments between a liberal who cites CNN while the conservative who relies on Fox.

3. We also have different languages. Arnold Kling’s book The Three Languages of Politics explains how liberals see things in terms of the oppressed versus the oppressors. Conservatives see the world as a conflict of civilization (law and order) versus barbarism. And libertarians think everything boils down to freedom versus coercion.

4. While we have our rational side we still are influenced by our evolutionary tribal roots. As a result, we often see the world in terms of “us versus them.” (The Coddling of the American Mind by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff identifies three “untruths” that many of our current youth have accepted: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people.)

When discussing issues with people who I know don’t share my framework I’ve tried to come up with an approach that plants a seed of doubt. I’ve collected information from sources I think the person I’m talking to is more likely to accept to get them to open their mind a crack. It takes some work but it can be done!

Confirmation Bias, Cherry-Picking, and Echo Chambers by Ed Latimore

2023-12-15T10:42:00.002-05:00

This post by Ed Latimore offers a good description of common errors people make when forming their opinions and how to combat them.

Gell-Mann Amnesia: What is it?

2023-06-26T15:31:00.006-04:00

I recently learned about a term created by Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, Jaws and Andromeda Strain. He identified something he labeled the Gell-Mann Amnesia. (Crichton named it after a friend, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann who discovered and named the quark.)

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.”

I have seen amnesia in action with people I know. As an example, I know a married couple who are devout Catholics. They distrust the reporting of The Boston Globe because they believe the Globe harbors an anti-Catholic bias. Yet they believe everything else the Globe says! I guess the Globe is biased only on one subject. Right?

I think there is another version of Gell-Mann Amnesia. Here is an example. During the Trump administration the media harped endlessly on his alleged collusion with Russia. When the Mueller report showed that there were no such ties, the people I know who bought into the Russia-gate story conveniently forgot how they were misled for years then move on to the next story. Their faith in their trusted news sources remains intact.

Tucker Carlson: Should We Care That He Is Off The Air?

2023-05-02T23:18:00.001-04:00

A friend posted his reaction on Facebook to Fox pulling Tucker Carlson’s show off the air by saying that he will shed no tears over Carlson’s departure. Why? Because Carlson didn’t advocate individualism, free markets or limited government but instead represents “right-wing tribalism” and a push for big government conservativism. Several other people expressed their agreement for my friend’s position.

My opinion of Carlson isn’t quite as negative. I won’t shed tears for Tucker either but for a different reason. He probably will land on a platform where his audience will be even larger (like Joe Rogan who has an audience at least three times larger than Carlson’s) and will make much more money. (However, will he have as much influence?)

What bothers me is how Democrats such as Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) openly called for taking Tucker off the air and, for whatever reason, Fox complied. (I’ve heard various theories what lead to his sudden silencing. My guess is that it was a combination of factors.)

I find it interesting too that Schumer or AOC aren’t demanding Fox to remove Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham or Jesse Watters. As I said, I don’t feel bad for Carlson; I’m more concerned about the concerted effort to silence people who question the dominant narratives.

Despite his flaws, Tucker played an important role in challenging and questioning many of the narratives pushed by the Left and their media cheerleaders. He revealed how DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) undermines meritocracy in the fields of airline piloting, medicine and corporate America, the incestuous relationship between pharma, government and media in pushing the vaccines and lockdowns while silencing and de-platforming prominent, respected doctors who disagreed, and the shady collusion between the various Federal agencies and Twitter (plus other social media platforms) to suppress mostly conservative voices. (Michael Shellenberger and Matt Taibbi, who Elon Musk recruited to produce the “Twitter files,” call this relationship the Censorship Industrial Complex. Shellenberger and Taibbi have been guests on Tucker’s show. Both are self-described liberals.) None of the other mainstream media outlets said a peep about the Twitter files.

Thanks to previously unreleased videos of the January 6th protest/riot to which House Speaker Kevin McCarthy gave Carlson access, you see a different version of what happened than what we were shown by other media. One of these videos show that Jacob Chansley [“QAnon Shaman”] was accompanied by Capitol police almost as if they were giving him a tour. This ultimately led to Chansley’s release from prison. Chansley’s lawyer didn’t have access to this video before Carlson’s show.

Yes, Carlson questioned whether our involvement in the Ukraine war serves our interests and is worth threatening World War III, shared claims of corruption in the Ukraine government and expressed concern about the lack of accounting for how our funds and military hardware are being used. Even if we endorse supporting the Ukraine militarily, these concerns shouldn’t be minimized or ignored.

I'm not saying Carlson is an individualist or a libertarian. I'd say he is a conservative populist. He regularly has liberal guests such as Tulsi Gabbard, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson and Michael Shellenberger. I know from watching Carlson he believes we have a uni-party government consisting of an elite that imposes laws and regulations that affect us but not them. I also know he has taken pot shots at libertarians and free market economics. So be it.

According to Megyn Kelly, Carlson wasn't fired. His show was taken off the air while Carlson is still under contract which was renewed in 2021 and expires in 2024. There is speculation that this was done to muzzle Carlson so that he won't be able to influence the 2024 election.

In evaluating Tucker Carlson, we should weigh his positives and negatives. Others have covered the negatives, so I won’t repeat them here. I’d narrow Carlson’s positives to two themes. One, his concern over the breakdown of civilization. Two, his concern over the constant and increasing attacks on free speech. (Free speech and civilization are interconnected.)

Whatever his flaws, you can tell Tucker was effective in asking uncomfortable and unpopular questions when you see the paroxysms of glee his departure has spawned on the left … and even on the right.

Scott Adams on Censorship and Voting

2022-11-30T13:35:00.001-05:00

Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert and host of daily video blog Coffee With Scott Adams on YouTube and Locals) posted this tweet with a provocative thesis.

Censorship determines the narrative. The narrative determines public opinion. Public opinion determines the vote. The vote determines who runs the country.
We have replaced voting with battles over who gets censored.

In response I posted this:

Behind the censorship is the postmodern idea that those who have the most power can decide and determine what is true.

Although I agree with Adams, I think he doesn’t go back far enough to the source of the censorship. The censorship Adams talks about doesn’t spring out of nothing like the Big Bang. We need to identify the beliefs that people use to justify imposing censorship that prevents certain ideas from being expressed or facts from being uncovered.

I believe postmodernism plays a role in many issues. I summarize postmodernism as the belief that there is no objective truth. Therefore, “truth” is determined by those who have the most power over the tools of communication such as social media, news media and over our language which includes the meanings of words and what is considered acceptable uses of these words. (There are some who claim that even silence can be oppressive because if you don’t vocally repudiate something that means you secretly support the “offensive” idea.)

Therefore, I now use the term “partial news” when referring to the news media. (I know, it's not as catchy as Trump's "fake news." I’m also thinking of using “skewed news.”) Here the word “partial” has two meanings. The first meaning refers only part of the story being told so that leads us to the conclusion they want us to reach. The second meaning refers to our news outlets as being partial rather than being impartial (i.e., objective). Postmodernism lies behind this because postmodernists believe there is no objective truth. When the truth and facts no longer serve as a yardstick, your political agenda takes over. News stories can then be crafted to steer us to a predetermined conclusion rather than presenting other sides of the story.

Dr Bhattacharya Twitter Post on the Department of Misinformation + My Reply

2022-05-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

Jay Bhattacharya

@DrJBhattacharya

There is no one disinterested enough, omniscient enough, honest enough, good enough, wise enough, and trustworthy enough to populate a Ministry of Truth.

Wanting to lead or serve in one is self-disqualifying.

My reply:

Henry Scuoteguazza
@scuoteguazza
Replying to @DrJBhattacharya
I often say that the desire to run for elected office is self-disqualifying, especially with a government that has much more power now.

With the influence of postmodernism, which denies objective truth, the "truth" is then decided by those with the most power or influence.

Labeling versus Discussing or Debating

2022-05-15T20:43:00.000-04:00

A New Radical Centrism

@a_centrism

Lefties call people they disagree with fascists and racists even though 99% of the time they are neither.

Righties call people they disagree with communists and pedophiles even though 99% of the time they are neither.

Once these insults lose their sting, what will replace them?

My reply: Good point. For both sides it’s way more fun (and easier) just to label people than to debate them.

What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known? Russell Conjugation - Eric Weinstein

2022-01-19T14:28:00.003-05:00

What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?

I came across a reference to something called the Russell Conjugation, an idea created by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. (It’s also called an emotive conjugation.) It consists of three statements that describe the same behavior from different perspectives. Here is an example from an article by Eric Weinstein.

I am firm. [Positive empathy]
You are obstinate. [Neutral to mildly negative empathy]
He/She/It is pigheaded. [Very negative empathy]

As Weinstein explains:

In order to understand the concept properly you have to appreciate that most words and phrases are actually defined not by a single dictionary description, but rather two distinct attributes:

I) The factual content of the word or phrase.
II) The emotional content of the construction.

How would this apply to political disagreements? Would it be the following? “I am right (because I have the correct principles). You are mistaken (because your principles are wrong). They are evil (because they have no principles, or their principles are evil).” In this case, “I” refers to yourself. “You” refers to a friend who disagrees with you. “They” refers to a politician or pundit who is on the other side.

I pose it this way because I think we are not likely to label a friend as evil. If we believe a friend is evil, why are we friends? But it is much easier for us to call someone we don’t know evil precisely because we don’t have a personal connection. As philosophers like Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) remind us, our psychology has deep tribal roots. Many experiments run by researchers show that they can get participants form us vs. them groups based on superficial qualities such as eye color or sports team affiliation. (See more at this You Are Not So Smart episode.)

I know that my observation on how we label friends versus people we don’t know doesn’t hold up all the time. I know friends who have disowned family members or have terminated friendships over political disagreements such as which presidential candidate to for. But I also know people who haven’t done this.

No Winners - by Matthew Willis - The Racquet: The Plague of Either-Or Thinking

2022-01-17T11:39:00.000-05:00

No Winners - by Matthew Willis - The Racquet

As a tennis player I've been following the drama with Novak Djokovic trying to play in the 2022 Australian Open while not being vaccinated from COVID. Ultimately, his visa was rejected and he was deported from Australia. The article linked above explains how Djokovic and his team tried to justify letting him play in the Open without being vaccinated. (I don't know if you need to subscribe to Willis's Substack to read it.)

I agree with this statement in the linked article: "I’ve been amazed over the last week or so watching how simple, or black and white, many people (journalists, fans, players et al) seem to think this saga is. Good vs evil." I call it the plague of either-or thinking. While I question whether the approach Australia has taken in dealing with the pandemic has been effective, I also have little sympathy for anyone who tries to enter the country knowing the stand the Australian government has taken.

It also doesn't help that people either love or hate Djokovic so it's easy for them to use him to reinforce their previous conclusions about the pandemic. To those who question the safety of the vaccines and/or whether the government has the right to mandate to get the vaccine, to wear masks or to self-isolate, Novak is a hero. To those who believe the government does have the right to mandate getting the "jab," require masks in public, and shut down restaurants, bars and other businesses, Novak is seen as an "anti-vaxxer" who puts his preferences before public safety. I'm not a mind reader so I can't say what Novak's motivation was but I'm sure some people think he was trying to "game the system."

To me Novak had three choices: 1. get the vaccinations needed to enter, 2. submit valid paperwork to justify why you can't get a vaccine, or 3. don't go.

Djokovic has a lot at stake given that the Australian Open is one of the four major tennis tournaments that count toward a “Grand Slam.” Djokovic has 20 Grand Slam titles, tied with Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. If Djokovic had won the Australian Open he would have had the most Grand Slam titles in men’s tennis history. His choice on he handled this situation threatens his quest to have the most slams. Instead, Nadal could end up with this honor. (Federer won’t be playing due to an injury.) Considering what is at stake I question the wisdom of Djokovic’s decision. I wonder if he does too.

Elon Musk Thinks Every Child Should Learn About These 50 Cognitive Biases | Inc.com

2022-01-13T13:29:00.002-05:00

Elon Musk Thinks Every Child Should Learn About These 50 Cognitive Biases | Inc.com

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1472647410568642564?s=20

The article in Inc. lists the 50 cognitive biases that Elon Musk thinks kids should be taught about in school. The second link takes you to the tweet Musk posted that shows these biases in an infographic. Given the number of these biases covering them would require a course dedicated to them. (This list, by the way, isn't comprehensive.)

Understanding the Divide Between Social Justice Advocates and the Left-Leaning "Anti-Woke" Community

2022-01-13T13:18:00.000-05:00

Understanding the Divide Between Social Justice Advocates and the Left-Leaning "Anti-Woke" Community

The article at this link on the Clearer Thinking website does a nice job describing the positions of the "woke" left versus the "anti-woke" left. They use steelmanning to outline the positions both sides take on a variety of issues. (Steelmanning involves trying to strengthen the argument of the opposing side before trying to refute it.)

It would have been nice if they would have included libertarians and conservatives in this exercise! Of course if had done this the article would be twice as long.

Learn to Think with the Best of Them

2021-11-01T12:44:00.004-04:00

This is the title of a section in Peter T. Coleman’s The Way Out: How To Overcome Toxic Polarization. Coleman’s book strives to show ways to deal with the strident difference of opinion we see all around us. I’ve chosen to put on long quote that I like. It relates to my July 29 post, Favorite Twitter Follows/Examples of Objective Thinkers. I believe many of the names in the table of that post present good examples of people with whom I don’t necessarily agree with but feel they strive to be objective. Prime examples would be Scott Adams, Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald.

As creatures of habit in a highly polarized era, most of us tend to follow the rule, “move toward similar others and away from different.” We are automatically inclined to surround ourselves with and therefore think with similar others who share “congenial information” versus “uncongenial information” – simply because it is easier and more comforting.

…

Most of us tend to close ranks and prefer to listen to those we mostly agree with during such tense times (it just feels so good!). This tendency to move toward the similar is intensified by the internet sorting algorithms employed today by many of the major technology platforms that automatically direct us to news, information, and opinion content that is complimentary to our own. This all serves to significantly reduce the nuance and accuracy of our understanding of complicated issues.

One check on this echo-chamber effect is to actively choose to think and learn with different people; that is, intentionally choose to hear from people across the divide. No, it does not mean that you need to tune into the nut jobs on talk radio and cable TV that spout nonsense and conspiracy theories. But it does suggest that there is much to gain from seeking out the best representatives of people you disagree with and thinking through complex issues (although not necessarily agreeing) with them.

…

So, if you are interested in gaining a more accurate understanding of a particular issue, learn to seek out the best thought leaders on the other side. [Emphasis added.]

I’d say there is another reason to do this: to test our beliefs. Someone who disagrees with you might present information we hadn’t considered when reaching our position or they might reveal a potential weakness in our argument. It doesn’t mean we have to ditch our position; it might mean acknowledging that we need to tweak it.

New Neuroscience Reveals 7 Secrets That Will Make You Emotionally Intelligent - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

2021-10-04T10:13:00.004-04:00

New Neuroscience Reveals 7 Secrets That Will Make You Emotionally Intelligent - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Eric Barker who wrote Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong also has a blog where he shares his insights based on Barker’s research. I recommend his book. I also recommend reading his summary of another book which I read recently. It’s Conflicted: How Productive Disagreements Lead to Better Outcomes by Ian Leslie.

I’ve been reading several books lately on how to overcome the extreme polarization we see, particularly in politics. So far, I haven’t come across anything in these books that I found to be earthshaking, “eureka!” insights. But there is one that I believe deserves promoting; Eric Barker agrees. He devotes a long blog post to capturing the key points of Conflicted. Below I’ve provided Barker’s summary of these key points. I debated whether to do this because you might read the summary below and think, “Eh, what’s the big deal?” If so, I invite you to read Barker’s entire post to get a better idea what is behind these key points.

Without further ado, here is the final section of Barker’s post.

Sum Up

This is how to have emotionally intelligent disagreements:

Remember The Relationship: Enemies don’t say, “You are right. I am wrong.” Friends do.
De-Escalate: If your disputes sound even half as snarky as my writing, you’re doing it wrong.
Stop Trying To Control What They Think Or Feel: When their autonomy is threatened, people attack or shut down.
Help Them Make Their Argument Stronger: If you can’t disprove the best version of their argument, then you’re not “right”, you’re just playing tricks. And, more importantly, “steelmanning” shows you’re listening and that you’re sincere. [HCS comment: steelmanning is the opposite of using a straw man argument in which we purposely oversimplify or exaggerate someone’s argument in order to discount it. Steelmanning involves trying to strengthen the argument of your conversational partner before trying to rebut it.]
Disrupt The Script: Constructive conversations have ups and downs. Don’t escalate tension. Make a joke or say something positive.
Get Curious: So those aliens that talk to you, do they give good advice?
Help Them Question Their Own Thinking: Therapists don’t say: “That’s ridiculous. Where in your brain did the stroke occur for you to have an idea so stupid?” No, they ask questions until you start to question your own thinking and it crosses the blood-brain barrier that what you’ve been saying is the equivalent of 2+2=147.

Favorite Twitter Follows/Examples of Objective Thinkers [Updated May 16, 2023]

2021-07-29T22:07:00.004-04:00

If you read this blog regularly you know that I like to keep track of people who try to think objectively. Those who do are hard to pigeonhole into the usual categories such as liberal or conservative, global warmer or warming skeptic, true news or fake news, and so on. Some of the people on the list below, such as Tucker Carlson and Bill Maher, clearly fall into one category or another. Carlson is a conservative while Maher is liberal. However, both of them sometimes take unexpected positions on some subjects. Carlson has taken on the Republican establishment at times while Maher has strongly criticized Islam and the COVID shutdowns. Given my libertarian leanings I agree with Carlson more than I do with Maher. Nonetheless I follow Maher partly because he reveals the direction the left is taking but mostly because he occasionally breaks ranks with his colleagues (and takes heat for it).

In the climate change debate Judith Curry has expressed concerns over those who claim global warming is man-made. While she says we do have some affect Curry believes the true story is more complicated. Same with Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger, both of whom believe we affect the climate but think the people who try to scare us into drastic action on global warming grossly simplify the true story.

Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are on the left, yet Greenwald fears the push to control free speech by some on his side of the fence. Taibbi, who hated Trump, feels the objectivity of the news media vaporized in the heat of their hatred for Trump. [UPDATE MAY 16, 2023. I'd add comedian Russell Brand @rustyrockets; Bari Weiss, former opinion writer and editor at The New York Times @bariweiss; Gurwinder

@G_S_Bhogal. Gurwinder is hard to classify. His goal is to "unweave popular beliefs into their constituent elements, revealing the delusions, biases and agendas that lie behind today's most alluring narratives—including the ones we tell ourselves."]

Below I’ve picked my favorites out of the 900+ people and organizations I follow on Twitter and put my absolute favorites in bold. If I ranked them in order of priority it would be Scott Adams, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Turley.

Category	Name	Twitter Handle
Climate Change	Bjorn Lomborg	@BjornLomborg
Climate Change	Judith Curry	@curryja
Climate Change	Michael Shellenberger	@ShellenbergerMD
COVID	Alex Berenson	@AlexBerenson
COVID	Ethical Skeptic	@EthicalSkeptic
COVID	Gummi Bear	@gummibear737
Critical Thinking	Peter Boghossian	@peterboghossian
Free speech	Glenn Greenwald	@ggreenwald
General	Andreas Backhaus	@AndreasShrugged
General	Critical Thinking 101	@critical18495985
General	Greg Lukianoff	@glukianoff
General	Hotep Jesus	@HotepJesus
General	Jonathan Haidt	@JonHaidt
General	Jonathan Turley	@JonathanTurler
General	Jordan Peterson	@jordanbpeterson
General	Megan McArdle	@asymmetricinfo
General	Mike Cernovich	@Cernovich
General	Scott Adams	@ScottAdamsSays
General	Steve Hilton	@SteveHiltonx
General	Steve Pinker	@sapinker
News Bias	AllSides	@AllAidesNew
News Bias	Ground News	@Ground_app
News Bias	Just The News	@JustTheNews
News Bias	Left Right News	@leftrightnewsus
News Bias	Sharyl Attkisson	@SharylAttkisson
News/Politics	Martin Gurri	@mgurri
News/Politics	Matt Taibbi	@mtaibbi
Personal Development	Naval	@naval
Politics	Alan Dershowitz	@AlanDersh
Politics	Bill Maher	@billmaher
Politics	Dave Rubin	@RubinReport
Politics	Greg Gutfeld	@greggutfeld
Politics	Tucker Carlson	@TuckerCarlson
Race	John McWhorter	@JohnHMcWhorter
Reporting	Andy Ngo	@MrAndyNgo
Reporting	Jack Posobiec	@JackPosobiec
Reporting	Lara Logan	@laralogan

Americans Distrust of Mass Media: Gallup Article

2021-04-17T15:50:00.000-04:00

Americans Remain Distrustful of Mass Media BY Megan Brenan

This article features an eye-opening graph that plots how much trust in the media Democrats have versus Independents and Republicans. It’s 73% for Democrats, 36% for Independents and 10% (!) for Republicans.

This graph could confirm what the right claims: the media leans left and their Democrat audience trusts these sources precisely because they share the same worldview. I have liberal friends who believe their news sources are 100% objective with no bias and mock anyone who dares to watch Fox News because Fox is biased and unreliable. However, the chart (below) produced by AllSides shows that the “mainstream” networks such as ABC, CBS, MSNBC and NBC fall into Lean Left or Left categories. The main outlets that fall into the Center category include the BBC, NPR, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal. Examples of Right leaning sources: New York Post, Reason, The Federalist, National Review, and of course the much-reviled Fox News.

This article (Why Being ‘Anti-Media’ Is Now Part Of The GOP Identity By Meredith Conroy) from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight tries to build a case that Republicans live in a bubble because they predominantly rely on Fox News while Democrats show more balance. “Hostility and distrust of the news media, in other words, has become a point of political identity among Republicans.” (I would argue that hostility and distrust of Fox News has become a point of political identity among Democrats.)

Conroy refers to a finding in a study conducted by the Pew Research Center in which Republicans heavily rely on Fox News over other news sources.

“This finding stands in stark contrast with the views of Democrats, who said they trusted a variety of news sources [Note: emphasis added], and it marks a further decline in Republicans’ trust of other news sources since Pew last conducted a similar survey in 2014.”

The comment that I emphasized above about Democrats trusting “a variety of news sources” caught my attention so I looked up the Pew Research studied that was cited in this article.

The Pew website shows a chart (shown below) with the top five sources for Democrats were: CNN (67%), NBC News (61%), ABC News (60%), CBS News (59%), and PBS (56%). As I noted above, the AllSides site rates all of these sources except PBS as Lean Left or Left. The chart for Republicans has this breakdown: Fox News (65%), ABC News (33%), CBS News (30%), Hannity (radio) (30%), and NBC News (30%). While Republicans clearly favor Fox News about a third of them still get news from sources that are considered on the Left. Meanwhile, Democrats rely on CNN as much as Republicans trust Fox but almost all of their other sources fall into the Left side of the spectrum (again the exception being PBS).

I’d say the alleged “variety” of sources that Democrats trust is not a variety of political points of view. As I noted at the beginning many of my liberal friends believe their news sources are completely unbiased and totally objective when they are not. What bothers me is that they claim Republicans live in a news bubble when in reality they're in their own bubble.

Scott Adams on Mind Hacks

2021-04-03T13:37:00.001-04:00

While I rarely link to someone's Twitter post this one by Scott Adams was too good to miss.

Here is the tweet thread in case the link doesn't work.

Here’s a reframe that will change some people’s lives forever: Your mind is the outcome of genetics, traumas and hacks.
If you don’t learn to hack (program) your own brain, the default is that you are little more than genes and traumas.
An example of a brain hack is education. It is a conscious choice to physically alter your brain via learning. Another hack is intelligent skill stacking.
Associating self-rewards with habits you want to deepen is a hack.
Learning to reframe your experiences is a hack. Learning to see reality as subjective is a hack. Learning to avoid “emotion pollution” from entertainment products is a hack.
Reframing sleep as a skill that can be learned is a hack.
Learning to put things in context is a hack. Practicing optimism is a hack.
If you make it your system (habit) to routinely learn and test new hacks, you become the author of your own mind, and — because your experience of reality is subjective — the author of your own experience.
Be the hack, not the trauma.

Bari Weiss on cancel culture, leaving The New York Times and self-censorship - Deseret News

2021-03-07T22:37:00.000-05:00

Bari Weiss on cancel culture, leaving The New York Times and self-censorship - Deseret News

Hat tip to Robert Bidinotto for this article by Bari Weiss, a former writer for The New York Times. The article’s subtitle sums it nicely: “In red America and blue America, an epidemic of self-censorship is threatening democracy.” This article resonated with me because it touches on things I’ve seen and makes cogent observations. The fact that Weiss comes from the left reveals that the right doesn’t hold a monopoly on self-censorship. As a resident of deep blue New England, I have friends on the right who don’t dare to speak up in social settings to avoid the cloudburst of indignation that will rain down on them. At the outdoor tennis club where I play in the summer, my conservative friends whisper to each other about politics. Meanwhile, their liberal friends on adjoining courts loudly mock anyone who even thought about voting for Trump or didn’t vote for Biden. My conservative or Republican friends have another reason why they don’t talk openly about their beliefs: they fear that they won’t be invited to play in these other groups and will be shunned.

Weiss starts her article noting some examples of intolerance on the right then switches her aim to the left. (Weiss provides some revealing statistics on this at the end of her piece.)

[T]here are two illiberal cultures swallowing up the country. I know because I live in blue America, in a world awash in NPR tote bags and front lawn signs proclaiming the social justice bonafides of the family inside.

In my America, the people who keep quiet don’t fear the wrath of Trump supporters. They fear the illiberal left.

…

Maybe you are among this self-silencing majority. There is a good chance that you are if the biologist Bret Weinstein is right when he observes that the population is composed of four groups: the few who actually hunt witches, a large group that goes along and a larger group that remains silent. There’s also a tiny group that opposes the hunt. And that “final group — as if by magic — become witches.”

…

That world I was born into was liberal. I don’t mean that in the partisan sense, but in the classical and therefore the most capacious sense of that word. It was a liberal consensus shared by liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats.

The consensus view relied on a few foundational truths that seemed as obvious as the blue of the sky: the belief that everyone is created in the image of God; the belief that everyone is equal because of it; the presumption of innocence; a revulsion to mob justice; a commitment to pluralism and free speech, and to liberty of thought and of faith.

…

Most importantly, this worldview insisted that what bound us together was not blood or soil, but a commitment to a shared set of ideas. Even with all of its failings, the thing that makes America exceptional is that it is a departure from the notion, still prevalent in so many other places, that biology, birthplace, class, rank, gender, race are destiny.

For some reason Weiss chooses a rather indirect way of saying that the American classical liberalism rests on a belief in individualism. Believing that your destiny springs from “biology, birthplace, class, rank, gender, race” are forms of collectivism.

This old consensus — every single aspect of it — has been run over by the new illiberal orthodoxy. Because this ideology cloaks itself in the language of progress, many understandably fall for its self-branding. Don’t. It promises revolutionary justice, but it threatens to drag us back into the mean of history, in which we are pitted against one another according to tribe. [Emphasis added.]

The primary mode of this ideological movement is not building or renewing or reforming, but tearing down. Persuasion is replaced with public shaming. Forgiveness is replaced with punishment. Mercy is replaced with vengeance. Pluralism with conformity; debate with de-platforming; facts with feelings; ideas with identity.

I highlighted the word tribe in the first paragraph above because Weiss identifies a key point: What people call progressive really is tribalism, a form of collectivism. Instead of progress, she notes that we are regressing to tribalism.

Victimhood, in this ideology, confers morality. “I think therefore I am” is replaced with: “I am therefore I know,” and “I know therefore I am right.”

I’d add “I’ve been wronged therefore I’m moral (and you’re not).”

At the beginning I noted I see only self-censoring by those on the right because New England leans (heavily) left politically. Weiss cites the results of a study on how we self-censor.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that a recent national study from the Cato Institute found that 62% of Americans say they self-censor. The more conservative a group is, the more likely they are to hide their views: 52% of Democrats confess to self-censoring compared with 77% of Republicans.

I find it interesting that roughly one out of two Democrats police their language while three out of four Republicans hide their beliefs.

Weiss then touches on some of the forces that could have contributed to cancel culture and protective self-censorship.

The rise of this movement has taken place against the backdrop of major changes in American life — the tearing apart of our social fabric; the loss of religion and the decline of civic organizations; the opioid crisis; the collapse of American industries; the rise of big tech; the loss of faith in meritocracy; the arrogance of our elites; successive financial crises; a toxic public discourse; crushing student debt; the death of trust.

That’s fine but we could dig more for what has brought us to this state. I’ve reviewed in this blog an important book that tries to ferret out the deeper reasons: The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. They claim that the cancel culture generation has fallen under the sway of three “untruths.” They are: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people.

As I said in my review of Lukianoff’s and Haidt’s book, they don’t identify the deeper premises behind the subjectivity prevalent in our universities and culture. (Note: I’m not saying everything can be reduced only to the prevailing ideas. I’m trying to avoid the mistake of reducing everything to one dimension.) Nonetheless, I think we need to look philosophy for some answers. While most of us don’t deal directly with philosophical trends in our daily lives, universities are a major transmission belt for ideas to young people who can readily absorb the ideas pushed by their professors without the real-world experience to question whether these ideas are valid.

Where do these Great Untruths come from and why are most people unable to refute them? Rather than try to provide a detailed explanation here I recommend another book to supplement The Coddling of the American Mind: Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

Hicks nicely captures the essence of postmodernism.

Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality. … Epistemologically, having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge about that reality. Having substituted social-linguistic constructs for that reality, postmodernism emphasizes the subjectivity, conventionality, and incommensurability of those constructs. Postmodern accounts of human nature are consistently collectivist, holding that individuals’ identities are constructed largely by the social-linguistic groups that they are a part of. … Postmodern accounts of human nature also consistently emphasize relations of conflict between those groups; and given the de-emphasized or eliminated role of reason, postmodernism accounts hold that those conflicts are resolved primarily by the use of force. [Note: This was written in 2004 but accurately describes what Lukianoff and Haidt say is happening in universities today.]

In education, postmodernism rejects the notion that the purpose of education is primarily to train a child’s cognitive capacity for reason in order to produce an adult capable of functioning independently in the world. That view of education is replaced with the view that education is to take an essentially indeterminate being and give it a social identity. Education’s method of molding is linguistic, and so the language to be used is that which will create a human being sensitive to its racial, sexual and class identity. [Note: Hence the focus on language and microaggressions.]

To summarize, postmodernism says that there is no objective truth. Therefore, your feelings are as valid, if not more so, than critical, objective thinking, especially if you’re feeling oppressed. Power is used to “correct” the legacy of oppression. Therefore, it’s OK to suppress certain ideas and speakers because their oppressive ideas are dangerous, discredited, aggressive and oppressive. Power trumps truth because truth doesn’t exist; feelings trump reason and logic.

Let’s get back to Weiss’s article. I don’t know if you picked this up, but Weiss twice uses the word “pluralism” as a feature of classical liberalism. Pluralism has a number of definitions but for the purpose of this post I think the following description explains what Weiss means by pluralism.

The political philosophy of pluralism suggests that we really can and should “all just get along.” First recognized as an essential element of democracy by the philosophers of Ancient Greece, pluralism permits and even encourages a diversity of political opinion and participation. … Pluralism is a political philosophy holding that people of different beliefs, backgrounds, and lifestyles can coexist in the same society and participate equally in the political process.

There also is value pluralism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has this to say about value pluralism.

It is also worth emphasising that moral value pluralism does not entail relativism. The idea is not that all values or value systems are equally true. Value pluralism is independent of any particular meta-ethical view. It is a claim about the normative domain: about what value looks like.

Commonsensically we talk about lots of different values—happiness, liberty, friendship, and so on. The question about pluralism in moral theory is whether these apparently different values are all reducible to one supervalue, or whether we should think that there really are several distinct values.

I’d describe pluralism in a different way. We can individually pursue our moral values using differing value hierarchies; our political system was designed to recognize this plurality and individualism by protecting our right to pursue these values as long as we don’t impinge on the rights of people to pursue their values.

As the entry above says, pluralism doesn’t entail relativism. I agree. But there is a problem. If postmodernism banishes objective truth, there is no principle to keep pluralism from spiraling into deuces-wild relativism. Because objective ways to negotiate differences of opinions are prohibited, it comes down to who has the most power. Instead of being able to work out our differences the people who happen to be in the minority (whether it’s conservatives in New England or liberals in Trump country) end up censoring themselves. This self-censorship doesn’t just threaten democracy. It damages our relationships and the ability for us to learn from each other.

Marcuse-Anon: Cult of the Pseudo-Intellectual - TK News by Matt Taibbi

2021-02-16T20:14:00.000-05:00

Marcuse-Anon: Cult of the Pseudo-Intellectual - TK News by Matt Taibbi: Reviewing "Repressive Tolerance" and other works by Herbert Marcuse, the quack who became America’s most influential thinker

We hear a lot about what is called the “Cancel Culture” and wokeism, especially from those on the political right who see these forces as threatening our civilization with its law and order. I’ve seen many on the right such as Tucker Carlson or Sean Hannity bemoan this destructive trend but without offering a good explanation why this is happening or what can be done to stop it. For explanations of the ideas behind these forces of deconstruction I recommend Stephen Hicks’ book Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault and Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay.

I would now add Marcuse-Anon: Cult of the Pseudo-Intellectual, an insightful essay by Matt Taibbi, who writes for Rolling Stone and wrote books such as Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another. Taibbi comes from a journalist background and is politically on the left. However, I’d say he is closer to being a traditional liberal than a progressive one. His essay builds a case for explaining a lot of what is happening stems from Herbert Marcuse, a Marxist philosopher. My blog post won’t be able to do justice to Taibbi’s article, so I won’t try to summarize his argument or key points here. Instead, I’ll share some key quotes that stood out.

Here are selected quotes from different parts of the essay.

Most Americans have never heard of him — he died in 1979 — but his ideas today are ubiquitous as Edison’s lightbulbs. He gave us everything from “Silence Equals Violence” to “Too Much Democracy” to the “Crisis of Misinformation” to In Defense of Looting to the 1619 Project and Antiracist Baby, and from the grave has cheered countless recent news stories, from the firing of Mandalorian actress Gina Corano to the erasure of raw footage of the Capitol riot from YouTube.

He was the real-world embodiment of Orwell’s utopian linguists who were impatient to rid the world of all those annoying words for shades of difference. Once you have a lock on “good,” why bother litigating degrees of its opposite? Bad is bad. He thought in binary pairs, and freely conflated concepts like inadequacy, misgovernment, and indifference with cruelty, repression, persecution, and terror, a habit of mind that’s inspired a generation of catastrophizing neurotics who genuinely don’t know the difference between disagreement and an attempt on their lives.

We saw it in health officials who went from condemning anti-lockdown protests to, a week or two later, declaring that racism — not on their radar prior to the murder of George Floyd — was a “lethal public health issue” superseding the pandemic. We saw it with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez applying the transitive property of whatever nineteen times over to make Ted Cruz’s decision to refuse certification of the Electoral College mean he was “trying to murder me” and “almost had me murdered.” Same with the New York Times employees who declared their lives were thrust in peril by soon-to-be-fired editor James Bennet’s decision to run an editorial by Senator Tom Cotton.

Summing up, this is a theory of an intellectual elite forced to seize absolute power on behalf of racial minorities, the disabled, and other oppressed groups, while canceling free speech and civil rights for all others, and especially for the corrupted mass of working-class people, who are no friends of the revolution but actually ignorant conservatives obstructing the road to “pacification and liberation.” Does this sound familiar?

It does indeed sound all too familiar!

I find Taibbi’s respect for facts and objectivity refreshing so I always look forward to his commentary and analysis, even when I disagree with him. These disagreements give me the chance to test my beliefs.

I Hate Federal Commissions, But Americans Need One To Look Into The 2020 Election – JONATHAN TURLEY

2021-01-07T10:45:00.001-05:00

I Hate Federal Commissions, But Americans Need One To Look Into The 2020 Election – JONATHAN TURLEY

One of the people I follow is Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors. I first heard about Turley when he testified during the Trump impeachment hearings. Although Turley is a Republican he stated during the hearing that he did not vote for Trump in 2016. He also has frequently criticized Trump in his blog. From reading his blog posts I've concluded that he tries to be objective.

In the aftermath of the January 6, 2021 Trump rally in which some of his supporters stormed the Capitol Turley posted his call for a federal commission to look into the 2020 election. I've extracted several key quotes below.

I hate federal commissions. I have always hated federal commissions. Federal commissions are Washington’s way of managing scandals. They work like placebos for political fevers, convincing voters that answers and change are on the way. That is why it is so difficult for me to utter these words: We need a federal election commission. Not the one proposed by some Senate Republicans. And not like past placebo commissions. An honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election.

...

There are three reasons why the need for a real commission is needed:

►First, and most important, this was an unprecedented election in the reliance of mail-in voting and the use of new voting systems and procedures. We need to review how that worked down to the smallest precincts and hamlets.

►Second, possibly tens of millions of voters believe that this election was rigged and stolen. I am not one of them. However, the integrity of our elections depends on the faith of the electorate.

Roughly 40% of that electorate have lingering doubts about whether their votes actually matter. Most of the cases challenging the election were not decided on the merits. Indeed, it seems they haven’t even been allowed for discovery. Instead, they were largely dismissed on jurisdictional or standing groups or under the “laches” doctrine that they were brought too late. Those allegations need to be conclusively proven or disproven in the interests of the country.

►Third, there were problems. There was not proof of systemic fraud or irregularities, but there were problems of uncounted votes, loss of key custodial information and key differences in the rules governing voting and tabulations.

We have spent billions to achieve greater security and reliability after prior election controversies. Indeed, we had a prior election commission that failed to achieve those fundamental goals.

...

The stakes are too high to allow even a dust particle to tip the difference on the ultimate findings. The dust-free option requires a dependent, not independent, commission. Otherwise, the public will be the loser.
So, let’s have a commission, but let’s make it a real one.

Turley admits that if a commission is appointed (which I find highly unlikely) it will take years to complete its work. Therefore it won't satisfy those who question the validity of the 2020 election. I agree with Turley's reasons for investigating the current voting procedures, especially the mail-in ballots and the Dominion voting machines. If we, the voting public, are to trust that our vote truly counts we need to believe that our vote is being counted.

'Loserthink' by Scott Adams - Narrative Corrections

2021-01-03T11:34:00.005-05:00

'Loserthink' by Scott Adams - Narrative Corrections

One of the people I follow on Twitter and locals.com is Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert and trained hypnotist who specializes in persuasion. Adams runs a daily video blog where he offers his unique perspective on current events. He is one of the few people who predicted that Trump would win the 2016 presidential election based on what Adams saw in Trump’s methods of persuasion.

I’ve been meaning to review his most recent book, Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America, but the post by Joseph Caskey in the link above does a nice job covering the key points.

What exactly is Loserthink? Per Adams, “Loserthink isn’t about being dumb, and it isn’t about being underinformed. Loserthink is about unproductive ways of thinking.” An example of Loserthink: mind-reading where we claim to know what another person is thinking then “refuting” that thought or intention.

Caskey’s review mentions a couple others such as the slippery slope argument but doesn’t mention one that I see all the time: using analogies to make predictions. Adams gives an example in this interview with Sharyl Attkisson.

I highly recommend Caskey’s review as well as Adams’ Loserthink and his other books. Check out Scott’s Twitter feed (@ScottAdamsSays) and his locals.com community (https://scottadams.locals.com/).

How “Silence is Violence” Can Become Compelled Speech – JONATHAN TURLEY

2020-11-05T10:02:00.001-05:00

How “Silence is Violence” Can Became Compelled Speech – JONATHAN TURLEY

Jonathan Turley’s essay identifies a trend that is surfacing: “failing to utter certain words, prayers or pledges is deemed a confession of complicity or guilt.” He cites this an example.

This week, a mob surrounded diners (https://www.businessinsider.com/white-protesters-confront-dinersduring-black-lives-matter-protest-2020-8) outside several Washington restaurants, shouting “White silence is violence!” and demanding that diners raise a fist to support Black Lives Matter. Various diners dutifully complied as protesters screamed inches from their faces. One did not — Lauren Victor, who later said she has marched in protests for weeks but refused to be bullied. The mob surrounded her, and Washington Post reporter Fredrick Kunkle identified a freelance journalist (https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/08/25/dc-protesters-blmdiner-confrontation/) as one of the people yelling at Victor and demanding: “What was in you, you couldn’t do this?”

Later Turley says:

The transition from speech codes to commands is based on the same notion of “speech as harm.” Just as speech is deemed harmful (and thus subject to regulation), silence is now deemed harmful.

Turley doesn’t talk about where the idea of speech as harm arose but Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt do in their The Coddling of the American Mind. They refer to a 2017 The New York Times essay by Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology and emotion researcher at Northeastern University, in which Barrett claims: “If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech – at least certain types of speech – can be a form of violence.” Turley’s example above shows that now it’s not enough to avoid politically incorrect language or even “micro-aggressions” where you can be taken to task even for unintentionally using the wrong words. Now even silence can be wrong. As he says, “the appetite for collective suppression will become a demand for collective expression.”

Turley’s use of the word “collective” twice in the same sentence reveals an issue I have with the constant drive to police expression: the drive to suppress individual thought. One side believes they have a monopoly on moral rectitude. So disagreement automatically means you’re immoral. You’re expected to purge your mind of “bad thoughts.”

I recall when I was going to Catholic Church in my youth we were taught that bad thoughts were as sinful as bad actions. (If I may take a slight and somewhat crude detour, George Carlin had a great skit on this where he says just thinking about “feeling up Ellen” consisted of multiple sins. It was a sin for you to want to feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to plan to feel up Ellen. It was a sin for you to figure out a place to feel up Ellen. It was a sin to take Ellen to the place to feel her up. It was a sin to try to feel her up and it was a sin to feel her up. There were six sins in one feel!)

I have a reason for bringing up George Carlin and religion. As a former Roman Catholic, I was raised to believe humans are born with Original Sin, that we are all sinful by nature

My point is that we are expected to all think and speak alike. No diversity of opinion of allowed. It’s almost like we’re expected to plug into the Borg collective where not only is resistance futile, so is disagreement. (If you’re not familiar with my reference to the Borg collective the Borg was a cybernetic life form in Star Trek Next Generation that conquered other species then absorbed them into the Borg collective where each member became a drone with no individual free will. This link explains in more detail. When confronting the Star Trek crew, the Borg drones would say, “Resistance is futile.”)

A kernel of truth lies under the concern of using language that can make people feel diminished, abused or oppressed. Pushing the idea that there is no such thing as an innocent misuse of language washes out the validity of this concern. Instead, ALL language that doesn’t meet these speech codes (as Turley calls them) means the person who uttered them is sinful, regardless of intent. Ultimately, it’s a no-win situation. The ultimate result squelches individual thought.

If you don’t agree that silence is violence then these people feel it’s OK to use violence, the physical kind, to silence you. Ultimately speech control boils down to thought control.

Tweet by Naval

2020-10-25T23:46:00.000-04:00

https://twitter.com/naval/status/1320071888551358464?s=20

One of the people I follow on Twitter is Naval. He condenses his thinking into short, pithy posts. Below is an example which I like.

“Artists” calling for censorship don’t know what art is.
“Scientists” citing consensus don’t know what science is.
“Teachers” indoctrinating students don’t know what teaching is.
“Journalists” parroting propaganda don’t know what reporting is.
Programming us all day long.