> I honestly don't think it takes an extraordinary degree of intelligence to systematically view the world through an objective lens.

Well I disagree passionately! lol

The world is highly subjective and illusory, as a consequence of it largely running on top of the human mind whose behavior is a function of millions years of evolution (in conditions highly dissimilar to the present), as well as distortion due to culture, propaganda, and various other issues. I mean just take this philosophy subreddit for example - getting anyone to seriously discuss the truth value of a proposition is very often like pulling teeth!

> Your example of r/politics is unfortunately a demonstration of furthering political tribalism, in my experience at least.

The mind is naturally attracted to the extremes of any situation - discussions in politically oriented subreddits are a train wreck, but I propose what's even more interesting than that is that political discussions in most any community, regardless of average intelligence level, will also be a trainwreck. The classic example I always use is https://news.ycombinator.com, a forum populated by mostly highly intelligent programmers, engineers, etc - in technical threads, people are smart - but pop into a political thread and observe how IQ's and logical capabilities have been cut in half, at least. I believe there is something about certain topics that the mind just cannot compute without constantly generating errors.

I very much agree with you on culture though - I wouldn't find ot hard to believe that culture could count for half or more of the problem.

> I'm considering context and intent.

By what means did you acquire necessarily accurate knowledge (as opposed to belief) about intent? Have you spoken with the author of this piece?

> You are the ones who want to run from the words, their context and her intent to what you feel from them.

I am here engaging in conversation with you, and speaking as truthfully as I can.

I am not running from anything.

I think you failed to address this:

"The word "obligation" was never a part of my comment. That's your distortion."

Are you willing to address it, or do you refuse?

> thinking that the meanings you give to words are more important to what someone is saying than the context and intent.

You are taking your interpretation as being necessarily correct, ignoring your very own advice: considering "the context and intent".

> The word "obligation" was never a part of my comment. That's your distortion.

"The second is one who believes we all have an obligation to "help each other make it to the end.""

https://i.imgur.com/aJun2k3.png

With every passing day, it is becoming increasingly difficult to believe that this is not a simulation.

Incorrect - some people believe that "help each other make it to the end" is a good idea, but once people start throwing the word obligation around, or speaking in confident false dichotomies, some people get nervous, and I'm one of them.

> The two parties agree on almost everything. We're so hyper-focused on the differences between them that we fail to notice how very similar they are. Which of them is in opposition to a stronger military? Which one is anticapitalist? Which party is against eating meat? Which party wants to dissolve federal government? On major issues there is no dissent.

Isn't it surreal that this is pretty much not even on anyone's radar? I mean sure, people complain about this shit endlessly, but things like you mention could be addressed, but never are.

Personally, I think there are unwritten rules in the journalist class, that these sorts of questions are never asked in a way other than so they can be addressed with a prepared sound byte.

> If you take the time to examine your beliefs and construct your own view of the world and how you see political structures best helping us, there should be no hypocrisy or conflict in your ideology.

This is assuming a pretty extraordinarily high level of intelligence on behalf of the individual. A short visit to /r/politics might give you an idea of the quality of humans we're dealing with here.

> Ironic considering what she said is that when you read someone say something, you should have a strong definition of words in your head and not conclude "Oh they can't possibly mean that."So either she's a hypocrite or you're a liar.

a) Can you quote the text where she said precisely this?

b) That's a lovely false dichotomy, but I think you may have missed at east one other possibility: you've misinterpreted the message.

> Yeah this is narcissism, thinking that the meanings you give to words are more important to what someone is saying than the context and intent.

This is ironic.

> a lot of that is going to get lost by how it’s presented

Don't overlook errors that occur when text is ingested and interpreted, much/most of which is done subconsciously and sub-perceptually.

I think it would be fun to run people here through some quotes from articles, but keep the identity/affiliation of the author secret. I wonder if people here would have identical(!) reactions to the same articles if they didn't know it was associated with Rand.

> Which, to be fair, one shouldn't just assume but double check

And if one does not have access to the author to double check, what is then optimal behavior?

> Instantly taking things literally

When you say "instantly", do you mean instantly? Because that word wasn't in the article. Also, the advice was "take ideas

Perhaps if an article isn't exhaustively comprehensive in wording, presuming the worst interpretation of the words is also not optimal.

>>> Take it literally. Don’t translate it, don’t glamorize it, don’t make the mistake of thinking, as many people do: “Oh, nobody could possibly mean this!” and then proceed to endow it with some whitewashed meaning of your own. Take it straight, for what it does say and mean.

My reading of it was ~"don't be generous and assume that bad sounding ideas aren't actually intended other than they are stated', which based on my observations of the ambiguous manner in which people speak, is sound advice.

> What really matters is the idea someone is trying to convey and sometimes people are not great at that which requires work on the receiving end

Well you've given a fine demonstration here of ensuring that your understanding is perfect before passing judgment.

> I suppose I could form strong beliefs like Republicans do, based on what Fox News says.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz2WfBFdOAU

> I mean why trust my eyes when I could just trust talking heads.

Trusting either may not be wise.

> Remember, critical thinking is a tool of the left, you should skip it unless you want to be woke.

Is this to say that all people on the left are good at critical thinking, or even a majority of them are?

> There is no room for thought on the right.

What does this even mean?

> Facts slide off Republicans like Teflon.

Perhaps you should give the rules on the sidebar a read.

> "Omg that's a cartoon, there is no possible way that cartoons can contain truth, I should just reject it outright, especially because it doesn't conform to my twisted perspective of the world". - you presumably

Well, you are incorrect once again.

I'm genuinely curious: why do you do this? Granted, it's surely plenty of fun, but still. It seems to me to be contrary both to your implied desires as well as your literal words.

> Generally The Simpsons tends to be a reflection of the current society.

"tends", "a reflection of", "the".

The nice thing about ambiguity is it is impossible to be incorrect, if used skilfully (which seems to come naturally to humans).

> I think it shows that Republicans have been evil for well over a quarter century.

It very well may, but there is an important difference between representing something in a cartoon vs it actually existing in reality (notice how many characters in cartoons can fly, do superhuman feats, etc).

> The Republican goal is to make sure rich people get richer and poor people stay poor.

Wrong - it is the Democrat goal. This is true by virtue of me saying it is true. Also: I saw it in a meme.

> You can see it in the few times they actually try to submit a bill to Congress. They are Patriots in the same way that they are pro-life, only when it supports their end goals.

You can also see that Democrats like abusing children in their bill submissions - though, I'd be careful forming a strong belief based purely on what one "sees".

Science has studied this phenomenon extensively, I highly recommend digging into the literature.

> But the reality...

Ah yes...."the" "reality". There can be only one.

> What I'm saying is that a good number of people believe that it's one or the other when really, it's not. It's all of them combined that make these judgements of how everything works

Agree....though, there are also many other important things in play, like media/journalism/propaganda/social media ("The telephone Game")/etc.

> -Technology. -We have entered a post-truth era. -We’re polarized, sorted socially and geographically along partisan lines. -Our leaders. -Psychology.

YES!!!

I believe that we can fight back against ("the simulation" supports it physically), but we also cannot (our minds do not (yet) support it).

> Why does it have to be just one and why can't it be all?

Architectural and "software" (culture, knowledge, etc) shortcomings. Consider the conversations you read online: most people are typically utterly unable to skilfully contemplate FAR simpler problems than this! A lot of people hit their limit with one variable, let alone millions.

> Why can't we as individuals look at an opposing individual and say "everything is fucked up and we are both feeding into it"?

It is our nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog

>> A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I am sorry, but I couldn't resist the urge. It's in my nature."

Though, if one considers the history of racism, sexism, basically any "-ism", we know that we do have some capacity for change. Were we to invest more time, attention, and resources in this domain, I would be shocked if we wouldn't make substantial progress, perhaps even rapidly. Unfortunately, we would first have to develop both the ability and desire to do that, before we would be able to actually do it, and ain't nobody got time for that. So, I suspect we will remain in this state until that changes.

> Even the Simpsons pointed out that Republicans are evil back in 1994.

Demonstrating that causing someone to believe that a proposition is true can be as easy as showing them a cartoon, which is pretty interesting if one has the ability to take such things seriously.

> How do we make sense of a party that simultaneously proclaims itself pro-life, yet wants to remove roadblocks to capital punishment AND wants to flood the streets with guns?

Ontology, logic, epistemology, psychology, mindfulness/meditation, at least (these are more than enough to improve things substantially, were we to actually use them).

For example: here you are discussing several predictions about reality as if they are necessarily accurate descriptions of reality itself. It is possible to do otherwise, but it is not very popular. Even discussing the simple abstract phenomenon itself is typically very popular, if such a conversation is invoked from an object level instance like this, despite it being a philosophy forum (psychology forums are similar in my experience). Paradoxically, abstract discussion is often extremely popular, but only if the invocation of the topic is from an abstract perspective - then, people very often thoroughly enjoy discussing the phenomenon, including their personal shortcomings.

I'm thinking ChatGPT and AI in general will some day be very helpful with this issue as technologies improve.

> Why can't political belief be a combination of all of the things they are referring to?

If you're asking literally, a shortlist of the root causes (imho):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics (kind of joking on this one lol)

It's somewhat similar to why historic practices in medicine and science were so "obviously" (from our current perspective) wrong and primitive: we had not yet discovered how to do otherwise (in many different ways), though in this case it is not known whether it is possible to do otherwise in practice, even if it is possible in theory.

> And solving a moral dilemma doesn't look at all like solving a problem in physics.

Agree, but listening to a lot of people talk with supreme confidence about what "is" the "right" thing to do, it seems like this idea is not very broadly distributed.

> oftentimes "solving" a moral problem or dilemma means deciding on a course of action. And we certainly do that all the time

Right, but the chosen course doesn't have to be right/correct, it only has to be adequate for the maximum number of people, something that I don't see The Man putting a lot of effort into discerning. If no one ever checks in with The People, should we be all that surprised when they are mad at we don't know why (though not to worry: memes "explanatory" "facts" can be imagined into existence and mass broadcast into the minds of the population in days, if not faster).

> I'm skeptical about whether moral judgments are even truth-apt at all, but the strength of a line of reasoning or argument is equal to that of its weakest link....

Mostly agree. As I see it, the problem isn't so much that answers to moral questions are hard to discern, but that with few exceptions I can think of (including literal murder), do not have a correct answer at all.

> ...so your confidence in your conclusion- assuming your inference is logically valid- is going to boil down to your confidence in your (normative) premises. Which will obviously vary from person to person, and subjective confidence is no guarantor of objective certainty in any case.

Right - so put error correction into the system, so when participants minds wander into fantasy and, provide them with gentle course correction back to reality, which is filled with non-visible (for now at least) mystery.

> So I'm fine with the idea that logic or mathematics could help solve moral dilemmas or problems, in at least some instances (e.g. utilitarian calculations/quantifications of pleasure/happiness vs pain/suffering) but it seems to me that some basic moral values or an ethical framework is a necessary prerequisite... which is usually the tricky part, so I'm somewhat dubious of the overall utility of such a strategy (it seems like it only helps solve what is already the easiest part of the problem).

"Solving" things can only be done in deterministic problem spaces, like physics. Society is metaphysical, and non-deterministic. It appears to be deterministic, but that is an illusion. Just as the average human 200 years ago was ~dumb by our standards (as a consequence of education and progress) and little aware of it, so too are we. This could be realized, but like many things humanity has accomplished, first you have to actually try to accomplish it.

Oh, I'm not claiming that necessarily correct answers can be reached ("whether it is valid or makes any fucking sense is a secondary matter"), I don't think any framework can provide that for this sort of problem space.

Well, simple math is pretty common, and I've seen several examples online where it gets elementary school math wrong.

Based on what I've read about it, its behavior seems extremely similar to human cognition, I can't even imagine what the next version is going to be like, let alone 2-3 years from now. I think we are in a new era, this might be similarly disrupting as the internet was, maybe even more.

What I injected is directly related to the topic of discussion: "Nazis" (or so-called Nazis).

You are welcome to act as if this has no relevance whatsoever, and I am welcome to point out that you are incorrect. To me, this is satisfying as it physically documents the nature of the mind in a way that can be ingested at a future date. However, further replies also increases the potential value, so I encourage it.

This demonstration satisfies me, thank you.