Have seen so many otherwise tame people go mask off fash because you can’t argue with logic (never mind the root cause of the logic in question)
I am seriously fucking terrified. I think philosophy might be dead thanks to pompous tech bros
I know a guy who I had to stop discussing politics with because he started doing the destiny debate streamer thing of pulling up wikipedia articles so he could "debate" me on subjects he knows nothing about. He also called it "doing quick non-biased research".
He's in his thirties.
Ew. I hate people who believe that wikipedia is the fountain of truth.
Wikipedia can be useful but only really if you’re already tuned to interpreting the biases in the information given.
Wiki is best when it's something too old for capitalists to give a shit. Like yes Wikipedia tell me more about bronze cauldron construction in ancient China. You still have to check the sources but it's usually okay. The pages on things like language migration are usually okay too.
In a darker way way it's really good on any topic the left and right largely agree on.
I have a coworker who thinks
was in charge of China during the Tiananman square protests. He did not believe me when i told him Mao had been dead for 13 years at that point. Just had to walk away.Can't be biased when you dont know the ideological splits of the topic.
And 99 times out of 100, the "logic" in question doesn't hold up to even the barest scrutiny. What the speaker claims is a direct line from A to B is in fact a line from A to Z, with all the letters B-Y being filled in with the speaker's own unsupported and often not explicitly stated prejudices and misconceptions.
Some worthless tech bro on tik tok did a major
because logic says everyone talking about wealth inequality is just a triggered and jealous leftist and things haven’t changed nearly as much as people are sayingI bet the ruling class is thrilled to have so many fucking useful idiots
I was talking to a friend yesterday who is a Biden liberal. Actually, it doesn't matter who you stick in there, he will support them. He grew up well off and has a nice job now.
Anyway, he brought up politics and it came around to "we need to get out the
for Biden but young people don't vote". So I brought up how hard it is to vote when you work weird hours, don't have transportation and have to stand in line for hours to do so. He agreed, but defaulted to "republicans make it so hard to vote". I didn't have the heart to press him on why democrats aren't making it easier when they are in power. To be fair though, our state did, and is doing a lot of good with our lib leadership.Anyway, his privilege glasses blinded him from all of the B-Y steps of why voting isn't as simple as A-B. I've been trying to crack his privilege dome for our entire friendship. I get through once in a while, but he's in too high of a tax bracket to ever know what real hardship is like.
This shit bothers the piss outta me but if you keep pressing them like this in my xp they will agree with you long enough until they get to the part where they either implicitly or explicitly admit they just don’t care about anything adjacent to a measurable truth and will go back to complaining about the homeless or lazy kids or whatever. Like, they’ll straight up say you’re right about everything, and then continue the conversation as if it never happened. Maddening. I don’t bother anymore.
He's a good friend of mine, and I usually just try to steer away from politics with him. He's just not engaged enough to see a big picture, and resorts to dumb shit like "we gotta reign in the deficit" or some other nebulous thing that won't improve people's material conditions. If I can, I remind him that the key to all of this is improving material conditions.
Garbage in, garbage out, I work in a heavily data driven field and I see it every day. But they don't care where the data comes from or its integrity as long as it agrees with their preconceptions
Legit feel like I could get in a fight with someone over this. It truly feels like creation with extra steps
Well, according to my research on Wikipedia, tech workers make up only 1% of the population, yet cause most of the stupid bullshit I have to see on the internet. Data doesn't lie, it's just a fact!
I worked at a place where the CEO had a massive hard on for being "data driven". But when people brought up studies supporting 4 day work weeks, he immediately and without reading anything went "we're not doing that."
Ok bro.
The solution is to propagate a constructivist philosophy at a basal level, as opposed to an essentialist one.
Essentialist philosophy will always run into awkward contrivances.
I think this is normal tbh (in the liberal society we live in anyhow). There are always waves of this, decades ago maybe it was race and iq stuff, before that early eugenics/phrenology. It's always presented as capital T Truth as discovered by our infallible Science, which then turns out to be obviously flawed and very motivated in its reasoning
Unfortunately people aren't taught how to properly interprate data. They shove a bunch of shitty biases and misunderstandings onto the data and act like that's the word of God. It's infuriating.
I mean if you wanna prove climate change is real you need to show people data. If you wanna prove trans people and indigenous people are murdered at alarming rates you also need data.
Be careful what you wish for.
Strong recommendation to read A Modest Proposal, it’s a fairly short letter, will take 20mins maybe to read. A fantastic critique of data and numeric driven decision making, as relevant today as it was in the 1700s.
162: How the "Data-Driven" Label Sanitizes Cruel Austerity Politics