When someone says something like “The left went crazy and drove me to the far right!”, they’re not (usually) relaying a neutral history of their intellectual development. Same when they reply to your post about animal welfare claiming that it “made them want to eat meat even more.”
Instead, what they’re usually doing is two things:
Asserting that they have the momentum on their side, the same way as you might send a radio broadcast during a war that says “your comrades are defecting!”
Issuing a threat on behalf of their coalition. “If you keep propagandizing then more people like me will do the opposite of what you want!”
The threat and/or cheer-leading gains credibility by not being explicit about the motivation, and portraying it as an uncoordinated decision. But that also means that explaining to the person that rational people don’t get negatively polarized is unlikely stop them from saying these bizarre-sounding things.
You’re correct to notice that it’s not a neutral history of their intellectual development because it’s functioning as a threat, but they’re usually not just making it up, either. “You’d better stop being so crazy, because I was your comrade, and I defected, and I’m not the only one” is better radio propaganda when it’s true.
The thing that makes this kind of threat particularly pointless, is that saying “I am on your side on all these other issues, but on this thing you are just wrong” is probably way more persuasive to people.
Lets say you are a big fan of a leftish politician like Jeremy Corbyn (JC). Someone you know to be generally on the political right tells you that they hate JC, and that in fact the awfulness of JC is WHY they are on the political right. You probably just dismiss them. But now someone comes to you who agrees with you on all kinds of policy positions, but that they tell you they dislike JC for such-and-such a reason. That seems more likely to generate a real update.
The thing that makes this kind of threat particularly pointless, is that saying “I am on your side on all these other issues, but on this thing you are just wrong” is probably way more persuasive to people.
Do you know concrete cases where this has worked? The way I’ve seen this play out on public fora is that the conciliatory tone is interpreted as weakness and taken as a signal that it’s cheap to go all-out on attacking the person for the heresy of arguing against the movement.
I guess the big difference is whether we’re talking about one-on-one conversations or social media.
someone comes to you who agrees with you on all kinds of policy positions
sounds like you’re having an actual two-way conversation with a person, while the original
someone says something like “The left went crazy and drove me to the far right!”
sounds like a thing someone would write on twitter as public engagement.
If you get one tweet’s worth of attention from other people, you don’t have space to build rapport. Things you can say that read as signal instead of noise sort of reduce to “I’m visible in your space and with you on the movement” and “I feel things have gone so off-rails with the movement that I’m defecting from it wholesale”.
Yes, I was thinking primarily of real life conversations with a person you already know. Where I have seen this play out as I described. Although, obviously I did not try out the counterfactual.
I have no kind of data on this, but my feeling is that it carries over to social media, at least for famous-ish people who have already had the space to build rapport. As a topical example, some right wing people in the USA (Tucker Carlson I think) seem unhappy with Trump’s recent Iran policy. My suspicion is that for MAGA types someone like this going “off script” and being against the war is significant, more so than if they encountered someone saying (for example), “Yeah, I supported Trump in his first term, but after the Capitol riots I became a Democrat.” Part of that is because the “I joined the other side over X” has to be something old, in the past, where opinion has hardened and in any case its in the past, but part of that is also the inherent implausibility of the “Side switch” bit. The previously-Trump-supporting person who turns against him after the capitol riots isn’t going to fall in love with all kinds of Democrat coded policies they previously hated.
There’s also a piece here of expressing “I didn’t go to the right because I was biased in its favor, I has the opposite bias and it took a lot of evidence to shift me over, which is meta-evidence in favor of my position”
(I also don’t generally see “The left went crazy and drove me to the far right”—usually it’s said by someone who went over the line from moderate left to moderate right. People who jump between extremes usually have different arguments)
How does one tell apart a person who “relays a neutral history of their intellectual development” from the one who threatens and/or cheerleads? Additionally, I don’t buy the analogy with animal welfare and eating meat. Alas, I don’t know any far-right blogs further to the right thanthistrio which claim that the far Left somehow managed to occupy such a big piece of the political and epistemic environment and post such BS that the only unaffected sources are the ones which are far to the right. One of the authors even used the term ‘Scout Mindset’ in order to try and persuade the readers that the left’s epistemic stance is deeply corrupt.
But that also means that explaining to the person that rational people don’t get negatively polarized is unlikely stop them from saying these bizarre-sounding things.
I agree, however the objective isn’t to change their mind, the objective is to remind coalitional partners and neutral third-parties that their surface-level arguments are retarded. Whether the onlookers then assess whoever said it as liars or idiots is up to the onlooker in question.
(Btw this comment was really annoying to format, getting the quote-blocks right seemed impossible)
But that also means that explaining to the person that rational people don’t get negatively polarized
At the very least, this does not sound so trivially true that it can be stated as a premise. If I’m a normal person living in a healthy, happy society, my political views are likely to amount to:
“Make minimal changes only where obvious inefficiency is present. Don’t rock the boat; the cost of losing what we currently have exceeds the likely benefits of experimenting with anything too different.”
Indeed, generations who grew up during a time of world-historic comfort and prosperity tend to be very moderate, in a way that infuriates people of more radical inclinations. However, if you grow up during a time of turmoil and uncertainty, and you identify the cause of this turmoil/uncertainty to be a certain political group, then your views are likely to amount to:
“Do whatever it takes to remove this group from power, and prevent it from regaining power. A more moderate society failed on the basis that it allowed them to ruin it.”
This generally involves embracing a slate of policies that they dislike, simply on the basis that people generally dislike policies that disenfranchise them. Assuming (and this is a big assumption) that the fact-finding of our subject was correct, and the group that negatively polarized them genuinely is responsible for social decline, then adjusting one’s politics from don’t-rock-the-boat centrism to reaction meant to steel society against the people who rocked the boat is a rational response. It simply amounts to updating your worldview in response to evidence that your previous slate of preferred policies wouldn’t work.
When someone says something like “The left went crazy and drove me to the far right!”, they’re not (usually) relaying a neutral history of their intellectual development. Same when they reply to your post about animal welfare claiming that it “made them want to eat meat even more.”
Instead, what they’re usually doing is two things:
Asserting that they have the momentum on their side, the same way as you might send a radio broadcast during a war that says “your comrades are defecting!”
Issuing a threat on behalf of their coalition. “If you keep propagandizing then more people like me will do the opposite of what you want!”
The threat and/or cheer-leading gains credibility by not being explicit about the motivation, and portraying it as an uncoordinated decision. But that also means that explaining to the person that rational people don’t get negatively polarized is unlikely stop them from saying these bizarre-sounding things.
You’re correct to notice that it’s not a neutral history of their intellectual development because it’s functioning as a threat, but they’re usually not just making it up, either. “You’d better stop being so crazy, because I was your comrade, and I defected, and I’m not the only one” is better radio propaganda when it’s true.
The thing that makes this kind of threat particularly pointless, is that saying “I am on your side on all these other issues, but on this thing you are just wrong” is probably way more persuasive to people.
Lets say you are a big fan of a leftish politician like Jeremy Corbyn (JC). Someone you know to be generally on the political right tells you that they hate JC, and that in fact the awfulness of JC is WHY they are on the political right. You probably just dismiss them. But now someone comes to you who agrees with you on all kinds of policy positions, but that they tell you they dislike JC for such-and-such a reason. That seems more likely to generate a real update.
Do you know concrete cases where this has worked? The way I’ve seen this play out on public fora is that the conciliatory tone is interpreted as weakness and taken as a signal that it’s cheap to go all-out on attacking the person for the heresy of arguing against the movement.
I guess the big difference is whether we’re talking about one-on-one conversations or social media.
sounds like you’re having an actual two-way conversation with a person, while the original
sounds like a thing someone would write on twitter as public engagement.
If you get one tweet’s worth of attention from other people, you don’t have space to build rapport. Things you can say that read as signal instead of noise sort of reduce to “I’m visible in your space and with you on the movement” and “I feel things have gone so off-rails with the movement that I’m defecting from it wholesale”.
Yes, I was thinking primarily of real life conversations with a person you already know. Where I have seen this play out as I described. Although, obviously I did not try out the counterfactual.
I have no kind of data on this, but my feeling is that it carries over to social media, at least for famous-ish people who have already had the space to build rapport. As a topical example, some right wing people in the USA (Tucker Carlson I think) seem unhappy with Trump’s recent Iran policy. My suspicion is that for MAGA types someone like this going “off script” and being against the war is significant, more so than if they encountered someone saying (for example), “Yeah, I supported Trump in his first term, but after the Capitol riots I became a Democrat.” Part of that is because the “I joined the other side over X” has to be something old, in the past, where opinion has hardened and in any case its in the past, but part of that is also the inherent implausibility of the “Side switch” bit. The previously-Trump-supporting person who turns against him after the capitol riots isn’t going to fall in love with all kinds of Democrat coded policies they previously hated.
There’s also a piece here of expressing “I didn’t go to the right because I was biased in its favor, I has the opposite bias and it took a lot of evidence to shift me over, which is meta-evidence in favor of my position”
(I also don’t generally see “The left went crazy and drove me to the far right”—usually it’s said by someone who went over the line from moderate left to moderate right. People who jump between extremes usually have different arguments)
How does one tell apart a person who “relays a neutral history of their intellectual development” from the one who threatens and/or cheerleads? Additionally, I don’t buy the analogy with animal welfare and eating meat. Alas, I don’t know any far-right blogs further to the right than this trio which claim that the far Left somehow managed to occupy such a big piece of the political and epistemic environment and post such BS that the only unaffected sources are the ones which are far to the right. One of the authors even used the term ‘Scout Mindset’ in order to try and persuade the readers that the left’s epistemic stance is deeply corrupt.
Political commitments are not propositional beliefs. That’s the difference.
I agree, however the objective isn’t to change their mind, the objective is to remind coalitional partners and neutral third-parties that their surface-level arguments are retarded. Whether the onlookers then assess whoever said it as liars or idiots is up to the onlooker in question.
(Btw this comment was really annoying to format, getting the quote-blocks right seemed impossible)
You should press
Entertwo times to exit a quote block: https://streamable.com/vfmxt6The logic is that two paragraph breaks = exit. If you press
Shift + Enterit won’t work because that is a line break.At the very least, this does not sound so trivially true that it can be stated as a premise. If I’m a normal person living in a healthy, happy society, my political views are likely to amount to:
“Make minimal changes only where obvious inefficiency is present. Don’t rock the boat; the cost of losing what we currently have exceeds the likely benefits of experimenting with anything too different.”
Indeed, generations who grew up during a time of world-historic comfort and prosperity tend to be very moderate, in a way that infuriates people of more radical inclinations. However, if you grow up during a time of turmoil and uncertainty, and you identify the cause of this turmoil/uncertainty to be a certain political group, then your views are likely to amount to:
“Do whatever it takes to remove this group from power, and prevent it from regaining power. A more moderate society failed on the basis that it allowed them to ruin it.”
This generally involves embracing a slate of policies that they dislike, simply on the basis that people generally dislike policies that disenfranchise them. Assuming (and this is a big assumption) that the fact-finding of our subject was correct, and the group that negatively polarized them genuinely is responsible for social decline, then adjusting one’s politics from don’t-rock-the-boat centrism to reaction meant to steel society against the people who rocked the boat is a rational response. It simply amounts to updating your worldview in response to evidence that your previous slate of preferred policies wouldn’t work.