I’m laughing way too hard at this.
I think it’s probably just because most people take themselves seriously and understand what they mean despite how they communicate it, leading to misunderstanding. If it’s a psychological phenomenon it’s one that affects the entire population.
Self-aware exhibit A)
Oh really? What’s your point in even saying this? That is, what psychological effect do you hope that the above statement will have on other people in this thread? Hmm?
I thought it was made pretty clear it has anything to do with other people, and that he/she is more concerned with his/her own ego…ironically a lot like precisely what we’ve been talking about throughout the thread.
Yet there’s no reason to tell us about it in this thread unless he wants to affect us in a certain way by it. Were he only concerned with his own ego, he’d just laugh his ass off and keep it to himself.
I’ll jump the gun a bit and submit that the reason Birthday Pony deigned to inform us of his raucous laughter is to obtain or maintain greater social standing on his part. Birthday Pony, like most people, intuitively understands that social standing involves both oneself and others. That is, it seems useless to have an opinion of oneself that isn’t shared by those around him. Hence why these sorts of games are played - in order to cultivate a certain perception of oneself by his fellows.
Edit: I just realized that, in a way, you’re right - it’s still all about his own ego. It’s just that he feels dependent on others to boost it.
Again, as I said, exactly like what has been discussed throughout this thread. And how exactly could one have an ego without other beings to feel superior to? Again, as I said only a few posts ago, you maximize your ego by doing whatever makes you feel superior at that moment. Other people don’t necessarily have to be affected. It’s about how you feel.
It sounds like you want a make an argument like Sieben…like someone acts out in during class and behaves badly, and the explanation given is that he was looking for attention…and your response would be “well that just makes him look bad. No one respects him for that, he just looks foolish.” Well so what? What’s that got to do with the reasoning you were just given? Just because you think it makes him look foolish doesn’t mean he thinks that. And even if he does agree it makes him look bad, again you’re assuming he cares.
It’s just like Sieben has been doing, projecting his own worldview into the place of others. He is under the impression that you build your ego by actually becoming a legitimate expert, and thereby gaining a justifiable reason to feel superior by actually having superior knowledge. But that’s nonsense. That may be what makes him feel superior, but that isn’t necessarily the case with someone else. By the same token he finds it to be “risky” to adopt controversial opinions you know nothing about. Again, he may consider that risky, because evidently he actually cares and places a level of importance on being right and knowing what he’s talking about. That doesn’t mean someone else does. If being proven wrong doesn’t phase you, where is the risk? The only example he’s given so far is the possibility of embarrassment from being shown to be incompetent. But as I said, that’s completely relative. He seems to think it isn’t. He seems to think embarrassment is just as straightforward objective as a punch in the nose.
In politics, this is partially right. Except when you expose their prejudices they’re at risk of being embarassed. For example, if someone believes something factually incorrect about WWII (ex: nuclear bombs/unconditional surrender), that’s something you can look up and really rub in. So again, it is risky to hold uninformed opinions IF (big if) you’re going to be scrutinized at any point. Most people are not scrutinized ever.
But then there’s prejudices that this model can’t explain, such as what I’ve been saying about peoples’ attitudes towards drugs and nutrition. Here we see millions of people turning down (in some cases) dramatic and immediate benefits for themselves.
Really? I’ve experienced just the opposite. People will ask “so whats your alternative” in the hopes that they can start attacking YOU and get off the hook. “Oh yeah anarchism that’s so stupid its like chaos that will never work”. I’ve actually started calling myself a political nihilist just so people can’t pull that trick. Keep the focus on them and really rub dirt in the wound.
But then there are all the cases where prescription drugs kills a family member, and nobody says squat about it. I don’t think people really change their worldviews on the basis of their misfortunes. See minorities and the democratic party, or soldiers who get shot/wounded/PTSD and the military.
I really don’t expect other people to be inquisitive. I just expect them to not sit there and lie to my face, especially when I’m gonna call them on it and expose them to everyone (and themselves).
All I’m pointing out is that, at least for many people, it’s also about how they think others feel about them. Look at it this way: if one enjoys feeling superior to others, he’ll enjoy it even more when those others feel the same way (i.e. they also consider him superior to them).
Sieben, I think maybe you underestimate the importance of social standing to many (if not most) people - especially those who have low self-esteem. Unfortunately, low self-esteem seems to be hyper-epidemic among people today.
Again you’re missing the point, even though you even said it yourself. How other people actually feel is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is how the person in question feels. And if that is in some way dependent upon the feelings of other people, then it only matters how the person in question thinks they feel (just like you said). It’s all about his own perception. Just like the example I gave above…Just because you may view an obnoxious kid acting out in class as a useless annoying brat, that doesn’t mean he thinks of it that way. He could either think you think he’s cool for being a rebel, or he could get the boost from believing he affected you. Again, it’s all about him.
My point to you is, you claim “he feels dependent on others to boost his ego”, and what I’m saying is, there’s never a case where that’s not true in one way or another…as, without some other being to feel superior to, where would the ego come from? Every egotist is dependent on others to boost their ego.
They’re not harmed immediately or every time. But they’re harmed when it blows up on them - either someone calls them on their BS, or their BS degrades their lifestyle. The harm doesn’t have to be immediate either. People don’t always get pulled over for not wearing seatbelts but they still do it. People don’t get blown up by terrorists every day but they are still down with TSA scanners and the WOT.
Well they all talk to each other. Its not like they’re independent. And the harm from underestimating drugs/nutrition is not decentralized, and the marginal harm is not spread over very much time.
Well in politics it doesn’t. That’s why you can explain people’s reluctance to take political action. But in other areas, particularly your own life, your opinion makes a difference.
You don’t have to understand electricity to know not to stick a fork in a socket. Someone’s done it before and its failed. They all know that.
On immediacy, its already been established that time preference has nothing to do with it. As for the satisfaction, yes they must gain something from holding the hasty-opinion, because obviously there are negative consequences to many of the opinions people hold.
A better conversation to have with people might be why they feel confident in their opinions in the first place. When people troll me on nutrition I’m like “controlled studies?”, “no”, “Oh. See those are nice…”.
No. I wrote what I meant. People have no incentive (read: cost vs benefit) to oppose policies that affect them. Simply because the repeal of the policy would have a very substantial benefit to them does not mean the costs are any lower. I’m sure we all agree that influencing the state is completely hopeless on an individual level, no matter how badly it is pushing you around.
Well politics and economics are special cases in that they are the only ones where the risk associated with having them is a function SOLELY of their (lack of) logical content - i.e. they might be called on their crap sometime. But if you wanted to stretch it, being ignorant of those subjects means you’re a crappier investor (like gold/silver recently), so you forego those monetary benefits.
Then there’s the other examples I gave you of nutrition/drugs/religion that could really help a lot of people in a matter of hours if they stopped with the garbage.
Again, I am thinking on the margin. Just because people slowly degrade does not mean they can’t quickly recover. If you accept that 250lb of weight loss in 2 days is possible, then yes, I’d say that holding irrational opinions about nutrition is almost immediately harmful.
Because the margin.
Well you have to factor in the cost of acquiring knowledge and the benefit of its employment. But yeah it would be wierd if people took tests and decided the answer based on what “felt the best”, and then flunked out of college months later because they got crappy grades.
No. I am assuming the person does not wholesale rule out the possibility that they have the wrong answer. If you have to have an opinion for some reason (example - nutrition - you have to eat), fine. But that doesn’t mean you have to be uber confident in your answer.
An assumption that varies from implausible (politics) to very plausible (nutrition).
You mean getting the right outcome? Again, it varies.
Uhh this falls under “outcome”. It is not a distinct point. Being embarassed is a consequence of having incorrect opinions, just as there are other consequences depending on the idea and context in question.
They’re not going to get beat up. Mohd. Ali is dead, and even if he weren’t there’s no way he would fight laymen just to prove them wrong. So there’s no physical cost to saying you could beat him up.
I’m pretty sure fat people would be embarassed if I told them they were fat because they held incorrect views about nutrition. It just doesn’t happen to them because its exceedingly “rude” for me to do that.
In all fairness, most people are not hobos. Most people would be embarrassed to urinate in public.
I deny that they’re idiots. We’re talking about the average person. We’re talking about people who have an IQ of 125 too. 150. The whole gamut. “Idiocy” does not explain it.
If I do it right and get lucky, then yes. I mean it doesn’t hurt their face but I’ve embarrassed people in public before and its been really bad for them. So yeah people’s BS can blow up in their faces. But people’s BS blows up in their faces even if I’m not there because it ruins their lives on the daily personal topics I’ve been mentioning.
Well, people still spout garbage on college campuses, the place where there’s MOST likely to be some highly informed and aggressive opponent to your BS.
Whether or not I call them on it doesn’t mean they automatically get away with it. You don’t “get away” with having bad nutrition. You get fat.
In another conversation, we are gravitating towards the “private circle jerk” theory of irrationality. People hold irrational opinions about things that bring them together. For example, hatred of democrats, terrorists, skinny people, drug users, etc. That’s why people don’t hold irrational opinions about being able to beat up Mohd Ali even though it would boost their ego individually. They sit around and suck each other off AGAINST another group. And they do it behind closed doors (mostly) so that they don’t have to bear the antisocial costs of marginalizing another group.
When people do speak out and defend their ideas in public, it is an anomoly. The person who holds irrational views and defends them publicly against erudites is in a state of cognitive dissonance. He’s naive and hasn’t figured out that the circle jerk is a circle jerk. Everyone else has figured this out though which is why people are so reluctant to have arguments in public. They’ll bail out with “that’s just your opinion” or try to shut down conversation with “You’re racist”.
"Yet there’s no reason to tell us about it in this thread unless he wants to affect us in a certain way by it. Were he only concerned with his own ego, he’d just laugh his ass off and keep it to himself.
I’ll jump the gun a bit and submit that the reason Birthday Pony deigned to inform us of his raucous laughter is to obtain or maintain greater social standing on his part. Birthday Pony, like most people, intuitively understands that social standing involves both oneself and others. That is, it seems useless to have an opinion of oneself that isn’t shared by those around him. Hence why these sorts of games are played - in order to cultivate a certain perception of oneself by his fellows.
Edit: I just realized that, in a way, you’re right - it’s still all about his own ego. It’s just that he feels dependent on others to boost it."
It’s lovely how much thought and attention ya’ll pay to my behavior. You really do care! And I thought you guys didn’t like me.
In all honesty, it just cracks me up that apparently you all are coming across so many people that don’t understand what you’re arguing when you hold pretty uncommon beliefs, and your explanation for it is that there is a major psychological phenomenon barring these loudmouths from understanding you. I mean, for chrissake, the rest of the world probably views every single one of us here like that.
And since we’re talking about egos, which one seems like more of an egoistic statement to make:
Maybe I’m wrong, or my beliefs are uncommon and hard to grasp right away.
I’m right and everyone who disagrees with me has a psychological problem.
Everyone thinks that most of what they say is right, otherwise why would they say it? People disagree on things all the time, and some people loudly disagree. It’s just funny that here disagreement becomes a psychological phenomenon. But shit, what do I know? I’m one of those psychologically inept folks, always bitching about being poor. And I own a fridge.
Birthday Pony, is the shape of the earth a matter of agreement?
So problem is “majority rules”/the system, not incompetence in itself?
What you’re talking about is something that I feel as though would be very difficult to actually go out and research outside of a direct psychological study. With this being said I think that it’s the direct outcome of mimicking other people. It’s widely accepted that you can have your own political opinion, you have your own rudimentary values about how it is the world works, and so you should be entitled to have your own judgment.
Therefore you are then ignorant and you think that you have a right to voice your own opinion, people are classically all too ready to believe that they know what exactly is wrong with the world and how exactly it should be fixed, and so they do this, and when anyone tries to correct them they strike back violently because they don’t want to be wrong. It’s literally childish.
So anyway I just believe it’s that it’s accepted in society and common in society to have these views. There’s also a general attitude of “it’s your opinion” not an attitude of “listen to what other people have to say and don’t have a stupid opinion”
The other day I was arguing with a Marxist and a libertarian socialist at the same time. The Marxist fell into the same fallacies as his predecessors, he was unable to conceive of a socialist society that didn’t fit to the letter his vision of one, he was literally a utopian in that he thought he knew exactly how society would evolve and that apparently a huge amount of ignorance and problems would go away with the establishment of the socialist state, he also couldn’t imagine that all states of society were not directly caused by class struggles, especially recently he wanted to believe that every development was because of some ultra-organized bourgeoisie that was exempt from any control by governments or economic laws.
When I tried to correct him on this stuff he either didn’t deal with what I said or started to call it retarded, he never took what I had to say seriously.
As for the libertarian socialist I gave up on him almost instantly because he clung to the fallacy that trade was a 0 sum game and kept harping on about how all balance sheets came out to 0.
Being wrong is scary, humiliating, and demeaning, and no one, not even most of the people here, is ready to be logically proven incorrect.
I think that the problem also originates in that people don’t construct a general methodology of how they should think and absorb political ideas, instead they simply go ahead with some “evidence”. I have argued with many people who have never cited any evidence that actually backs what it is that they are saying, and those that do are unable to explain to me the epistemology behind empirical evidence in a social context.
For this reason people think that it’s fine to have taken some history lessons in highschool or college and then they will know all that there is to know about economics, sociology, morality, and so on, they don’t realize that history can say nothing about economics, only economics that can say something about history, or that any of the other sciences might be deeper than what they realize.
You’re making my point for me. How long does it take before your BS “degrades your lifestyle”? And do you seriously think that by the time that happens to someone they can make a direct connection to their idiotic behavior and their current situation? Even moderately intelligent people don’t even see that half the time.
And how does the fact that people wear seatbelts and suffer through TSA gropings do anything to help your case idiotic people should know better than to spout nonsense for fear of being embarassed? Again you’re making my point for me. For one, we’re talking about idiots, but two, did I not just get through proving to you that the direct and immediate possiblity of physical harm is much more motivating than the remote possiblity of simply being shown to be ignorant? You’re just reanimating the same analogy.
You’re going to have to be more specific. This almost makes no sense at all.
So let me get this straight. You say “Changing your opinion doesn’t actually change what happens”. I say “who suggested otherwise?” And then you reply by suggesting that what you just said is wrong.
Mmmm. Fork in socket, immediate electric shock. Kind of like believing you can fly, and having reality literally slammed in your face. Action, and then immediate, painful, impactful, easily directly correlated, unignorable consequence. You’re really making this too easy. Are you sure you’re even trying to debate me or is this just an agree-athon?
Please show me where. The only thing I’ve seen is you claiming that is the case, and then presenting examples that illustrate the exact opposite. Case in point, directly above.
Okay, so people have “no incentive to oppose policies that target them directly”, and I therefore assume they don’t have any incentive to oppose policies that don’t target them either. So basically what you’re saying is people have no incentive to do anything but do what they’re told. I can provide you a million and one examples that prove that to be completely and utterly false.
Yeah you’ve said that at least four times already. So basically, what you’re saying is, there really isn’t any.
That makes little sense. If you’re going to argue that simply remaining the same is a “direct, immediate, and easily correlated harmful consequence” of not doing something, then you might as well just say that everyone is in a perpetual state of self harm.
What about it?
Huh?
This really basically supports my whole point, and certainly does nothing to help yours. Every time you move the goal posts it just illustrates the validity of my argument. You have to keep coming up with exceptions and explanations as to why what I’m saying is true so that you can fit it into your thesis, which I’m not even sure you know what it is any more.
I didn’t realize you were speaking in non-hypothetical terms. In that case your example doesn’t even make sense. You literally said: “If they can’t figure that out in advance analytically, they’ll figure it out by trial and error. Its like people don’t think they could beat up Mohd. Ali even if it would boost their machismo”
Originally it sounded like you were saying people would be dumb enough to think they could beat Ali and then find out the hard way through trial and error…but now re-reading that I notice you said “people don’t think they could be up Ali”. So not only does your response here not make any sense, that second sentence doesn’t even make sense as an example.
This does nothing to refute my point.
Idiocy was only secondary. Again my main point still remains. People have no problem holding (and touting) idiotic beliefs because they see no direct (and certainly no immediate) negative consequence to doing so, but they gain an immediate sense of satisfaction from purporting to know more than other people.
Again, illustrating my point.
Again, what are the odds?
Another nice goal post move. This whole part of the conversation has been about holding ignorant beliefs regarding economics and politics and the consequences (or lack thereof) that stem from that, and your entire argument (put forth multiple times) is that the risk they take in doing so is being called out on being ignorant. I ask how likely that is to actually happen and imply that they don’t often get called on it and therefore don’t see any negative consequence, and you jump right over back to talking about nutrition.
BS degrades your lifestyle on the timescale of hours or even minutes. You have totally ignored all my short term examples. At this point you are just talking past me and declaring victory. Good job.
For one, no. We’re talking about average people with average intelligence levels. We’re also talking about otherwise intelligent people who fail to employ it properly for some reason. Second, the “remote possibility of demonstrated ignorance” is only ONE of the downsides of being incompetent. You are just focusing on it because you think you can blow it out of proportion and win because you think its somehow categorically different from other forms of harm. You’re wrong on both counts.
The fact that people support TSA, including people who suffer through it, rationalize it, shows that people will ACCEPT SHORT TERM HARMS as long as they get to keep their ideas in tact. So TIME is not an issue here, and PHYSCIAL HARM is not an issue here. It is more GENERAL than that and TSA is only an example.
People talk to each other. Therefore they do not form their opinions in an existential vacuum. I.e. they can participate in division of labor AND bounce ideas off each other. Conversely, the harm from underestimating drugs and nutrition is concentrated on the ignorant individual. So people have a very strong private and individual reason not to be incorrect about these topics.
Maybe you should read. See I said in POLITICS changing your opinion does not change what happens. This makes politics a poor discussion topic for us because it is very low-impact, and that low-impact can theoretically explain people’s unseriousness. But if you turn around and look at people making EQUALLY poor decisions in HIGH IMPACT areas, like drugs/nutrition/career choices, then impact-magnitude is no longer explanatory and we have to look to something else.
Zzzzzzzzz thanks for ignoring all the other immediate marginally harmful things people do. I mean if you’re not going to address my examples why even type back? Just to save face? Cognitive dissonance much?
Maybe you should look at how >> I << use examples instead of projecting your own agenda on to them. The fork+socket thing is complicating because there are other fork+socket scenarios (mentioned above, never addressed by you) that people hold irrational beliefs about. It shows how sometimes feedback mechanisms work, and sometimes they don’t. And don’t you dare point out that fork+socket = immediate because, again, ad naeseum, there are counterexamples showing that you get (ir)rationaliy irrespective of the time frame.
Holy christ. There is no incentive to oppose horribly harmful government policies because YOUR OPPOSITION WILL NOT CHANGE THE OUTCOME. There WOULD be an incentive to oppose them if you could… I dunno… press a button to make the policy go away. But there isn’t. This situation demonstrates that people not only need to be harmed, but they need to have a means of changing their circumstances before they can be expected to act. (I am getting tired of summarizing everything for you)
There isn’t really any what? I am totally fine with not talking about politics or pure-ideas anymore. You’re simply using them to cop out of all the high-impact examples I’ve given.
I do. So do economists. Its called thinking on the MARGIN. You should know this by now.
Maybe you should look up “thinking on the margin” or “marginal benefit” or something.
Just extend it as an example of how feedback mechanisms that AREN’T immediate or physical actually change people’s behaviour. Lol.
The “exceptions” and “explanations” are attempts to show you that you can’t plug people’s behaviour into your little simplified “people are stupid and only understand immediate physical consequences” model.
Again, your projecting your own conceptual agenda on my examples. The Mohd. Ali example demonstrates that people do not go out of their way to maximize their egos by making irrational claims. If you cannot understand this, I cannot help you.
Thx4projection.
Which is falsified DIRECTLY by the Mohd Ali example, and INDIRECTLY by the fact that idiotic beliefs often do have extreme immediate consequences. You have never addressed either, but I’m sure you will find a way to maneuver around them, even if it is just by saying “Huh?”
Actually, it illustrates my point. I can cause people immediate harm if I deconstruct their arguments adeptly. Yet people still hold irrational views, and even hold them right in my face even if they know I’m going to smack them down. Its masochistic.
Quite high. Much higher in the above example. You really have never been critisized for being a libertarian?
Actually it is not specific to economics or politics. Those are simply the most VISIBLE ones that people on the mises.org forums complain about. My whole thesis has been that this kind of irrationality actually extends onto a whole smattering of subject areas, including ones that directly impact people’s individual quality of life.
Being called or not called on it is peripheral. It is specific only to ideas that are purely logical. Ideas with practical content do not need to be publicly debunked in order to cause harm to the believer. So you can stop talking about this narrow subset and maybe deal with the general observation. I’m not shifting the goalposts just because I remind you that you’re only talking about one iota of the topic.