Outside of the progressive hive, there has been a long running debate, going back to the 1980’s, about the awareness of the people in the hive. Left-wing people say things that are clearly not true, but they seem to believe what they are saying. They have some of the facts and seem to grasp certain concepts, but they come to conclusions that are obviously false. The question is whether the people in the hive really believe what they say or do they know the truth?
The default assumption, popular with mainstream conservatives, is that progressives are well-intentioned, but wrong on the facts. These are reasonable people who can come to the right answer if you slowly explain it to them. Conservatives have built their entire movement around the assumption that there is some way to explain things to the Left that will trigger a revelation. They will see their error, throw down their weapons and embrace the conservatives as brothers.
Along with conservatism, this view is fading from the scene. It is a generational thing as conservatism and most conservatives were formed in the post-war period. Most people have now concluded that the Left knows they are lying, but they are consumed with partisanship, so they are fine with lying. Far-left cranks will claim men can get pregnant because it advances their interests. The blank slate is central to their program, so they defend nutty ideas like the trans business.
In a way, this is a coping strategy for conservatives. They cannot accept that there are people not driven by facts and reason. To do so would mean the whole facts and reason approach is a waste of time. If the hive is immune to reason, then there is no point in reasoning with them and therefore no need for conservatives. Instead, they fall back on the mendacity claim. That way, if they can expose the lie, the liars will have not choice but to admit the lie and receive the truth.
There is no doubt that self-interest drives mendacity in politics, but this only works at the personal or small group level. Politicians lie for personal advantage. Their staff and allies will join them in the lie if it benefits them. It was clear that Jen Psaki knew she was lying and she knew everyone knew she was lying. It was her job and the path to a television job where she would make big money. This is how things work in entertainment and politics and everyone knows it.
The behavior of the hive, in contrast, is not for petty advantage. It looks more like a religious duty. People in the hive now declare their pronouns and claim people are assigned sex at birth as an act of faith. The motivation to put pronouns in an e-mail signature is no different than the motivation to wear a crucifix. It is way to signal your membership in a religion. In fact, religions have often required these displays as a way to separate the faithful from the rest.
Here is an example of how this works. This article in the Atlantic is about how dog breeds are a social construct. It is based in a shoddy bit of social science that was concocted to address the dog breed line used by people who question the blank slate arguments of the hive. Dog breeds are used by critics of the hive as a proxy for the human family and human diversity. Just as there are different breeds of dogs, there are different breeds of humans with different characteristics.
The first thing to note is that this was an organized effort. On the same day, the Washington Post had the same story about the dog breed study. This was then picked up by small sites that republished it. That is how it works in the hive. The second thing to note is the Atlantic writer is someone with impressive academic credentials. Mx. Wu has a PhD in microbiology from Harvard. She did her undergraduate and masters at Stanford. Box ticking aside, those are impressive credentials.
Despite those credentials she has never worked in the human sciences. Instead, she has been a small time contributor to on-line sites. Her role here is to give the fake study legitimacy by having someone with credentials endorse the study. This is what the lawyers would call mens rea. The rollout of this fake study says they know they are promoting a fraud. They selected the sites and authors in order to best promote what they know is not true.
On the other hand, where is the personal advantage? The problem with the conscious mendacity angle is there is no personal advantage for the people involved. It is not as if Mx. Wu gains something from this. It will not boost her career in science, assuming she wants a career in the human sciences. The Post used a random dingbat on the staff for their version of the story. Instead, Mx. Wu is selflessly sacrificing her credibility to show her commitment to the progressive faith.
The camp that argues that self-interest is what motivates these will point out that Mx. Wu could be working from self-interest. People with her credentials who promote crackpot ideas like the blank slate are quickly elevated in the hive. Credentials count for a lot with the Left. If a credentialed person says the moon is made of cheese, the faithful will believe it. Therefore, Mx. Wu is simply gaming the system in the hope of being quickly elevated to high status in the hive.
That brings as back to where we started. It is clear from examples like Mx. Wu that there can be no reasoning with these people. A woman with her training should see right through that study. She chooses to promote it, ether because she is a sociopath or she is a true believer. In either case, facts and reason will have no purchase on her mind or the minds of the people like her. What motivates members of the hive is either sociopathy or faith, neither of which yields to reason.
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Talking to some true believers, one of the consistent features is a blind, fanatical trust in institutions, especially scientific ones. They will treat the University professors like a platonic form of a man whose life is devoted to delving into the truths of nature. The thought that a professor is swayed by grant funding and prestige is akin to blasphemy. This falls into the modern trap of thinking man is inherently good and virtuous. With that level of faith, it’s easy to put your mind into pretzels to accept contradictory/crazy beliefs.
Another common property is marriage. I’ve seen several men’s opinions change from conservative to insane progressive when they marry, and I rarely see the opposite happen. The only time the liberal to conservative conversion occurs is if the man changes the wife’s political compass.
These examples are, of course, people without actual power, but just following signals. It’s clear the progressives with actual power to mold public opinion are psychopaths.
4
Sociopaths, Psychopaths, Dingbats;
It’s almost like they live in a different reality. Which I guess, in a sense, they do, in their heads.
Has anyone seen the commercials (I’m reticent to cop to watching any network stuff), where “doctors” (actors in lab coats), articulate that the Jabs “work” and are “safe”.
The actual facts in the ground are completely the opposite of what is being said, and yet it is spewed out.
They are basically participating in genocide.
5
“I’ve seen several men’s opinions change from conservative to insane progressive when they marry, and I rarely see the opposite happen.”
It seems to be a uniquely female thing that they cannot deal with someone holding a different opinion from them. Also, many women (my wife is one of them) will pretend to agree with their men on issues, until they get married. This seems to be especially true with liberal women and “conservative” men.
As I have learned the hard way, when the wife throws out some opinion as if it was Holy Truth That Can Not Be Questioned, it’s best just to keep quiet and ignore it. It’s not worth the fight to try to prove a point. This is why many political polls get it wrong–the guy will say publicly what keeps him out of trouble, but in secret will still vote how he feels. Lesser men actually adopt their wife’s politics.
2
The dog breed stuff is hilarious. Nobody who has own different breeds of dogs would believe it.
I think that there is a spectrum of people who preach the left’s latest lies. On one end if the idiot true-believer NPC type. As IQ increases, it becomes a mix of stupidity and mendacity (most Dem politicians), at the top (Soros and Schwab types) it is pure malice and evil.
5
There are no homosexual dogs. There are dogs bred over time to serve human needs. Therefore, we have Rottweiler/Pitbull humans, who fight and guard, we have Retriever humans, who go and get things for their master, we have Submissive rollover and rubmabelly humans who will do whatever master wants as long as they get to sleep at the foot of the bed, and we have Terrier humans who go after things like facts or information, and we have Poodle humans who just like to look good and be fussed over on the end of masters leash. Where are the lgbtqpd dog breeds??
5
And even better title for this article would be “The Life and Habits of the Lemming.”
1
There’s something I noticed, a little poker tell, whenever progressives are cornered and trapped, forced into telling a boldface lie. It happened when Jumanji Jackson was grilled about knowing what a woman was, and it happened several times in senate inquiries involving dirty feds, dirty medicos, and Silicon Valley sleazebags. I also recall seeing it happen when someone asked Pete Bootygig a question about paternity leave or racist highways. There’s a flicker, a little glint in the eye and a smile stowed before it can grow across the face, before the liar answers the question, as if the truth is a kind of burp that’s burbling upward in the belly and needs to be suppressed. It’s a dopamine hit, the lying gives a high (maybe the poker analogy wasn’t the worst one, as some sick players get off on bluffing when the stakes will either double their pot or knock them out of the game). There are sociopaths and true believers among their numbers, but I think there are also junkies. I think the lying is addictive. I just wish that lying had the same effect on them that fentanyl has on the dirt people. It’d be fun to watch Psaki’s eyes roll into the back of her head and get replaced with a couple of X’s after she told us about Biden’s decisive leadership before keeling over at her news desk at MSNBC.
6
I know what you mean, and I saw it with Bill Clinton. I guess it helped that I really was “apolitical” in those days — I thought politics was just showbiz for ugly people, like the man said, because I was busy getting rich (so I thought) because the good times would never end now that we’d reached The End of History…
…yeah, I was that young and naive and stupid, but whatever, point is, I had no investment in Bill Clinton either way, so whenever I saw him giving a speech or a press conference or whatever, I viewed him almost completely dispassionately. And he always struck me as a little bit off, and I could never figure out why, until one day I watched my goofy Liberal girlfriend watching Bill Clinton. I knew two things right away: I’d be getting some later that evening, and that Bill Clinton got off by lying.
It suddenly all made sense. I don’t know how he ever came out from behind the podium, because lying aroused Bill Clinton sexually. I am 100% serious. The bigger the lie, the more he got off. It was weird and creepy, but nonetheless true. And they’re all like that now.
2
Reason may not work on Sociopaths or true believers, but if you want to get a response from a Hive Minder, mocking and ridicule goes a long way.
If I find myself in a situation where I realize I’m interacting with, and speaking to a Lefty/Hive Minder/Dingbat, I simply disengage by saying,” you know, it’s a good thing we live in an age where people can believe, whatever they want to believe. You get to believe what you want, and I get to believe what I want”.
7
I’ve had good success with “Oh, is that what your tv told you?” Not original to me, but very effective.
7
I know a “Hiver” who loves to mock the conservative concern about the border and illegal immigration. He lives in a swanky apartment building with a high gate out front and the riverfront stretching behind his property. “How’s life at the compound?” I ask. “Anyone sneak over the wall?” Then I ask him about the “moat” behind the house. He never enjoys it. I always do.
14
Nice
I’m purloining that.
With regards to the Jab, I simply say that I’m not getting it as someone will have to bury all the people who voluntarily took it.
Then I offer mine. If one Jab is good, two should be twice as good!
Science!
4
I’ve had good results with: You’re too smart to think that.
There are a lot of variants which convey different meanings: you seem too smart, or seemed too smart. Seemed means I thought you were smart, but I guess not.
Or to believe or have believed. Have believed means they did believe that but now they don’t Etc.
1
In the chamber of the hive I know well, academia, I’d guess it’s about 70/30, true believer / sociopath. Most of the true believers really don’t see the contradictions, both because it’s an article of faith, and because they’re dumb — that special kind of highly educated stupidity that enables them to miss the forest for the trees, even as they’re smacking headfirst into every tree in the forest. You can give your average academic historian an article you cut and pasted from MSNBC, tell him it’s from the London Times in 1834, and he’ll start gleefully ripping it apart. Tell him it’s from this morning’s New York Times, however, and suddenly it’s sacred scripture.
I got to the point where I really appreciated the sociopaths, because at least the sociopaths can be “reasoned” with. Figure out what they’re after (it’s usually not hard), and you can sidestep them with ease. I’ve known a million Jen Psakis, and they’re a piece of cake to deal with. She wants to be Department Chair; I have no say in who gets to be Department Chair; therefore she’ll never bother with me… either that, or she’s trying to enlist me in some other scheme, so I just play dumb (really easy, as most eggheads are also super autistic, so it’s easy to do the Sling Blade routine to get them off your back).
Too bad they don’t stay in academia, but instead go to Washington, where they have access to nuclear weapons.
20
“so it’s easy to do the Sling Blade routine to get them off your back”
I’m seeing Professor Sev in my mind’s eye saying to some Assistant Professor: “I picked up a Kaiser Blade that was sittin’ there by the screen door. Some folks call it a Sling Blade, I call it a Kaiser Blade. It’s kindly a wood handle, kind of like an axe handle. With a long blade on it shaped kinda like a bananer. Mhm. Sharp on one edge, and dull on the other. Mhm.”
Followed up with “I like them French fried potaters. Mhm”.
“You can give your average academic historian an article you cut and pasted from MSNBC, tell him it’s from the London Times in 1834, and he’ll start gleefully ripping it apart. Tell him it’s from this morning’s New York Times, however, and suddenly it’s sacred scripture.”
In 2016 I was in the company of some leftist acquaintances and their leftist wives. I decided to conduct an experiment. I went back and gathered some talking points from Obama from 2004. You know, things like being against gay marriage, having a secure border and other common sense things that Obama claimed to support back in those days. I proceeded to go down the list of all of Obama’s sane view points at the time without disclosing they were from Obama. The women started cursing me out telling me how rayciss I was and that all of those views were indicative of Trump voters and hillbilly white supremacists. That’s right when I pulled the video montage of Obama…. I swear to you they turned white as a sheet.
For the left, it doesn’t matter WHAT is stated, but only WHO is stating it. That was a very defining moment for me at that time. There is no helping or reasoning with them. They’re all rotten to the core.
I come from the hive and live in its midst
Much of the hive’s immunity to reason and fact comes from insularity, the desire for personal status and, like with most people, the ease of going along to get along and the need to think well of oneself.
And don’t neglect the power of Orwellian doublethink. I’ve contended that my Senator Liz, as a type, is not a phony, hypocrite or even an opportunist. She’s an android, an early model AI concoction for whom the present moment is all in all, lacking any context of or commitment to before and after, a being whose genuine beliefs blow with the wind of chance and circumstance.
It’s custmary now to speak of the culture of narcissism and to say that we’re in for the kind of fall and collapse that overtook Rome and, more recently, post The Great War, the Habsburg Empire. “Multiculturalism” is the Trojan Horse. John Glubb laid the sequence out fairly well. We’re on a larger stage now. Those who tout the virtue of the eclipse of fossil fuel and the beneficent effect of the next pandemic have a confluence of interest.
Still, as regards the progressive hive, a few set the pace and the rest follow. There’s not much principle here, just a vague utopian narrative and the feel good vibes of showing off for one another.
7
Sorry to hear you live in the Hive. But I live in the opposite type area…shootin’, ranchin’, boot-scootin’, Christian, flag-wavin’. There is certainly a desire to fit in here, as well. If you aren’t Christian nor have any patriotic sense, you won’t make friends here nor be elevated in any way. For example our dingbat governor is trying his best to be the most restrictive abortion state. This is what you call a virtue signal on the right. If you run for public office, you’d better be shown going to church, shooting a gun, and closing abortion clinics. And respecting the men and women in uniform. Cops too.
I’m not sure what’s more eye-rolling…the Hive or the Ranch. But at least the Ranch will let you be.
5
This past week Slow Joe and the Davos crowd were speaking from the same talking points when they called the current Western World energy crisis a “transition” to a great and glorious but still hazy and vague green future. They have it all planned out for us and no, we will not have any say in what is about to happen.
3
Hopefully our Great Leap Forward works out better than the last.
The alt-left is feminine in nature, it operates on feelings rather than facts. A good example was that Justice Kavanaugh “felt rapey” ergo he was a rapist.
Trying to make a point with the alt-left using reason and facts is like trying to teach a dog to play the violin – it doesn’t work, and it annoys the dog.
If conservatives ever want to sway the left, they need to realize this, and make their points based on feelings, not facts or reason.
12
From my experience, it’s more a high-status/low-status value mechanism. Media conglomerates do a good job of making views regarding immigration, firearms, and sexuality into implicit IQ signifiers. They’re cosmetic beliefs, and the way to counter them on shallow people is to make their beliefs look low-class.
Snobbishness isn’t something that dissidents like to do, but such attitudes towards their beliefs will get more of a rise than anything.
5
This is absolutely true. It is why the Left cannot abide ridicule, and why it is even worse than Conservatards when dismissed out of hand and ignored.
2
“If conservatives ever want to sway the left, they need to realize this, and make their points based on feelings, not facts or reason.”
There’s no swaying leftists. Like Z has said, these people must be removed by any means necessary for a normal society to function. I know several people who fit this description. They’re all women and they look exactly how you’d imagine them looking.
If I may riff on this topic. Bongino is the classic conservative that truly believes that if he orates the correct magic words on the air, then light bulbs will go off all over the world, sanity will spread like wildfire, voters will have epiphanies en masse, new competent leaders will be elected to office, and the ship of society will change course for Shangri-La.
That’s a nice pipe dream, but the odds of it actually happening are pretty minimal. And it certainly would be nice if it did, but betting your life on that outcome is more than a bit insane in and of itself. Are things really that dire if Starbucks is still making lattes and you can watch Carlson’s rant on Fox every night? If you can continue to rage comfortably from the couch throne, is there any need to roll up your sleeves? Heaven forbid that you must break a sweat.
Being lazy and worthless is not a good long term success strategy. The lying will stop after 3 days without a meal. Or a dirt nap. As nature intended.
3
I think Bongino is just going through the motions for a paycheck. I absolutely do not believe anyone who was a guard dog for the political elite from 1999 to 2011 actually thinks that reason and logic, combined with voting Republican, will win the day.
But a pitchman has to sell the product.
6
Rick
Good point about Bonginos’ being a guard dog for the Cloud Folk.
Rule number 3 for survival (after avoiding crowds and Joggers), is “never trust a Fed”.
1
One thing about sociopaths (and psychopaths) is that they believe their lies are true. In their minds, they are not lying with impunity–they are doggedly defending the truth! This is how Amber Heard can get on the stand and claim that it was the dogs who pooped the bed and not her. She actually believes it! To understand more about psychopaths and sociopaths, I highly recommend HG Tudor’s YouTube Channel on psychopathy.
2
The hive represents an indecipherable mix of true believers, swindlers, and textbook sociopaths. Sometimes all three can exist to varying degrees in the same individual. Keep in mind, however, that the hive rewards conformity and punishes anything that even hints at dissents. It’s difficult to figure out how many people are faking it for purely opportunistic reasons.
6
In a way, this is a coping strategy for conservatives. They cannot accept that there are people not driven by facts and reason.
The hive people believe that they themselves are on the side of fact and reason. Their thinking is based on “scientism”.
For most of human history human perceptions of the world were based on the impressions received by the five senses. An individual’s sex was determined by their appearance, odor, the sounds they made and so on. Only since the scientific revolution and the construction of instruments that are supposedly capable of examining things at an atomic level have sensory inputs been made secondary to instrumental findings and computer models. While in some cases, of course, this is a good thing but it also means that only those experts trained and equipped with this equipment can determine the “facts” involved. Arguments about their validity take place between the trained experts, not the general public.
A endocrinologist can say that a particular person with a pharmaceutically induced testosterone level measured in nano-moles per liter is a female while an ordinary person will see, smell and hear a male. Both observers claim fact and reason is on their side. It’s a battle between science and scientism.
3
I no longer believe these elites are well intentioned. They are all scoundrels.
Joe Manchin just spoke to the WEF saying Ukraine should see this to the end, in other words, this should not end with diplomacy, but with complete victory alone. All the Republican talking heads kept saying Manchin was a good guy.
They kept on saying Joe Biden was a nice guy. More lies. The guy was always a scumbag, and it’s not because he lost his wife and two sons to tragedy that we should feel bad for him.
There are no nice guys. The Party is 100% reptile.
15
I am actually optimistic about the state of higher education in our Imperial United States. We just have to wait and watch it unfold, with great pleasure.
After The Empire collapses, there will be no money for The Hive. Money from the Givernment is the milk and honey of essence for so-called higher education.
Once the collapse occurs, something like well over 90% of it will collapse as well, and probably within a semester.
Thus the hive will take care of itself. Just like honey bee drones, they produce nothing and when the food dries up, they will be thrown out of their hives whether they like it or not.
“If the hive is immune to reason, then there is no point in reasoning with them and therefore no need for conservatives.”
Accepting that the Left can’t be reasoned with is a huge mental hurdle because it means so many things that are extremely disturbing, especially to the logically inclined.
First, it means that debate is now pointless and that you have to fight back on the ground. You have to DO something, not say something. It means getting dirty politically, or, if politics is no longer an option (which it’s not), it means you have to start trying to build an alternate community.
Second, it means you have to abandon any hope of what was the United States surviving. You have to give up on civic nationalism and the hope that all these various groups will adopt the principles of the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers.
Not to keep piling on the poor guy, but, unfortunately, Steve Sailer is a perfect example of even a dissident who can’t come to grips with this reality. He can’t bring himself to accept that the Left won’t be won over by his charts and tables, so like Sisyphus, he just keeps rolling the ball up the hill. (Really, he’s more like Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football.)
Accepting that the Left can’t be reasoned with means accepting that we can’t live with these people. And that’s a difficult thing to do for Joe Normie.
14
It turned out that Sailer is more boomer than dissident. The first clue should have been that asinine “citizenism” hokum that he’s been pitching for years. Such a foolish concept completely contradicts everything that Sailer has been exposing since roughly the 1990s. It is astounding that he continues to subscribe to it.
Your post is spot-on. It’s a long and arduous mental road that Joe Normie must travel to discover that, in the end, separation will be the only answer.
4
Yeah, after I hit “send” I realized that calling Sailer a dissident was wrong. He’s a CivNat Boomer who happens to acknowledge racial differences but then says that we shouldn’t care because we’re all individuals and individuals can fall anywhere along the bell curve.
White Boomers really seem to hate identifying as a group. I guess from their worldview, we’re all “Americans” or something like that so we shouldn’t identify as anything else.
That’s a nice sentiment, but if other groups don’t share it, you’re a fool to continue acting as though they do. It’s related to not acknowledging that the Left (well, the white Left) can’t be reasoned with.
CivNats simply refuse to accept reality because doing so means accepting that they have to fight back and that their country is lost.
1
Sailer came up with Citizenism in the demographically-different early 2000s, when it sounded like a good idea. At least I thought it was, until he debated Jared Taylor.
It’s surprising that Sailer, even though he keeps up with the current culture, can’t grasp that the changes mean that the country is being handed over to POC.
1
Citizenism was a way to get whites to embrace immigration restriction without having to say that it was to protect the white majority. It wasn’t a crazy idea, but once it failed, he never moved on.
And he didn’t move on because it would mean embracing identity politics and Steve, like so many CivNats, can’t bring himself to do that, even if it means whites become a persecuted minority.
1
Here is a perfect example provided today in the David French venue called the Dispatch. The author argues conservatives should protect the free speech rights of corporations. It was a nice thought 20 years ago. But with corporations now joined at the hip with the federal government in restricting unapproved speech, this theoretical purity leads only to the gulag.
Sorry, forgot the link: https://thedispatch.com/p/the-new-rights-dangerous-attitude?s=r
The adherents of the leftist hive-think are a mixed group. I think most of those that we know in everyday life are true believers, just following along to be part of it. A lot of them have a view of “the right” which means being lumped in with people they despise like Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party types. They have no chance of differentiating a neoconservative from a paleoconservative, or any other right-leaning faction.
In the example of breeds or race, most of the more intelligent leftists (and many or most on the normie right) don’t want to go down that road because of where they fear it leads, to Hitler and the six million thing, and demolishes happy slogans like “we’re all one race, the human race.”
For guys like Tim Wise, the “anti-racist,” he probably doesn’t really believe his own BS about races being social constructs, since he seems too intelligent for that. But he makes lots of money on the college speaking circuit, and he’s truly on a mission to see that whites become replaced.
Then there’s Richard Spencer, who flops around back and forth with different views and desperately wants to be seen as a leader, so will grab whatever belief will get him there.
6
Decent essay. As I often will criticize however (get ready to hit that frown button, folks) are some downer observations. We are partisan here, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Obviously, deliberate deceit is a universal problem, especially in politics. But what about unintentional deceit? We love to point out the irrationality of the Left, or equivalently, the irrational belief of Conservatives that facts and logical argument will persuade opponents. Both are valid charges. But what are we overlooking here? Simple:
What makes us think that we are immune to “hive mind” or its related defects? No human is immune to falling for a false belief; to defend against them takes a conscious effort or process. What steps have we taken to insure that we are not committing the same sins we accuse the opposition of? You’d be a very rare individual if you don’t hold at least a few erroneous beliefs. I’m not saying EVERYTHING you know is wrong, only that adhering to false beliefs is a universal failing.
The problem is not restricted to psychology or the soft sciences either. For decades, economists crafted their theories under the assumption that humans acted in a rational manner. By the 1970s, at least two researchers, Tversky and Kahneman, among others, researched decision making and concluded that quite the contrary, that humans deviate from what rational theory would suggest, and they do so in predictable ways. Their findings were novel enough that a Nobel in economics (2002) was award, a rather odd award for a psychology investigation.
In medicine, it often takes many decades for new discoveries, even important ones, to become accepted doctrine. A common example is Semmelweis’s suggestion that doctors simply wash their hands with soap and water between patients. A less known one was the heretical claim that a bacteria was the cause of some ulcers. Now to be fair, not just any claim should be accepted without challenge. The world is full of bad actors, whether malevolent cretins or simply well-meaning but misguided lunatics. Nothing should be accepted without proof. In large measure, that’s precisely what official wisdom advances but slowly.
But equally dire problems may arise when new information is rejected not because it’s untrue, or perhaps even provably true, but for what we might call psychological reasons.
The point of the above is to illustrate that a lot of the irrationality is probably hard-wired into the human brain. If even bastions of wisdom, knowledge and rigorous procedure like the hard sciences are not immune to what should be embarrassing lapses, how much worse then will be groups or individuals with little or no discipline of thought? Hence, a large fraction of the craziness we experience.
Go ahead and down vote me if you like, but it remains a fact that you are just as liable to being a “true believer” in at least some areas of your life. As Plato said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” If you are so sure of your beliefs, why not put them to various tests? If they’re valid, they will withstand any challenge. But you balk, don’t you? Again, a perfectly normal human response: “How DARE anyone question my sincerely held beliefs?” To end with another famous quote (Twain, approximate): “It’s not what people don’t know, it’s what people know that ain’t so…” that is what causes the worst problems.
Another problem that a belief may not be falsifiable. Some questions can be put to a test, others simply cannot be decided. But at the least, a truth seeker can put some premises to the test, but rare is the man who’s brave enough to do that! Like Nietzsche’s example of Oedipus and the Sphinx, does one really want to best the monster and, perhaps, learn unpleasant truths? One problem with truths is that you cannot unlearn them once discovered, unless maybe, one has the dubious “gift” of being authentically mentally ill, cast adrift from everyday reality or even a reasonable facsimile.
And I won’t even get started on the issue of whether humans actually NEED (some) “false” beliefs to even live. This is one area of philosophy I’ve not delved into, but I believe there is validity to that assertion. So perhaps you don’t have to discard all your wrong cherished beliefs after all. 🙂
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“What makes us think that we are immune to “hive mind” or its related defects?”
No one is completely immune, but dissidents are hit daily with the other’s sides arguments and morality. Our views are constantly challenged. We can’t exist in an echo chamber if we leave our house or turn on a computer.
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You seem to elevate the hard sciences to the realm of objectivity. In theory: yes. In practice: not even close. Furthermore, science only gathers small piece of quanta, discrete little doses of “facts” isolated from everything else. Typically (not always), utterly useless.
You reference medicine; in all likelihood, our medical system is the largest killer of Americans. And, yes, those statistics can be obtained from “official” statistics. Now, I would agree with your points on some level. For example, how many here still hope for the Biden laptop or the trucker convoy to enact miraculous change?
I will utilize Emerson here: When a true theory is discovered, it is its own proof, for it explains everything. As humans, that is the best we can do because no science is ever going to do better. I rarely find any disharmony between my theories on what is occurring and the activities on display. That is not true of the two main parties. It does involve self-examination, absolutely, but I would argue it mainly involves learning to synthesize data – where hard sciences become corrupt.
I would also point out, as you tend to critique the writings of others, it is “ensure” not “insure.”
There is another possibility–Leftists, in general, have strong tendencies toward psychopathy, which creates a caesura between self and objective reality. In short, these people cannot grasp the real world, which causes them to adopt an ideology and specific stances that are fundamentally irrational. They, therefore, actually believe what they are saying. They are not lying. But it is nevertheless impossible to correct and convert them with facts because the facts do not gibe with the fantasy world in which they dwell.
I believe this hypothesis accounts for the political behavior of perhaps 85% of Leftists. The other 15% are shameless liars, they know it, and they couldn’t care less.
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The other 15 percent is lying sociopaths in it for profit and personal gain. Pray they stay in charge.
In a word, they’re koo koo
That Van Der Lain lady in Europe has the exact same crazed true believer eyes as this lady who was trying to get me to join her in some pyramid scheme that would make us both rich when I was a struggling young man.
Or more than koo koo alone, they’re a cult. A religious cult. And it is only a matter of time before they are removed from government on separation of church and state grounds.
I have some personal experience in this which may give me a leg up over my peers in seeing the signs, but my aunt was a religious nut who spoke in tongues. I remember when she had me and my dad come over and she busied me with burgers and a bucket of KFC while taking my dad aside and trying to get him to see the light while she convulsed herself speaking in her gobbledygook.
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Socrates believed in lying. Sometimes, as Plato explains in The Republic.
The noble lie. Propaganda for purposes of serving the public welfare. “Johnny! Stop picking on Sally or Santa won’t bring you any presents!”
Or
All men are created equal, for example. There is the concern that the consequences of admitting genetic inequality explaining performance inequality would be worse or politically less expedient than blaming it on racism or sexism.
tl;dr: They believe because they want to believe. The exception is the sociopaths, although they are a distinct minority, usually in the thing for personal gain and benefit (the rapey male feminist is an actual thing, billionaires pocketing govenment cash to save the planet via their products are a real thing).
Transgenderism, MSNBC, Elizabeth Warren, all the transparent frauds and phonies, thrive because their fans want to believe them, regardless of the validity, which is irrelevant, and will believe them. Yes, for the True Believer it is a religion, and the majority of the leaders still tend to be sociopathic or more sociopathic Jimmy Swaggarts, who will make 180 degree turns whenever it personally benefits them. The Hive will follow and forget about East Oceania. Conservatives are the same, just late adopters like the Scandis were with Christianity. Once the sociopaths led the nation and dominated the institutions and the Hive simply followed them. The great change is the loons are empowered along with the sociopaths now, and much of the upheaval is a direct result. The sociopaths still are most of the leaders and in charge, but for how long?
There is no dealing with these people, absolutely none, and unfortunately the lunatics may have access to nuclear weapons. All the loose talk recently about survivable nuclear war is a good example. I want to believe, and kind of believe, the grifting sociopaths still have operational control. If that is wrong, and it may be, we all may be vaporized. If Putin believes the loons control the buttons, we will be vaporized.
I just finished reading the article in the Atlantic that you referred to. The author isn’t saying that dog breeds are a social construct — she is admitting that the genes of a breed do play a part in determining an individual dog’s traits and proclivities. The quibbling is over the extent to which a breed’s genes determine individual behavior (and not average behavior over a large sample sizes). This is all legitimate explanation and discussion on the writer’s part. Pit bulls are on average more aggressive. Poodles on average are more docile. But we can’t predict the behavior on an individual basis. Pretty obvious stuff.
Like every other serious race realist I am a statistician at heart — the issue is average behavior and traits gleaned from examining large sample sizes. Different ethnic groups will display different traits and proclivities — different average scores on the SAT, for example. But this doesn’t mean I can predict what will happen in an individual case.
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OT question
An article on the front page of Market Watch this morning has the language;
“Weaker than expected guidance for the second quarter”
And
“Similarly software stock Snowflake tumbled 12.5% after the companies guidance for operating margin came in narrower than expected”.
I’m guessing the phrases mean the companies did worse than expected.
But the Hive uses words for a reason, and I’m wondering why “guidance” is being substituted for less than expected earnings.
It seems like a nefarious use of language.
Clarification would be appreciated.
They think the same thing about us. If we say something they don’t think is evil, they just accuse of lying and hiding our true intentions.
Besides, convincing anyone of anything is falling for the big con of democracy. That is the root cause of political debate amongst the plebs. It is also getting the cause and effect backwards. Mx Wu isn’t convinced by this supposed study, xir thinks the object is to convince the reader to do what it is xir already wanted to do before xir even saw the study. IOW, it is a tool of propaganda.
It is also just a way of putting the “science(TM)” technocratic stamp of approval on xir ideology. It’s no different than Nobel conferring a peace prize on Barrack Obama. The feminists do the same thing. They turned their pet project, their crotch, into a field of academic study which just happens to agree with all the ideas they had before feminism ever existed in the university. They wear credentials and status conferring bodies like a cheap skin-suit. Not only does it confer credibility on them, it often will also allow them to use that credibility to push it into law. This is how a tribal nutter was able to testify against the Charlottesville people and tell the court what they secretly think and wouldn’t say at the trial. Nice work if you can get it.
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Having recently escaped Hive Central this is an issue near and dear to my heart. Ninety percent of my acquaintances from there are irredeemable shitlibs (I initially wrote “friends and acquaintances” but can a person with whom one is incapable of having an honest conversation without being on the receiving end of much wailing and gnashing of teeth really be called a friend?). Take away the hive mentality and they are almost all decent people. One in particular has been invaluable to me over the last year in dealing with a serious personal issue. Given his occupation, age and other factors I made the safe assumption that he marinates in “progressive” lunacy so resolved never to go there with him. A couple months ago in a moment of weakness I took the bait. Shortly after explaining my thoughts on group differences based on environmental adaptation I was accused of being a deranged, possibly demonically possessed, racist. I actually found it somewhat amusing in its predictability until I didn’t.
What to do? Older ones I write off because they should know better and are usually insufferable. But I feel for Gen X and younger having been cynically maneuvered into a ‘if you don’t believe this you’re a horrible person’ corner. It’s so unpleasant and frustrating to deal with the irrationality, but If we don’t figure out a way to negotiate this divide and conquer tactic we all fall into the abyss together. It’s a conundrum.