So let’s say I have a friend who starts posting non-stop about a business opportunity to be your own boss hocking fake fingernails or diarrhea tea.
I have never had personal experience with an MLM but I trust enough people that are well versed on the topic to form an opinion. I comment “Vivanutrition is a pyramid scheme”, my friend says I’m one of the small minded doubters that hates female owned small businesses and we block each other.
We are mutually disgusted by each other, but it’s not symmetrical. I’m not trying to subtly influence the enforced mores of the herd. I see a person knowingly or not being used to sell something toxic and exploitative.
Likewise, nearly 10 years after “ethics in gaming journalism” it isn’t some quest for moral purity that causes people to call out an account claiming to be leftist repackaging incel talking points for consumption in progressive spaces. It’s recognition that there’s an organized, scripted effort by bad faith actors trying to recruit people to easy, simple, highly appealing, toxic worldviews.
You're friend is enforcing his tribe's disdain for those that would miss out on or deny others incredible opportunities. His tribe may be a cult or a scam operation but the psychology is the same.
You were raised right and have sense, your tribe knows that these types of schemes prey on the vulnerable and no one intelligent enough to be a member of your tribe would not fall for or stand for this foolish scam.
The psychology is the same, it doesn't matter that you happen to be objectively correct.
You mention its been ten years since gamer gate, obviously only bad actors or people tricked by bad actors could possibly say whichever things. From your POV only. I like video games, I like reading stuff online, I'm a bit of a nerd. When that whole controversy happened, nobody could explain it to me in a way that made any sense at all. It just so happened, that I was not tuned into the online discourse and all I could discern was that a lot of people were so extremely angry that they couldn't explain themselves properly. It was like walking into a room full of preteens in a full on brawl and trying to ask how the fight started. Only maybe in the last year or so that I've been trying to read lots of books and get into lots of long form video essays and such have I been able to get a sense of what actually happened there, and it turns out, I'm on your side.
Most people, still have never heard of it.
I feel your frustration, but sometimes its not about who is right, but how people think
> “Believe this, not because it’s true, but because this is what the tribe believes now. And you can’t live without the tribe.”
It's not always just about fear of rejection from the tribe.
Sometimes it's also about the tribe making the individual believe their moral worth is derived from tribal affiliation itself.
Blue Tribe are the capital N Nice ones in the room. They have Nice ideas about being maximally Nice to people, particularly those they believe are the victims of our society.
If being Nice is important to you, then you have to be Blue, even if Red Tribe has some ideas that are mean but Practical. You can't be Nice and Practical at the same time. You gotta pick the one you're gonna be - Blue or Red, Nice or Practical.
So if you are Blue, and you agree with any not-Nice Red Tribe ideas, including ones like, "a person should be able to shoot anyone, even a victim of our society, if they represent a deadly threat," then *you* aren't really Blue anymore, and thus you also aren't really Nice.
When my ex-boyfriend suddenly broke up with me last year, despite us never having had a fight and agreeing we were compatible on every major level, he said it was because he was "super Left," far more than he'd ever indicated to me (politically non-binary and out and proud about it) and that, "I can see a lot of your points and I don't like the way being okay with them makes me feel."
He went on to explain his worldview: that there is an inherent good in all people, and that everyone just needs enough love and kindness to thrive, and we should do what we can to help them, no matter what it takes.
(In contrast, I have had concealed carry permits literally since the day I turned 21, and once prevented a robbery at my workplace by calmly indicating to my would-be attackers that I was 100% committed to killing all three of them were they to draw their weapons on me. I meant it, and they left quietly, even though they never even saw my gun.)
While I don't think it's a coincidence my ex dumped me immediately upon returning from his first out of state family vacation since before the pandemic, I don't think it was just that they didn't approve of what he told them about me and my politically non-binary self.
I think it was also that the tribe made him believe that all judgments had to be made in their court of opinion, not his own.
EDIT/ADDENDUM: I don't understand the difference between feeling the need to avoid rejection by the tribe and the need to accede to its judgement—the latter seems to me to be part-and-parcel of avoiding rejection from it. Maybe I'm over-influenced by my background, since for nearly two millennia Jewish religious courts could enforce their judgements solely via the threat of ostracism of those rejecting them, and the same threat kept most members of the community behaving in line with what was considered fitting and proper.
I'm sorry that that you've suffered from it, but for most of history this is how things have worked. People lived much as their ancestors had done, so following the rules that had worked {well enough}/{not badly enough} that they could wind-up being born was probably the best bet around, and this meant subordinating their own judgements—based on their limited experience and ability to reason, as opposed to the evolved knowledge acquired over hundreds or thousands of lifetimes, with the worst practises weeded-out by a tough world—was the best bet. (I gather that I'm restating Edmund Burke's justification for his sort of conservatism, please tell me if I'm wrong.)
Modern life is different; circumstances change quickly and they alter cases. I don't know the Yiddish for 'In America the children teach the parents.' but I gather it was folk-wisdom on the Lower East Side c.1900. Old code used in new situations reveals the kruft that builds-up in code over its maintained and patched life…or fails to run at all because bits of it create wild pointers.
I don't belief in a single, unitary, Human Nature, but I do believe that some things persist in human behaviour. Some things about people—for example, that they tend to be imitative, or accept ad hominem arguments readily—still seem to be true, and we shouldn't throw-away what we think we've learned in those areas, but we should be cautious about claiming that this is why we still believe as we have before.
Since it seems that he won't leave his tribe, I wish him well in it, and I wish you well, too. AS things have changed since 1960, I'll omit the dialect Lenny Bruce used in telling a joke of his about a waiter who very solicitously askes about the state of 'Mrs Bruce'’s health and evinces great concern until he find-out that Lenny and she have divorced, and suggest 'You’re better off.'.
I was attempting to outline the idea that it's not just the threat of rejection that might persuade someone to submit to tribal beliefs.
Rather, if one's *own* belief is that one's identity as a Good Person (tm) is contingent on unambiguous tribal membership, breaking with tribal orthodoxy becomes much more difficult.
I think there's tension there between that and purely individualic judgement. Mindlessly going in lock-step with the tribe is an abdication of personal conscience, but ignoring it completely rejects whatever good lessons the tribe have learnt over time that one person will not have had the time or depth of experience to learn. Also, we tending to be as we tend to be, ignoring social judgements contains the danger that we'll both see things and form moral judgements more on the basis of how pleasant or convenient they seem to us—I can think of more than one person whose definitions of 'true'. 'real', and 'right' boil-down to 'what I like to hear'.
Deciding what lessons are good and which are bad (or relatively neutral kruft that's accumulated in the code over centuries of revision) does, for us moderns, reduce to an individual judgement, but I think we should pay some attention to the claims our tribes* make, and where they've led and seem likely to lead now, if only because not every decision is clear-cut or easy.
*(and each of us can have more than one: I'm a Jew, a rationalist, a U.S. American, a karate-ka [of very little ability]… and I can point to good and bad decisions those tribes' values might make for me, where 'good' and 'bad' I guess are decided on a basically humanist basis)
It's been pitched to me, likely correctly, that industrialized revulsion isn't new. The tragedy is that people get better at it over time. There's a sector applying the same creativity, research, and simple talent into permanently pissing people off that goes into breaking Olympic records. Somewhere, the Stephen Curry of rage is patting himself on the back.
While this is a familar theme of your writing Jason and I know where it's coming from and I find the general thrust of it useful in forming my own worldview, I think there's something important to point out.
The wastrel, the priss, and the hypothetical sane reader (big If there though) are not *logically* different but they are *empirically* different and that does in fact matter because reality exists as brute fact. An argument can be logically valid or have the same basic syllogistic form but still not be correct. This is why we got endless arguments from bearded Greek dudes about how the nature of all things was Fire or Water or whatever, and then Francis Bacon and his method ended cutting through a lot of that noise.
A very good point about the difference between the logical and practical equivalencies…using your terms, I was struck that in the example given, the priss were much less likely than the wastrel to infect your arm or foul your pocket.
As usual, that is to say, 'Damn you for stating it before I could!'.
Could you elaborate on the Broke/Woke/Bespoke bit? I'm not confidentI understand it and would love to hear more and perhaps literally subscribe to your news letter.
I don't have a newsletter lol. The Broke, woke, bespoke thing is a twitter meme. It's also phrase tired, wired, inspired. It's basically a funny internet way of saying thesis (initial concept), antithesis (criticism of that concept), synthesis (a new thesis that takes in the criticisms to create a new form).
In the history of philosophy you have different epistemologies (ways of knowing what is true, philosophies on how truth is understood and sussed out) that have waged back and forth. The general dividing line as understood in Western philosophy is usually centered around rationalism versus empiricism. Rationalism is basically deductive reasoning (Premise A, Premise B, therefore conclusion C), while empiricism is inductive reasoning (The sun came up this morning at 6, and the day before that it came up at 6, I believe it will come up at 6 tomorrow).
Rationalism and Empiricism both have issues. Purely rational reasoning ungrounded from observation is either useless or gets absurd pretty fast (Aristotle believed that everything was made of Water, Fire, Air, or Earth because.... he thought it sounded like it made sense). And inductive reasoning is something we lack any real capacity to prove is actually valid. Just because the sun came up yesterday and the day before doesn't guarantee it will come up tomorrow.
Popper was a famous philosopher who middle of last century advocated for this concept of critical rationalism. The wiki is pretty good on the subject but the basic gist is that rather than trying to "prove things true" we should hold theories as contingent beliefs subject to change, and our efforts should be spent trying to criticize/disprove those beliefs rather than prove them. "Truth" is merely "our best guess so far".
I often think of the FLDS lost boys. Clearer what's going on there, not a tidy analogy to wider society or too many other groups, but illustrative of something.
I wonder how my brother's old eighties dialup bbses compare with yt algorithms (never mind darkweb) now. I am also wondering how those polarization graphs would align with the Overton window.
Oh, I dunno if I find this reassuring or something else but if you select "general public" and "overall" you get very different mountain ranges. Like, it flattens out from an initial concentration at the center, but it doesn't look like it got implants. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/
So let’s say I have a friend who starts posting non-stop about a business opportunity to be your own boss hocking fake fingernails or diarrhea tea.
I have never had personal experience with an MLM but I trust enough people that are well versed on the topic to form an opinion. I comment “Vivanutrition is a pyramid scheme”, my friend says I’m one of the small minded doubters that hates female owned small businesses and we block each other.
We are mutually disgusted by each other, but it’s not symmetrical. I’m not trying to subtly influence the enforced mores of the herd. I see a person knowingly or not being used to sell something toxic and exploitative.
Likewise, nearly 10 years after “ethics in gaming journalism” it isn’t some quest for moral purity that causes people to call out an account claiming to be leftist repackaging incel talking points for consumption in progressive spaces. It’s recognition that there’s an organized, scripted effort by bad faith actors trying to recruit people to easy, simple, highly appealing, toxic worldviews.
You're friend is enforcing his tribe's disdain for those that would miss out on or deny others incredible opportunities. His tribe may be a cult or a scam operation but the psychology is the same.
You were raised right and have sense, your tribe knows that these types of schemes prey on the vulnerable and no one intelligent enough to be a member of your tribe would not fall for or stand for this foolish scam.
The psychology is the same, it doesn't matter that you happen to be objectively correct.
You mention its been ten years since gamer gate, obviously only bad actors or people tricked by bad actors could possibly say whichever things. From your POV only. I like video games, I like reading stuff online, I'm a bit of a nerd. When that whole controversy happened, nobody could explain it to me in a way that made any sense at all. It just so happened, that I was not tuned into the online discourse and all I could discern was that a lot of people were so extremely angry that they couldn't explain themselves properly. It was like walking into a room full of preteens in a full on brawl and trying to ask how the fight started. Only maybe in the last year or so that I've been trying to read lots of books and get into lots of long form video essays and such have I been able to get a sense of what actually happened there, and it turns out, I'm on your side.
Most people, still have never heard of it.
I feel your frustration, but sometimes its not about who is right, but how people think
> “Believe this, not because it’s true, but because this is what the tribe believes now. And you can’t live without the tribe.”
It's not always just about fear of rejection from the tribe.
Sometimes it's also about the tribe making the individual believe their moral worth is derived from tribal affiliation itself.
Blue Tribe are the capital N Nice ones in the room. They have Nice ideas about being maximally Nice to people, particularly those they believe are the victims of our society.
If being Nice is important to you, then you have to be Blue, even if Red Tribe has some ideas that are mean but Practical. You can't be Nice and Practical at the same time. You gotta pick the one you're gonna be - Blue or Red, Nice or Practical.
So if you are Blue, and you agree with any not-Nice Red Tribe ideas, including ones like, "a person should be able to shoot anyone, even a victim of our society, if they represent a deadly threat," then *you* aren't really Blue anymore, and thus you also aren't really Nice.
When my ex-boyfriend suddenly broke up with me last year, despite us never having had a fight and agreeing we were compatible on every major level, he said it was because he was "super Left," far more than he'd ever indicated to me (politically non-binary and out and proud about it) and that, "I can see a lot of your points and I don't like the way being okay with them makes me feel."
He went on to explain his worldview: that there is an inherent good in all people, and that everyone just needs enough love and kindness to thrive, and we should do what we can to help them, no matter what it takes.
(In contrast, I have had concealed carry permits literally since the day I turned 21, and once prevented a robbery at my workplace by calmly indicating to my would-be attackers that I was 100% committed to killing all three of them were they to draw their weapons on me. I meant it, and they left quietly, even though they never even saw my gun.)
While I don't think it's a coincidence my ex dumped me immediately upon returning from his first out of state family vacation since before the pandemic, I don't think it was just that they didn't approve of what he told them about me and my politically non-binary self.
I think it was also that the tribe made him believe that all judgments had to be made in their court of opinion, not his own.
EDIT/ADDENDUM: I don't understand the difference between feeling the need to avoid rejection by the tribe and the need to accede to its judgement—the latter seems to me to be part-and-parcel of avoiding rejection from it. Maybe I'm over-influenced by my background, since for nearly two millennia Jewish religious courts could enforce their judgements solely via the threat of ostracism of those rejecting them, and the same threat kept most members of the community behaving in line with what was considered fitting and proper.
I'm sorry that that you've suffered from it, but for most of history this is how things have worked. People lived much as their ancestors had done, so following the rules that had worked {well enough}/{not badly enough} that they could wind-up being born was probably the best bet around, and this meant subordinating their own judgements—based on their limited experience and ability to reason, as opposed to the evolved knowledge acquired over hundreds or thousands of lifetimes, with the worst practises weeded-out by a tough world—was the best bet. (I gather that I'm restating Edmund Burke's justification for his sort of conservatism, please tell me if I'm wrong.)
Modern life is different; circumstances change quickly and they alter cases. I don't know the Yiddish for 'In America the children teach the parents.' but I gather it was folk-wisdom on the Lower East Side c.1900. Old code used in new situations reveals the kruft that builds-up in code over its maintained and patched life…or fails to run at all because bits of it create wild pointers.
I don't belief in a single, unitary, Human Nature, but I do believe that some things persist in human behaviour. Some things about people—for example, that they tend to be imitative, or accept ad hominem arguments readily—still seem to be true, and we shouldn't throw-away what we think we've learned in those areas, but we should be cautious about claiming that this is why we still believe as we have before.
Since it seems that he won't leave his tribe, I wish him well in it, and I wish you well, too. AS things have changed since 1960, I'll omit the dialect Lenny Bruce used in telling a joke of his about a waiter who very solicitously askes about the state of 'Mrs Bruce'’s health and evinces great concern until he find-out that Lenny and she have divorced, and suggest 'You’re better off.'.
Ah, I perhaps didn't go into great enough detail.
I was attempting to outline the idea that it's not just the threat of rejection that might persuade someone to submit to tribal beliefs.
Rather, if one's *own* belief is that one's identity as a Good Person (tm) is contingent on unambiguous tribal membership, breaking with tribal orthodoxy becomes much more difficult.
I think there's tension there between that and purely individualic judgement. Mindlessly going in lock-step with the tribe is an abdication of personal conscience, but ignoring it completely rejects whatever good lessons the tribe have learnt over time that one person will not have had the time or depth of experience to learn. Also, we tending to be as we tend to be, ignoring social judgements contains the danger that we'll both see things and form moral judgements more on the basis of how pleasant or convenient they seem to us—I can think of more than one person whose definitions of 'true'. 'real', and 'right' boil-down to 'what I like to hear'.
Deciding what lessons are good and which are bad (or relatively neutral kruft that's accumulated in the code over centuries of revision) does, for us moderns, reduce to an individual judgement, but I think we should pay some attention to the claims our tribes* make, and where they've led and seem likely to lead now, if only because not every decision is clear-cut or easy.
*(and each of us can have more than one: I'm a Jew, a rationalist, a U.S. American, a karate-ka [of very little ability]… and I can point to good and bad decisions those tribes' values might make for me, where 'good' and 'bad' I guess are decided on a basically humanist basis)
It's been pitched to me, likely correctly, that industrialized revulsion isn't new. The tragedy is that people get better at it over time. There's a sector applying the same creativity, research, and simple talent into permanently pissing people off that goes into breaking Olympic records. Somewhere, the Stephen Curry of rage is patting himself on the back.
While this is a familar theme of your writing Jason and I know where it's coming from and I find the general thrust of it useful in forming my own worldview, I think there's something important to point out.
The wastrel, the priss, and the hypothetical sane reader (big If there though) are not *logically* different but they are *empirically* different and that does in fact matter because reality exists as brute fact. An argument can be logically valid or have the same basic syllogistic form but still not be correct. This is why we got endless arguments from bearded Greek dudes about how the nature of all things was Fire or Water or whatever, and then Francis Bacon and his method ended cutting through a lot of that noise.
Broke: pure rationalism
Woke: Empiricism
Bespoke: post-positivist critical rationalism
A very good point about the difference between the logical and practical equivalencies…using your terms, I was struck that in the example given, the priss were much less likely than the wastrel to infect your arm or foul your pocket.
As usual, that is to say, 'Damn you for stating it before I could!'.
Could you elaborate on the Broke/Woke/Bespoke bit? I'm not confidentI understand it and would love to hear more and perhaps literally subscribe to your news letter.
I don't have a newsletter lol. The Broke, woke, bespoke thing is a twitter meme. It's also phrase tired, wired, inspired. It's basically a funny internet way of saying thesis (initial concept), antithesis (criticism of that concept), synthesis (a new thesis that takes in the criticisms to create a new form).
In the history of philosophy you have different epistemologies (ways of knowing what is true, philosophies on how truth is understood and sussed out) that have waged back and forth. The general dividing line as understood in Western philosophy is usually centered around rationalism versus empiricism. Rationalism is basically deductive reasoning (Premise A, Premise B, therefore conclusion C), while empiricism is inductive reasoning (The sun came up this morning at 6, and the day before that it came up at 6, I believe it will come up at 6 tomorrow).
Rationalism and Empiricism both have issues. Purely rational reasoning ungrounded from observation is either useless or gets absurd pretty fast (Aristotle believed that everything was made of Water, Fire, Air, or Earth because.... he thought it sounded like it made sense). And inductive reasoning is something we lack any real capacity to prove is actually valid. Just because the sun came up yesterday and the day before doesn't guarantee it will come up tomorrow.
Popper was a famous philosopher who middle of last century advocated for this concept of critical rationalism. The wiki is pretty good on the subject but the basic gist is that rather than trying to "prove things true" we should hold theories as contingent beliefs subject to change, and our efforts should be spent trying to criticize/disprove those beliefs rather than prove them. "Truth" is merely "our best guess so far".
Ah, thank you, that was quite satisfying!
Were we imagining Adrian Monk?
I often think of the FLDS lost boys. Clearer what's going on there, not a tidy analogy to wider society or too many other groups, but illustrative of something.
I wonder how my brother's old eighties dialup bbses compare with yt algorithms (never mind darkweb) now. I am also wondering how those polarization graphs would align with the Overton window.
Oh, I dunno if I find this reassuring or something else but if you select "general public" and "overall" you get very different mountain ranges. Like, it flattens out from an initial concentration at the center, but it doesn't look like it got implants. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-polarization-1994-2017/
Broad, but relevant:
https://www.psicothema.com/pdf/4103.pdf
Biased, but with excellent research data and citation:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-021-00296-8