Well, those people certainly don’t make their living by writing or abstract thinking. I meant liberal/moderate leftist journalists, professional writers, political experts, etc. Celebrities known to be conservative also often say misguided ideological things, except that there’s less of them in America because conservatives there typically stay away from the entertainment industry (both due to natural predisposition and active self-segregation, I’d guess).*
(In other countries the political divide looks less sharp in general, and proeminent people tend to express their political views more subtly too.)
- I think it was pretty silly of Moldbug to spin a theory of how everybody-who’s-anybody is carrying the “progressivism” meme in America because it’s supposedly better adapted; it’s clear that there’s simple Hanson-style signaling at work in Hollywood and elsewhere; Moldbug’s assertion that academia sets the intellectual fashion might bear closer scrutiny, but clearly most people (non-intellectuals) don’t give a rat’s ass about the contents* of any fashion they’re following! They believe-in-belief that they do, of course, but e.g. the people of the US entertainment industry, AFAIK, went from cautiously admiring the Soviet Union to considering it a miserable dump sometime around the early 80s, so they clearly aren’t faithful adepts of “progressivism”. Also, consider all the psychodrama after 9/11.
The belief that people behave certain ways because it signals something about their thought process, without actually thinking that way. I.e. politicians expressing outrage to signal, not because they are actually outraged. Hanson thinks this type of insincere signaling explains a lot of social behavior, much more than conventional wisdom would suggest.
Oh! We have this thing in TV Tropes! We call it a Straw Hypocrite! Indeed, it’s a hypothesis always worth assuming, but I don’t see how much use it can have except in hindsight, I mean how would one go about predicting someone else’s genuine emotional state? It’s much easier to predict the emotional state they will allow themselves to show, than it is to try to divine what’s going in in that brain of theirs! Not to mention, they probably aren’t even actually very clear on what they feel or what they think, at all. In extreme cases, they may have less predictive ability on the topic of their inner workings than an external observer! Not to mention the remarkably ironic occasions where people believe they are “faking” feelings that they actually have and are in denial of!
Well, those people certainly don’t make their living by writing or abstract thinking. I meant liberal/moderate leftist journalists, professional writers, political experts, etc. Celebrities known to be conservative also often say misguided ideological things, except that there’s less of them in America because conservatives there typically stay away from the entertainment industry (both due to natural predisposition and active self-segregation, I’d guess).*
(In other countries the political divide looks less sharp in general, and proeminent people tend to express their political views more subtly too.)
- I think it was pretty silly of Moldbug to spin a theory of how everybody-who’s-anybody is carrying the “progressivism” meme in America because it’s supposedly better adapted; it’s clear that there’s simple Hanson-style signaling at work in Hollywood and elsewhere; Moldbug’s assertion that academia sets the intellectual fashion might bear closer scrutiny, but clearly most people (non-intellectuals) don’t give a rat’s ass about the contents* of any fashion they’re following! They believe-in-belief that they do, of course, but e.g. the people of the US entertainment industry, AFAIK, went from cautiously admiring the Soviet Union to considering it a miserable dump sometime around the early 80s, so they clearly aren’t faithful adepts of “progressivism”. Also, consider all the psychodrama after 9/11.
Forgive my ignorance, but what’s that?
The belief that people behave certain ways because it signals something about their thought process, without actually thinking that way. I.e. politicians expressing outrage to signal, not because they are actually outraged. Hanson thinks this type of insincere signaling explains a lot of social behavior, much more than conventional wisdom would suggest.
Oh! We have this thing in TV Tropes! We call it a Straw Hypocrite! Indeed, it’s a hypothesis always worth assuming, but I don’t see how much use it can have except in hindsight, I mean how would one go about predicting someone else’s genuine emotional state? It’s much easier to predict the emotional state they will allow themselves to show, than it is to try to divine what’s going in in that brain of theirs! Not to mention, they probably aren’t even actually very clear on what they feel or what they think, at all. In extreme cases, they may have less predictive ability on the topic of their inner workings than an external observer! Not to mention the remarkably ironic occasions where people believe they are “faking” feelings that they actually have and are in denial of!
Pinkie Pie mode, eh?
Pinkie Pie mode is my default mode, I just try to subdue it when I’m on the Internet, but sometimes I get lazy...