I am fascinated by the difference in heuristics that shows up when you discuss something here for which we have, like, actual data. Because you invariably get folks in the replies trying a 'pure logic' approach to a question for which there is a known, studied answer they could just look up.
Pure logic is what told the French before WWI that the Germans was not going to invade through Belgium.
To use Kant's convenient division between empiricism and rationalism: rationalism is seductive because seamless logic can easily distract a person from fundamental faults in their premises. And empiricism is such damn hard work...
I started to shift closer to the empiricist side of the coin after noticing that a lot of the people deploying various clever critiques of empiricism (often technically and narrowly correct) seemed to have very closely held beliefs at odds with the empirical evidence. It was very convenient...
Logic alone will go wherever the chosen premises point. When I was a child, I saw this. And I've never fully recovered from the shock.
Part of it is an implicit assumption that everything you read is clickbait. Enshittification of reality on the one hand, and conspiracy theory analyses on the other, make people think they're just picking between different brands of bs and so have to start with a theory of which bs is best.
I mean, there has always been an Aristotelian strain of thought that is difficult to hammer out of people because: - Human brains are flawed pattern recognition machines. - This allows people to confirm their priors easily.
The entire Austrian School of economics is based on data being noisy unlike logic, ergo when they conflict logic supercedes data. ...yeah, not exactly their biggest fan.
If you ask them, they will "look it up" with an LLM.
Yep. Here in the information age, willful ignorance is really the only kind. And yet, ignorance remains *at least* as pervasive as it ever was.
Part of the problem though is that many people don't have the training to critically assess the validity of a statement of a fact; without that, the internet is a sea of contradictory noise that you have no tools navigate.
Sometimes that training also contributes to the phenomenon. If I wanted some statistics about household size I would not even consider trying to search for studies about it until I could be quite certain and precise as to just what definition of 'household' I wanted to use.
Yes that does happen, but nowhere near as frequently among normies as someone throwing down a pseudonymous blog post with no references from confirmsallmypriors dot blogspot dot com because it was the first Google result for " is true arguments"
You have to get in among the (very small in relative terms) minority of nerds before quibbling over the units used in credible studies becomes important.
Just try condemning Netanyahu's genocidal policies and Israeli genocide and you see this is as bad, if not worse than ShiTwitter
I think the core issue here is a Mix of distrust of the answer (often for ideological reasons) and a Lack of time and Training to actually Parse the methodology for yourself.
Are real median incomes in the USA rising or falling? Are household sizes getting larger, or smaller? Is poverty in countries other than China rising, falling or stagnant? Do high poverty levels in 1820 remain high prior to that? These are questions for which google can rapidly supply answers!
Google isn't providing much of anything useful anymore
And I suppose I have been trained - I mean, this is a pretty important part of being a historian - to first check to see if a fact is knowable with a high degree of certainty before trying to instead use inductive reasoning or analogy to arrive at a *probable* result.
The same people will talk about how the academy has given up pursuit of truth because of woke.
This is not exclusive to people on the right. I wish it was.
Fair, I probably ignore it from others...
But I sound smarter if I argue with vibes (Also, vibes are more immediately compelling to our fundamentally ape brains, but that's a discussion for a different thread I think)
“Well, everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn. What this book presupposes is... maybe he didn't?”
I look at what true, genuine geniuses in ancient Greece came up with using those methods--Euclid believing that the eye projected radar-like rays, for example--and quickly realize I should probably stick to relying on empiricism, because I doubt I'm drastically smarter than Euclid.
i think this is the biggest difference most people are *not* trained and google is not by any means guaranteed to give any given Joe Dunning-Kruger Public the actually most reliable source rather than some crank with an axe to grind (which may be a very well-funded org with great SEO)
The belief that there are a limited amount of good things in the world, and therefore one individual or group's gains must come at the expense of someone else, is a deep-seated cultural belief. Not surprised it resists empirical evidence.
on the one hand, nearly all of our modern non-zero-sum value had been dug out of the earth at great *environmental* cost on the other, we can definitely be making better use of that stuff if we stop treating it as zero-sum *against each other*
sites.nd.edu/world-politi...
That paper title has me thinking about how this tracks with people's feeling that their life is becoming more peasant-like. (Yes, it's mostly vibes, and also the source of the feeling is too long to fit in the second half of this.)
It's vibes, and I'm not quite sure which parts of it contribute most, but I'm pretty sure the feeling of peasantification has something to do with highly-visible people at the top of apparently untouchable orgs making incomprehensible decisions.
I dont think its entirely vibes tbh. Atleast Part of it is changes to the terms of highly central aspects of live (employment, education, housing, especially the latter two).
Does google actually supply an answer? Google is not a search engine. It never was. It's not concerned with truth or even orthodoxy. It's a confirmation engine. Answering real questions as you pose requires data that isn't conveniently packaged to be in a google search.
It supplies links to research papers, census data, studies, etc. It doesn’t directly answer your question, it helps you find the right resources to get an answer
And yet “just google it” and “a simple google search” are used to insult, minimize & shame people.
It’s neither an onerous task, nor a complicated one Plus, they teach you how to find factual sources and do research in the school library and as part of English class, history class, etc. If you can’t “just google it” you might deserve being shamed
Add to the fact that past searches influence future results, and that the same search is almost guaranteed not to return the same results to different people?
If you search for something factual like “is the real median income in the us growing” there are obvious data based reputable sources vs obvious non-data editorialized think pieces. Regardless of how the search engine works, it is not a complicated task for someone to differentiate sources
Do you have the chart you’ve posted before on war deaths handy?
the last time we had an argument with a friend about wages in the US she used google and supposedly found countervailing evidence 🙃
It's always shocking to remember that there are a ton of people who've never had to critically evaluate the accuracy of sources. I think this is a big part of why so many people are so bad at arguing on the Internet.
But Bret! Studies have shown that only Chesterfield cigarettes give you that smooth, relaxing flavor that your body needs.