I'm glad you briefly mentioned NPR's Code Switch. Blocked and Reported did an episode about them where they (Code Switch) just shit on this Palestinian immigrant store owner who got in trouble over offensive posts his daughter made 8 years ago. He ended up having to fire several employees over the outcry, who AGAIN did nothing wrong.
It was infuriating. They were so sneering and condescending the whole time toward this guy. And sadly, that's what the Educated Left is like now. It's always "hahahaha. I can't believe you're so fucking stupid. Imagine believing anything other than what we believe." Non-stop haughtiness. I hate it more than anything.
The infuriating thing about our race-obsessed betters is their complete lack of any sense of proportion. Supposedly the US is this racist hellhole. Compared to whom?
India has a caste system and still permits slavery
China imprisons its Muslim minority population
The Japanese lump everyone into one of two buckets: Japanese and gaijin
The French put their Muslim minority in a no-go zone outside of Paris
Sweden does the same thing around Stockholm, and the government does not collect racial data
The US has affirmative action, diversity quotas, and has created an entire academic discipline out of whole cloth which does nothing but police the most mundane things for potential offense.
If you had to rank the nations of the world on a scale of inclusiveness, where 1 is, say, Canada and 10 is Saudi Arabia, the US would be a 1
Jeff, how did you ever work for John Oliver? You’re clearly a liberal normie (same here, dude), and that dude runs segments endorsing rioting and looting.
I’m a conservative, and I’m reading this because The Dispatch provided a link. Believe me, I think there’s plenty wrong on the right, and The Dispatch doesn’t shrink from reporting on that. But, to read something like this from someone on the left gives me hope that there’s actually some sanity out there.
The biggest turn off for me has been about *racism.* I remember getting together with my best friend (says she’s an independent, but usually votes for Democrats), and she was insulted that she was considered a racist, and friends were encouraging her to read “White Fragility.” Her parents (we live in the Midwest) took her and her brother to Washington DC when they were children to hear Martin Luther King give a speech. They were always supportive of Black causes.
My husband and I got all 3 vaccinations, and we’ve respectfully used masks when required, but it’s reached a point where it’s ridiculous. Our community doesn’t require masks; however, if we drive an hour northwest to where the UW Madison campus is located, masks are required to be worn everywhere. (We even see people riding bikes or walking outside wearing them, although that’s not as bad as it was a few weeks ago.)
Wind farms are the rage here, but I’d much rather see us investing in nuclear power. My dad (who was in his 80s) was saying this years ago.
Yes, it is difficult to change our minds. Critical thinking is a skill that can be developed, and maybe something that is actually worth teaching in school. At the very least, we need to be curious: does that make sense, and maybe I should read some differing views with an open mind before deciding there’s only one way of seeing something.
Your description of the media made me think of a word I had forgotten about. Shitfuckery: an extreme degree of nonsense, especially when coming from an authoritative figure. Great word.
The Laffer Curve has been mischaracterized by the left, and they fault it for not doing something it was never intended to do.
With a 0% tax rate, the government will collect nothing. With a 100% tax rate the government will collect nothing. In between there is an optimal level that maximizes revenue.
It doesn't address government spending, and leftists who argue that the Laffer Curve is a failure because deficits increase after tax cuts are either misunderstanding the concept or arguing in bad faith.
For race and COVID19, I think an important factor is that there are very substantial intra-left pressures against course correcting. If you're a white liberal, it can be hard to find a permission structure to say "wait, this racism stuff might be overstated" and not feel like a betrayal.
The funny thing is, your dad was right about Betamax being better than VHS. It was only because a coalition of VHS manufacturers convinced the porn industry to go with their product that the VHS tape became the standard. (It's also why Blu-ray beat out HD DVD).
I love how this article starts really wild and casual but then delves into some serious points. But I want to ask people to be patient with those who are still a bit slow to discard their plague-routines of masks and other social cautions. Is it really fair to expect us to abruptly drop the cautions that have saved our lives for two years? Also, racism is way less different than I think you think it is. Yes, demographic stats always shift. Love your work!
I think the overall view you put out here is probably correct. I believe it is indeed becoming increasingly difficult for people to change their minds about significant issues or positions for a couple of reasons. One is the narrative-above-all media landscape you spoke of. The other is the constant reflexive impulse to play "defense" where one's beliefs about certain things are concerned, engendered by the hyper-partisan and socially belligerent atmosphere we are all constantly immersed in, in which someone somewhere is always asserting that what you think or believe is wrong, and you must be stupid (or worse) for believing it. Add to this the always present every-day run-of-the-mill we've-all-got-it human factor of confirmation bias, and changing one's mind can become a herculean task requiring a painful effort, not for the faint of heart.
It does happen. I'm a case in point. While I won't delve into the major changes my opinions and beliefs about certain things have undergone, I'll just say that I believe much differently now about a few "issues" that seem to be constantly in the public realm than I did in the past. But I'll also say that these changes took a long time, and when they happened, it felt good to believe I'd formed a more correct opinion / outlook, but it felt pretty bad to realize I'd been wrong for so long. Which isn't conducive to further pursuit of truly critical thinking. Also, full disclosure, the things I'm speaking of here occurred a while ago, before the constant and unrelenting "noise" of our current society and culture reached such a fevered pitch and volume. These days, it can be hard for one to even hear oneself think. Critically or otherwise.
Just discovered you while catching up on the Michael Shermer podcasts (great episode by the way).
My 2 cents on Why we are getting Worse at Changing Our Minds:
We don't like speaking up in front of the crowd.
I'm 42, so for ~70% of my life, anything I said, no matter how stupid, awful, or just flat out wrong, I could walk away from - only the fading memories of those around me at the time could hold me accountable. Now, with a camera in every pocket and social media preserving our thoughts for eternity (should we share them or be caught sharing them), we are either a) too afraid to discuss challenging or even contrarian ideas as we don't want our potential "wrongthink" to be recorded indefinitely and leveraged against us, or b) we feel the need to stick to ideas we know are now forever recorded on FB/TWTR as we don't like admitting we are wrong.
Since we are now communicating heavily through Social Media, we are always in front of the crowd.
For example, if I made a long facebook post about how dangerous Nuclear Power is to the US, and it got a lot of likes and comments, I would probably be far less likely to ever change my mind had that just been an idea I spoke about with my friends and family. And, given that most people don't like being seen as contrarian on FB, that post would almost certainly receive only positive comments and likes. Any friend of mine who disagreed with me would be far less likely to take a stand publicly than they would if we were just discussing over a beer, and I would be tricked into assuming the lack of critique indicates my position must be correct.
Personally, I admit to the fear of "wrongthink" keeping me from speaking up, asking questions, or simply trying to better understand ideas that don't seem well thought out to me.
And I think many people stay quiet for that reason.
And if that is true, then it allows obviously stupid ideas to get spread unchecked, as social media has created a way to connect like-minded idiots to reinforce and share their nonsense, and disincentivizes critique or review, and then people on the fence of the potentially stupid idea, noting a lack of critique on the idea, assume it must because it is a good idea.
And then all the sudden we are all wearing "Onions on our Belt", as was the style at the time.
Do you, in actual fact, believe that there are no declining returns to taxation at any level? If so, then fine - the Laffer curve is mythical. Otherwise, please do not claim it is false.
Covid? Race? Changing minds? OK, I think I have something. Maybe it's time we...
...learned to live with Woke?
We can't live in fear forever. Interventions to slow the spread of Woke might have seemed sensible when it swept across America in 2020, but Woke's mutated around people's defenses and it's endemic now. The fact is that most of us are going to get Woke at some point; if someone's fixated on avoiding that, isn't that their personal responsibility? Do people expect us to hide from Woke in our houses forever? To follow China's authoritarian steps to eliminate Woke?
And yes, I'm aware that not everybody can get inoculated against Woke, like the under 5s. But if you look at the numbers, it kills very few children. A lot of kids won't even notice if they get Woke! Trying to save kids from Woke by forcing them to do things like wear MAGA hats is only going to traumatize them — little kids scarcely know how to wear them and don't have any interest in that stuff!
Squishy centrist Democrats risk setting themselves up for electoral failure by indulging overreactions to Woke. Just look at surveys! Most voting-age Americans support police reform¹, the Equality Act², and not allowing racists to teach college³. Instead of indulging boutique concerns of the degree-wielding laptop class, like the idea that cancel culture is some big social problem⁴, our politicians could reconcile themselves to the new reality of Woke, and stop slamming kids and the working class with crackdowns in a futile attempt to halt Woke.
As I get older I'm coming around to the position that all politics is cognitive. We are much less rational than we perceive. About three years ago, Vox interviewed political scientists who said that there is a definite divide in society, and it has to do with our world views. It's deeper than liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican or red vs. blue. It's fixed vs. fluid.
This duality is largely subconscious, and has to do with the environments in which we're raised. The more dynamic interactions you are exposed to (job changes, languages, races and ethnicities), the more likely you are to develop fluid worldviews and prefer them. Consequently, you're also more likely to develop an aversion to the opposing viewpoint.
Perhaps it's the confirmation bias talking, but when I saw the Keynes quote (before reading the article), my mind immediately went to the right-wing pinheads who, every time CDC updated information (as they learned more), the pinhead response was that they were just making all this crap up, as though the updates reflected self-contradiction.
That idiocy has been going on for 2 years solid, so I nearly swallowed my tongue laughing as you presented the concept that the big problem with changing your mind, as it pertained to COVID, was on the left. Yeah, there are some who are extra cautious. But to state or imply that they're WRONG to do so is just the other side of the afore-mentioned pinhead coin.
Then, just when I got my convulsions under control, a white guy's gonna tell us about how much better racial issues are now? Yeah, OK.
You should've left it at the Keynes quote and stopped writing.
One of my pet peeves is conflating "this is bad" with "this is getting worse". Yes, people are bad at changing their minds, but people have *always* been bad at changing their minds. Polarization might be making things worse, but there's several factors which might work the other way:
* Social media means a lot more people get to share their view. It's quite common to look at the comments section, reddit replies, etc. and see a reasoned argument for the other side.
* Fragmentation of media means people are aware of dissenting views, even if it's mostly ridiculous tweets being mocked. Contrast to the days of media consolidation, where a person might go a decade without encountering any, say, pro-communist views.
* The Internet makes it easy to do your own research, albeit with a substantial risk of getting misinformed.
For the case of nuclear power and race relations, I don't think it's a matter of "changing minds". Most of the left wasn't alive in the 1960s, so they couldn't have been convinced that nuclear power was bad and race relations were fraught then. It could be some kind of institutional failure to change minds, but that would be an entirely different argument to the one you made here.
I'm glad you briefly mentioned NPR's Code Switch. Blocked and Reported did an episode about them where they (Code Switch) just shit on this Palestinian immigrant store owner who got in trouble over offensive posts his daughter made 8 years ago. He ended up having to fire several employees over the outcry, who AGAIN did nothing wrong.
It was infuriating. They were so sneering and condescending the whole time toward this guy. And sadly, that's what the Educated Left is like now. It's always "hahahaha. I can't believe you're so fucking stupid. Imagine believing anything other than what we believe." Non-stop haughtiness. I hate it more than anything.
The infuriating thing about our race-obsessed betters is their complete lack of any sense of proportion. Supposedly the US is this racist hellhole. Compared to whom?
India has a caste system and still permits slavery
China imprisons its Muslim minority population
The Japanese lump everyone into one of two buckets: Japanese and gaijin
The French put their Muslim minority in a no-go zone outside of Paris
Sweden does the same thing around Stockholm, and the government does not collect racial data
The US has affirmative action, diversity quotas, and has created an entire academic discipline out of whole cloth which does nothing but police the most mundane things for potential offense.
If you had to rank the nations of the world on a scale of inclusiveness, where 1 is, say, Canada and 10 is Saudi Arabia, the US would be a 1
Jeff, how did you ever work for John Oliver? You’re clearly a liberal normie (same here, dude), and that dude runs segments endorsing rioting and looting.
I’m a conservative, and I’m reading this because The Dispatch provided a link. Believe me, I think there’s plenty wrong on the right, and The Dispatch doesn’t shrink from reporting on that. But, to read something like this from someone on the left gives me hope that there’s actually some sanity out there.
The biggest turn off for me has been about *racism.* I remember getting together with my best friend (says she’s an independent, but usually votes for Democrats), and she was insulted that she was considered a racist, and friends were encouraging her to read “White Fragility.” Her parents (we live in the Midwest) took her and her brother to Washington DC when they were children to hear Martin Luther King give a speech. They were always supportive of Black causes.
My husband and I got all 3 vaccinations, and we’ve respectfully used masks when required, but it’s reached a point where it’s ridiculous. Our community doesn’t require masks; however, if we drive an hour northwest to where the UW Madison campus is located, masks are required to be worn everywhere. (We even see people riding bikes or walking outside wearing them, although that’s not as bad as it was a few weeks ago.)
Wind farms are the rage here, but I’d much rather see us investing in nuclear power. My dad (who was in his 80s) was saying this years ago.
Yes, it is difficult to change our minds. Critical thinking is a skill that can be developed, and maybe something that is actually worth teaching in school. At the very least, we need to be curious: does that make sense, and maybe I should read some differing views with an open mind before deciding there’s only one way of seeing something.
Your description of the media made me think of a word I had forgotten about. Shitfuckery: an extreme degree of nonsense, especially when coming from an authoritative figure. Great word.
The Laffer Curve has been mischaracterized by the left, and they fault it for not doing something it was never intended to do.
With a 0% tax rate, the government will collect nothing. With a 100% tax rate the government will collect nothing. In between there is an optimal level that maximizes revenue.
It doesn't address government spending, and leftists who argue that the Laffer Curve is a failure because deficits increase after tax cuts are either misunderstanding the concept or arguing in bad faith.
For race and COVID19, I think an important factor is that there are very substantial intra-left pressures against course correcting. If you're a white liberal, it can be hard to find a permission structure to say "wait, this racism stuff might be overstated" and not feel like a betrayal.
The funny thing is, your dad was right about Betamax being better than VHS. It was only because a coalition of VHS manufacturers convinced the porn industry to go with their product that the VHS tape became the standard. (It's also why Blu-ray beat out HD DVD).
I love how this article starts really wild and casual but then delves into some serious points. But I want to ask people to be patient with those who are still a bit slow to discard their plague-routines of masks and other social cautions. Is it really fair to expect us to abruptly drop the cautions that have saved our lives for two years? Also, racism is way less different than I think you think it is. Yes, demographic stats always shift. Love your work!
I think the overall view you put out here is probably correct. I believe it is indeed becoming increasingly difficult for people to change their minds about significant issues or positions for a couple of reasons. One is the narrative-above-all media landscape you spoke of. The other is the constant reflexive impulse to play "defense" where one's beliefs about certain things are concerned, engendered by the hyper-partisan and socially belligerent atmosphere we are all constantly immersed in, in which someone somewhere is always asserting that what you think or believe is wrong, and you must be stupid (or worse) for believing it. Add to this the always present every-day run-of-the-mill we've-all-got-it human factor of confirmation bias, and changing one's mind can become a herculean task requiring a painful effort, not for the faint of heart.
It does happen. I'm a case in point. While I won't delve into the major changes my opinions and beliefs about certain things have undergone, I'll just say that I believe much differently now about a few "issues" that seem to be constantly in the public realm than I did in the past. But I'll also say that these changes took a long time, and when they happened, it felt good to believe I'd formed a more correct opinion / outlook, but it felt pretty bad to realize I'd been wrong for so long. Which isn't conducive to further pursuit of truly critical thinking. Also, full disclosure, the things I'm speaking of here occurred a while ago, before the constant and unrelenting "noise" of our current society and culture reached such a fevered pitch and volume. These days, it can be hard for one to even hear oneself think. Critically or otherwise.
Just discovered you while catching up on the Michael Shermer podcasts (great episode by the way).
My 2 cents on Why we are getting Worse at Changing Our Minds:
We don't like speaking up in front of the crowd.
I'm 42, so for ~70% of my life, anything I said, no matter how stupid, awful, or just flat out wrong, I could walk away from - only the fading memories of those around me at the time could hold me accountable. Now, with a camera in every pocket and social media preserving our thoughts for eternity (should we share them or be caught sharing them), we are either a) too afraid to discuss challenging or even contrarian ideas as we don't want our potential "wrongthink" to be recorded indefinitely and leveraged against us, or b) we feel the need to stick to ideas we know are now forever recorded on FB/TWTR as we don't like admitting we are wrong.
Since we are now communicating heavily through Social Media, we are always in front of the crowd.
For example, if I made a long facebook post about how dangerous Nuclear Power is to the US, and it got a lot of likes and comments, I would probably be far less likely to ever change my mind had that just been an idea I spoke about with my friends and family. And, given that most people don't like being seen as contrarian on FB, that post would almost certainly receive only positive comments and likes. Any friend of mine who disagreed with me would be far less likely to take a stand publicly than they would if we were just discussing over a beer, and I would be tricked into assuming the lack of critique indicates my position must be correct.
Personally, I admit to the fear of "wrongthink" keeping me from speaking up, asking questions, or simply trying to better understand ideas that don't seem well thought out to me.
And I think many people stay quiet for that reason.
And if that is true, then it allows obviously stupid ideas to get spread unchecked, as social media has created a way to connect like-minded idiots to reinforce and share their nonsense, and disincentivizes critique or review, and then people on the fence of the potentially stupid idea, noting a lack of critique on the idea, assume it must because it is a good idea.
And then all the sudden we are all wearing "Onions on our Belt", as was the style at the time.
Do you, in actual fact, believe that there are no declining returns to taxation at any level? If so, then fine - the Laffer curve is mythical. Otherwise, please do not claim it is false.
Covid? Race? Changing minds? OK, I think I have something. Maybe it's time we...
...learned to live with Woke?
We can't live in fear forever. Interventions to slow the spread of Woke might have seemed sensible when it swept across America in 2020, but Woke's mutated around people's defenses and it's endemic now. The fact is that most of us are going to get Woke at some point; if someone's fixated on avoiding that, isn't that their personal responsibility? Do people expect us to hide from Woke in our houses forever? To follow China's authoritarian steps to eliminate Woke?
And yes, I'm aware that not everybody can get inoculated against Woke, like the under 5s. But if you look at the numbers, it kills very few children. A lot of kids won't even notice if they get Woke! Trying to save kids from Woke by forcing them to do things like wear MAGA hats is only going to traumatize them — little kids scarcely know how to wear them and don't have any interest in that stuff!
Squishy centrist Democrats risk setting themselves up for electoral failure by indulging overreactions to Woke. Just look at surveys! Most voting-age Americans support police reform¹, the Equality Act², and not allowing racists to teach college³. Instead of indulging boutique concerns of the degree-wielding laptop class, like the idea that cancel culture is some big social problem⁴, our politicians could reconcile themselves to the new reality of Woke, and stop slamming kids and the working class with crackdowns in a futile attempt to halt Woke.
¹ https://www.vox.com/22372342/police-reform-derek-chauvin
² https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/340349/american-public-opinion-equality-act.aspx
³ https://gssdataexplorer.norc.org/variables/253/vshow
⁴ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/11/young-people-college-grads-wokeness/620674/
As I get older I'm coming around to the position that all politics is cognitive. We are much less rational than we perceive. About three years ago, Vox interviewed political scientists who said that there is a definite divide in society, and it has to do with our world views. It's deeper than liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican or red vs. blue. It's fixed vs. fluid.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/18/18139556/republicans-democrats-partisanship-ideology-philosophy-psychology-marc-hetherington
This duality is largely subconscious, and has to do with the environments in which we're raised. The more dynamic interactions you are exposed to (job changes, languages, races and ethnicities), the more likely you are to develop fluid worldviews and prefer them. Consequently, you're also more likely to develop an aversion to the opposing viewpoint.
Perhaps it's the confirmation bias talking, but when I saw the Keynes quote (before reading the article), my mind immediately went to the right-wing pinheads who, every time CDC updated information (as they learned more), the pinhead response was that they were just making all this crap up, as though the updates reflected self-contradiction.
That idiocy has been going on for 2 years solid, so I nearly swallowed my tongue laughing as you presented the concept that the big problem with changing your mind, as it pertained to COVID, was on the left. Yeah, there are some who are extra cautious. But to state or imply that they're WRONG to do so is just the other side of the afore-mentioned pinhead coin.
Then, just when I got my convulsions under control, a white guy's gonna tell us about how much better racial issues are now? Yeah, OK.
You should've left it at the Keynes quote and stopped writing.
One of my pet peeves is conflating "this is bad" with "this is getting worse". Yes, people are bad at changing their minds, but people have *always* been bad at changing their minds. Polarization might be making things worse, but there's several factors which might work the other way:
* Social media means a lot more people get to share their view. It's quite common to look at the comments section, reddit replies, etc. and see a reasoned argument for the other side.
* Fragmentation of media means people are aware of dissenting views, even if it's mostly ridiculous tweets being mocked. Contrast to the days of media consolidation, where a person might go a decade without encountering any, say, pro-communist views.
* The Internet makes it easy to do your own research, albeit with a substantial risk of getting misinformed.
For the case of nuclear power and race relations, I don't think it's a matter of "changing minds". Most of the left wasn't alive in the 1960s, so they couldn't have been convinced that nuclear power was bad and race relations were fraught then. It could be some kind of institutional failure to change minds, but that would be an entirely different argument to the one you made here.